Hired By The Grumpy Minotaur (Monsters Of Saltford Bay #9)

1. Chapter One

Chapter One

Maddie

My feet hurt like twin bitches playing volleyball on a bed of hot coals.

It's no surprise, since I've been standing for the past twenty-two hours. Something has taken up residence behind my right eye and started redecorating the insides of my skull in bright red.

It has views. It has opinions.

I've been running that number in my head since sometime around hour eleven. I wasn't supposed to pick up a double shift at the Shop-N-Save today, but Mrs. Halloran's niece called out sick again and she had no one else to cover for her.

Well, that's not exactly true. She could have called Maggie or Billy, but I jumped on the chance for some extra buck as soon as she hung up the phone and looked in my direction.

It's my third double shift this week. Maybe if I'm lucky, I'll land another night shift at the nursing home, too. With Nelly Hansen on maternity leave, I'll be sure to get more calls.

And I need more. Desperately.

My stomach grumbles and I rest my forehead on the steering wheel of my ancient Toyota Corolla. I just need another few minutes to collect myself before going into the house.

I don't want Mom to see me like this. She always worries when I come back from a double and she doesn't need to worry right now.

Ugh. Another breath, another few precious seconds to collect myself and I straighten, get up on my aching legs, my aching back and my aching feet and walk out of my car and to the front door of my parents' house.

It's not locked. It's never locked. No one in Saltford Bay locks their door, even at night. Perks of a small town, I guess.

Or maybe it's because we know full well that we have nothing to steal, so why bother?

The front door sticks on the warped floorboard. I put a shoulder to it, get it open, and step inside.

"Maddie?"

Mom's voice comes from the kitchen. I toe off my shoes, set my bag down, and manage a "Yes Mom, it's me" that comes out less dead than I feel. Progress.

The smell that greets me in the kitchen sends my stomach into overdrive and another pang shoots through my midsection. It nearly sends me into a feral state.

Nearly.

Who knew that the cure for aching feet was onion and butter smell? Because it is. All my body aches are forgotten and as I step into the small and immaculate kitchen, my sole preoccupation is to fill my belly with as much food as I possibly can.

Grace Berwick is at the stove, her back to me, stirring something in the big skillet. Her jet-black hair is done in a long braid that reaches her waist and her green skin appears soft and weathered under the incandescent light.

"I made your favorite, lemon chicken with orzo. I hope you're hungry."

I open my mouth to answer, but I don't get a chance since a loud grumble fills the air with all the answer she needs.

Mom turns, her eyebrows raised high, her amber eyes going straight to my stomach.

Her lips twitch upward in that heartwarming smile she always has, then up to my face.

Her tusks protrude on each side of her mouth, long and white, a testament to her orc nature.

"Duly noted. Hungry as an orc."

I can't not laugh at this.

"You're the best," I say as I step in closer to give her a hug.

She hugs me back and I lean into feeling small in her towering six-foot-three embrace. She's tall, even for an orc woman, and she always struck me as an invincible force of nature. But even a force of nature like her can be struck down.

Which is why I never skip a hug from her. Not even after a twenty-two-hour workday.

As my arms wrap around her broad back, I can't help but notice how thin she still is. Her shoulder blades are sharp under my palms and I can feel her ribs as she holds me close.

"How was your day?" she asks as she pulls back, then rearranges the oversized cardigan over her chest.

A cardigan that wasn't oversized when I gifted it to her for Mother's Day a few years ago.

"Long and boring."

She scoffs at that and turns back to her cooking, stirring the skillet where the chicken stew simmers like some dangerous potion. It's that good.

Especially when you're starving like I am now.

"You know you can't keep doing double shifts like that, Maddie. You'll work yourself to death."

Mom reaches up to pull down the pepper grinder from the shelf above the stove, then stops. She takes a half step closer and reaches for the pepper again, then keeps cooking like nothing happened.

From my position, I see the way she tries to hide a wince of pain. I want to ask her about it, but I don't. She hates it when I fuss.

Eleven months cancer-free and all that remains of her ordeal is that damned arm pain on her left side. I should feel blessed by this, but it's hard feeling blessed when I see the woman who loved me when no one else would in pain.

"I'm fine, Mom."

"You're going to drop dead in my kitchen if you don't slow down to take care of yourself."

"That would be inconvenient for both of us."

"Don't quip about your health, young lady." She points the wooden spoon at me. "Dinner's twenty minutes. Sit."

"I'm gonna shower first." I shake my head.

"Go on, then." She turns back to the stove. "But if you fall asleep in there, I am not pulling you out."

"Love you too."

I make it two steps toward the hall before the familiar sound of Dad's truck stops me in my tracks.

I glance down at my wrist and frown. Dad's company has been slowing down in the past few months, but he's not normally home this early.

"Lenny, is that you?" Mom calls.

"Yeah honey, it's me," Dad calls from the still-open doorway.

I stand there as his towering seven-foot frame enters the kitchen a few moments later. His short black hair is silver at the temple and his tusks jut prominently from his lower lip. His work overalls are faded and stained, stretched at the shoulder by his imposing frame.

He's every bit the big, strong orc man he always was, his steady, comforting presence making the air in a room settle. Except when he looks up at me, then back at the ground, I get an ominous feeling, deep inside my guts that has nothing to do with my gnawing hunger.

"You're home early."

My voice comes out small and low, like I'm wishing the words back.

He crosses to me and kisses me on the cheek, careful that his overalls don't touch my clothes. I get a whiff of diesel and peppermint and then he straightens. I watch from my position in the hallway as he goes to do the same with Mom, except the kiss is on her lips and it lingers just a bit more.

"Gonna get a minute in the office before dinner," he says after he pulls back.

"Oh." Mom smiles, but even from my position, I see her disappointed frown. "But you just got here."

"I'll be just a minute."

His footsteps go past me and his large hand squeezes my shoulder as he walks by. He doesn't look back as he reaches the small room at the end of the hall and closes the door behind him.

That growing unease I felt the moment he stepped into the house grows more vivid.

Dad never closes the office door. He goes in there to do the bills with the radio set on that country music station he likes. With the door open. He always said a man doesn't need to hide behind a closed door.

I stand in the hall with that growing weight in my empty stomach.

My feet move of their own accord as I walk past the bathroom and past my own bedroom door, all the way to the end of the hall. I face that closed door and swallow, hard.

Not a sound comes from the other side. Like Dad is sitting in a black hole.

I knock.

"Yeah."

I open the door.

Dad sits at his desk with his hands flat on the worn wood surface, on either side of a stack of envelopes like he expects something to happen.

That ominous feeling in the pit of my stomach churns into something acidic at the back of my throat and suddenly, I have to refrain from closing that door and jumping into that shower like I saw nothing.

But Dad's hands are never still. Dad's hands fix engines. Dad's hands fix stuff. Dad's hands do things.

My eyes go from those still hands to his face and I have to swallow the lump in my throat that suddenly appears there.

"Hey, kiddo." He's not looking at me. He's still looking at that damned stack of envelopes between his hands. "Thought you were hitting the shower."

"Just wanted to check in with you first."

I step in and close the door behind me. He lifts his eyes from the desk and those envelopes, and a muscle tightens along his jaw.

I sit down in the chair across from him, the one I used to put my feet on when I was twelve and he pretended not to notice until I scuffed the varnish.

My headache registers and a sharp pain shoots behind my right eye, moving from behind my eyeball to somewhere deeper in my skull, but I barely notice it.

"Dad, talk to me."

His eyes go from me to somewhere both close and infinitely far above my head, then he inhales a long, deep breath that stretches his massive chest under the rough cotton uniform.

"The town killed the new piers project."

Oh, shit.

He says it to that spot above my head, not to me. His brows furrow like he's tasting the words out, trying to wrap his own mind around them.

A bucket of ice pours down from the crown of my head all the way to the small of my back and all of a sudden, I'm not tired anymore. All of a sudden, I can barely breathe.

"When did that happen?"

"This morning. City Council session."

I don't know what I'm supposed to do with my face. I keep it still, because I get the sense that if I say the wrong thing, Dad is going to shut down on me and stay there in this office, staring at his flat, useless hands on that desk forever.

"Town's broke," he says, still staring above my head. "Broke, that's the word they used. The bonds they issued didn't have any takers, so there's no money for the piers, at least not this year."

He does a little gesture with one hand. He leaves the other one flat on the desk.

"Maybe next year. Maybe never. They couldn't say. They were real sorry about it."

When he finally tears his gaze from that distant spot above my head, I almost wish he didn't.