Four
Sterling
I was minding my own business and thoroughly engrossed in my phone when a woman with the wildest blonde hair I’d ever seen stepped into my path.
Stopping just short of running into her, I blinked and looked up from the blog post I was reading. Brilliant green eyes met mine. I frowned at her when she didn’t immediately apologize and step out of the way.
“Excuse me,” I said and went to step around her, but she moved in the same direction.
“Sterling Luna?” the woman said.
I lowered my phone and stared at her. “Depends on who’s asking.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’masking. Mostly out of politeness. Your picture is on the website of your conspiracy theory buddies.”
“Then why did you ask?” I snapped.
“Because it’s polite,” she snapped back, “though I shouldn’t have wasted my breath on manners with you, I see now.”
“I’m in a hurry,” I said. I wasn’t, but I also loathed small talk with every fiber of my being. The average human being lived only about 27,000 days. I wasn’t human, but seeing that number struck me at how short life can be for them. 75 years, give or take the few who had tragedy strike and die young. That’s all they got. I expected to live a heck of a lot longer, but I didn’t want my mind to go idle debating over stupid shit, like whether it was really me standing there or not, especially when she already knew the answer.
“You aren’t,” she said and crossed her arms over her ample chest. My eyes automatically strayed there because they were kind of hard to miss.
I immediately looked up. “What do you want?” I asked the sky.
“I heard your family was playing matchmaker with the Bregola family out of Italy,” she said.
I stiffened and looked down at the woman, giving her more of an appraising study. I shouldn’t have dismissed her out of hand as soon as I saw her. She was diminutive, yes, but I could also sense a pretty incredible aura of power around her.
Shit. “Portia?”
She grinned at me then and did a little bow. “At your service.”
Of all the things I thought would happen to me today, meeting the founder of the town wasn’t even on my top fifty. Even though it was an honor, and I should be scraping and bowing at her feet, all I could feel was annoyance. I’d always heard once she showed up in your life, your single days were over.
I planned to prove her wrong. I had no desire for a match, but with the threat of an Italian family wedding hanging over me, I knew I should probably start looking for a wife.
That was where the difference came in. I wanted to find someone blond, biddable, vapid, and with absolutely zero hint of intuition hidden in her small, large breasted frame. I wanted her to be coldly pretty, to appreciate the finer things in life so she would leave me alone, and have a track record of adultery so I would never have to sleep with her. Maybe once, just to make it seem real, but other than that, she could leave me to my science, and I could leave her to her pool boys. Now that would be a match made in Heaven.
“I have no desire for a wife,” I practically growled.
Her eyes glittered. “Ah, but your family does, and they have quite a bit of pull around here, don’t they?”
It was true. They’d come into this town as a powerful clan and refused the gestures of the local pack to integrate seamlessly within them. Seventy-five years ago that refusal came to a head and my father was pitted in a fight to the death against the local alpha.
I was not too proud to gloat in the fact that dear old dad had destroyed him. When the alpha’s wife approached him to offer her hand and leadership of the pack over to him, he declined and said he would kill everyone within the pack unless our family was left alone.
Considering their alpha lay in shreds all over the ground, the woman readily agreed.
A pact was drawn up and our family was now sovereign. We answered to no one and did the bidding of no alpha. I’d heard the newer alpha was a pretty cool guy, but he also appeared to be respecting the pact made between our family and the past wolves. That earned him some respect from me. Dad was still virile as he ever was, but age was creeping up on him. Slowly but surely. I didn’t want him involved in any more fights to the death if we could help it.
“They do,” I admitted to the woman. “But I have no desire to have a wife.”
Portia’s eyes darkened as she considered me. “You want someone biddable. Someone to stay home or involve themselves in rich people fundraisers and question nothing you’re doing, correct?”
She’d pegged me in less than a minute. I decided to be honest. “That’s exactly what I want. If you can find me one of those, I’ll get married in a heartbeat. If you can’t, then I’m not interested.” This would keep my parents off my back for at least a hundred years. Maybe more if I were lucky.
Her lips pursed as she stared at me. Her green gaze was piercing and deep and I felt like she was seeing me down to the marrow. I didn’t like it.
