“Right…” she said, her tone growing strained.
“I’ll leave you to it then,” he said, knowing he had to get away from her as fast as possible.
Chapter 5
Matilda set the bucket on the floor and leaned the mop handle against the wall. She had never seen a kitchen this messy in her entire life. Not even in the movies. Not even in her imagination. Every surface of the chrome and black granite kitchen was covered in dirty dishes. Stacks of plates rose up to the thirteen foot ceilings. Pots and pans littered the deep sinks. Matilda rubbed her temples, taking in the scene. It was almost too extraordinary to believe it was real. How can one person possibly make this much of a mess by himself?
No matter how unbelievable it was, James Hill had indeed trashed his mansion and dirtied every dish he owned. Matilda could make out at least three different plate pattern designs and was beginning to understand the dangers of having too much time and too much money on one’s hands.
James Hill definitely had both.
Matilda slowly slid out of her jacket and hung it up on the back of a chair that was tucked into the kitchen table. The breakfast nook was the only surface in the entire room that wasn’t completely covered in dirty dishes and trash. It looked like the one place that James bothered to clean off.
As Matilda took in the shocking scene around her, she glanced out the window over the breakfast nook at the snowy grounds beyond. It was a lovely view, and she could understand why James chose that area to keep clean.
Matilda turned back to the kitchen with a sigh and rolled up the sleeves of her maid uniform. This was going to take every ounce of determination she had in her body. She should be getting time and a half for this kind of work, but she doubted she would. Her mother’s help only went so far and Matilda had only just agreed to work for Fate Mountain Cleaning.
First things first: Matilda began to organize the dirty dishes and rinse them off. James’s kitchen did have a large dishwasher, but it would take about thirty loads to get all of this mess clean. Not to mention the counters, the floors, and what she was sure would be lurking in the refrigerator. As she scraped the plates into the garbage, she wrinkled her nose and scrunched up her eyebrows. This was almost more disgusting than working in the meatpacking plant for Tim’s family.
When Matilda lived in the valley with Tim, she’d had a full-time job at the meatpacking plant. Unfortunately, Tim burned all her money on drinks and poker, and she had nothing left to show for two years of hard work.
She hadn’t exactly loved the job, but at least it was consistent, and it had paid her well. Aside from that, she wasn’t working for her mother, which was a major bonus. But she had been working for Tim’s father, and that had a distinct downside: Matilda had become fairly certain that Tim’s family was involved with criminal activity.
She’d heard rumors about it from her friends in school, but had chosen not to believe anyone since she’d been so in love. Tim was a few years older than her and often came to Fate Mountain to watch his cousin play football on the varsity team. That was how she and Tim had met her senior year of high school.
Instead of doing what her mother had told her, she had decided to go off with Tim and settle down in the valley to work for his family. Her mother had warned her repeatedly that Tim and his family were bad news, but Matilda had never listened.
That was what made working for and living with her mother so humiliating. She never wanted to admit that her mom was right all along. Tim was an asshole and his family was sketchy. Matilda wished she had never gotten involved with him. But there was nothing she could do about it now.
Matilda had always gotten good grades in high school and wanted more than anything to become an archaeologist. Unfortunately, going to school full-time was extremely expensive. Especially for a girl with a single mom living in a rural mountain town. Matilda had a curious mind and she needed to apply it to something, otherwise she tended to get herself into trouble.
As she washed the dishes and scrubbed the counters clean, she realized that her curiosity was the reason she’d been so willing to get involved with Tim. The discoveries of new love were almost as exciting as unearthing an ancient monument that hadn’t been seen by human eyes for thousands of years.
But now that the affair was over, she realized it had been a serious mistake. Tim was a controlling jerk who never really loved her for who she was. Tim had no respect for her desire to go to college or study or explore.
She kept telling him that she was trying to save her money to go to school, but all he ever wanted to do was go out gambling and drinking with friends.
After about two hours, Matilda had made a serious dent in the mess in the kitchen. That was when James reemerged in the doorway, glancing around at the progress Matilda had made.
“I didn’t believe anyone could do it. But you did. Now I think you need to get going.”
“I’ve been here for two hours, and I haven’t even finished this one room. Is the rest of the house like this?”
“Some of the rooms are better and some of the rooms are worse.”
“Worse than this?”
“The master bathroom needs some work.”
“I don’t even want to know,” Matilda muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she said, not wanting to lose her job. “I’ll be back to continue tomorrow.”
“I don’t know if that will be possible.”
“Why?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. Was he going to fire her anyway?
She thought she had done a good job on the kitchen. The last load of dishes was in the dishwasher and the counters were all clean. The sinks were emptied out and scrubbed down. The floors were shining with a fresh polish. She’d worked for Fate Mountain Cleaning in high school and she believed she’d done a good job here.
“I don’t know if it’s a good idea for us to work together,” he said, his voice distant and strange.
He had the weirdest look on his face. As he stared at her, Matilda could see a light in his eyes that drew her to him. When he had opened the door in his dark gray sweater with the frayed neck and cuffs and his dark five o’clock shadow, she had to admit that she had felt a massive surge of attraction for him.
She hadn’t felt that way since she’d met Tim. No, that wasn’t true. She hadn’t even felt that way when she’d met Tim. There was something about James Hill that called to her. It awakened her deepest cravings and darkest desires. Her attraction for James was so disturbing that she had pushed it out of her mind completely the entire time she worked on his disgusting kitchen.
“Why would it be a problem for us to work together?”
“I can’t really talk about it.”
“Are you firing me?” she asked, feeling a pit sink into her stomach.
“I’m going to ask the owner of the cleaning company if there is someone else who can work for me.”
“I think I already know the answer to that,” she said in an irritated tone.
The guy with the messiest house in the history of messy houses was seriously going to fire her after she had spent two hours working on his disgusting, dirty kitchen. She couldn’t believe the injustice. Her mom had better pay her time and a half for this, that was for sure.
As James stared at her from the doorway, Matilda thought over her life choices. She contemplated leaving Fate Mountain and moving to Portland with the seventy-five dollars she currently had in the bank.
“There isn’t anyone else,” Matilda continued. “You scared off every other cleaning lady on Fate Mountain.”
He growled and turned away, waving his hand into the air. She could see the curve of his neck under his shaggy hair line. It looked like he didn’t get to the barber as often as a billionaire should, but something about his unkempt look was even more attractive than it had any right to be. Matilda had to smash down her arousal along with her irritation at this annoying man.
“I need a cleaning lady,” he said with his back to her.
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“Well,” she said flatly, “I’m it.”
“Fine,” he growled. “Come back tomorrow and finish the job.”
“Look,” she said. “I don’t know what your deal is, but I really need this job. I’m going to do my best. You can be sure about that.”
He turned back to her with that supernatural light in his eyes, glowing so brightly it made her gasp. The look on his face was dangerous and violent and she could see the simmering rage he held in his body as he stood in the kitchen doorway staring at her. It made her take a step back at the sight of it.
“I already said to come back tomorrow to finish the job,” he growled.
“Great,” she said hesitantly, inching toward her jacket over the back of the chair. “I’ll just be going.”
She grabbed her parka and slid it on. She grabbed her mop, bucket and cleaning supplies and hurried toward the front foyer. She couldn’t get out of there fast enough, but James followed her all the way to the front door. His presence was like a dark shadow that emanated heat and desire like a radiator.
She was so flustered by the time she grabbed the doorknob, she didn’t realize that the door was locked. She rattled the knob for several seconds before he stepped beside her with a grunt and flipped open the deadbolt.
His body beside her sent a surge of electric fire into her core. She glanced up into his face as he opened the door for her. His eyes were bright and his expression was unreadable, but there was something in his look that told her he was having the same feelings she was. It was all so absurd and impossible. Why was she attracted to this eccentric, insane, bad billionaire?
It didn’t make any sense why every nerve in her body was at war with itself. On one hand, she was filled with fear. On the other hand, arousal crept up from deep within and twined around the base of her spine, calling her to examine its many secrets. The scent of James’s expensive cologne made her want to stroke the ache she felt in his presence, but the dark look in his eyes made her want to run away as fast as possible.
He blocked her with his arm at first, but finally pulled it away. She hurried out the door, her feet crunching over the icy snowpack on the walkway. She made it to her car and opened the back door, throwing all her supplies inside.
She glanced back at the mansion. James still stood in the doorway, staring at her as she climbed behind the wheel of her car.
Whatever was up with James Hill, she wanted to get to the bottom of it almost as much as she wanted to never see him again.
Chapter 6
James watched Matilda drive away in her crappy little white Honda. Of all the bad luck possible for a bear without luck, he had just experienced the worst luck of his life. Only two minutes after finding that his fated mate existed, and that he could never have her, she had showed up right at his door. The entire time she had been cleaning, he had hidden himself away in his rooms, pacing back and forth across the floor.
The cuckoo clock had stared at him with those inanimate eyes that seemed to follow him and judge his every movement. The madness was too deep; he could never bring another person into his mess, let alone someone as young, innocent, and beautiful as Matilda.
The college-age girl was not quite as sweet as he had expected her to be, but she had done an excellent job cleaning his kitchen.
He had almost forgotten what the counters looked like all cleared off since he had started stacking up dirty dishes a week ago. It amazed him how quickly these things could pile up. He’d almost expected her to refuse to clean it. But she had handled it like a real champ.
Unfortunately, his growing respect for her only made the fact that he could never have her even more excruciating. He had tried to fire her when she left, but she hadn’t let him. Now he had agreed to allow her to come back tomorrow.
It would be another day of hiding out in his room, trying to resist the alluring scent of her body as it permeated his entire mansion.
His grizzly growled and roared inside his mind, more crazed and wild than ever. He didn’t know if he could survive another moment of her in his house, let alone having her come back day after day. It would never work. But none of the other cleaning ladies at Fate Mountain Cleaning would work with him anymore. Matilda was the only one who was willing to put up with his moods or his ways. And if he scared her off, he wouldn’t have anyone else to clean for him. And then where would he be? He’d have to start washing his own dishes.
The prospect of washing up after himself was almost as terrifying as the prospect of having his fated mate so close without being able to touch her. He slid into a red leather upholstered chair by the window in his bedroom and stared outside at the snow-covered grounds.
The winter was still thick and frozen across Fate Mountain. In the snowy dead of winter, his mind played tricks on him. There hadn’t been a day since the snow started in November that he did not feel his grip on reality slipping further and further away.
The objects in his house seemed to move on their own. They whispered behind him as he walked down the halls. The candlesticks rearranged themselves from one moment to the next. When he looked away, the paintings on the walls changed. The decorative artifacts that had been left by the previous owners seemed to have a mind of their own.
Now that Matilda had arrived and disrupted his life in more ways than one, James contemplated the possibility of leaving and going back to San Francisco to open another tech company. He still had plenty of billions left from his previous company. He knew that he still had it in him to compete with the other tech giants in his field.
James growled and pinched the bridge of his nose. Who was he kidding? He hadn’t been able to hack it after the war, and that was with a company that was already successful. What made him think he would be able to do it all over again after so many years of spiraling further into his own insanity? The only option in front of him was to put an ad in the paper for a cleaning lady who did not work for Fate Mountain Cleaning.
That’s what he should do. Find a different cleaning lady and forget that he had ever met Matilda.
Without a thought, his inner grizzly riled up inside his mind. It started to bellow so loudly James thought his brain might crack and blood might start to pour out of ears. He clamped his hands over his ears and screamed at himself.
“Shut the hell up!”
But it made no difference. The wild animal inside him was furious that James was not going to claim his mate. The ferocity of his inner beast was the main thing that kept him isolated from the world. It had driven him away from his company and up onto the mountain to be alone.
He often had no control over the animal, and could feel it breaking through the bounds of his humanity. His sharp canine teeth began to descend in his mouth and his claws began to grow out of his fingernails against his will.
James scrambled up from his chair and hurried out of his room and down the hall out the back door of the mansion as quickly as he could. There, he stood barefoot in the snow. The grizzly was emerging without permission, and there was nothing James could do to stop it.
He tried to pull off his sweater, but the animal ripped through before he could. He let out a strangled scream that quickly turned into a roar as his body contorted and shifted into its grizzly bear form. The sharp pain snapped through him as he fell onto his four huge paws in the snow.
The animal panted in the cold air, its hot breath puffing out in front of him. His beastly senses picked up the sounds and smells of the forest beyond the mansion’s grounds. The beast wanted to hunt.
James’s human mind was tucked so deep behind the mind of the animal that he had no choice but to follow the grizzly as it galloped through the grounds and into the forest beyond. He smelled the musky scent of deer and heard the rapidly beating hearts of squirrels and rabbits in their dens.
Lust pulsed inside the beast’s mind, driving him on. He picked up the trail of a small creature that he followed deeper and deeper into the evergreen forest.
Paws crunched on the fro
zen snow. In the distance, a fox hopped into the rabbit hole, trying to catch his own supper.
James’s human mind knew that the bear did not need to hunt for food. There was a massive supply of anything he wanted to eat back at the house. But not even James’s gourmet cooking was enough to satisfy the bear.
No, James’s beast wanted blood. He wanted to kill. He wanted to feel the life force flowing from his prey as its blood lapped over his tongue.
The grizzly sniffed the air, standing downwind from the fox. Without warning, the grizzly charged at the little creature, taking it by surprise. The massive beast smacked at the little creature with his paw and sent it tumbling.
He bit at the little canine before the fox turned and bit back, sinking its sharp teeth into the grizzly’s flesh. The grizzly pulled away and growled. In that split second, the fox bounded off into the snow, escaping the bear’s grasp.
Disappointed, the grizzly roared. He would not be put off. He picked up another scent: the rabbits, and the den the fox was hunting. He began to dig with his massive paws, burrowing deeper and deeper into the den. His muzzle dove into the tunnel and his jaws snapped at the little creature within. He caught one of the little rabbits and crunched its head between his jaws. He pulled the animal from the burrow and ate it in several big gulps.
Hungry for more, he tore apart the warren, eating half a dozen rabbits, some tiny, some larger. Finally sated by the kills, the grizzly started back toward the mansion, carrying James’s mind and body with him.
The human inside fought to take control. By the time he made it to his back porch, he’d used every ounce of his strength to force his grizzly to shift. In the end, James found himself naked and shivering, still dripping with blood from the rabbits he’d devoured.
He made his way into the house, feeling vulnerable and sick to his stomach. He just needed to shower and to clean off. Then maybe he would feel better about what he had done.