Breakwater: Custer (BBW Bad Boy Space Bear Shifter Romance)

by Becca Fanning

  She chuckled a little, and, hoping it would come off as endearing, said, “My good looks?”

  Beck blinked at her, but Knox looked like he was holding back laughter.

  “You’re serious?” Beck asked.

  “Umm.” She gulped and her eyes pricked. He didn’t find it amusing or charming. This man clearly hated her. There was no way he was going to hire her. “I’m sorry. I am just started out, and I really don’t know how to answer that. I will work hard and clean how you like and I am reliable.”

  Beck nodded at this, what was clearly a much better answer. She should have said that in the first place.

  “Okay,” Beck said and stood. “We have one more interview, and then we’ll make a decision and let you know.”

  She and Knox also got to their feet.

  “Thank you very much.” Jasmine held out her hand to shake Beck’s. When she shook Knox’s hand, she noticed how much warmer it felt and how he held it just a moment longer.

  “I’ll walk you out,” Knox said.

  She followed him back to the front door and walked through it when he held it open. He looked outside, confused. “Did you drive here?”

  “No, I took the bus,” she said.

  “The bus? Isn’t the closest stop over a mile from here?”

  “Yes, it’s about a twenty-minute walk.”

  “That’s nuts. I’ll drive you, hold on.” He went back into the house and came out a minute later with keys in his hand. “That’s okay with you? If I drive you home?”

  “Oh, s-sure.” She took in a slow, deep breath. It would save her a lot of time and money, but to be alone with him? Her palms broke into a sweat.

  Knox led her to a pickup truck, blue and covered in mud splatters on the side. He opened the door and took her hand to help her up the high step. She buckled her seatbelt while he walked around and got in.

  “Where do you live?” he asked as they turned out of the driveway.

  There was no way she was going to tell him about the shelter. “Oh, can you take me to the drugstore on Eighth Street? I need to stop and get some things. It’s only a block from there.”

  “Sure.” They drove in silence for a few minutes. Then he asked, “Do you have family around here?”

  “No, not really. Are you related to the men you live with? Like cousins or brothers?”

  “Beck is my brother. The other guys are just my business partners and best friends. We’ve all been best friends for most of our lives.”

  “Oh.” Beck was his brother? There was no way she was getting this job, then. Even if he had seemed to like her, his brother clearly didn’t, and blood always came first. “What’s the business?”

  “We make honey. And other things.”

  They turned onto Eighth Street and she saw the drugstore. “This is it, right here.”

  “I can wait and drive you home after you get what you need.”

  “Oh, no, thank you.” She pulled the door open. “I really appreciate it.”

  “You sure? I’m happy to wait.”

  “Oh no, really, this is perfect. Thank you very much.” She hopped down to the curb.

  “Alright then. Have a great day.”

  She waved and they exchanged smiles. When she closed the door, he didn’t pull away, though. She went quickly into the drugstore and ducked into an aisle. She watched until he drove off, waited a few minutes, making it seem like she was looking at the makeup selections, then walked the block to the shelter.

  Jasmine had spent the whole day after the interview and all the following morning feeling full of dread. She’d blown it. There was no way they were going to hire her. After breakfast, she opened her newspaper to the employment section and started looking. She’d have to go with a minimum wage job that needed no experience and hope she could earn enough to get her own place soon.

  Her door was partially opened, and Sarah knocked, then stuck her head in. “Hey Jas, you have a call.”

  She hopped up and dashed downstairs to pick up the phone. “Hello, this is Jasmine.”

  “Jasmine, hi, this is Knox. Knox Ryker. We talked to you yesterday about the housekeeping position.”

  “Oh yes, hello.” Her heart squeezed itself tight in her chest, ready to be let down.

  “I just wanted to give you a call and see if you’d like to accept the job.”

  Accept? Had he said accept the job? Meaning they wanted to hire her?

  “Yes, I would love to!” She’d probably sounded a little too excited. She tried to tone down her voice before asking, “When would I start?”

  “Well.” He chuckled. “To be honest, the place is a wreck. You can start today if you want.”

  “That’d be great. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Perfect. See you soon.”

  “Thank you! Thank you so much for this job. I will work very hard for you.”

  “I know it.” He chuckled again. “Bye, Jasmine.”

  She hung up the phone and stared at it for a minute. Many emotions rushed over her. She was elated that she’d gotten the job, and especially a first job that paid so well. But nervous. What if she wasn’t good at it and they let her go after a short time? And then Knox. Obviously, now that he was her employer she couldn’t have feelings for him, but she was attracted to him. Not only his looks, but he seemed to be kind, and he seemed to like her, and the way he said her name in his silky voice…

  She dashed upstairs, went straight to Sarah’s room, and told her the good news in a serious of squeals and shrieks. Then she hurried into her room and dressed. She was out the door and on her way to the bus stop in a matter of minutes. Less than an hour after he’d called, Knox opened the door and smiled at Jasmine.

  “That was fast,” he said.

  “I told you I was punctual.” She smiled and stepped inside.

  “I’ll give you a tour of the place, show you what we want done. Basically, we’re slobs, and we need someone around who’s not. I guess Dax’s girlfriend complained that it’s a mess.” He shrugged. “We never seemed to mind much.”

  They started in the living room, where they’d interviewed her the day before. “In here, I guess just dusting and vacuuming, that sort of thing.”

  “And wiping down the tables and cleaning the windows?” she asked.

  “Uh, sure, whatever.” They next went into the kitchen. “We always have dishes in the sink. The usual crumbs and stuff all over the counter. I swear, I do wipe it off constantly. It’s like the crumbs just find their way back.”

  She glanced around the kitchen. It was a decent sized room, big enough for a table and four chairs. But it was filthy. The floors seemed to have a dirty film, there were crumbs and dishes as he’d said, but also sticky spots and an overflowing trash can.

  “So, mainly just the dishes in here.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Surely, the floors and counters and table, refrigerator, and trash as well?”

  He looked around and nodded. “Yeah.”

  They walked down the hall and passed a dining room and office. “In there, you can just vacuum and I guess dust. Nothing major.” He opened a door to a small half bathroom. “This is one of the bathrooms. We try to keep it cleaner for guests.”

  She didn’t want to seem horrified, but if she had been a guest, she wouldn’t have felt comfortable using the bathroom. It smelled and it was grimy on every surface. The seat was up, revealing splotches of yellow and brown. The hand towel smelled of mildew, the rug had clumps of mud, even the light switch had some sort of sticky substance on it. Was this all honey? Did it get into the house and stick to everything?

  They next went upstairs to a long hall of bedrooms.

  “All the bedrooms are up here and the big bathroom.”

  She was afraid to look in the big bathroom after seeing the one downstairs. It was much the same, but here there was also a shower covered in soap scum, a sink full of toothpaste and tiny hairs, and products sitting all over the counter.

  Knox didn
’t say much about the bathroom except to give her a resigned look. “I’m sure that’ll be the worst part.”

  They walked down the hall a little way. “We don’t have to go in all the bedrooms, but just to give you an idea, this is mine.”

  He opened the door to a room that looked like clothing had exploded inside of it. On the floor, on the bed, on the desk, were shirts, pants, and socks. The bedside table had a collection of dishes, including a bowl with some liquid at the bottom that was starting to mold.

  “So probably just vacuum the bedrooms. Or whatever you normally do in a bedroom.”

  “Sure,” she said. And dust and scrub the furniture and windows, and do the laundry, and tidy up and make the bed.

  “That’s pretty much it. You still want the job?”

  “Yes, though…” How could she ask this without sounding like she wasn’t up to the job?

  “You’ll need more money? I can probably arrange that.”

  “Oh. That’s not what I was going to say. Just that, at first, it may take longer to clean than normal? I may not get to all the rooms today, but once I clean each room, it will be faster to clean from now on.”

  He laughed. “Oh goodness. No one expects you clean this whole house today. Whatever time it takes. I know it’s a dump and we’re messy. Blair—that’s Daxton’s girlfriend—does the dishes and stuff sometimes, but she refuses to shower here until it’s cleaned, so Dax was whining that were too messy, and that’s when we all decided it was time just to pay someone. There’s no way we’ll ever be able to keep it clean. So, anything you do will be an improvement.”

  “Do you have cleaning supplies? I can get started right away.”

  “Oh.” He scratched his neck. “Uhh… well, let me give you the full tour, then we can figure all that out.”

  They went back downstairs and then into a basement. “You don’t have to clean down here, in fact, you don’t ever need to come down here at all, but I just thought you should see the whole place.” He motioned to several large metal barrels. They had tubes coming and going from them. “We make whiskey, too.”

  She nodded, not sure what to think of that, then followed him back upstairs. Next, they toured a large building full of machines and a few workers running them. This was where the honey was made, and again, he assured her, she never had to go in there. In fact, they had someone that cleaned in there since food was processed there and it had to be kept cleaner.

  They walked out of the building and stepped into a large patch of grass. Square wooden boxes were in a row and there were bees everywhere. When he’d said they made honey and had shown her the processing facility, for some reason, she hadn’t thought about how they got the honey. Of course they had bees. She walked close to him and tried to move very slowly.

  “These are all the hives.” He walked over to one and started to pull something out of it.

  “Oh no, that’s okay, you don’t have to do that.”

  He looked at her and must’ve seen her nervousness. “Don’t be afraid. They won’t hurt you unless they get agitated.”

  She nodded, but backed away. He led her back into the house. “My brother and I are the beekeepers, so I spend a lot of time with them. They get a much worse rep than they deserve.”

  Three men walked toward the house from another direction.

  “Ah,” Knox said. “Here are the guys.” He waved them over.

  These men, too, were all huge in size. Maybe they liked to go to the gym together or had met there. He introduced each of them and she tried to remember a defining characteristic so she would remember their names. Daxton had black hair, and he wore business suits, since he was the sales guy, according to Knox. Slade ran the business, though, and he was the tallest, also the most serious looking. Until he smiled. Then a dimple popped in his right cheek, and made him look softer. And Amir, who was the one to do all the moonshining in the basement. He was easier to remember because he was the one with darker skin and a slight accent. The thing that stood out the most about all of them, besides their large muscles and wide chests, were their eyes. They all had the hypnotic golden eyes that Knox did.

  “You’re not related in any way?” she asked Knox after the men had walked away.

  “Not by blood.” They went inside and he stood in the living room. “Okay, so what all do you need to get started?”

  “Do you have any cleaning supplies?”

  “Oh, right.” He went to the kitchen retrieved a few bottles. Dish soap, anti-bacterial spray, a floor cleaner. “There’s a mop and broom in the kitchen closet.”

  “Great. I can get started in here. Are there other things? Rags or cleaner for the bathrooms?”

  “Umm, there might be stuff upstairs. The vacuum is up there in the hall closet. Let’s just do this. You get started and do whatever you can do. Anything you need, just make a list and I’ll be sure to get it.”

  She nodded.

  “Okay, well, I’ll be out back with the bees. If you need anything, just holler.”

  She watched him walk away, then got to work.After four days of hard cleaning and multiple trips with Knox to the store to purchase various cleaning supplies, the house was starting to look much better. Soon, she’d be ready to just maintain and the deep cleaning would be done.

  “It’s really looking awesome in here,” Knox said, peaking into the bathroom. “And it smells good. I like that floral cleaner stuff we got.”

  “Thanks.” Jasmine brushed a hair from her forehead with her arm and set down the scrub brush. The tile floors were gorgeous—once she scrubbed the layers of dirt off.

  “I talked to Slade, too. We’re going to pay you more than what we agreed on. This place is so gross, and you’ve already done such an awesome job, it’s the least we can do.”

  “Thank you very much. It’s a big help to me, and just that you would take a chance on someone with no experience.” She chuckled. “I thought I did very poorly in the interview.”

  “I think it was the ‘my good looks’ comment that won it for you.” He winked at her.

  She shook her head and felt her cheeks warm. “I can’t believe I said that.”

  “Well, it’s certainly true.”

  She looked down, her pulse speeding up at his words.

  “I came up here to ask you a question, though. A favor.”

  She pulled the gloves off, one finger at a time, and stood up.

  “Something is up with one of the hives. We had a lot of deaths.” His smile faded and his face became concerned, maybe even worried. “We’re not sure what’s going on, and we don’t want anything to affect the other hives. Can you come take a look at something? We want to clean it all out, but I’m not sure what would be best.”

  “Okay, sure.”

  She followed him out of the house, into the backyard, her heart racing now for a different reason. She didn’t want to be anywhere near these bees. But how could she say no? He’d just given her a raise, and compliments, and he was her employer. She prayed the bees would stay far from her.