I could feel my own desire growing as he looked over, his head jerking back a bit at seeing me standing there, like he had missed me in the driveway, hadn't noticed almost hitting me.
"Mr. Buchanan," I greeted him, giving him a smile, wondering if my need was as plain on my face as it felt in my body, that frantic sizzling and simmering in my belly, in my core.
"Who the hell are you?" he asked, his voice a deep, rich, smooth sound that washed over my skin, leaving goosebumps in its wake.
"Wynn," I told him, not minding a bit when his gaze did a sweep of my body before landing on my face again. "Your new house manager," I clarified.
His reaction was slow at first.
He stared at me for a long second.
Then away over the front lawn.
Then back at me.
"Shit," he hissed, slamming his car door, and making his way up the front path, leaving me looking after him until he disappeared.
Taking a breath, I climbed in my car, flipping down the visor, looking at my reflection. Blonde hair, red lips, green eyes, but they were heavy-lidded with desire. And my usually pale cheeks were tinted pink with it as well.
I turned over my car, carefully backing out of the driveway, making sure not to let a tire touch the mostly dead but very uniformed grass, pausing at the end to let a sleek silver sedan pass.
My gaze slid back to the house, finding the drapes parted in the front room, one I had gotten a short glimpse of while rushing to keep up with Elsbeth.
The study.
And there he was.
Fitzwilliam Buchanan.
Tall, dark, handsome, looming.
And completely unprepared for what I had in store for him.
Three
Fitz
She was too fucking pretty.
I was going to kill Blake.
Sure, I had given him the directive to make sure Elsbeth chose candidates who were young and spry enough to handle all the housework and errand-running. But I meant someone under sixty, since she'd once tried to have her own only partially mobile great aunt take the position.
My brother, notoriously self-involved and lacking anything even akin to a sensible bone in his body, somehow heard this as 'find me the youngest and most attractive women this country has to offer, and stick them in front of me five days a week.'
Maybe it was simply him misunderstanding an order. It wouldn't be the first—or last—time.
But a part of me was convinced he was doing it deliberately.
Why, was the question I needed answered, though.
"Blake!" I called, knowing the sound carried to damn near every corner of the first floor where he would be lurking, making some sugar cereal for himself as though he was a five-year-old instead of a grown-ass man. "Get your ass in here," I demanded, hearing shuffling of feet a moment before he moved into the doorway, giving me a smile.
"You rang?"
"What the fuck do you think you're doing?"
"Well, I was trying to find something to eat."
"You know what I mean. The girl. What are you doing?"
"Hiring your house manager. Like I was assigned to do, boss." It bothered Blake, whether he would admit it or not, that I was the one who held the purse strings of the family fortune. I even had control over how much of his trust was released to him and when. Not because I was a controlling asshole—though Blake would certainly make that argument—but because our father had been wise enough to know that his younger son went through money like water, and would squander away any large sum given to him in under a year, leaving him destitute for the rest of his life.
He worked for me because I felt a familial obligation. He handled hiring and firing of my house manager as well as a small-time job at the office, doing things that couldn't end up making the company look bad because of his poor work ethic.
He lived in the pool house in the backyard—a structure big enough to comfortably house a family of four—but he spent a lot of his time in my house, finding ways to piss me off because he felt entitled to do so.
The charm he had naturally fooled most people.
But not me.
I knew the whiny, spoiled brat underneath, one who never developed the work ethic our father had possessed, that he had passed on to me.
That said, he was my brother. I loved him, even with the flaws, even with the constant headache he gave me. I was hoping that by being near me for a while, some of my hard working attributes would rub off, and he could eventually get more serious about his life and future. He had it in him. He just chose to take the immature route instead.
I was starting to wonder if maybe he always would.
"Is there any particular reason they have all been pretty twenty-somethings?"