"I'll say." Valerie shot Morgan a resentful look.
"Hey!" he said indignantly. "I'm actually considered quite a catch."
Eileen ignored their arguments. "And you, Morgan. You need a pretend mate. Someone you can trust, someone who won't exploit the situation. And you need one right now. You don't have time to find anyone else who would meet all of your requirements. And also, you own a million subsidiary companies. You can have someone from one of those companies approach Valerie's grandparents and offer to make them a low-interest loan in exchange for a partial share in their business, and they'll never know where the offer came from. And then your main company could just coincidentally come along and place a bunch of orders with them, so they'd have plenty of revenue coming in."
"Well … " Morgan glanced at Valerie. "She actually makes some good points."
"But it's … We can't … I mean … jeez. I don't know if I should thank you or murder you in your sleep," Valerie said to Eileen.
"Why in my sleep?"
"Well, I'm human and you're a shifter. I can't kill you if you're awake."
"I sleep next to a very big, very grumpy shifter who sleeps with one eye open. You'll just have to thank me, I'm afraid." Eileen smiled sweetly.
"You're forgetting something," Valerie said. "His mother said no."
Morgan scoffed at that. "I'm the Alpha. Nobody tells me who I can mate."
He stared off into the distance for a moment, then nodded. "It makes sense. We'll do it. I'll arrange to have your stuff moved into my house today."
"Moved into your house?" Valerie said with alarm.
"Yes." He glanced at her impatiently. "We're pretending to be mated, so we need to be convincing. We'll be sharing a bed for the next month, Valerie."
Chapter Four
Valerie stared up at Morgan's house, a growing unease swelling inside her. She was doing this. She was actually going to try to pull this deception off, to live a lie in front of Morgan's family. She'd left behind her small apartment in Juniper, filling up one of Morgan's pickup trucks with the essentials for the next couple of weeks until Morgan's family and packmates left.
He lived in a stone-and-timber mansion on the outskirts of Silver Peak. The exterior was hard and imposing. The windows had been coated with weatherproofing film, so from the outside they looked like dark, hooded eyes glaring with disapproval. The balconies had spiky iron railings. The hedges around the house were severely trimmed into geometrical shapes, and thorny.
Morgan's servants were carrying her suitcases into the house. His family had called to inform him that they would stay at a hotel, in protest of his appalling choice of a mate.
The whole house reminded her of something, she just couldn't figure out what. "It's a metaphor," she said, frowning in thought.
"What?" Morgan said.
She looked at the spiky gates again. "Your heart!" she said. That was what it reminded her of.
He looked at her oddly. "My heart's doing just fine, thank you." He headed up the steps to his house.
"I would imagine, since you hardly ever use it," she said, following him inside. "Speaking of which, I'm adding a condition to our deal."
"A new condition? No. I've already had one of my companies approach your grandparents with an offer, which they accepted. That is what I agreed to," he said, leading her into the house's great hall. It had flagstone floors, oil paintings of various ancestors glaring from their gilded frames, and a massive crystal chandelier. There were huge doorways on either side of the hallway leading off to other areas of the house, and at the end of the hallway was a spiral staircase that led to the second floor.
He headed toward the staircase and she trotted behind him, hurrying to keep up.
"Yes, I know, my grandparents just texted me," she said breathlessly. Damn him and his long legs. "They think it's a Christmas miracle. Okay, here's my condition. That painter you were screaming at? He doesn't get fined. You're ahead of schedule on the construction of the new spa. It's not going to kill you to give him a few days. His wife is recovering from a very severe case of pneumonia."
Morgan paused at the stairway and looked at her stonily. "No. This is a perfect example of why you don't have a head for business." He turned away and started walking up the steps.
Valerie let out an unladylike snort of derision as she scrambled up the steps after him. "Please enlighten me, oh wise one."
"If he can't fulfill his contracts, he doesn't deserve to be in business. I don't give out charity to able-bodied adults. Think about it, Valerie. He's not a one-man show. He's got several employees, who could show up and paint if he's not able to. So the fact that they're running behind has nothing to do with his sick wife, and everything to do with a man running a sloppy, inefficient business."
They walked into Morgan's bedroom. Two maids were in there, putting Valerie's clothing away for her.
"I'll do that!" she called out to them. They ignored her and kept unpacking clothing and putting it away in an enormous wooden dresser.
"No, really, let me," she insisted. The two women glanced at Morgan, who nodded, so they made odd little half bows to Valerie and left the room.
Morgan headed for a door at the far end of his enormous bedroom. The open door revealed an office. Of course. The man who lived for his work.
Valerie ran after him and grabbed him by the arm, and he turned to look at her with an expression of impatience.
"Do you know who Giacomo's employees are, Morgan?" Valerie said. "No, of course not, because you never get to know the people who work for you. They're his kids. He has seven children, ranging from age six to twenty-two. Since his wife is sick, his three older kids, who usually work for him, have been caring for the younger kids and visiting their mother in the hospital, and getting as much work done as they can."
Morgan started making harrumphing sounds. She kept talking. "I already called him and told him that you said to take all the time he needs, and he was very grateful. You're welcome. I just saved you from being hated by the entire town of Juniper."
Morgan stood there spluttering for several seconds, then fixed her with a ferocious glare. "I don't care what Juniper thinks of me, or anyone else, for that matter."
"I care what they think of you," she said quietly.
He ignored her.
"When I make a business decision and then appear to back down, it makes me, and by implication my pack, look weak. Don't do that again," he said, and headed into his office, slamming the door shut.
"I don't care what Juniper thinks of me," she mimicked him in a high, squeaky voice, kicking one of her empty suitcases.
"I heard that!" he yelled from behind the closed door.
"Good! Hound dog! I hope your fleas get fleas!" she shouted back. Then she flung herself down on his enormous four-poster bed and blinked back tears.
It was at times like this that she came perilously close to hating his guts, and she didn't want to do that. She took a deep breath in through her mouth and let it out through her nose, slowly, like the Stressbusters website suggested. She'd been visiting that website a lot lately.
She leaned back against the big, firm pillows and tried to summon up good memories of Morgan. After all, once this fake mating was over and she'd taken a new job somewhere else, memories would be all she'd have.
Well, one thing about Morgan, he might give her grief all day long, but he never let anyone else speak badly to her. Or of her. One time one of his dates had asked him why he didn't hire someone prettier to work in the front office. Morgan hadn't even been aware that Valerie had overheard – but he'd hustled his date out of the office building so fast he'd practically left scorch marks on the carpet, and slammed the door on her so hard that the window had shattered. Valerie had watched through the broken glass as the tall, skinny blonde had stomped to her car and driven off with a screech of tires.
One time when Valerie had been at the local tavern and a man had made a crude remark to her, Morgan had appeared out of nowhere – Valerie hadn't even seen him come in – and he'd picked the man up and hurled him out the front door.
And he'd stood up for her back there in his office, when his mother had started bad-mouthing her. That was a pretty big deal. She knew men who were married or mated for real who didn't stand up for their wives when their mothers treated them badly.