The house was straight from a dream.Wooden floors in the main hallway, a beautiful winding staircase leading upstairs.It was open plan, with a few walls between each of the rooms.She could see glimpses of the sitting room, dining room, and kitchen.It was stunning.
Lord held onto the cloth he’d been using to wash his hands, and started to walk her through.
“The job is simple, keep the house clean.I don’t like mess, and you’ve also got to keep me and the boys fed.”
“You have a pack?”
“No, I don’t have a fucking pack.I have men that work for me.They expect a good, hearty meal at the start and end of the day.We start at four every morning and will want breakfast by seven.Dinner by six, five days a week.If some of the boys need any help with food or shit like that, I’ll let you know, and you make double.”He turned toward her.“You can cook, right?That is nonnegotiable.”
“Yes, yes, I can cook.”
He nodded.“That’s good, but I want to test you out,” he said.
Her heart started to race.“Pardon me?”
“I don’t need to see if you can clean.I know what you did at the library, and considering that place is filled with musty books, you have my vote.I want to know if you can cook.”
Astrid was so nervous.
“Go in the kitchen.You’ve got till six tonight.If the boys are happy, you’ve got the job.If you’re a shit cook, you ain’t got it.”And with that, Lord just turned around and left.
She was alone in his home, not that she would do anything.But she couldn’t believe it.Alone, in his home.
She went straight to the kitchen, because it was already late at four in the afternoon.She should have known it was a strange time for a job interview.Lord didn’t exactly play by the rules.
A wolf without a pack.
A wolf without a mate.
He made other wolves nervous.She had seen it.
From what she knew, wolves were supposed to be part of packs.Those that weren’t tended to be ...scary.There were always rumors about lone wolves going crazy, becoming rabid.Lord was none of those things.Sure, he was mean at times, and grumpy, and not the nicest, but what did that matter?
She went to the fridge, opened it up, and was stumped.
“Son of a bitch,” she said.Astrid never cursed.
His fridge was nearly empty.A box of processed cheese, some pieces of rough-looking vegetables, but nothing else.
“What the ...how am I supposed to cook a hearty meal?”She took a step back, closed her eyes, and then thought back to all those times growing up, when her parents were hard on cash, before her father got a steady job with good money.
Her mother had stretched food, seeming to make hearty meals out of nothing.The fridge and freezer might be a waste of time, but Lord had a nice pantry.He needed to go shopping badly, but Astrid could actually work with what he had left.
If he wanted to make it hard for her, he had, but clearly, he wasn’t expecting her to want this job so badly.
****
“Astrid Sinclair?”
Lord turned to look toward the only man he could probably call a friend.Blake Moseley was the first human to take the job of coming to work for him on his ranch.He was damn good at his job, but then Blake did come from a ranching family and was considered at one time one of the best.However, hard times hit the Moseley family ranch, which meant they had no choice but to sell and leave.
Blake made his way to No Wolves Road, and the rest was history.Everything he knew, he imparted on Lord’s Ranch, and it had made for a successful ten years so far.Not that Lord needed the money.In his early days, he had learned to invest his money, and he was already a wealthy man.If he had bad years, he had plenty of money to substitute and get him by.
“Yeah,” Lord said.
Astrid Sinclair.A beautiful woman.He knew her.He remembered her.The girl that always had her head in a book.Then the woman who worked at the library, forever keeping the place clean.She either had a dustcloth in her hand, or a vacuum cleaner.
He found himself at the library nearly every week, returning the books he had read during the week.Lord was not the kind of guy that read books, however, since Astrid had worked at the library, that was all he did.At least one book a week, just so he could catch a glimpse of her.
