That night, as Lorna was cooking the family meal, Charley and James rushed in, demanding to know what was for dinner and, most importantly, where there dinner was. Unluckily for Lorna she had been daydreaming as she'd been cooking and had forgotten to actually turn the stove on. That Conan Beothewulf was really getting to her wasn't he. There was just something very charismatic about the way he had spoken to her, his very accent, one that she just could not place seemed to drip with sex. Just the mention of his name could make her shiver, and she was going to have to keep that hidden from all, including her siblings.

'Your scripts are in my bag by the door. Now if you would just go and patiently read them whilst I get dinner done you can find out what lines you have to learn for the audition tomorrow can't you?' Lorna asked maternally. She was a very maternal person in general. She just couldn't help it. When her parents had abandoned them many years ago, Lorna had taken both of their places. And once she was finished up here with the cooking she was going out to work.

Lorna's work consisted of waitressing, bar tending and sometimes even singing when the live acts had fallen through. She loved it, she really did. She did in fact prefer the singing, as that meant she was not in a place where the customers could grab at her. Thankfully, her AS level in drama helped her to put on a front and pretend that everything was okay. That worked for both professional and family life. She hoped it would work with the new head of performing arts too.

'And get off the table with those scripts!' she called back, not even turning her head as she put the vegetables on to boil. Just because she was on minimum wage and they lived in a small dinky flat did not mean that they would not be eating healthily. Not under Lorna's watch. She saw them not only as brother and sister, but her son and daughter too. She had always been there for them, even before their parents left.

'I swear Lorna's got eyes in the back of her head,' Charley whispered to James and James nodded back.

'I heard that you two,' the cook snapped and the twins almost stopped breathing, and then they just burst out into laughter at the inane situation. The three of them loved to rib each other lovingly and it made every day just that little bit easier for them to manage, most importantly for Charley. She'd fallen to pieces when her mother and father had abandoned them, she'd been only fourteen and it had been hard on her. She just couldn't comprehend why her mother would leave her. Lorna could remember tucking a teary eyed Charley up in bed and telling her it was okay that she would be her mother and that she would always protect her and never ever leave her. Charley had believed her and Lorna had never broke that promise.

'So are you still definitely going in for the witch?' James asked astounded to which she nodded.

'Wouldn't you want to be the mother?' Charley asked hopefully and Lorna knew why. They would make the most perfect mother and daughter on stage, as well as off stage. 'You'd be great at it,' she added for extra persuasion.

Sometimes when Lorna looked at Charley she still saw that helpless fourteen year old girl, and she guessed it was because she still hadn't gotten over her parents' betrayal.

'No honey, I'm needed as the witch; I'm far scarier than I am motherly. And I wouldn't want anyone to know about a predicament. Would you Charley?' Lorna asked to which Charley shook her head, her gaze downward on her script. 'And what did I say about having those scripts at the table?' she left the cooker to ask in a witchy voice before raising her arms scarily and heading over to stand behind Charley where she proceeded to tickle her sister to death.

'What about me witch? What are you gonna do to me?' James asked, and Lorna was almost one hundred percent sure that he was reading a line from the script; so recalling the line after she crept up behind him and said in a sickly sweet voice.

'Oh, Hansel, I'm going to stuff you full of sweets and then, then I'm going to gobble you all up,' Lorna replied, never once breaking character.

'You wanna know something Lorna? If you weren't so maternal, I'd say you could have been a witch in real life. But then again you have got great acting skills,' Charley butted in and that was when Lorna remembered that she had vegetables on the stove and sausages in the oven.

When she retrieved the food and plated it all up she delivered the three plates to the table and her hungry siblings. Sometimes she wondered if they were getting a little chubby around the edges, and then she realised that they couldn't possibly be. They all ate what she cooked for them, and what she cooked she ate herself. Plus she made them homemade packed lunches so they couldn't possibly be sneaking anything at college.

Before they'd even finished their dinner Lorna was up and untying the apron from her body and hanging it on the back of the door. And then she left without another word. That was how it always was, she couldn't have it any other way, she had to try and keep things between them as normal as possible. Yes she could play mother, but she could never be mother, and sometimes she even needed to remind herself that, so she didn't overdo it.

Conan Beothewulf had been seated on a stool at the bar for almost over an hour before the barmaid he wanted to see even turned up. She wasn't late, no, she couldn't afford to be. What he'd read of her official files, her and her siblings had been abandoned. And from her modest and maternal streak he had realised that she was the one who looked after the younger ones. After all she was the eldest, and worked here, when the twins only had effort enough for their college work.

That was something that Con valued in a woman, a maternal trait. Conan's family had been struck with misfortune when it was said that very few of the women in it could conceive, let alone bear males. And some of them had even given up trying to, after they'd miscarried after the first trimester, none of them had wanted to go through the heartbreak a second time. Con thought that Lorna could, and would. She was strong and she seemed very fertile. She wouldn't let one miscarriage hold her back from trying again. Lorna was a family woman; it seemed to him she would one day want one of her very own.

So Conan might seem much older than Lorna and he was the head of the performing arts faculty, but that did not mean that he was older than her, or in fact in charge of her. Technically speaking Conan was only a year older than the woman, and he was only a visiting member of staff, at least until his play: Hansel and Gretel was finished.

Even as he watched her walk through the bar and stand behind it, Conan was still baffled at the fact that she would want to be cast as the witch in the play. He was very sure that he had had her down for the mother, he would have even cast her as the mother, if it weren't for the fact that he didn't know how her portrayal of the witch would be in the morning. And he had to wait, for she could possibly turn out to be the sexiest witch to ever play the role. He hoped that she had gathered his meaning when he'd said the witch didn't have to be the way the Grimm brothers had portrayed her to be.

'Can I get you anything, or are you just going to sit there and stare at the club for the rest of the night?' Lorna's beautiful cockney voice came from behind him and he turned, to pierce her with his brown eyes. But gods was she beautiful and tough too. She took no nonsense, there behind the bar where she had the most power. Or so it would seem. For he too had a power latent within him, or perhaps it wasn't so latent. Maybe his power was just seething beneath the surface, and maybe he would show it to her one day. One day when the time was right.

'Yeah, I'll have a scotch,' Con replied with a wink as he slipped her a five and told her to keep the change. And as she made herself busy with his order, he noticed that her fine olive cheeks had been just a little red when she'd spotted him. 'Embarrassed to find a teacher here?' he asked when she turned around with his drink, still blushing.

'No, it's just…a little hot in here, and I didn't expect to find you here,' she stuttered and that was when he realised…she was fighting the attraction just as he was. Except she was fighting a lot better than him, he noticed, for she wasn't the one who kept reaching out to touch her when her back was turned. But oh how soft her skin looked, and how badly he wished to feel its warmth!

Another of the many things that set Lorna aside from the women in his family was the colour of her skin, whereas his female family relatives were all pale and, in most cases, blonde, she was all dark and beautifully Hispanic too. She was perfect; he just wished he had a plan to make her his.

'It's because I look a little too old for this kind of get up isn't it?' he asked knowingly and she nodded. 'Well between you and me, let me just say that I'm only nineteen,' Con whispered to her behind his hand, in a way that made such a seemingly harmless communication, that much more intimate. 'Also I'm only here on a training basis, to see what I can learn from you great actors at the college,' he added and noticed the blush on her pretty cheeks intensify. Hot was it?

'Oh,' Lorna could barely manage it seemed. Was she thinking the same as him? That as soon as he had finished his training at the college that he would have her as his? Well he hoped so, for many women did not like the idea of being claimed by a male such as the ones in his family. No they were merely too terrified, too weak. But he knew that Lorna would not be, he just knew that the one thing she would hate him for, would be the abduction of her from her family. For where he lived, was by far too lengthy a distance from the great city of London.

'So, what brought you to the decision to audition for the witch?' Conan asked and Lorna leaned in as if to whisper discreetly to him, in the same intimate manner that he had used.

'Well, can I let you in on a little secret?' she asked to which he nodded.

'Of course.' What couldn't he give her? And besides anything new he found out about her could only make her stronger to him. Would only make her by far more appealing!

'Well I've always had this urge to join a coven, I've always felt quite magical. I mean, and please don't laugh, I swear at time I can predict the future and make the twins do anything I ask as if I did a spell of compulsion on them,' Lorna chuckled. She felt that it was such a casual, such a weird proclamation, yet she did not know the meaning it had to him.

'You're a witch?!' He asked, rearing up and leaving the pub completely. He had been wrong about her it seemed…