Page 15 of Savage Prince
Keira hangs up as I return to her desk with the bags containing our food.
“Men. I swear.” She rolls her eyes, but I know she finds comfort in his overprotective nature.
Either way, I can’t imagine having a man look at me the way Mount looks at her. Like he’d kill anyone who made her frown. And, honestly, he might.
“You should go on the vacation. I can handle things.”
With a smile, she digs into her grits. “I know you can, Temperance. That was never in doubt.”
“Then why the cat-and-mouse game with him?”
Her smile turns sly. “Because that’s how you have to handle a man like Lachlan Mount. Otherwise, he’d bulldoze right over me. Besides, my spitfire ways keep him on his toes.”
Her words rattle around in my brain as we eat and discuss the remaining items on the never-ending to-do list, and I keep myself from thinking about my stranger.
He had that same demeanor that screamedI take what I want.He’d be a bulldozer.And I’d like it.
Just as quickly, I push the thought out of my brain and bury it six feet under.
I’m never going to see him again, so it doesn’t matter.
Chapter 6
Temperance
Guests are due to start arriving in thirty minutes and my office looks like it’s been ransacked. Crates and packing material are scattered everywhere, thanks to all the auction pieces that have been unwrapped and transported upstairs.
Well, not quite all.
I roll my eyes as I glance at the open crate labeledExtremely Fragile—Break It and You Die. Gregor Standish, the artist who donated it, has been a pain in my ass since the day he decided to get involved with this Mary’s House event. As grateful as I am that we’re going to raise even more money because of his contribution, part of me wishes he would just come pick up the monstrosity. It looks like a cactus made of blobs of yellow wax left out in the sun too long.
New Orleans Rising, he calls it.
It looks like New Orleans melting, if you ask me, but then again, what do I know? The kind of art I like isn’t what inspires people to gather in groups and talk about how it makes them question their existential crisis, not that I know what that means either.
My kind of art is raw and obvious. The kind that lacks subtlety and punches you in the gut when you see it. Maybe that’s because I wasn’t raised sophisticated enough to be the existential-crisis type.
My gaze shifts to the sculpture in the opposite corner of my office—one that won’t be in the auction because no one would ever ask its artist to donate. The fleur de lis stands five feet tall, made of welded reclaimed metal objects.
Junk art. At least, that’s what my daddy used to call my creations. I can still hear his voice telling me that we’d be better off getting the scrap money from the metal than letting me play with it.
Just one more reason it’s hard to be sad he’s gone.
I turn away from the crate and the sculpture and reach for the dress hanging on the back of my door. It wouldn’t do for the COO of Seven Sinners to arrive in a blouse covered in smudges of dust and dirt from all the manual labor I put in this afternoon ensuring every piece was perfectly arranged upstairs.
But, of course, I’m not allowed to moveNew Orleans Risinguntil the artist, Gregor Standish, arrives tonight, and he’s late.
Putting Mr. Standish’s problem with punctuality out of my mind for two minutes, I kick off my shoes, adjust my thigh-highs, and pull the little black dress, flattering yet completely professional, off the hanger.
I step into it and reach around for the zipper. It’s about three inches above my ass when my arm cramps and someone knocks on my office door, the door I didn’t remember to lock before stripping to change.
“Shit,” I whisper, hopping on one foot and attempting to contort my arm so I can reach the zipper I’ve lost my grip on. “Hold on, please.”
The door opens and a man sticks his head inside.
“Oh. So sorry. I didn’t mean to catch you in a state of undress.”
It’s Ronnie Lyle, another donor for the fundraiser’s auction, who gave me the creeps earlier this week when he dropped off his nude painting. Not that I have anything against nudes, just this guy.
