Billy & The Beast (Ever After, New York #3) - Eli Easton Page 0,4
thoughts flood my mind.
But bigger than the fear was something else: excitement. There was something about him—handsome, masked, menacing. Snarky. Nothing this cool ever happened to me.
I felt a smile hijack my mouth. “I’m Billy,” I said, apropos of nothing. “What’s your name? Do you live here?”
“Sorry,” he snapped. “I must have missed the invitation to tea. I thought we were discussing your thievery.”
“It was just a rose. My mom’s sick, and I thought it would cheer her up. I shouldn’t have taken it. I was wrong, okay? Here.” The rose was in my left hand, and I held it through the bars. Once again, it struck me how beautiful the blossom was. Perfect, in fact, as if that justified the temptation that had made me steal it, and the anger he had at losing it.
The masked man didn’t touch it. “Can you reattach it to the bush? Can you make it live again?”
Live again? This guy is nuts.
“No, I can’t reattach it to the bush,” I said patiently. “Not being blessed with divinity.”
That bright blue eye stared at me for a long moment. I felt a little warm, being looked at like that, though the disdainful curl on the right side of his mouth made it clear he wasn’t impressed. Then again, why would he be? I was skinny, sweaty, and not exactly dressed for success in my skintight biking shorts and a red T-shirt big enough to double as a circus tent.
“An apology is useless,” he finally said.
I huffed. “Okay. So you don’t want the rose and you don’t want an apology. I’m kinda out of options since my firstborn is already spoken for. Go ahead and call the cops. See if you can get them to care about someone stealing a rose. My mom’s credit card was hacked once, and they told her unless the damages went over five grand, not to bother them.”
The man growled, literally growled. It was a soft rumbling in his throat that sent a shiver down my spine. “This is between you and I,” he said in a low, deadly voice, as if he didn’t need the stupid police—as if, if he wanted to exact revenge, he could do whatever he wanted to me at any time. And I believed him.
I gulped.
“You’ll pay me with labor,” he announced. “It’s the garden you damaged, so you can make up for it there.”
“You want me to work in your garden? Doing what?”
That one bright blue eye was more than capable of a killer duh look. He glanced over his shoulder, still gripping my arm.
Yeah, okay. The place was a wreck. I suppose he wanted me hauling stones or mulch or pulling weeds or some other chain-gang task.
He glanced at the rose in my hand. “One day for every petal. At five days a week, that ought to take you through the summer.” His one-sided grin was vicious.
I rolled my eyes. “Look, I’d be willing to help you out for few hours maybe, but that’s it. I have to get a paying job this summer. I need the money.” He had no idea how much I needed the money.
His mouth pressed into a line. “You’ll find some menial job in Ever After, I suppose. What’s the hourly rate for something like that?”
“Uh . . .” Were we negotiating? “Well . . .” I cleared my throat. “I was hoping to get twenty-five an hour, maybe at the grocery store.” That was higher than I was likely to get but, hey, I wasn’t stupid.
“I’ll pay you twenty-five,” he growled. “But you’ll work for it.”
He still glared at me as if this was some kind of a threat. But honestly? It sounded pretty sweet to me.
I summarized, speaking slowly. “So you want me to come here five days a week and work in the garden, for twenty-five dollars an hour.”
“Glad to know you have the use of your ears, even if you don’t know the meaning of the words private property. But yes, that’s what I said. At least until I get sick of your bumbling and tell you to go away.”
I smiled, ignoring the insult. “Okay. Want me to start tomorrow?”
There was one slow blink of that blue eye. “Fine. Be here at nine. Don’t make me hunt you down. And you might as well keep that rose since you’ll be paying for it.” With that, he released my arm and turned away.
It felt like mere seconds before he vanished into the green.