Chapter 3
?
With a cherry on top.
Zakery
“No,” Viktor says, moving to the fridge and pulling out an onion that he then begins to peel on the cutting board next to me.
“Please?” I ask, abandoning sitting on the kitchen island in favor of leaning against the stove where I hope the deadly onion juices are less likely to float into my eyes.
Viktor chops the evil vegetable in half. “No, you cannot buy a woman’s services. I don’t care how politely you ask.”
My nose wrinkles in a sneer.
“You can help me make dinner, and tell me about how your con went, though.”
“Sunny Con went great,” I provide. “I met a beautiful woman there.”
Viktor heaves a sigh and shoots me a look that I blame fully on the evil onion juices. Surely, onions don’t just make your eyes water. They also make you a butt.
Nevertheless, there are very few places I feel comfortable being anything less than the epitome of grace . Around my brothers is one of them. Especially around Viktor, who lets me mope and pout and grouse. Even when he’s a butt.
Today, however, someone made me laugh within minutes. A complete stranger had me struggling for air in a storage room, because after a brutal breakup, she actually went through weeks where she woke up every day and said, yes, wearing a fursuit is the answer , then proceeded to work on making one.
Like—
I’m sorry—
What?
I very desperately would like more of that in my life.
And Viktor won’t let me have it.
“What’s for dinner anyway?” I mutter, crossing my arms.
“Salisbury steak. Mashed Potatoes. And a vegetable. You can pick the vegetable.”
Good ol’ Viktor, and his balanced meals. He’ll be lucky if I don’t pick okra. He hates okra.
“Is your darling fiancée going to be joining us?” I ask.
“Crisis is having dinner with Crimson while they go over more wedding plans.”
With the way those two act, you’d think they’re marrying each other.
I hum recognition as I push off the stove to peer in the freezer, at our veggie stash. Which appears to be more of a veggie explosion at the moment. The freezer could use a good reorganization. But. I’m definitely not going to do it, neither is Lukas—who’s still on tour anyway—nor Kyran, for we are the trinity of clutter is your friend . Outside our triangle, Viktor’s too busy…and Kaleb. Well, when Kaleb first rejoined our family after our rotten parents died in a horrific accident seven years ago, he tried to keep things organized in shared spaces like the kitchen.
Shame that Kyran, Lukas, and I did not exactly assist in those efforts. The only thing Kyran keeps clean is his bedroom, and that’s probably because there’s nothing in there. His game room? Atrocious. And don’t get me started on anything Lukas touches. If Viktor didn’t work out with him often enough to put the equipment back where it belongs, the workout room would be a hazard.
“Why don’t we keep any staff—still?” I mutter, pulling out a bag of peas and throwing the freezer door closed. “Our parents are so dead I bet their bodies have almost entirely rotted away by now. No prying eyes are gonna see us hitting each other if we get a little help around here. I bet unused rooms on the far side of the manor are breeding new species of spiders as we speak, possibly crossbreeding . With the rats. We don’t have enough cats or staff to keep the impending spider-rats at bay.” I pull out a steamer pot and fill it with water while Viktor begins caramelizing the onions. “We should have at least a cook, and a maid— several maids, actually. For spider-rat control and managing what we do occupy. Just look at the size of this place.” I drag my attention around the kitchen. The high ceiling boasts a spare few lights that keep it lit…atmospherically. The entire Bachelor property—consisting of a manor with more rooms than I’ve ever been able to count and more buildings than I’ve ever been able to find—was once built to the exact specifications of a great-great grandfather or something.
That great-great grandfather, or something, really loved shadows.
Plop parents who regularly made their kids bleed into this place, and all the luxury looks like little more than a dreary prison.
“Did you hear me?” I ask.
“I’m not validating the question with a response.” Viktor sighs. “You know Lukas won’t be on tour forever. He does not need a harem of pretty little maids to mess with.”
“We can get a handful of little old lady maids. Lukas is nice, and only sometimes a flirty bully, with little old ladies.”
Viktor, bless, glares at me, so I lift my hands in defense and start peeling potatoes.
My surrender lasts only a few moments. “ Male maids.”
“The last thing this place needs is more testosterone, Zakery.”
“Right. Exactly.” I point my peeler at him. “That’s what I’m saying. Let me have a pretty little splash of estrogen, all to myself, safe from Lukas’s Lukasness, in my bedroom.”
Viktor, bless , glares at me some more, tossing seasoning into his skillet without looking at it.
“It’s like you don’t trust me.”
“I trust that this girl you want to hire to model for you will fall head over heels with you in a matter of days, and then you’ll be stuck again, since you have never—once—been interested in dating any of the women who have thrown themselves at your feet. I do not need it on my conscience, which works double time, to make up for the fact you don’t possess one.”
“Please. She’s not going to fall in love with me. She’s just—” I snort. “—broken up with some guy named Harry.” I chuckle, slice, slice, slicing potato skins onto the counter. “He’s a wolfkin. Great howler. Don’t ask me how I know that.”
Being absolutely no fun at all, Viktor doesn’t.
So I continue my spiel, “I’m pretty sure she doesn’t like me. I did laugh at her.”
“ You laughed at a stranger? In front of a stranger?”
“I know. Why do you think I’m so invested? She’s hilarious , Viktor. Hilarious. In two minutes, she had run through a convention hall away from a guy who was howling and calling her his mate , collided with my table, and knocked down all the boxes in a storage room—all while spilling her life story. She rambles. It’s adorable.”
“Zakery.” Viktor pauses his prep of the other steak ingredients in order to stare me deep in the eye. “Women…” He takes a breath, lets it out slowly. “ People are not your toys. They do not exist to amuse you. I shouldn’t have to tell two of my brothers that regularly.”
“You think I don’t know that?” I inquire, offended. “Trust me. I wish people existed to amuse me, yet so few I find are genuinely amusing. Be honored. Crisis is one of the few.”
Viktor growls, “Why don’t you practice never looking at my wife again, hm?”
“Hard not to look when things randomly blow up around her. Looking is practically required—for self-preservation reasons. Also. Fiancée , Viktor. You’re not married yet.”
“You’re unbelievable.”
“I know it.” I beam. “Come on, since when do I ask for anything?”
“You asked me to let you run this con.”
“Other than that.”
“You asked for a new drawing tablet less than a year ago. It was over three thousand dollars.”
I wanted a standalone, with a stand, as if I don’t bring that much into the family on a weekly, if not daily, basis. My comics and accompanying merch sell by the hundreds every single day. I frown. “It’s really messed up that we have to get permission for things like this from you. I could afford her all on my own if I wanted.”
“Yes, you could. But, last I checked, my brothers trusted me to protect the image of our family to the best of my abilities.”
“We do, don’t we? And you do a great job protecting that perfect, shining image that our parents loved so much. You’ve always protected it, haven’t you? Even when protecting it meant covering our bruises with makeup.”
“Zakery, that’s too far.”
Is it? I rewind the words in my head and wince. Yeah, okay. It was. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“I think I’m angry.”
“Yeah, I can tell.”
Attempting to free the convoluted mix of emotions twisting up in my stomach, I soften my voice. “Am I doing anything wrong by wanting a model to help me plan my next series? Is it really my fault if she gets her feelings hurt? Can we not afford to pay her fifty dollars an hour for a few hours a day?”
“We don’t need or want scandals, Zakery, least of all with any of the residents in Sunset. This is the one place where we can exist without cameras being shoved in our faces every few seconds.”
Yeah, don’t I know it? Only having a few security guards at a con was…refreshing. Normally, I’m surrounded by them. And screaming fans. Who sometimes feel compelled to throw their undergarments on my face.
Having a pretty pink little furry fox tumble into my lap, by comparison, was so much better.
“I solemnly swear I won’t start a scandal or rumors in Sunset. I’ll have her sign an NDA to keep what happens during our time together classified. Then, if she rats, you have grounds to escort her out of our lovely little town and fill the spot with a less chatty person from our long, long waiting list. My muse might not be perfectly sane, considering Crisis passed the assessments to live here, but she’s definitely going to be kind. That’s the main thing your tests look for, isn’t it? If she goes and gets her feelings hurt longing after my princely facade, that really seems like a her problem. There are no downsides. For us.”
“I wish you had a soul,” Viktor murmurs, morose, despondent, truly mourning the soul that he knows our parents carved from my flesh.
Sometimes, I do wish I were a little more in tune with feelings , so I’d know better what’s going on with other people who have them and let them affect me, but mostly it’s hard to want what I have no realm of understanding for. If ever I had a soul, it’s been too long for me to remember what that’s like. “Please, Viktor. It’s literally for work. And I think I’m pretty good at keeping up a professional front, don’t you?”
He heaves another sigh. “I’ll think about it.”
That’s another way that my darling brother says no .
Before I can open my mouth again, however, my cell phone rings, so I grab a towel to wipe my hands, pluck the device from my pocket, and tamp down the smile that responds when I see the unknown number. I knew my offer was too tempting to resist. “Hello? Zakery Bachelor speaking.”
“H-hi.”
Cutie. I love her stammers. Her hesitation. Her um s.
“This is Maelin, from the con?”
“Oh, Maelin!” I smile. “That was fast. You’ve changed your mind already?”
A fortifying moment passes, suggesting that wasn’t the right thing to say, but then desperation fills her voice.
“I have. M-my sister just lost her job. She’s a very good worker. Very, very good. She only lost her job because she’s not blonde, and her employer wanted her to be blonde.”
I scowl. “What a sicko.”
“Yeah. Um.” A shaking exhale makes its way through the line. “Mr. Bachelor, I don’t know what exactly you were considering by the way of hours for me, but…well…we only have one car, and depending on what you were thinking, I don’t know if it’d be enough to cover our expenses. Is there… any possible way that maybe you have room on your staff for a maid, too?”
Well, well, well. If that’s not fate, I don’t know what is.
I cut my attention toward Viktor, who’s pretending not to listen in as he settles the steaks into his mushroom gravy. I tilt the phone away from my mouth and ask, “Did you catch that, Viktor?”
Articulately, he grunts.
“ Pretty please?”
His shoulders fall. “Fine. One maid. One model. No special treatment. And this better not come back to bite me.”
Of course it won’t. It’s not like I’m trying to hire Harry . That man looked like he bites—and not in a fun way. Thrilled, I lift the phone back to my mouth. “Do you know how to get to the main manor on the Bachelor property, princess?”
“I think so?”
Very good. Most everyone in Sunset should know just about where this palace on our property rises above the treelines off the main roads…
“Perfect,” I say. “I’ll see both you and your sister here Monday at nine o’clock. We’ll get you two settled in with expectations and orientations that morning, then you can start the same day.”
Relief swells, overwhelming her voice. “Thank you so much, Mr. Bachelor. I really appreciate this.”
“Don’t mention it. Also, we’re a house full of Mr. Bachelors, so you might as well get used to calling me Zakery.”
“O-oh. Okay. That makes sense. Thank you, Zakery.”
I really like the sound of my name on her lips.
Smiling, I hang up and chirp to Viktor, “She’s really, really pretty.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’ll see.”
“Mm.”
“I’m so excited.”
“I’m gonna start the water for the potatoes. Dump them in when you’re ready.”
I pout. “You’re no fun.”
But that, at least, gets half a smile out of him.