Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Marcus
Her breath is on my lips, warm and unsteady, and my heart slams against my ribs hard enough to hurt.
I don’t understand what this woman does to me. Every scrap of discipline I’ve built over the past few years turns to nothing the second she’s this close, her scent wrapping around me and her mouth tilted up toward mine. I lean in that last inch.
The sliding door rolls open behind us.
“Marcus, are you home? I brought food.”
We jump apart so fast that Jessa’s hip catches the counter. Her face is scarlet, her pulse jumping at her throat where I can see it, and the warm bloom of her arousal still hangs in the air between us. She crosses to the far side of the kitchen and grips the edge of the sink, her back to me.
I turn toward the door, ready to throw whoever it is back out of it.
A woman steps into my kitchen, her soft blond curls bouncing with each step. Her blouse is painted onto her skin, and her pants are just as tight, leaving nothing to the imagination. She’s holding a covered dish in one hand, smiling at me with bold red lips. I groan under my breath.
“Sloane,” I mutter under my breath.
Sloane’s gaze slides from me to Jessa and back. Her eyes pinch tight for half a second, irritation she can’t quite hide, and then she paints a bright smile over it.
“I’m sorry.” She steps inside without being asked. “Did I interrupt something?”
“Yes,” I say at the same instant that Jessa blurts out, “No.”
Sloane’s attention swings to Jessa and travels head to foot, taking in the worn jeans, the soft cardigan, the dark hair pinned up in a loose knot.
By contrast, Sloane is poured into something that probably equals a month of most people’s wages, every line of it pressed and deliberate.
The difference is the whole point, and she means me to see it.
“What are you doing here, Sloane?” I keep my voice level.
She sighs, long and put-upon, and crosses to me. “I heard Bella wasn’t well. I brought food for her. I wanted to help.”
She wraps a hand around my forearm, and I draw back because I don’t want Jessa reading one wrong thing into this. Sloane’s grip tightens, fingers digging in to keep me where I am. I’m stronger than she is by a wide margin, so I keep the pull easy at first, unwilling to make a scene of it.
She holds on, looks over at Jessa, and smiles. “Are you the new maid?”
The kitchen goes silent, and I feel my wolf snarl at the thinly veiled insult.
Jessa’s lips press into a thin line. “No. I’m Bella’s friend’s mother.”
The same moment, my patience snaps, and I yank my arm clear of Sloane’s hand. “Does she look like a maid to you? Did you miss what you walked in on?”
Color floods Sloane’s face. “I was only assuming. She’s not exactly your type.”
“And what’s my type, Sloane?” I let the words come out cold. “You? In your fashion-show clothes? I don’t think so.”
Her eyes fill, fast, the humiliation hitting exactly where I sent it. “Why are you treating me like this? I came because I thought you’d be home. I was trying to do something kind.”
Jessa frowns at me, her voice even. “I’m going to step into the other room.”
She moves to pass me, and I catch her by the wrist before she clears my reach.
The contact sends a jolt up my arm, and the wolf surges toward it before I can stop myself.
I turn her so her back meets my chest, her arm folded against her own front, my hand circling the slim bones of her wrist. She goes rigid against me, and I hold her there anyway.
The animal in me settles the instant she’s against my chest, the snarl I’d been swallowing for Sloane gone quiet, every sense bent toward the woman in my arms instead. I shouldn’t be doing this in front of Sloane, who reads everything and forgets nothing, but I keep my hand where it is anyway.
“How many times have I told you not to come here?” I demand over the top of Jessa’s head.
Sloane’s chin sets, stubborn. “Your uncle said we should go on a date. He thought it would be a good chance for us to get to know each other. I’m one of your marriage candidates, after all.”
Jessa stiffens in my arms, a small flinch I feel down my spine.
“This isn’t some ancient court with marriage candidates lined up at the door.” I bite each word off. “I want nothing to do with you. Get out.”
I mean to humiliate her, and I’m clear-eyed about why. I know how vicious Sloane runs under the gloss, and I caught how she sized Jessa up, head to foot, hunting for somewhere to draw blood. The maid remark was meant to cut. I won’t have it aimed at the woman in my arms.
“I came to see Bella,” Sloane tries. “I’m allowed to see her.”
“Bella isn’t seeing anyone.”
“This one’s here.” Sloane jerks her head at Jessa, her tone petulant. “Why does she get to stay?”
“Because you’ll make a scene, and I have no patience for your drama tonight. Bella’s with her friend, and we’re about to sit down to dinner. Out.”
Jessa tips her head back to look up at me, her eyebrows raised.
Sloane spins on her heel and storms out, the dish abandoned on the counter, the door cracking against its frame behind her.
We stand there in the quiet. Jessa is still pinned to my chest, her wrist still ringed by my fingers, and neither of us moves for a beat too long.
“Can you let me go now?” she murmurs.
I release her at once. “I’m sorry.”
She steps clear and rubs at her wrist, studying me, and I brace for a slap or a snapped word about handling her without permission. Neither comes. She just looks at me, curious now, her temper nowhere in sight. “Marriage partner?”
“Yeah. My uncle keeps trying to set me up with her. She’s my old manager’s sister.”
Jessa frowns at the door Sloane vanished through, her brows knitting together.
“What?” I ask.
“She looks familiar.” She frowns harder. “I’ve seen her somewhere before.”
“Where?”
“I don’t remember.” She shakes her head slowly. “I’ve seen her somewhere, though.”
I drop it and step in closer, lowering my voice. “About what we were doing—”
Her palm presses to my chest before I finish. “I don’t think so. You may not want Sloane, but I don’t want you, so we make a tidy little triangle. Back off.”
I deflate, and she returns to the soup with the matter closed. With a sigh, I settle a hip against the counter beside her.
“I can’t work out whether you’re playing hard to get or you actually can’t stand me.”
She doesn’t look up from the pot. “I actually can’t stand you. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.”
I grin before I can stop myself. “Really? So what is it you can’t stand? The money? That I’m good-looking?” I start counting reasons off on my fingers. “The charm? The—”
“Do you ever shut up?” She finally turns her head.
“I will if you make me.”
She lifts a loaded spoon from the pot and comes toward me. I straighten off the counter, certain my luck’s about to turn, certain she’s about to kiss me. She leans in close enough that I catch the warm scent of her over the soup, takes my jaw in her free hand, and pushes the spoon into my mouth.
“How’s that?” she asks.
I give her my most wounded look, swallow, and mutter, “It’s good. You could’ve just kissed me.”
“I’d rather kiss a toad.”
I sidle closer until my shoulder brushes hers at the stove. “I’ll be your toad. I’m very open to roleplay.”
She elbows me back a step, but the corner of her mouth keeps twitching toward a smile she thinks I can’t see.
She isn’t half as immune as she wants to be, yet she keeps pushing me off, and I can’t figure her out.
No one in my life has made me want to chase this badly.
Now that she’s in front of me, I have no intention of quitting.
On one hand, I told myself I’d stay single till Bella was an adult, but in front of this woman, that rule is weakening.
Jessa starts preparing the sandwiches and looks at me. “Tell the girls to come down.”
I go to the foot of the stairs and shout for them, and moments later, footsteps come thundering down the steps.
Jessa sets them to work before they’ve cleared the last step. “Mia, plates. Bella, sweetheart, grab the napkins and the spoons.”
Bella, who normally treats a single chore as a personal injustice, scurries around the kitchen doing exactly as she’s told.
My niece sets out napkins and lines up the spoons, beaming the whole time.
I stare at the sight of it. She wants to please Jessa, plain as day, and somewhere in the last hour, she’s decided she adores her.
“I’ve got it, Uncle Marc.” Bella nudges me away from the cupboard when I reach for the bowls. “I can do it.”
“I’ll help with the—”
“I can do it!” Mia bumps me out of the way quickly.
I hold my hands up and surrender the kitchen to a nine-year-old.
The food goes down, soup and stacked sandwiches, and we all take our seats. Mia leans over her bowl and screws up her face. “There’s no carrot in here, is there?”
Jessa laughs. “I know you don’t like them. You’re safe.”
“You don’t like carrots, Mia?” I put in.
“I hate them.” She scrunches her whole face at the word.
Jessa shakes her head, fond. “She’s hated them since she was tiny. She wouldn’t touch one.”
I light up. “You know what, what a coincidence. I can’t stand carrots either. Never have been able to. Bella’s the opposite, part rabbit. She’ll hunt down every carrot on the plate.”
I look to Jessa, expecting the easy smile she gave me at the stove. Her face has gone pale, her eyes dropped to her plate, her sandwich forgotten in her hand. The change stops me cold, and I run back over what I just said and find nothing in it. I wonder what I stepped on.
Through the rest of the meal, I start to notice a pattern.
Every time I turn to Mia, every time I draw the girl into the talk, her mother’s shoulders climb toward her ears.
This isn’t the fear prey holds for a predator.
She simply doesn’t want me close to Mia, and she watches every word that passes between us.