Gone with the Wolf - By Kristin Miller Page 0,48

to curl up with one of the books on the shelves in the back and put the worries of the day behind them.

That is, if customers would come in at all.

Emelia had always been good at knowing what customers wanted and what they needed in their local watering hole before they asked for it. She knew when they wanted stand-up comics and got them. She knew when they wanted open mic night and had arranged to have it on the first weekend of every month. Business went from trickling to booming in no time. Emelia had finally found something she was good at—running and maintaining her tiny sliver of heaven.

But over the last couple months, business had slowed to a halt, and it seemed that nothing Emelia tried brought customers back. It had to be the economy. Or maybe she’d slipped on paying attention to the customers’ needs.

“Where are you going?” one of the guards asked as she walked around the wall separating the main room from the bar.

“To my office.” She didn’t stop walking, and became hyperaware that the guard shadowed her every step. “Is that a problem?”

“We were told to have you in sight at all times.” He was the burliest of the three, with a skull-trim cut and dark, blazing eyes. “Direct order from Mr. Wilder, ma’am.”

“Watch me at all times, huh?” Emelia swept past the bar and walked to her office tucked in the back near the kitchen. “And if I have to use the restroom? What then? You gonna follow me in and hand me paper?”

The guard flustered, clearing his throat. “I think, ah, I think it’d be best if you… Logan, it’s your turn to guard the Luminary!”

Oh, wonderful. They all knew she was Drake’s match. Did Drake tell everyone in the pack, or was their connection something they all sensed, like Silas?

Rolling her eyes, Emelia entered her office and plopped into the leather seat in front of her computer. “Friday was slow, Saturday was horrible,” Emelia read aloud from a Post-it stuck to her computer screen. “Missed you. Hope you had fun in SF. Renee.”

Emelia sighed, running her fingers through her hair. When she’d first approached Drake about the bar, when she still thought she owned it, he’d said the neighborhood was in a downward spiral. He’d said she would go bankrupt without serious financial backing. Damn him if he was right. Emelia couldn’t deny that business was slower than normal, but customers came in waves. They would come back, wouldn’t they? What if business never picked back up? And what the hell was she going to do about Needles and the money she had apparently flushed down the toilet?

She wished she had something saved up to hire a lawyer and sue the hell out of Needles and get her fifty grand back so she could reinvest in the bar. But damn it, there was nothing she could do. Drake owned her building. She’d have to go back to leasing it.

Like an elephant in the room that she refused to acknowledge, Emelia did everything she could not to think about Drake’s offer. She couldn’t push it aside any longer…if she married Drake, what was his would become hers.

She would own the bar again.

“No,” she said aloud, plopping her head in her hands. “I bought it myself, built it up myself, and I’ll do it again. I don’t need anyone.”

Emelia’s heart sank, but it wasn’t because she didn’t know what she was going to do with her bar and Drake’s building. Deep down, a tiny inkling warned that while she might not need anyone, she was starting to want someone by her side. And not just any someone, but one very special someone in particular.

Drake.

“What am I thinking?” She mindlessly stroked her left ring finger. “Things shouldn’t be this difficult. What the hell am I doing?”

“If you’ve managed to keep this place up and running while everything around the neighborhood is falling apart,” a scratchy voice said from the doorway, “I say you know exactly what you’re doing.”

The packmate leaning against the doorframe was smaller than the other two wandering around the bar, but he was still a whopping six-feet-something huge, with a mop of unruly black hair and enormous, piercing gray eyes. He was dressed in black leather pants, a baggy black shirt, and had the jaw-dropping good looks to grace the cover of Muscle magazine. But he didn’t look plastic, like he’d gotten his build from the gym alone. No, he looked