Golden Binds

Wow. Okay. This guy liked his sweets. She set the box down.

“And step away.”

She stepped back. “The Twinkies are safe now.”

“Yes. They are.”

He gave her a meaningful look. Shit.

“You have no reason to hurt me now.”

“Oh, don’t I?” An eyebrow rose. Damn, he was hot. Movie star hot. His dark brown hair hung a little past his ears and curled at the ends. He had the beginnings of a beard, twinkling brown eyes, and a smile that would make a lesser woman bend at the knees.

A lesser woman? Hell, who was she kidding? Her insides were a pile of goo at her feet.

“How did you get in here?” he asked.

“Ah, I walked in.”

“Really? How’d you get over the wall?”

“The gate was open,” she lied.

“That so? That’s remiss. What about all the booby-traps in the forest beyond?”

“There are traps? I didn’t run into them.” All the times she’d watched her brother lie so easily seemed to be paying off. She could do this. She’d bluff her way out, and in a few days’ time she’d remember this and laugh.

Yeah. That’s what would happen.

“And the signs? Did you miss them too?”

What? Miss two hundred signs telling trespassers to leave and th

reatening all sort of bodily harm to those who passed? Be pretty hard to miss those. Before she’d realized that one of the tunnels came out close to the gates, she’d run into many of those signs searching for a way to get closer to the castle. They kept most honest folks away. The snares stopped the rest.

One of her brother’s top enforcers had decided to do a bit of exploration one day, motivated by the stories of the riches held in the castle. He’d returned a day later covered in blood, missing his right ear and half his hand. There’d been a few idiots who’d tried since, but none had been successful.

Finally, tired of his men coming home injured and maimed, her brother had forbidden anyone else from entering these forests.

Maybe it would have paid to have listened to him. Wasn’t hindsight a grand and annoying thing?

“There were signs?”

“Yes. There are signs. To warn people about the traps. There are still idiots that ignore them, though.”

She narrowed her gaze. Was he calling her an idiot?

“I wouldn’t know about any of that. I work here.”

All right, it was probably a stupid thing to say. But he wasn’t one of the Bjorn brothers. They had to be in their sixties at least, right? So maybe this guy worked for them. That could be it. Whoever he was, she’d made her bluff and she was sticking to it.

“You work here, huh?” His eyes widened in surprise and then that smug grin was back. “And what was it you were hired to do?”

“Cook.” She had to hide a wince. She didn’t have a clue how to cook. She wasn’t even allowed in the damn kitchens back in the compound. If her brother had his way she’d be confined to her bedroom until she was eighty.

Right now, that wasn’t sounding like such a stupid idea.

“You’re a cook, huh? You usually eat so much while you’re cooking?” He looked down at the mess of wrappers and containers she’d left on the floor. “Hope you clean up after yourself. Since we don’t have a maid.”