The Wolf’s Billionaire by Layla Silver
Chapter 5 – Ainsley
Hanging up the phone, I massaged my forehead with one hand. My overnight front desk clerk wasn’t coming in. That wasn’t a surprise, really. He lived a ways out of town on a back road that was no one’s first priority to plow. When nor’easters like the one bearing down on us right now hit, he often had to call in. Normally it wasn’t a problem because Mary, my day-shift clerk, loved overtime. But Murphy’s Law was in full effect this week. Mary had the flu and Louis, who rotated shifts, had family in town and wasn’t open to taking extra shifts.
I didn’t mind picking up the slack but we had an almost full house at the moment. Ground-breaking on the pack’s resort project had started and, with a limited number of construction workers native to the area, most of the muscle for the project was flooding in from other areas. As the only hotel in the area, we got them all.
I was grateful for that—our numbers this year would be amazing and I’d see the reward directly in my quarterly bonus. In the meantime, though, it meant that my small staff was working at full capacity… and when we got storms like this, we could all expect to put in some very long days.
Once again I was grateful that I lived on site. My suite was much the same as the standard rooms I rented out to guests and it was situated in the far back corner of the hotel complex with a view of nothing, but having it meant I was never more than a short walk away from the front desk when issues needed to be addressed. It also meant that I had a blessedly short distance to traverse when I could finally crawl back to my room for some sleep.
Glancing down at the notes I’d made for myself, I triaged what remained of the evening. No one would be checking out in the morning—not with the weather like this. So I wouldn’t need to double-check the bills for the two guests who had been slated to leave, but I would need to extend their stays in the system to reflect the change. I’d also need to talk to the maintenance man on call and have him do the rounds to verify that all our backup systems were working. I was not getting caught without power because someone had forgotten to flip a switch on the emergency generator.
I was reaching for my cell to text him when I heard my name.
“Ainsley?”
Looking up, I froze. Blue eyes I’d thought I’d never see again, as bright as the summer sky, stared at me from across the counter. My Prince Charming had shed his casually charming warm-weather wear for heavy jeans and a thick sweater under an open Carhartt, but no amount of clothing could keep me from turning pink at the memory of the hard, naked planes of his chest and the heat of his skin beneath.
“Bas?” I stammered. What on earth was he doing here? How had he found me? Why had he found me? Our night together had been magical but surely a man like him had far more impressive women than me lined up to date him wherever he lived.
He grinned and, in spite of myself, I felt my knees go weak.
“I think we must be fated for each other,” he announced, setting an expensive-looking camera on the counter between us. Propping his elbows on the broad, flat surface, he leaned in. “What are the odds of finding you by accident twice, otherwise?”
My heart fluttered, uncertainty and longing warring in my chest. The idea of fate bringing us together was blissfully romantic, but I knew better than to think it really worked that way no matter how much I wished it could. Men like Bas didn’t fall for women like me. They might dabble with us, but when push came to shove they wanted girls like Teagan—adventurous and vibrant and not tied down by traditional jobs and responsibilities and fears.
Besides, love wasn’t all that books and movies promised it would be. It was messy and fragile and when it broke down it left a lifetime of wreckage in its wake. I’d already had enough heart-ache in my life. I didn’t know if I could bear to risk suffering any more.
“Is this the job you were promoted to?” Bas asked, drawing my attention back. His gaze flicked curiously around the lobby.
“No.” I fiddled nervously with my pen, trying not to think about how good he looked even in the unflattering hotel-standard lighting. “The new property is still under construction, so I’m here until it’s close enough to done to make the switch.”
“Somewhere local?” he asked curiously. “Or somewhere else?”
“Local.” I sounded strained and I hated it. I cleared my throat. “Are you staying here? Or visiting someone?”
“Staying,” he answered promptly, sounding immensely pleased. “Indefinitely.”
Indefinitely.My heart leaped at the same time that my stomach sank. Part of me desperately wanted him to stay. Another part of me knew better. If he stayed, whatever allure had drawn him to me on the magical night we’d shared would be lost. We’d get to know one another in our real lives and familiarity would breed contempt. Impatience and disappointment with who I truly was would ruin his wonderful memories of me and his disgust would break my heart.
“Here to take photos of something in particular?” I asked, trying to deflect any more questions about myself before he could get a chance to come up with them. I needed to stall until I could think of a way out of this mess. “The State Park is pretty famous, though this probably isn’t the best time of year to capture it.”
“I’ll have to check it out.” His gaze slid over me as if he was remembering exactly what I looked like when my clothes came off before his eyes returned to mine. “I was actually hoping to get some urbex shots of this place called The Slopes. An abandoned ski venue, or so the internet tells me. Always a good addition to the portfolio.”
That shook me out of my distracted state.
“Oh! No, you can’t.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “I’m pretty good at getting past basic security features,” he assured me. “Not my first rodeo, as the saying goes.”
“No, it’s not that.” I shook my head. “It isn’t safe. A bunch of the buildings are in terrible shape and there’s equipment and crews everywhere from the ground-breaking—at least when the weather’s not terrible.”
I’d expected him to be disappointed at the loss of a great photoshoot opportunity but he perked up instead.
“Ground-breaking? New development?”
Somewhere in the back of my head, red flags unfurled.
Don’t be paranoid and stupid, Iscolded myself. The resort project was public information and big news locally. Of course it would be interesting.
“My friend Kaia and her—” I almost said mate but caught myself last minute and said, “—husband bought the property. They’re redeveloping the property into a five-star resort.”
“Huh.” His gaze sharpened. “Sounds like a big project.”
“Yeah.”
I wanted to spill my happiness about the stunning new hotel property it would include but bit my tongue. This wasn’t Arizona and we weren’t having a champagne-toasted dinner. This was real life and he was a guest at my hotel. It would be an unforgivable breach of company rules, to say nothing of general professionalism, to let myself be overly familiar.
The phone rang, the sound splitting the quiet of the lobby and making us both jump.
“Excuse me.” I snatched it up, automatically putting on my polite public-facing voice as I answered it. “Front desk.”
Bas made no move to leave, staying precisely where he was while I answered a guest’s questions about the pay-per-view movie system and associated billing. I refused to look at him, however, staring at the desk and trying to pull myself together.
When I hung up, I took a deep breath. Before I could find words, though, Bas spoke up.
“Let me take you out to dinner, Ainsley. Tomorrow.”
The only possible response to that was to laugh. “You’re not from around here, are you?”
“Baltimore,” he said as he shook his head, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he’d just shared more personal information with me than we’d let slip in the whole of our night together in Arizona. “Why?”
“Because nothing’s going to be open for dinner tomorrow,” I said, unable to keep a hint of amusement from my tone. “The cafe here in the hotel will be, so you can get food, but nothing in town will be open before the day after tomorrow. It will take that long to dig out.”
“Oh.” He considered that. “Well, after that, then. Let me take you somewhere nice.”
Given how much he’d spent on champagne alone in Tucson, I was fairly sure there wasn’t anywhere locally that would impress him, but that was hardly the main concern.
“Bas,” I said reticently, forcing myself to be the adult in the room. “Whatever you’re hoping for—”
“You,” he interrupted simply, shocking me to silence. “I haven’t been able to get you out of my head, Ainsley. You didn’t leave your number and I tried to respect that, but seeing you again—it’s fate.”
I yearned to believe him, but I held firm. “This is my home, Bas. I’ve got friends and a future here.” And a pack that needed anchors like me to stay firmly grounded if it was going to draw home its lost and wayward members. “I can’t give that up to move to Baltimore with you. You deserve to know that before you—well, just, you deserve to know.”
I felt my cheeks heat.
“And, in spite of my behavior in Tucson, I’m not the kind of girl who…”
“I didn’t think that you were.” His tone was totally serious. “Let me court you, Ainsley.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Let me court you,” he repeated, insistently. “I’ll do it right. I’ll even keep my hands to myself, mostly.” He winked then turned intent again. “Give me a chance.”
“What about—”
“I’m looking for something new,” he said, bluntly. “Somewhere new. Maybe it’s meant to be here, with you.”
I should have objected. I knew that I should. But some treacherous sliver of my heart latched on to unfounded hope and refused to let go. The entire landscape of the region would be changing in the next few years, wouldn’t it? The resort and Renly’s restaurants would draw in a huge and varied crowd. There’d be nightlife and business opportunities and plenty of things to keep even someone as footloose and metropolitan as Bas interested, wouldn’t there?
I chewed on my lip. Then, against my better judgement, I offered, “I’m due for a break in about two hours. I know it will be late but if you’re still awake…”
“I’ll be awake. Here?”
I nodded and pointed to the short, narrow hallway to the right of the desk area. “There’s a door just down there.”
“I’ll be here.”
The front door opened and several guests entered the lobby. I stiffened, suddenly aware of how openly we’d been having our conversation.
Bas straightened, too. Scooping his camera off the counter, he gave me a jaunty salute. “Thank you for your help.”
“Of course.” I summoned a professional smile and then tore my eyes away, refusing to watch his very appealing behind as he walked away.
***
By the time my break rolled around, I’d had plenty of opportunity to reconsider my invitation to Bas. Anxiety sang high and loud in my chest.
Stupid, my head shrieked as I brushed at my blazer nervously. Bas might be sincere about wanting to court me and yes there might things to keep him here in the next few years.
None of that meant that a relationship between us would work. Hadn’t I just talked to Teagan about how incapable our mother was of keeping a spouse? Hadn’t I just been reminded that neither of my siblings nor I had managed anything remotely like a healthy, long-lasting relationship? Teagan was so sure we were incapable of love matches that she was going into a contract marriage of convenience for god’s sake!
Why would I be an exception to that? Why would Bas, who could have anyone, choose me?
This was a mistake. It didn’t matter how appealing he was or how much it had killed me to sneak out of his room to catch my flight without waking him for a goodbye kiss. I’d made that decision for both our sakes. What on earth was I thinking undoing it now?
I thought of my mother’s emptied-out closet. The hard set of my father’s mouth and the dark shadows beneath his eyes the last time I’d seen him before he disappeared out of my life altogether. Nausea set in. I couldn’t do this.
There was a tap at the side door and then it opened. Bas stepped into the narrow cubby of space between the front desk area open to the lobby and the hallway, out of sight of everyone but me. As he closed the door behind him, I felt myself take a step in his direction.
Explain, I told myself. Use your words. He’ll understand.
As I crossed the threshold that took me out of sight from the lobby he stepped forward and swept me into his arms. A small sound of surprise escaped and then I found myself pressed against the door, Bas’s lips on mine. Every thought of words and explanations flew out of my head as he tucked a hand under my blazer and flattened it against my ribs. Heat soaked into me through the thin fabric of my shirt, my fears fizzing away as he pressed me against the door, his strong body bracing mine and making me feel blissfully safe and wanted.
“Ainsley,” he whispered against my lips. “You have no idea how much I’ve missed you.”
***
He missed me. The thought made me feel buoyant as I poured us both coffee from the tiny pot in the back office. I’d been as reluctant to pull myself from his arms as he’d been to let me go, but I was at work—a fact we’d been reminded of by the screech of the phone interrupting our embrace.
Bas was blessedly unperturbed, however, turning me loose to see to the phone and making himself comfortable at the little table wedged into the corner. He was more like the rakish space captains or galactic pirates that populated Teagan’s preferred genres, I decided, than any of the stately gentlemen that populated my beloved romance novels. Still, when I glanced over my shoulder to ask how he took his coffee, he was staring at me with the same intent focus that heroes in every genre bestowed on their love interests. I felt my cheeks go pink again.
“What do you take in your coffee?” I tried not to sound as bashful as I felt.
“Cognac when I can,” he answered with a lazy grin. “But I’m guessing you don’t keep a bottle of that stashed in your filing cabinet, so a splash of cream would be great.”
“Is photography like writing then?” I asked, fixing us both coffees—mine with sugar atop the cream, his with just cream as requested—and carrying them to the table. “You know what they say—‘write drunk, edit sober.’”
Bas laughed. “I only tried drunk photography once. I broke my knee and then re-broke it when I insisted on going hiking again before it was fully healed. My doctor threatened to put me in full-body traction if I pulled a stunt like that again.” He sipped his coffee with a smirk. “I was so sure he meant it that I’ve never tried anything quite that brand of reckless again.”
I winced. “That sounds awful,” I said without thinking. “Grayson broke his leg once and it was horrible.”
“Yeah?” Bas cocked his head with interest. “Who’s Grayson?”
“My brother.” I ducked my head, starkly aware both that this was intimate territory of a kind we hadn’t trod our first night together and that I’d potentially set myself up for trouble. “He was trail running,” I continued quickly before Bas could ask and potentially frame the question in ways that made it hard to get around with just little white lies. “He caught his foot on something and fell. Snapped the bone and bled all over.”
Technically, none of that was untrue. The fact that it had been an ancient, rusty bear trap he’d had the misfortune to stumble into while running around the mountainside in the dark in his wolf form was a level of detail we’d have to work up to.
Uneasiness squirmed inside me as though I’d swallowed a small creature alive and whole. Bas was open-minded and intelligent. He’d proven that over dinner our first night together. Surely he wouldn’t reject me for being a shifter when he found out. Would he?
“Ouch.” Bas grimaced. “That sounds messy. Did he recover all right?”
“Yes, thankfully.” I smiled. “He was a terrible patient, though.” I shot him a shy glance. “Like you, it sounds.”
“In my defense,” Bas lifted his coffee mug to his lips again, “I got a truly stunning shot of the sunrise over the ocean before I re-injured myself. So it was a sacrifice for a good cause.”
“I think that’s debatable,” I retorted.
Despite my dubious words, I couldn’t help the fondness spilling through me. The confident ease with which he made his assertion gave him a boyish, mischievous aura that appealed more than I cared to admit.
“Do you enter your work in shows?” I asked. “Or do you have your own gallery?”
“Nothing that formal.” His gaze seemed to shutter a bit and I wondered if I’d inadvertently hit a sore spot. “I have a network and I usually sell through that.” He paused. “It’s less shady than it sounds, I promise.”
That made me giggle. “I’ll take your word for it.” Swirling the remains of my coffee in my mug, I asked, “how did you find The Slopes? I didn’t think it was that well-known.”
Bas shrugged. “My step-sister asked me to take care of something for her out this way and I decided since I’d be in the area I’d do some poking around for good photography targets.” He glanced toward where the front desk opened into the lobby. “I guess maybe I should have checked the weather while I was researching.”
“This is good, actually,” I ventured, hoping that what I was about to say would prove a draw rather than something that would scare him away. “The new resort going in where The Slopes was will thrive on this kind of snow this late in the year. We’re going to structure it so there are things to draw people all year, of course, but a long skiing season will definitely help.”
“We?” Bas held out his hand for my empty mug.
I let him have it and watched him walk to the pot to refill our cups, feeling only the tiniest bit self-conscious about how very much I enjoyed the view. Even in bulkier winter clothing, his muscled physique was impossible to ignore. Remembering how his body felt against mine made my insides go soft.
“You’re involved with the resort? Or it’s a community kind of thing?”
Bas’s prompt jerked me from my staring and I blushed. He winked, clearly pleased, and made a show of bending over to pull creamer from the little mini-fridge.
Torn between wanting to laugh and being mortified at myself, I scrambled for an answer. “The new job I mentioned? I’m going to be Operations Manager at the resort. I’m working directly with Kaia and Renly on the development and planning.”
Stowing the creamer and shoving the mini-fridge shut with a hip, Bas returned, offering me a fresh cup of coffee. “Impressive.”
“I’m excited,” I admitted, running a finger around the rim of my mug.
Bas propped his elbows on the table. “Tell me all about it.”
