… maybe I can save Black Crag.
This is going to besomuch work, but already the old castle is speaking to me, whispering that beneath all the dust and grime and stuff isrealtreasure. Even though this place looks like a junk store had a drunken hate fuck with a Jackson Pollock painting, it has a personality, a vibe, apresence. And I could be the one to bring it to life.
I can’t stop my mother from filling her house with rubbish, but this Lord Valerian calledme. Hewantsmy help.
Maybe I can save him.
Despite the dust and the dinginess and the tightness in my chest, I can’twaitto get started.
I practically skip into a gloomy room after Reginald, who bows deeply at a shadowed figure behind a large table. “My lord, may I present to you, Ms Winifred Preston, from the Clutter Queens.”
I step forward, extending my hand at the shadow. “Good evening, Lord Valerian. You can call me Winnie. You have a beautiful home, and I’m here to help you make it shine. I’m so excited to get stuck in and clean up your?—”
As the shadowy figure lifts his head from a desk covered in paints and brushes to fix me with a withering glare, my words die on my lips.
It’shim.
The stranger from last night. The one who saved me from that creep and kissed me as if he needed me to breathe.
He’s my new boss.
CHAPTER FIVE
ALARIC
Reginald, I am going todestroyyou.
CHAPTER SIX
WINNIE
Claire: Winnie, I know you’re ignoring my messages because you’re still angry at me, and you have every right to be. I just wanted to see if there was anything I could do? You mean the world to me and I want to fix things. Just tell me what I can do, please.
Ninety percent of my body freezes at the sight of those anthracite eyes fixed on mine, revealing none of the surprise that I feel.
The other ten percent of my body – my feet – doesn’t get the message. They collapse from under me. I stagger forward, trip over a large model locomotive, and go flying.
“Argh!”
I sail through the air, limbs twisting as I try to stop myself from falling on what looks suspiciously like a glass terrarium filled with cacti. But no amount of acrobatic talent I do not possess will save me from my spiky doom, so I close my eyes and brace myself for pain.
But no pain comes.
Instead, something cool and hard slides beneath my arms, lifting me from the ground.
I open one eye.
Lord Valerian holds me beneath my armpits like I am a clumsy child he’s rescued from disaster, which isn’t that far from the truth. Those dark, fathomless eyes regard me with ire, and the corner of his mouth quirks up in what could be annoyance or amusement.
How did he move so fast?
His desk is on the far side of the enormous drawing room, yet somehow he crossed the distance in less than a blink, and is now holding my entire body weight with no visible signs of strain.
I search for those eyes, a thousand unanswered questions bubbling up inside me. But he’s pointedly staring at the wall behind my head.
“Are you quite alright, Ms Preston?” he says in that deep, ragged voice of his, the one that hums through my body as if someone has melted down ten of Louis Armstrong’s trumpets and then poured that molten metal into my veins.
“I tripped on a train,” I say lamely.
