FOUR
Malinda woke up in the morning still fully clothed, the sheets up over her head, panic like ice in her veins. The events of yesterday with Garrett Millieur yelling at her were still fresh in her mind.
More than yelling -- he had terrified her. She couldn’t remember the last time that she had been that scared by any man. There was something about him. Something he kept buried away beneath a carefully crafted façade. Something she couldn’t identify. Whatever it was, it frightened her.
She pushed her way up out of the covers and out of the bed and immediately went to her dresser. Her backpack and her dufflebag, all the luggage that she had to her name, were still piled next to the dresser and she went drawer by drawer, taking out shirts and pants and socks and stuffing them into her bags. Her only thought was of leaving.
Then she stopped. If she ran away, what would happen to Brandon? He’d go back to living the life where the world ended at the walls of this house. No matter how big this place was, it was becoming too small for him. He’d outgrown it. At ten years old, his feet were too big for his boots. He needed to stretch his legs, spread his wings. Fly.
If someone didn’t give him that chance, that bright little boy would wither and die in this house. No one else was going to save him from that fate. His father had made it abundantly clear that he didn’t want Brandon doing anything outside of the home. Maybe if she went to him again, talked to him, argued harder or smarter or with bigger words. Whatever. Someone needed to stand up for that boy. If she was the only one who would do it, then it had to be her. She wasn’t in the habit of giving up something once she’d started. If the high and mighty Garrett Millieur wanted her gone, he could fire her.
She swallowed. His horrible, darkened eyes from last night glared at her in her memory. Hopefully, firing her was all he planned on doing to her. No, that was insane. Shaking her head, forcing herself to think calmly, she began putting things back in their drawers. This was America. Not to mention the twenty-first century. It was a civilized society. No matter how scary Millieur might have looked last night, she didn’t have anything to fear from him. He was just a man. Besides, she’d made a promise to Brandon. She wasn’t going to break it without a very good reason.
For the moment, she was staying right where she was.
What time was it? Checking the clock next to the bed, she was surprised to find it was still so early. She didn’t even remember falling asleep last night. She had just simply drifted off and now she was wide awake. Plenty of time for her to get showered and make herself presentable before she saw Garrett Millieur again. She wasn’t going to let him see how badly he’d rattled her. No, sir.
This time she remembered to use the door to her own shower, her own private shower. It was far smaller than the one she had accidentally borrowed from Garrett. A small window in the wall let in the morning sun, showing her the heavy branches of a tree growing close to the house in the backyard. It was a cozy space, and thankfully, there was only this one door in and out.
The white tub was an old style heavy thing with clawed feet and one of those curving rims. The shower curtain with its seashell design was suspended from a bar jutting out in an oval from the wall. Pulling it around the tub created a standup shower. Everything was done in a seashell design, in fact, from the wallpaper to the scalloped sink to the little soaps in the dish.
With clothes piled on the floor, she twisted the twin knobs in the tub until the water was scalding hot. When it came out of the showerhead she stepped into it and let it beat into the muscles of her back. It felt glorious. After a while she felt better. She felt like she could face Garrett Millieur again in all his privileged, rich fury.
Liquid soap and shampoo were on a shelf set into the tiled wall along with a loofa sponge. She washed herself, not quickly, feeling somehow that she was cleansing his menacing glare from her skin. Smiling, she scrubbed herself all over again. Take that, Mister Garrett-damn-Millieur.
Snapping off the water when she was good and ready, she threw the shower curtain back, ready to face the day. She screamed when she saw the yellow, piercing eyes glaring at her through the window. The animal sat stretched out along the heaviest limb of the spreading tree growing outside the window. Its gray fur was thick and its long snout was feral and wild and its teeth…
Malinda screamed again and pulled the curtain back in place. It was stupid, and she knew it was stupid, because the thin plastic sheet wasn’t going to save her from anything. Especially not from whatever that animal had been.
First the argument last night, now this. She was going to have a heart attack. Die of fright. Right here in this damn private bathroom.
Was it a dog? It might have been. Just a dog. Or a wolf. It looked like a wolf. She’d heard there were wolves sometimes in the city but wasn’t that just one of those urban legends like how entering your PIN backwards in an ATM machine let the cops know you were being robbed only it didn’t and everyone who tried it just got robbed anyway or killed or…
She took a deep breath, realizing she was close to hysteria, bringing herself back from that edge by telling herself no one was coming to save her even though she had just screamed loud enough to wake the dead and she was inside anyway and there was no way for an animal to get at her. No one had come to save her.
Swallowing, wondering how her throat could be so dry when she had just soaked herself in a long shower, she gripped the edge of the shower curtain. Looking out through the cloudy plastic and the dark seashell pictures, all she could see was a murky view of the bathroom. The window was a small dark square. If anything were still there, staring at her, she wouldn’t know until she pulled back the curtain…like this…
Malinda forced herself to open her eyes. There was nothing there. Outside was just the tree with its rough bark and its tiny leaves shaking in the breeze. No animal. No predator waiting to pounce on her.
Shaking, she rolled her head back and stared at the ceiling. If there were animals like that around this part of the city, maybe that was why Garrett wanted his son to stay inside. No, that couldn’t be it. The boy could still take cab rides into the city and visit Central Park and go to school. Couldn’t he? There was something else going on here. It reeked of male protectiveness gone way too far. Not that telling him that would do any good. Look where it had gotten her last night.
She kept her eye on the window as she stepped out and picked up her clothes and, walking backward into her bedroom, closed the door behind her.
The sound of Garrett clearing his throat caught her by surprise. She dropped the clothes in her hand and she spun, and she was completely naked and dripping wet.
“We have to stop meeting like this,” he said.
Was that supposed to be funny? His back was turned to her. What had he seen before he turned his back? Wait, why was he in her rooms? Was he smiling? That bastard, he was smirking, she could tell!
“What are you doing here?” she demanded, putting her one hand down over the V between her legs and crossing the other over her breasts. It was already too late, but damn it she did not want to be naked in front of him.
“I heard you scream,” he told her, very carefully keeping his face turned away. He was in a dark sweater and khaki pants. His hands were folded together behind his back. His hair was meticulously in place. Still she got the sense that he had dressed hastily, that he had thrown himself together this morning either when he came running here from down the hall or even before that. “Generally, when you hear a woman scream, you come to help.”
“That was like five minutes ago!” Now it was her turn to yell at him. It felt good, after the undeserved verbal thrashing he had given her last night. Take that, she thought. Damn you and your money. “What did you do, wait to come rescue me? Stop for a snack?”
She sidestepped, very careful to keep all of her private parts…well, private. When she got to her drawers she had to take her hands away but she turned her back to him and picked out panties and socks and pants and a t-shirt. If he got a peek at her ass, then so be it. He wouldn’t be the first guy to see it.
Then why did it have her so bothered to think of him standing there, looking over his shoulder, admiring her as she bent down to pull her pink satin panties on?
Her face was flushed. Her heart was racing. First the animal at the window, now him in her bedroom when she was totally exposed.
Oh.
Reminded of what had made her scream in the first place she tugged her t-shirt on over her head and pulled her still wet hair out and over her shoulder and put everything in place. “There was something outside in the tree.” Ugh, that sounded stupid. Like she was a little girl spooked at a passing shadow or the monster in the closet.
He turned toward her then, slowly, one eye barely open, until he saw that she was dressed. His eyes were stuck on a spot below her face and she didn’t know why until she realized she hadn’t put on a bra. The shirt was a light blue and her wet skin and soaked through it and her nipples were still tight and peaked from her shower and her fright.
She crossed her arms and shifted her weight to her other foot. Standing there alone in the room with him, she still felt naked. It was becoming a thing between them.
“There was something outside in the tree,” she repeated, trying to get some of her dignity back.
One of his eyebrows quirked. “Something? Can you describe it better than that? The word includes a lot of things. Something. Was it an apple? A tin can, perhaps? A bird?”
“Don’t be a bastard,” she barked at him.
His face turned darker. “People don’t talk to me like that.”
“After how you treated me last night you deserve to be spoken to like that.”
He didn’t argue it with her but he didn’t tell her she was fired either. Maybe she had gotten through to him last night, after all.
The silence stretched out. Malinda felt like she had to fill it in with something. “I saw an animal. Out there on the tree. It was a…” She almost said wolf but then she remembered no matter what it had looked like in her terror it would be crazy to think a wolf had found its way into the city just to stare at her naked ass through the window. “A dog. It was a big dog.”
The color drained from his face. The little sarcastic smile slipped away. “Describe this dog.”
“It was gray.” What else? She was confused. Why was he so worried about a dog? She was embarrassed enough as it was that she had screamed her head off just because a pair of yellow animal eyes had been staring at her like she was a piece of meat. “Um. Really hairy. Big teeth.” The better to eat you with, she nearly laughed. It was ridiculous. It was just a dog. That’s all it had been.
So why did Garrett look so worried?
“You saw that?” he asked. No, not asked. Demanded.
“A gray dog. Yes, I saw it. What, you don’t believe me?”
He turned away from her, reaching for the door, then turned back like he was going to say something. Whatever it was, died on his lips. A flash of what she had seen in his eyes last night sparked again. It froze her in place. Mostly because it was the same look she had seen in the dog-wolf’s eyes through the bathroom window.
She understood him now, at least a little bit. He was an animal, caged inside a man’s skin. Hiding behind the cloak of propriety that members of high society wore like a suit of armor. Garrett Millieur wasn’t a man. He was some sort of beast.
“You should leave,” she told him, her voice weak and quiet.
She couldn’t move. If he wanted to hurt her in that moment, she would be defenseless to stop him. He could do anything to her and she wouldn’t be able to do any more but let him. He could take her and hold her down and do anything to her…anything.
Her body was reacting to an image of her on the floor, his body a strong weight over hers, her clothes torn off and him biting the slope of her shoulder while he moved inside of her…when she moaned, the desperate plea hidden inside of it surprised her.
“You should go,” she managed to croak one more time, even though her heart was pulling her toward him.
“I’ll go,” he snarled, “when I’m ready.”
Suddenly she was standing in front of him. She didn’t remember moving. She didn’t take all those steps across the floor, did she? To be here, right here, wanting to touch him, to have him touch her, to press herself against him and find out if his heart was pounding as heavily as hers. If she pressed her chest up against him she would feel it. If she pressed herself there, he would feel how tight her nipples had become and how her chest was heaving to take in enough breath. There just wasn’t enough air in the room. She was drowning, suffocating, panting for him to save her.
A rumbling growl in his chest was her only warning before he was on her. His strong hand held her by the back of her neck and pulled her up to him where his lips fed hungrily on hers. She felt every stitch of her self-control unravelling as she melted against him and allowed herself to be taken.
Only, he didn’t let it go any further. In an instant, he pushed her away and flung her bedroom door open. He was gone, leaving her stumbling, trying to find her balance while the room spun slowly around her. What had just happened? She told Garrett to leave. He had…touched her…
She folded her arms over her chest again. She was alone now, and even now she felt exposed. Garrett had looked at her with those eyes—those intense, ravenous eyes—and laid her bare in an instant. Like, right to her soul.
Malinda had watched herself. From the outside looking in, it was pretty obvious how much she’d enjoyed him touching her. What was the power he held over her? It was like she’d been a puppet on his string. Oh, damn. Could this day get any more messed up?
She started to leave the room to go downstairs and find Brandon. She needed to talk to him more about why he wasn’t allowed to leave the house. There was something there she needed to understand.
Before she even reached the door, she stopped. Going back to her dresser, she found a bra to wear.
***
Near the bottom of the stairs she heard Garrett, voice raised, having a heated conversation with his butler Wilson. She stopped, hand on the rail and listened to his words.
“She saw the wolf!” He sounded like he was talking through clenched teeth. “She saw him, Wilson. Do you know what that means?”
“Trouble,” was Wilson’s simple response.
“It never comes this close to the house. Whenever I change, I always roam away from the house. It’s the way things are!”
“Apparently,” Wilson said in a calm, straightforward way, “not anymore. Sir, if the girl has seen…”
“No.” For a moment there was silence and Malinda was worried they had seen or heard her there. With a snort, Garrett continued. “I take responsibility for her. No matter what else has happened, she’s been good for Brandon. I tell you, Wilson, she had no right to take him out to Central Park but you should have seen him this morning. I can’t remember the last time he was this animated. This excited! She’s good for him.”
“Your instincts win out again, sir.”
Malinda tried to process what they were saying. A wolf? If Garrett knew there was a wolf around the house why wouldn’t he have warned her? And that stuff about it staying away from the house. Garrett was talking like it had been himself outside of her window.
A trembling sensation snuck its way over her skin. Her eyes went wide as crazy thoughts filled her brain. When he changed. That’s what he’d said. When he changed, he roamed away from the house.
Wolves.
No. This wasn’t some dumb tweenage love movie with sparkling vampires. She needed to keep her head on her shoulders and stop being spooked by every little thing she saw or heard. There were wolves near the mansion. Now that she knew, she could take the right precautions. She’d need to keep away from Garrett, too, and not let his animal side take her over again. Keeping Garrett from seeing her naked might be a good first step. She made a mental note to see if her bedroom door had a lock on it.
“Well, well. Miss Rose.”
It was Wilson standing at the bottom of the stairs, his black butler’s uniform with the long tails crisp and neat, his expression disapproving. “I see you’ve come down to start your duties, finally.”
She swallowed back a lump in her throat. If Wilson suspected she had heard anything that he and Garrett had just said, he didn’t mention it. She decided it would be better for her if she didn’t mention it, either.
“I’m sorry if I’m late, Mister Sherman.” She straightened her back and tried her best not to look like someone who had been eavesdropping. “Garrett and I were, um, talking in my room. Apparently there’s some sort of animal roaming around the grounds outside this gigantic house of his.”
His face twitched, once, before settling back into a scowl. “Yes. That would be the neighbor’s shaggy dog. The thing enjoys climbing trees. Don’t worry, Miss Rose. We’ve taken steps to keep it away. It shouldn’t happen again. Perhaps if it bothers you, then you should consider finding some other employment?”
At the bottom of the stairs she made a show of checking her cell phone. She had already decided she was going to keep this job. There was no way she was letting this pompous ass make her leave, or giving into her feelings for Garrett.
When she had her courage again, she said, “No, that’s fine. I’m sure you’re doing everything you can to keep this…dog from climbing your trees to stare at me in the shower. Now, where is Brandon, please?”
He sized her up for a good long moment and Malinda was proud of herself for standing her ground and not giving in to the roiling knot of fear in her stomach. There was obviously something going on in this house that she didn’t know about yet, something they were hiding from her.
Garrett Millieur had seemed a little strange to her when she had first met him, but in a mysterious, alluring way. Now? Well, now she had to wonder if she should be worried about her own safety.
Still, she met Wilson’s level stare and only the pounding of her heart would have given her away. So unless he could hear the blood pulsing in her veins…
“Very well,” he said abruptly, turning and stalking away without waiting to see if she would follow. “Young Master Brandon is in with his tutor at the moment. This way.”
She smiled, feeling like she’d won some tiny victory.
The part of the mansion that Wilson led her into was a part she hadn’t stepped foot in before. The walls were smooth and white, like museum walls, made from granite or formica or hey, for all she knew, it was actually marble. They passed several paintings framed in filigreed frames. They were almost exclusively scenes of animals in the wild; horses running across a mesa, a bear snapping at salmon in a stream, deer standing tall and graceful in a thick forest, a hawk flying through a cloudy sky.
“Please don’t dawdle,” Wilson called back to her.
Malinda frowned at him and when he turned his back again she stuck out her tongue. She had been lagging behind to admire the paintings. Whoever had made them was a really great artist. She could see each feather in the hawk’s wing. The antlers on the deer were so vividly rendered that they seemed to curl out form the canvass. The bear’s teeth glistened in a sun that wasn’t there. Amazing.
Leaning down to get a better look at the signature in the corner of a painting that showed a black panther blending in to the background of a dark jungle, she saw only initials.
GM.
She was ten steps further on, turning right down another hallway, before the meaning of that signature registered. GM? Garrett Millieur? Did he paint all of these?
As she was about to ask Wilson that very question, he stopped in front of a set of plain double wood doors that seemed out of place in the middle of all of this grandeur. “Here, Miss Rose. Young Master Brandon will be engaged in his lessons for perhaps another half an hour. I believe the rest of his schedule today is free.” He inclined his head toward her in a way that he probably meant to look severe and menacing. “Do remember, you are not to take him out of this house under any circumstances.”
“Afraid the wolves will get him?” she asked, knowing she was pushing her luck, but reminding herself that she had to stand up for Brandon in the middle of whatever mess was going on here.
She didn’t expect him to go pale and then step quickly past her and back down the hallway. He’d looked scared. What had she said? Wolves. She’d asked about wolves. What the hell was going on?
She needed to have a long conversation with Garrett, one that didn’t involve her mysteriously falling into his arms, or her being naked. She had to make him explain this. If she was going to help Brandon and keep him safe, didn’t she need to know?
Hmm. That thought surprised her, a little. The way she had become so protective of Brandon so quickly. She’d never been a mother. She was way too young for it. Yet, being with Brandon yesterday had brought something out in her. This kid needed her.
Noises from behind the doors caught her attention. A hard whack, whack, whack. No, clinking, like metal hitting metal, then Brandon shouting.
Her body jumped into action even before her brain formed a coherent strategy. He sounded like he was in trouble and she acted. The doors swung inward and she rushed through them and into the room beyond.
A gym. It was a small gym complete with padded mats up along the walls and high ceilings and a polished wood floor that squeaked with every step that Brandon and the other man with him took. Malinda stared.
Apparently, Brandon’s lessons for today consisted of fencing practice.
Brandon and the other man—his instructor—wore white body suits with long sleeves and heavy gloves. Masks with black metal mesh over the face covered their heads. Both men held their left hands behind their backs, and in their right hand was a long, thin sword. A rapier? Or a foil? She didn’t remember what the things were called but she knew they looked deadly as the instructor lunged toward Brandon and thrust forward with the point of his sword.
“Stop!” she heard herself yell. “What are you doing?”
The man looked over at her when she said it, his blade pausing in midair. Brandon took the opportunity while his instructor was distracted and landed a slashing blow across the bigger opponent’s chest.
“Ha!” he exclaimed. “Take that!”
Well, Malinda had to admit he didn’t look like he was in any danger. In fact, he looked like he was having fun. Swordplay? At his age? That couldn’t be part of the New York State educational curriculum.
The instructor took his protective helmet off, a wide smile on his face. “Very good, Brandon. You took advantage of an opening. Exactly what I’ve been telling you to do. I salute you!”
He lifted his blade up, and Brandon did the same, crossing the thin whips of steel. Then he danced in a circle and pointed toward Malinda. “Did you see that? Did you see that?”
“Yes, I did.” She felt better knowing he wasn’t in trouble. Not so much that he was being taught games with sharp objects at his age but his enthusiasm was contagious and she couldn’t help but smile. “So this is what your lessons are? This is where you are all day?”
He struggled to get his helmet off. “Only sometimes. Usually it’s boring stuff like history or quantum calculus. You know, kid stuff.”
Kid stuff? She didn’t even understand all of the words he’d used. “Um. Well. I don’t want to interrupt your lesson. Can you come find me when you’re done? I’ll wait for you in the dining room.”
“Which one?” he asked.
He was serious. Of course there would be more than one. “Um. The one we had breakfast in.” Sure, if she could find it again.
He promised to meet her there as soon as he was done. Then he put his face mask back on and squared off with his instructor. She left as the swords started to fly. She wasn’t used to this sort of thing, although she supposed it was harmless enough. Garrett Millieur certainly had some odd ideas about what his son should be learning in his homeschool environment.
Odd and deadly.