Rae peeked through the doorway into Wulf’s Devilhouse office. He sat behind his desk, languidly reading on his phone. Sunlight dappled him through the leaves of the garden outside his window.
She might be able to breathe if she sat in his lap and rested her cheek against his suit just one more time.
If Wulf fired her for yet another debacle session, Rae could look Lizzy in the eye while she packed to leave college. She wouldn’t have to worry about her family finding out anything because, even if Jim Bob said something, she would have been at home for a while and would have no money. No one would believe his illogical accusations.
Rae wouldn’t have to worry about her sweet, stupid dream of a clinic for autistic kids any more, either. Her planned-out life would be simpler, less stressful, and require far less effort.
Wulf glanced up from his phone and saw her peeking around the door frame. His bright blue eyes seemed calm, as always. “Come in. You may close the door behind you.”
Rae pressed the door closed with her palms and then sat in one of the chairs in front of Wulf’s desk. “I’m sorry,” she began.
Wulf waved her apologies away as if brushing away smoke in the air. “There was no way you could have known. The pseudonyms in the files are for our clients’ privacy. You should peruse the business files, which include legal names, to ensure that you are not related to any of our other clients. There is one more relative of yours here, as I’m sure you’ve figured out.”
“My uncle. The mayor.”
If she wasn’t fired, then she either had to quit or figure out some other way to stop poaching Lizzy’s guy.
“He utilizes the very vanilla side of the business.” Wulf smiled, and sympathy spread through his eyes. “I would like to apologize to you. I had forgotten that this corner of the United States has as many familial relations as certain areas of Europe.”
“Yeah,” Rae said. She held her breath with conflicted emotions and blew it out with relief. “Bloodlines around here are more convoluted than the Plantagenets’.”
Wulf’s face hardened, and he reared up behind his desk to his feet. He leaned over the glass, bracing his hands as if to vault it. Rae pushed back in her chair even though the glass desk separated them.
Wulf asked, so quietly, “I beg your pardon?”
Rae didn’t know what had set him off, but he stared at her as if she were a heretic during the Spanish Inquisition. “The Plantagenets? Like Richard the Third? Shakespeare?”
“I know who the Plantagenets are. Why did you reference them?”
“Because, you know, everyone was their own uncle. Their family tree doesn’t so much branch as tangle in upon itself.” She’d heard that phrase a thousand times growing up. “My family is the same way. Second cousins marrying each other, you know?”
Wulf straightened and adjusted his shirt cuffs under his suit jacket. He inhaled through his nose and regarded the garden outside his window for a moment. “Yes, the Plantagenet line does evince consanguinity.”
Rae picked apart that last word into con, which means same, and sang, which means blood, so he must be agreeing with her. “Right.”
Wulf sat in his office chair and rolled himself in. “The business files are in our accountant’s office,” he said, as if he had never leapt out of his chair. “You should make use of them.”
“Right,” Rae said. “Just in case I’m related to any more of the spank-and-wankers.”
Humor returned to Wulf’s blue eyes. He adjusted his tie knot with a practiced tug. “Yes. Can’t have that.”
“You know, Wulf, maybe I shouldn’t work here.” Rae stared at her hands. She turned them over and flexed her rough fingers. She really needed to paint her nails, whether she was going to work at The Devilhouse or not. “I’m too much of a liability. I mean, girls like Lizzy and Georgie, who are both from Back East, they don’t know anyone around here. I’m connected to half the state, and they’re connected to everyone else, even politicians and police chiefs and judges and drug lords and coyotes from across the Border. I don’t want to cause trouble for you.”
“You don’t have to worry about The Devilhouse or me, Reagan.”
She looked up when he used her full name. Usually, she didn’t like it when people called her that, but Wulf tended to use more formal names, and on his lips, it sounded different, more polite.
He continued, “This establishment has special licenses from the state for its operation, and our clientele is our best asset.”
“Evidently. Man, I thought you were going to kill Jim Bob.”
“Oh, I never think about killing people.”
Rae glanced up at his icy eyes. That was a whole lot of denial for such an exaggerated cliché. It didn’t take a psychology major or a Shakespearean actor to notice that Wulf doth protest too much. However, maybe his reasoning came from having been on the wrong end of a rifle. “Um, well, I can’t believe you called Mayor Harding,” Jim Bob’s uncle and her uncle, too, “and that he comes here.”
Her family had never been on the best of terms with the Hardings, which is why Rae could never have asked them for the money for college. They would have laughed at her for her presumption, just because her mother’s sister had married one of the Harding brothers.
“Yes, and that’s another reason why you should remain employed at The Devilhouse. I told your cousin that I would protect you. If you return home, Jim Bob might not be so tractable. He might try his assault again.”
“I didn’t think about that.” Crud. She was kind of trapped, at least as far as working at The Devilhouse was concerned. However, Lizzy’s feelings were still foremost in Rae’s mind. “There’s another problem, though.”
Wulf leaned in and rested his forearms on the desk, the very image of a concerned employer. “What is that?”
She couldn’t narc on Lizzy crushing on Wulf, either. “This seems wrong.”
“What does?”
“The way that we always,” and she wasn’t sure what to call it because neither making love nor screwing seemed right, “can’t help ourselves.”
Wulf smiled a little more. “Well, then,” he said, “we will refrain.”
No!
Dang it, her brain couldn’t decide what it wanted.
Yet, if she and Wulf could just have a business relationship, then Rae wouldn’t be betraying Lizzy at every opportunity. “Okay.”
“Do you have any other reservations about working here, other than our lack of self-control?”
“Just that, well, I don’t know.” Again, she always seemed to be on the verge of saying something obnoxious and judgmental. “I just don’t get why these guys would want to be spanked.”
Wulf’s smile betrayed nothing but calm amusement. “I believe that we were just about to have a training session.”
“Um, yeah. But we just talked about that.”
Wulf licked his lips, and even though his expression barely changed, Rae had the uncomfortable association of a wolf about to rush a wide-eyed lamb. He asked, “If I spank you and you like it, you’ll stay here and work for me, ja?”