“Yes, sir?” She popped back into the doorway.
“I’m expecting someone. Evie Savoie.” I couldn’t keep the rough rasp from my voice at the mere mention of her name. “Will you let me know when she arrives?”
“Yes, sir.” She ducked out with wide eyes.
Poor girl. She’d been noticing my abrupt moods, but stayed sweet and polite as always.
Back to Evie. Why not her?
Are you a complete idiot? Because she’s helping us get rid of this hex.
So.
So?
I put my head in my hands, my knee jumping ninety miles a minute. A growly laugh rumbled in my chest. It was Alpha’s laugh, but it found its way out of me.
Seriously. You need to stand down, Alpha.
Foreign language. Don’t know what you’re saying.
You know exactly what I’m saying. We’re not pursuing her. End of discussion.
You want her.
I want her to help us, yes. Break this fucking curse so we can go back to normal.
A rough chuckle. Again, it rose out of my chest, echoing off the small office walls. Mocking me.
And there it was. Another tremble of fear streaked through my body and tightened in my chest with a sharp sting. That ever-present ominous what if loomed nearby.
I wasn’t just worried about the next shift and what the wolf would do to satiate his craving for blood and violence. I feared he’d take complete control. I feared what he’d do if I let myself go to bed with a woman right now.
Especially one I…
I flipped to the next invoice, not even seeing what was on the paper, my knee jumping again with the swift tap of my heel.
God, do you fucking want her.
The happy greeting of Missy’s voice came from the front gallery when someone walked in.
“Yes, I’m here to see Mateo.”
Evie. A strange coiling sensation stirred low in my belly, a heated burn that buzzed along my skin. I didn’t recognize the sensation. All I knew was that I was standing and my feet were moving. Man and beast needed to be near her, and there was nothing in the wide world I could do to deny it.
Her proximity was all I needed. Yeah. I could keep all unwanted thoughts and desires under control.
You can try.
She was shaking Missy’s hand with a warm smile when I walked in. That smile. The way her eyes sparkled—actually sparkled—transforming her from pretty to ethereal, radiating some kind of angelic aura. Stunned. I was fucking stunned, bewildered, stupefied by the force of her damn smile. I truly was losing my mind. I was halfway obsessed with this girl after knowing her less than twenty-four hours.
There’s no halfway about it, brother.
Anxious to get her back to the studio so I could start working and stop fixating on her heavenly smile, I rushed an introduction.
“Missy, this is my…Evie. Evie, my assistant, Missy.”
“Nice to meet you,” said Evie before I urged her with a hand at her back toward the hallway. The brief brush washed me with calm. She arched a brow over her shoulder. “In a hurry?”
“Yep. I need to work.”
“No problem.” She patted the leather backpack over one shoulder. “I brought stuff to do while you work.”
“Awesome.”
“But you only have three and a quarter hours left.”
“What do you mean?”
“Four hours a day. That was the deal. We spent at least forty-five minutes at Bam’s. And like I said, it won’t all be me sitting in some sweaty studio.”
I was practically hurdling her through the door at the end of the hall and outside through the small brick courtyard that connected my gallery to my studio and apartment. As we walked through the courtyard, Evie abruptly swiveled around me toward the centerpiece of my patio.
“Whoa,” she whispered.
Centered in a square of a small bricked-off garden, which was mostly green plants in mid-October, no flowering blooms this late, stood one of my first pieces I’d ever made. It was Hades, standing tall like the god of the underworld he was with one sandaled foot shifted forward, his tunic flowing in an unseen breeze, one hand gripping his two-pronged bident, the other resting on the head of a waist-high hellhound.
Evie circled the piece, her admiring gaze pulling me closer. But I didn’t say a word as she made a second pass, stretching out her delicate hand and tracing the god’s arm that held the fork-like scepter.
“How…how do you make metal look like it’s moving?” She shook her head. “I mean, it looks like his cloak is billowing in the wind. It’s insane.” She dragged her attention away from the sculpture to me, an expression of pure awe written in her smiling eyes and slightly upturned mouth.
I didn’t know how to respond. I’d had other artists and critics question me a thousand times on my methods of construction. For some reason, I couldn’t quite find the words to respond.
She let her fingers drag across the head of the hound and then walked to meet me. “You’re damn good, aren’t you?”
A shot of adrenaline pulsed through my veins at her open admiration. At the way she had touched the metal. Swallowing hard, I took two steps to the door and opened it for her. “After you.”
She walked through and into my workshop, glancing at the closed door that led to my apartment upstairs, but then took in the surroundings of my workspace.
She whistled then giggled. “Somebody’s a neat freak.”
I tried to see what she did, noting my worktable with everything in its place except for the helmet still on the floor where I’d left it this morning. I scooped it up. “I like things in order.”
“I see that.” She took a long look around the room. I followed her gaze, realizing I didn’t even have a chair for her to sit in.
“Oh, shit.” I headed for the door that led upstairs to my apartment. “I forgot to get a chair for you.”
“Don’t bother,” she said, already sliding to the ground against the wall. “I prefer to stretch out on the floor anyway.”
“You sure? I can—”
She waved a hand, already unzipping her backpack and pulling out the comic she bought this morning.
We bought.
Yeah. Small price to pay to have her here. That was the first time Alpha had piped up since she’d arrived. And the mental pressure I felt from his constant pushing had melted away the second she was within inches of me.
I still want to find that Wolverine and challenge him to one-on-one combat.
Yes. You already said this back at the comic book store.
That man-animal thinks he can win over our Evie? He has no idea who he’s dealing with.
Look who was calling who a man-animal.
Like I told you, Wolverine isn’t real.
But she kissed his likeness and said he gives her the shivers.
Seriously, it was like talking to a caveman.
Only we can give her the shivers.
“All right then,” I said, focusing on Evie. “So you’re good?”
“I’m good.” She glanced up over the rim of her comic and smiled before her gaze returned to the pages.
Those eyes. They looked mossy green in the shadowy space of my studio. Stop obsessing!
I’m not obsessing. I’m plotting. Planning.
I wasn’t talking to you.
So now you’re ignoring me but talking to yourself? Get it together, brother.
You’re unbelievable.
Yes, I am. Extraordinary, actually. And once I find that Wolverine, I’ll prove it.
Rolling my eyes, I walked over to the opposite side and lifted the garage door, which opened up to my narrow driveway where my truck was parked. The open door let in sunlight and fresh air so the room didn’t become too stifled with the smell of melting metal and the heat of the torch.
“You mind if I play music?” I asked.
Her eyes flicked up to me from over the top of the comic again. With a shrug, she said, “This is your place, Mateo. Do whatever it is you need to do.” She tapped her watch. “You’ve got three hours left.”
With that, I moved quickly, setting my cellphone on the shelf next to my wireless Bose speaker and hit play on playlist number three. Once gloves, helmet, and torch were in hand, I settled on my work stool in front of the sculpt and got busy.
Jesus. I couldn’t believe how easy this felt. It was like her presence whispered to my muse, channeling my energy into my hands and fingers to do the work it was made to do. Heaving out a deep breath, I bent closer and let the music take me to that place where only the art mattered. For the first time in two months, I was actually able to do it without a peep out of Alpha.
Damn, I might need more than four hours a day. But for now, I’d take whatever she gave me.
Chapter 7
~EVIE~
Sweet Mother of all things holy. How was I going to sit here and stare at that for four hours a day and not drown in a puddle of my own drool?
I’d been just fine for the first thirty minutes or so, completely immersed in my new comic. But after sketching a little on my tablet, I happened to glance up while Florence & the Machine’s “Seven Devils” played and nearly had a heart attack.
He was working on this cool but simple sculpture of a mermaid lifting out of the water, her hands braced on a rock, arms straight, the fan of her tail lifting in an arc behind her. It wasn’t just his skill with metalwork where he magically melted tiny metal rods into multi-layered, three-dimensional works of beauty, but watching the man do it.
So focused. So intense. He was bent close now, his threadbare T-shirt like a second skin to his back and torso. I could actually see the full definition of his obliques as he bent and stretched his arms to work. He set the torch and his helmet aside, still wearing protective gloves and using some metal instrument to shape her breasts. His gloved fingers pressed and stroked up the top slope to indent at her collarbone, becoming more defined under his talented fingers. My skin tingled with awareness of what those hands would feel like on me.
And why was I thinking about this?
No werewolves. No werewolves. No werewolves.
Maybe if I repeated it enough in rapid succession, it would seep into my subconscious and take effect. But right now, my body and brain was telling Jules that she and her rules could go fuck off.