had to show I was taking action for the pack. Even if the thought of receiving another female here killed me.
I said nothing more, only went up the backstairs and to my room.
Alone.
7
WILLOW
When I’d first arrived and chosen a bedroom, I couldn’t pick the biggest, the one that Adam Shefield had used the fifty-plus years he’d lived in the house. His clothes still hung in the closet, his slippers tucked beneath the side of his bed.
Instead, I chose a smaller one down the hall, which turned out to be a good thing since it had rained overnight, and there was a small puddle on the floor in the big bedroom. It appeared the roof had a leak. I had to assume it was a new thing, but it would need to be fixed right away. Roof damage, especially bad enough to have water come all the way through a ceiling, could destroy a house.
A money pit, definitely.
I’d learned the guy had never married or had kids, which was why Natalie, being a great-niece, inherited. Also, because they had a musical connection. Adam had played fiddle, and Natalie became a concert violinist. I had to hope no one asked me where my violin was because I couldn’t play a note to save my life.
My bedroom seemed to be for guests although I didn’t know how many the old man had had. Natalie had visited when she was a kid but hadn’t been back in years.
I’d emptied the few things from the closet—an old robe and a few moth-eaten sweaters on the top shelf. I’d vacuumed the rug, mopped the wood floor and even dusted. At least the room I was staying in was cleaned out. While I didn’t want to mess too much with the real Natalie’s inheritance, it also wouldn’t look right if I didn’t properly move in.
Downstairs, I’d thoroughly cleaned the kitchen and aired out the rooms.
After being closed up for months, the house was cleaner than the clothes I’d worn last night. I hadn’t gotten dirty on my date. The only thing I could’ve done was dribble steak sauce on my shirt. But I’d wanted to shower the second he brought me home last night, the cloying scent of his cologne had lingered on my clothes… and still did in my room. I grabbed all my laundry and headed down to the cellar to get the washing machine running.
I’d always had a sensitive nose. Even now, I grimaced and held the stinky clothes away from my body. Growing up, my foster brothers used to purposely leave smelly things hidden in my room to drive me crazy.
I sighed as I lifted the lid on the washer and tried to figure out the buttons. The machine was avocado green and probably forty years old. I pushed the dial, and the water began to fill the basin.
I dropped the clothes in, then poured some soap in from the box on the shelf. I was used to the little pod things and had to hope I wouldn’t suds the cellar. On my way up the stairs, I heard knocking.
I must be close to ovulation because my nipples hardened even before I had the conscious thought that it might be Rob, my cocky cowboy.
God, that kiss! A million—no a trillion—times better than Markle’s. Markle’s wasn’t even a kiss in comparison. No, Rob Wolf had curled my toes last night, for sure.
The next time you come, it will be beneath me.
He was wrong. I’d come last night with the massaging showerhead thinking about him. And he was the guy I couldn’t stop thinking about last night as I fingered myself to sleep again afterward.
But yes, I was definitely considering his offer. I’d been considering it non-stop since the moment he sauntered off into the darkness. And who walks in the dark, anyway? There was no moon last night at all, and the guy didn’t have a flashlight.
He probably thought he could see in the dark. I remembered when I was a kid, I could. Until my foster brothers locked me in a dark closet to prove I was wrong. Then whatever superpower I thought I possessed drowned in a new fear of the dark.
The knock came again. When I opened the warped door, a dark-haired woman in her early thirties stood there with a smile and a plate of brownies in her hands.
“Hi.” I pushed open the screen door.
“Hi! I’m Audrey Ames-Wolf, your new neighbor.”
Wolf. I peered past her at the Wolf Ranch, as