Taming the Beast

“You cook?”

“Yes, I cook. How do you think I got all those dirty dishes?”

“Point taken,” she said with a giggle.

The sound of her laughter excited something deep inside his heart, sending a tingle of pleasure through his entire body. He shivered in the cold air, and his inner grizzly growled at him to stop being an idiot.

“Come on,” he said in a low voice. “I have everything we need for beef stew.”

She followed him across the grounds toward the house. James avoided the eyes of the statues as he led her to the back porch.

“Is it just me or do the statues seem like they stare at you?”

“What?” he said, not sure he understood her question correctly. Was it possible she could see it too?

“The statues, it’s almost like they’re looking at me. I know it sounds crazy, but…”

“It is like that,” he said hesitantly.

“It’s not just the statues either. I swear sometimes the objects in your house move by themselves. I can’t explain it. God, I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

“The mansion can play tricks on the eyes,” he said.

He couldn’t believe that she saw it too.

“Well my eyes have been tricked since the first day I started working here. I swear I saw a candlestick dancing out of the corner of my eye.”

“You did?” he said, opening the back door of the mansion.

“What’s with all this blood all over the back porch?”

“That? That’s from a few rabbits.”

“And you know that how?”

“Because I killed them and ate them in grizzly form.”

“Okay. That’s a little too much information.”

“If you’re going to live with a grizzly shifter, you should get used to it,” he said in a flat voice.

“I’m not judging or anything.”

They stepped into the mansion and walked through a sitting room and into the kitchen. He invited Matilda to sit at the kitchen counter while he began pulling things out of the fridge.

“It’s awfully nice to get to cook in a clean kitchen.”

“I’m better at cleaning than cooking, truth be told,” she said.

“That would make sense,” he said, before he could stop himself.

“What would make sense? You’re good at cooking and I’m good at cleaning? I don’t understand.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Obviously it isn’t nothing. There’s something going on here that I don’t know about. You know I need this job, but there’s only so much weirdness a girl can deal with. I just got out of a bad relationship, and I’m trying to have better boundaries. I read that on a relationship blog.”

“Boundaries are important.”