AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Instead, I’d found a woman.
She was a small thing, thin but with curves in all the right places. Young too, maybe in her early twenties. But the thing that drew my attention first was the filthy state of her clothing, the bruising on her arms, and the mass of wild hair on her head. She’d been through something, that much was obvious, and I was curious about what it was.
I also thought about what it might be like to touch her smooth skin and kiss her soft lips…
I swallowed hard and forced my eyes away from the screen as the woman walked cautiously down the stairs toward the kitchen. I didn’t like the strange warmth I had in my chest. It was a tender emotion, one that was unexpected and completely unwelcome.
I didn’t develop feelings for women, and I never would. I wouldn’t get caught up in that again. Affection and love caused pain in the end.
My phone rang, and I pulled it out of my pocket, seeing it was Maxwell.
“What?” I answered, my eyes once again on the screen with the security feed. Why couldn’t I look away? Annoyed with myself, I closed the feed on my computer to remove the temptation.
Maxwell started talking, filling me in on the goings-on in the business while I barely listened.
“And I wanted to ask, have you called the authorities?” he asked, and I frowned.
“About what?”
“Barclay told me there was a security breach two days ago. The…uh… north wing.”
He was treading lightly because he knew that part of the castle was a touchy subject for me, but that wasn’t what bothered me at the moment. I wasn’t aware that my butler kept my assistant updated about things like that. Displeasure seeped into my bones, and I rolled my eyes.
“I took care of that. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
I tried to keep my tone patient, something I wouldn’t do for most people. I liked Maxwell enough to make certain exceptions for him, even though he could be a real pain in the ass sometimes. He had a hard time keeping his thoughts to himself, even when he should, crossing the line dividing personal and professional relationships way too often.
There was a moment of silence on the line. I knew Maxwell wanted to push for more information, so I changed the subject.
“How’s the search going for my breeder?”
It was a crude way to put it, but I wanted to make my intentions clear from the start. Any woman that signed up to have my child would be nothing more than that. They needed to know it.
“Plenty of women have inquired about it, but once I take them through the online screening, I find out they aren’t a good fit. So far, it’s yielded zero results.”
I ground my teeth together. I didn’t think it would be so difficult when I set my requirements. Single woman. No kids. Age twenty-five to thirty. Able to stay in Switzerland for the duration of the pregnancy. No family history of preexisting conditions. Simple.
Those all seemed perfectly reasonable to me, but if we didn’t have a single candidate yet, maybe I needed to rethink it.
“Maybe if you put a little something about yourself in the ad. Successful, wealthy—”
“I don’t want to invite vultures into my home. The information they have is good enough already.”
I didn’t mention that I was rethinking all of this already myself. I needed time to figure this out.
“I’ll keep looking,” Maxwell said.
I ended the call and sat for a moment, considering getting some work done. Instead, I grabbed my tablet, opening up my security app. I firmly told myself that I was just making sure the house was secure, even though I’d never done that before.
It only took a moment to find the woman. She was in a different part of the house today. Apparently, she was getting braver. Or maybe her curiosity was overriding her caution.
Her curiosity led her to the tasting room, just off the kitchen on the first floor. The room was large, cozy with shelves that lined the walls from one end to the other. But no books took residence on the mahogany shelves. Instead, square packages of chocolate wrapped in golden foil waited on every shelf. As the owner of a candy company, it made sense to have something like this, but it also made my job easier.
Most candy companies had no choice but to do tasting in a cold, fluorescently lit test kitchens. Not me. For one, I had no desire to travel anywhere to taste tiny samples of chocolate. I had my preferences, and my team knew them well. They picked the chocolates that were to my standards, and then samples were always sent to the castle. The entire process was easy, convenient and didn’t involve giving some of my imbecile employees an earful in person.
