by Holley Trent
Because they were so cruelly attached to their father, Charles and Claude did what they could to keep the creature placated. They made excuses and told lies. They’d done good work for him for more than a century each and had tainted the souls of innumerable women.
But, recently, they’d quit because of John.
John had been a game-changer for them.
Gulielmus, however, didn’t know yet.
Julia may not have been immersed in their world for long, but she knew they were all going to be in hot water when he learned his two favorite spawn had defected.
Squaring her jaw and rolling her shoulders back, Julia took a deep, bolstering breath. “Well, what’s his name, this love of my life and temporary warden?”
“Fuck if I know,” Charles said. “Doesn’t matter. You’re like us. You were born to be charming. I imagine you’ll be able to stumble your way through the introduction just fine.”
“When do you think I’ll be able to leave?” she asked both brothers when she and Charles approached the driveway.
She didn’t want to go from one jail straight to another. She’d left the compound because she didn’t want to be some old man’s fifth wife and the mother of a brood of indistinct, glassy-eyed, towheaded children who looked exactly like her sisters’ kids and her cousins’ kids. She wanted to be some man’s one and only, and to have children because she was that in love—not because she had a quota to fill. Her quasi-cupid cambion brother had sworn she could have that with this stranger he was hiding her with, but how could she?
She was meant to be a succubus.
She knew better to hope. Hope was like pride—not allowed for women like her.
Claude rested one of his large hands on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Hey. Try not to worry about how long, chéri. Just live, okay? I’m working on some charms for you, but you’ve got to give me some time. Lost half of my stash when I exorcised John. It’s going to take a while to erect the protective wards, and I’m low on supplies. I don’t think twelve bags are going to be enough. Charles misread the acreage when he pulled up the property record.” He added in a mumble, “And apparently didn’t think to read the guy’s name.”
Charles rolled his eyes again.
She sighed. “So, I need to charm a stranger enough that he tolerates me and doesn’t punt me from his woo-woo magical property when I ask to spend the night.”
“Exactly that.”
“Guess I better get on with it and go meet him.”
“You’re not marching to the gallows, Julia,” Charles said. “He’ll love you. I swear it.”
She scoffed.
Love.
What did that even mean?
She doubted she’d know romantic love if she ever saw it. She’d been raised to believe that relationships were about networks and little else.
Taking her bag from Charles, she gave her brothers a final wave. Telling herself to be brave, she started up the wooded path.
She was stepping out of the frying pan and into the fire, and as always in her life, she didn’t really have much of a choice.
CHAPTER TWO
Groupie, scouter, or proselytizer—it couldn’t be anyone else at Calvin Wolff’s front door.
His driveway was barely visible from the road, and the house was so far beyond the entrance that most folks gave up and turned around before they got to the clearing.
That was exactly the way he wanted things to be. The reason he’d purchased ten acres of prime Blue Ridge real estate was so that people would leave him the hell alone.
Folks had to be really ambitious to track him down and make that pilgrimage up to the house.
He knew what his autograph was worth. It wasn’t like he could forget. His agent reminded him about the value every time he called, emailed, or dropped by. Calvin hadn’t given out too many of them during the five years he’d played professional baseball, and although he’d more or less retired, people still wanted a piece of him. Apparently, he was too damned interesting to forget.
He opened the security camera’s app on his tablet just like he did every other time some asshole rang his bell.
He scowled.
“Not an asshole,” he muttered, because as far as he knew, there was no feminine version of that word, and that was most definitely a female mashing the doorbell button.
He zoomed repeatedly on the blonde creature on his doorstep.
Her hairstyle would have been perfect for a cast member of Real Housewives of the Prairie. He was pretty sure he’d seen Laura Ingalls Wilder wearing braids coiled around her head like that.
“What the hell?” He panned the side camera up, and then down.
He angled the camera at her plain white blouse—with fussy, a rounded collar—and a floral-print skirt that practically touched the wooden slats of the porch floor.
“What in the fresh hell?” he asked the cosmos as she depressed the doorbell button again.
She didn’t look like any baseball groupie he’d ever seen before.
Hell, maybe they’re resorting to new tactics now. They probably think if they send somebody weird enough, I’ll open up.
He had no urgent plans to do that.
Her shoulders slumped, and she dropped something from one.
It was a bag of some sort.
When she took a step back, she moved into the center camera’s range, and he finally cleared the focus on her face.
He whistled low and leaned back in his leather desk chair. “Well, goddamn, then.”
That woman had a hell of a face to go with the getup she was wearing.
“Wrong holiday, honey. Valentine’s Day is next week, not Halloween.”
He put his elbows on the desktop and stared down at the deteriorating image.
“Fuckin’ satellite internet. Gotta cut down some trees.”
The picture cleared once more, putting her stunning face in sharp focus.
She had the prettiest mouth he’d ever seen.
Even without moving, it called forth certain base urges in his lower half.
He ignored them, just like he always did as of late.
With his hormonal situation currently being in a chaotic state of “If he dies, he dies,” he couldn’t afford to get hot under the collar. Or hot anywhere, for that matter.
“Nah, maybe not an autograph,” he mused as he bobbed his knee to siphon off some excess energy. “Gotta be selling something. What’s she selling? Tupperware? Nah, Bibles, probably.”
He’d probably need a Bible to purge himself of the lascivious thoughts threatening to thread through his mind at the moment. That blouse she was wearing was kind of thin and he had a damned good imagination about what was inside it.
He bobbed his knee faster.
“Maybe we could play a little game.”
She could borrow his favorite sweatshirt and pretend to be Little Red Riding Hood. He could be the Big Bad Wolff, and when he caught her, she’d tell him all about his big things.
He sucked in some air through his clenched teeth and bobbed the other knee, too. “The last time I saw a woman who looked like that was…”
He’d never seen a woman who looked like that.
Before he’d entered his self-prescribed seclusion, the women he tended to consort with were the kinds who didn’t have tan lines, and not because they avoided the sun. The one at his door had probably never seen the inside of a tanning bed, or much else for that matter. Those delicate lobes of hers weren’t even pierced. Her eyebrows had probably never met a strip of wax, but that was okay. He didn’t mind a little fur. The brows suited her large, thick-lashed eyes and balanced the luscious lips she kept pulling into her teeth’s clamp. He bet those lips were pink as dogwood flowers, but he couldn’t tell from the black and white image. He should have spent the extra money on the color cameras.
She leaned forward and rang the bell once more.
“Persistent, aren’t ya?”
They always were, though. They always thoug
ht if they’d done the work of finding the place, they’d give their best effort at getting inside, sometimes illegally.
That was why he kept a shotgun loaded and cocked behind his front door. He hadn’t had to use it yet, but he’d grown up in the sticks, so if he had to shoot, he knew how, and would. He had other ways of scaring people, though. He’d just prefer to not resort to them.
She disappeared from the cameras’ views for a few seconds, and when she stood again, she had the bag strap on her shoulder and her face had taken on a pall of dejection.
“It’s not that big of a deal, honey. Just move on to the next house.”
The woman turned, walked to the steps, and sat, easing the bag onto her lap.
She was going to wait it out.
“Okay, definitely not a proselytizer.”
She leaned her head against the stair rail as lightning flashed through the sky and rain began to patter against his tin roof.
February rain. That meant cold and miserable.
She must have certainly felt it, because she stood and backed toward the door, still clutching that bag against her chest.
“Okay, probably not a groupie.”
Groupies didn’t particularly like getting their hair wet.
He stilled his legs and crossed them at the ankles beneath the desk. “And where’s your fucking coat?” With those thin clothes on, she’d catch her death from cold.
He groaned, even thinking about the possibility. He couldn’t have that shit on his conscience. Despite what his little sister asserted, he did actually have a soul.
“All right. You win.” He put his tablet to sleep. For a moment, he just sat there. Thinking. Wondering.
He didn’t want to open that door. He liked his quiet life and not having to be around people anymore.
Loneliness was just…easier, even if it was isolating.
And sometimes messy.
As it occurred to him that she was from the temp agency, he snapped his fingers and said, “A-ha. Swiss cheese brain. Constantly forgetting shit.”
Even with his hormonal shenanigans, he could hardly be blamed for not remembering. The last time he’d talked to the agency had been about a month before, and they’d said they hadn’t found him any new candidates for his live-in assistant-slash-housekeeper position. He had specific needs, and they were tough to meet.
Judging from the sight of her, she didn’t look like she could operate a computer, much less make day-to-day decisions for him regarding his personal affairs.
She was lovely, though.
He had to fire her on the spot.
The last thing he needed was lovely.
“Fuck that.”
CHAPTER THREE
Calvin strode out of the office and through the den. He paused at the front door with his hand on the knob.
He didn’t like dealing with strangers. There were too many unpredictable variables to interactions and reading social cues was like deciphering cuneiform.
He hadn’t always been that way. Once upon a time, he’d been really damn charming, but then Mother Nature caught up to him and figuratively swept his legs from beneath him.
“All right. Get on with it.”
Allowing himself one bolstering breath, he unlocked the deadbolt and turned the knob.
Her back was facing him as he pulled the door open.
“Can I help you, honey?”
She turned and opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out.
Ah, hell. Prettier up close. Shouldn’t have opened the door.
She swallowed and shifted her weight. Her eyes went wider the longer she stared.
Her eyes held the brightest blue he’d ever seen in a set of irises—as blue as the Caribbean he hadn’t seen in three years, and made her face just as warm as it, too, despite how fair her hair was.
His momma had taught him not to ogle people, but he couldn’t take his gaze off her. It was like he’d been hypnotized all of a sudden because she was awe-inspiring. Standing in front of her, he felt the way he always had as a kid when looking at big Renaissance paintings of angels or spectacular stained glass.
The smattering of freckles across her cheekbones did somehow counterbalance her ethereal looks with just a touch of down-to-Earthiness.
He ran his tongue over his dry lips and imagined being on the receiving end of an ice water IV because every single one of his Y-chromosomes stood up to salute. He was hot all of a sudden. She could probably touch him and leave a dent. She was a broiler, and he was a stick of store-brand margarine.
Fuck. Can’t do this.
He closed his eyes, swallowed with great difficulty, and tried again. “Would you happen to be from the agency?”
“The agency?” Her voice was lusty and low and woke up his nuts in four tiny syllables.
Shit. Of course she sounds like that.
He didn’t know what he was expecting, really, but not that sound.
She should have sounded like a twentieth-century Disney princess and spoke in song, perhaps. That would fit her face.
He dragged a hand down his and cleared his throat.
Any more surprises?
Would she open that bag and take out some rope, a whip, and a blindfold?
Actually, that wouldn’t be so bad. He might actually like that. It’d be better than her just lying there like a lump. That’s what all the rest did. That’s what they thought the Wolff wanted.
Growling low, he pulled the bottom of his undershirt up and wiped his sweaty forehead.
“The employment agency,” he said in a strained voice. He let the shirt fall in time to see her furrowing that pretty brow.
“Oh. Do you need help? And did your stomach just growl?”
He rolled his tense shoulders and took several long, deep breaths.
There. That’s better.
“That’s usually why people contract agencies, so, yes.” He smiled at her, and for once, it was genuine. He couldn’t tell if she was a ditz or if she was just that kind of person who liked to double- and triple-check things so she didn’t make an ass of herself. Either way, her consideration was endearing. Sweet, even. He didn’t have enough sweet in his life.
He furrowed his brow at himself. The fuck I don’t. He didn’t even know why he’d thought such a ridiculous thing.
“Then I’ll help you.” She slipped by him, brushing his side as she passed, and he drew in a long whiff of her essence.
Plain-old clean, no perfume.
Maybe that’s not a costume after all.
He shut the door and followed her through the corridor only to come to a precipitous stop when she halted at the living room entryway.
She scanned the room at her left, around to the large open kitchen in front of them, and then the dining room he never used at the right.
She set her duffel bag—made of olive canvas that seemed incongruous in the possession of such a delicate woman—onto the floor beside the console table and turned to face him. “What do you need help with?” She loosened the buttons at her cuffs and rolled up her starched sleeves.
“Oh, you’re serious.” He laughed and put up his hands. “Hold on. We need to do a bit of an interview first. You might not want to work for me. Folks say I’m difficult.”
He growled at people, for one thing. He couldn’t exactly help it. The proclivity was hardwired into his DNA along with an insatiable craving for red meat and an artistic appreciation of full moons.
“Are you?” she asked.
“I made you ring the doorbell more than once, so what do you think?”
Her lips bunched at one side of her pretty mouth and her brow creased in concentration. “I think you’re probably careful.”
“And I think you’re smart.” He rested his hand on her back and nudged her toward the kitchen. As soon as he touched her, he wanted to skim his fingers lower, and wrap his arm around her trim waist, but that would have been entirely inappropriate. Too proprietary, even though for some reason she felt like she wa
s his.
In truth, he knew why. There was a reason he’d asked the staffing agency for plain, low-energy candidates and that reason had to do with the hormonal surges he couldn’t keep at bay anymore.
If he could get through the next fifteen minutes without acting on his hardwired animal impulses, the interview wouldn’t rapidly devolve into a trial by fire.
His mother said that’d happen—that if he kept himself away from people instead of confronting his problem head-on, he’d start to lose his grip.
He’d already had to quit playing baseball. He didn’t know how much more he’d be forced to give up in the name of doing the “right” thing.
Calvin Wolff wasn’t meant to be anyone’s mate. For that matter, he didn’t want to be an alpha werewolf, either, but there he was—the special motherfucker born at just the right time and to the exact right couple.
He pulled out one of the frou-frou upholstered chairs his designer-slash-mother had picked out, and the lady sat gracefully into it, crossed her legs at the ankles, and folded her hands on her lap.
Manners. Nice.
He scoffed.
Wolves tended to be short-stocked where manners were concerned.
“Would you like something to drink?” he asked in a grumble, trying to keep his eyes off her.
He was operating on the “Out of sight, out of mind” principle, which he doubted would work given the amount of information his nose was giving him. If her face didn’t tear the inner wolf out of him, her scent would. The dog inside of him was desperate for a closer inspection.
Well, you ain’t gonna get it, asshole.
“I’ve got water, orange juice, Cheerwine, real wine, beer, and about forty-seven coffee pod flavors courtesy of my momma.” He grimaced. His momma had her own damned house. He’d bought it. She still insisted on marking her territory in his. “What’s your poison?”
When the lady didn’t immediately respond, he had to look at her to see why.
She was wringing her hands and chewing on her bottom lip.
“Hey, it was just a figure of speech. None of it is actually poisoned,” he said, looking away again. Her lips were too pink, and pink in a way he liked.