by Wolf, Terra
With that, he was gone. Bryce dropped to the ground, his legs barely catching him.
"Eloquent bastard, isn't he?" Holden said, coming to help steady his friend.
"You noticed that too, did you?"
It was the most that they had heard him say at any one time. Thomas preferred to speak in shorter sentences, and he did not like to say more than one or two at a time before allowing the other party to speak, as if his vocal chords tired easily.
"I've also never quite seen such an open display of his strength. Not since that fiasco with Ethan."
Holden was referring to the pack which Thomas had hired before them. The leader had tried to claim Joanna for his own, despite Ethan being her mate. It had been headed to open conflict between the two packs before Thomas stepped in to prevent any deaths.
"This is not good. Come on, let's go tell Jake. We're going to need to up our game."
If they didn't, someone was going to get hurt.
Or killed.
Chapter Three
Natasha
The next morning she had gotten up early, learned her way around the town as best she could with a few hours' notice, and then had headed straight in to the restaurant. As luck would have it, Joanna was already there, working away at some aspect of paperwork or another. The two women introduced themselves, hitting it off right away.
"I'm so glad I'm working for you, and not Thomas," Natasha quipped as they took a brief break after finishing up an order for more food supplies.
"Well, technically we all work for him, but you won't see him around too much. Which is a relief, I know," Joanna chuckled.
"He's so weird!"
"I know!"
"Do you ever get used to his...oddity?" Natasha asked, unsure of how sensitive to the issue Joanna might be.
"He's scary and unnerving as all hell you mean. The answer to your question though, is no. I've been working with him for years now, and it still throws me off. I've come to expect it, which helps a little bit, but every time I think I'm getting used to it, he does something else to throw me off."
"It's like he's not human," Natasha joked.
Joanna smiled and laughed, but there was something about her reaction that said the joke had hit a nerve of some sort.
"In fact," Natasha said, pushing the topic slightly, against her better judgment, "a lot of things around here feel...odd. Do you ever notice it?"
"Notice what? Anything in particular?" Joanna asked. It was a credible attempt, but once again Natasha could see she was trying to sound surprised, though she wasn't.
So she told her boss about her slip the other night where Bryce had caught her, the way Thomas seemed to glide instead of walk, and how none of them seemed to make any noise when they moved either.
"I can't say that I've ever noticed any of that, but I'll definitely keep an eye out for it."
Joanna was deflecting, she could see that rather easily. There was something going on, but whatever it was, they weren't going to include her in it just yet. It hadn't even been a full twenty-four hours since she had first stepped foot onto the property. Still, Natasha was determined to dig to the bottom of things and find out just what the hell everyone at The Silver Bullet was hiding.
"What's next on the agenda?" she asked, deciding to change the subject for the time being. Her job was more important than anything else.
"We need a new waitress. I've already been in the process of hiring, so it's down to these two," she said, pushing two folders across the table. They contained resumes and other notes on two women that Joanna had already interviewed. As personnel was going to be one of the main areas of responsibility for Natasha, it made sense for her to be involved.
Looking over the resumes, she analyzed the pros and cons for each. It was a test. It wasn't all that hard to figure out that the boss wanted to see her thought processes. Hell, it's what she would have done if the positions were switched.
"This one," she said, pushing one of the folders back toward Joanna.
"Agreed."
"You didn't even look at it," she said, confused.
"Didn't have to. Your department, your choice. If you regret it, guess what?" Joanna said with a grin.
"My department, my problem?" she said wryly, a smile pulling at her cheeks.
"Oh, we are going to get along so well."
"How did you come to work here anyway?" Natasha asked, curious to learn a bit more about her boss.
"Well, Thomas initially hired me when I was working at a bar in Seattle. I was just learning the trade, and managed to spill a drink all over him. Somehow that persuaded him to hire me away from there. He runs a bar here in town too, just a small little thing really. So I became in charge of that."
"Then once this opened up, he brought you here?" she asked.
"Pretty much," Joanna replied with a grin, shaking her head at the memory. "There's a little more to it than that, but that's the gist of it."
"So despite his behavior, you find working under him to be a good job?"
"Are you kidding? Have you seen your pay?" Joanna said with a laugh.
"You have a point there."
Thomas paid well over the industry norm. Well over. This was the type of job she could easily settle down and live off of comfortably, with room to spare. Natasha knew she would make every effort not to get fired from it. These opportunities came around once in a lifetime.
"Besides, I met my husband working for Thomas," Joanna said happily.
"Really? Wow that's amazing."
"Want to know what's even better?" she asked, leaning in conspiratorially.
"What?"
"Now he works for me. I get to boss him around here and at home!"
The two women shared a laugh.
"Perhaps you can find your m—" Joanna began to say, before cutting herself off.
"My man?" Natasha grinned. "It's okay, you can refer to him as such."
"Oh, met someone already have you?"
"What? No."
"Oh come on, Natasha. You're blushing. Dead giveaway."
"Shit," she said. This was not how the conversation was supposed to go.
"Who is it? Come on, tell me!"
"Do you know the security guy Bryce?"
Joanna all but squealed. "Bryce? Oh my goodness, no way! That's so amazing."
"Joanna, I just met him yesterday. It's not like we're going to get married or anything."
"Call it women's intuition," her boss said, leaning back into her chair, unable to stop smiling.
Natasha was confused. Nothing was going on with Bryce. Except that he had been in her dreams the night before. They were sexy dreams. He had been shirtless, his muscles carved from stone as he stood before her. She had had other dreams, but they weren't for retelling to her boss. But that didn't mean she was going to marry him. Absolutely not. He worked for her, for starters. It was one thing for Joanna to have met her husband before they worked together. This was different. It wasn't going to happen. At all.
"Okay, I'll save you any further embarrassment! Let's head downstairs, and we'll start properly introducing you to everyone."
As she was walking down the stairs to the ground level, Natasha glanced over at the door. Standing there, staring right back at her, was Bryce. He smiled. It wasn't the cocky grin he'd worn the night before, but more of a warm and inviting look. She flexed her back slightly, trying not to let him send shivers down her spine.
It didn't work, so she ducked into the kitchen as fast as possible, hoping he hadn't seen her reaction to his smile. Damn, he was just so gorgeous. He shouldn't be looking at her that way though, no matter how much she enjoyed it. A part of her wanted to have a private talk with him about workplace attitude and professionalism. She rolled her eyes, leaning back against the tiled wall. That meeting would be useless, because she knew what would happen if she and Bryce were left alone together.
"What are you doing in here?" Joanna asked curiously, poking the door open after her.
&
nbsp; "Hiding from my own insecurities?" she said lamely.
Joanna laughed in reply. "Well, we may as well introduce you while you're in here!"
Nodding, Natasha decided to do her proper rounds. She met Alex, the tall, skinny head chef, a middle-aged man who seemed to lack all the normal stress of a lifelong chef. Then there was Carlos. He handled most of the food preparation. He was shorter and of some sort of Latin descent, though she declined to ask which. Thick black hair and a jovial laugh endeared her to him right away. The final member was Jenny. She was of average height, with several visible tattoos and long, straight red hair that ran completely contrary to her dull, uninspired personality. But, as Joanna assured her, Jenny was a master in the kitchen, proficient in all areas almost to the degree of Alex, who was at least a decade her senior.
"They seem like a solid team," she remarked as they exited the kitchen.
Bryce was still standing there, observing the two women as he talked softly into a radio handset. She assumed he was talking to the security on the perimeter of the place. Her first instinct was that something was wrong, because every other time she had seen him, he had been staring right at her.
"What now?" Joanna said as Natasha covered up a laugh.
"Nothing," she managed to get out.
Of course nothing was wrong, you egotistical moron, she thought. Just because a man isn't paying you one hundred percent attention, doesn't mean the world is ending! Natasha couldn't believe how quickly she had assumed herself to be the center of Bryce's universe. The notion was ridiculous, because as she'd told Joanna earlier, she had met Bryce not even twenty-four hours earlier.
"Listen, Natasha, I have to use the ladies room real quick. Why don't you go do some rounds, talk to some patrons and meet some of the wait staff? You're fine to do that on your own, right?"
"Sure, not a problem," she said, squaring her shoulders. It was time to get to work, to do the job she had been hired to do in the first place. She could do that. Natasha knew how to do her job, and she was good at it. She looked around. There were precisely two staff members working at the moment that she could see. One was a waitress, busy with the three active tables. The other was the hostess. That wasn't a problem, except she was standing next to Bryce, near the door.
"Fuck," she muttered under her breath. Sucking in a lungful of air that was supposed to reassure her of her own competency, Natasha sent the signal to her legs to take her over there.
She didn't move. It was ridiculous. She was a grown woman who couldn't get her body to obey her command to take her in the direction she wanted. It was as if her subconscious wanted her nowhere near the sexy security man. Oh come on! Now she was moving? Her legs moved perfectly, bringing her up several steps from where the two of them were standing.
"Hello," she said to Bryce, before turning to the hostess.
"I'm Natasha," she said, sticking her hand out in greeting.
"Nancy," the petite blonde said pleasantly, a polite smile on her face. "You're the new GM, right?"
"That's me. Just getting settled and meeting everyone."
"Oh, then you should meet Bryce here. He's the chief of security for the Bullet."
There was no sarcasm in Nancy's voice when she referred to Bryce's title. She thought it was almost like she believed it was his true position. Natasha wondered how Bryce had been so successful in convincing people of that when the hierarchy she had seen from Joanna clearly stated a man she had not yet met, by the name of Jake, was the leader.
"Chief of security Bryce is it?" she said, eyebrows raised slightly.
"You got it, Boss," he replied, the shit-eating grin back on his face.
She had to admit, it did wonderful things to his face when he smiled. Bryce was the model of sexy most of the time, but when he smiled her knees wanted to do anything but support her. He was gorgeous, but his goofy childlike smile made him all the more precious. Thick, soft lips surrounded by stubble that looked utterly kissable. His hair was short, but she would be content to run her hands through it nonetheless.
Stop that! He works for you. Not with you, but he is your employee. You can't just take up relations with the first attractive employee you meet. That is not part of the Natasha Ellis recipe for success, and you know it, she thought. You wrote the damn thing after all.
She knew it was a bad idea, but he seemed to call to her. It wasn't just between her legs that filled with warmth and tingles when she looked at him, but the rest of her as well. His personality was brash and abrupt, but he was always quick with a retort or comment, in a way that belied a solid intelligence lurking in the depths of his gray eyes.
"So, tell me about yourself Nancy. How did you come to be working here?" she said, anxious to learn more about her staff.
"Well, I used to work at a restaurant in Seattle, and it was good. But then my boyfriend moved here, and got a job as a park ranger. I followed him, but obviously I couldn't make the commute just for that job. But then Eric, my boyfriend, met Ethan, one of Bryce's friends. He knew what I used to do, so when this place was hiring, Ethan put in a good word for me, and I got hired."
"Well that was nice of your friend," she told Bryce in an approving tone.
"I only hang out with the best, Boss," he agreed.
She shook her head with a smile. "And what about you Bryce? What's your story?"
"My story?"
"Indeed. Who are you, where are you from, and why are you working security at a restaurant?" she said.
Bryce began to speak, but the door opened, admitting a middle-aged couple. Natasha sat back, letting Nancy do her job in silence. As she guided the pair to one of the open tables, the attention turned back to Bryce.
"Well, Natasha," he said, her name rolling of his tongue, very pleasing to the ear. "It's a bit of an odd story." He chuckled, the only one to understand his joke.
He continued when she didn't say a word. "I was traveling with my friends. We stopped at a campground here in town."
"I've heard of that place. Everyone here seems to love it," she said, searching her memory for the name. "What's it called again?"
"It's Muller Lodge & Campground," he supplied. "Anyway, we arrived here, set up camp, and managed to burn the place to the ground." He grimaced.
"You what?!" she yelped, trying to keep her voice low. Even so, several patrons turned their heads. "How can you say that so nonchalantly? You set it on fire?"
"Not on purpose!" he assured, throwing up his hands in a calming gesture, intended to get her to let him finish the story first.
"Sorry," she apologized, feeling silly that she had jumped to the conclusion that he was an arsonist.
"It was an accident, but the damage was extreme. Anyway, our alp—the guy whose fault it was, Jake, he came from money. So, we worked together with the owner Harper and rebuilt it, better than before."
Natasha knew she was staring slack-jawed as Bryce recalled the effort that had gone into rebuilding the campground. He tried to be modest and downplay it, but it sounded like he and his group of friends had moved heaven and earth to fix Harper's property.
"So what happened after?" she asked, curious as to the outcome.
"Jake ended up marrying her!"
"No way."
"Absolutely. He and Harper hit it off, and once she got over what we had done, she and Jake fell madly in love. They even have a family now and everything."
"Talk about a first impression," she breathed in disbelief.
"No better than almost falling and knocking yourself out in front of the chief of security," Bryce teased.
"I think it's safe to say it was a bit worse than that," she huffed, not really offended.
"Not from where I was standing."
"Which was exactly where again?" she said, skewering him with her best stare as she tried to get an answer once more to how he had moved so fast.
"I told you I was—"
"You were following me, like a creep," she said, making fun of him since he wouldn't admit th
e truth.
"I was not being creepy!" he protested with a laugh. "So, why did you leave your last job to move all the way out here?" he asked.
She decided to let him change the subject for the time being. I'm not done with you Bryce, not by a long shot, she thought. I will find out what you're hiding. Patience is practically my middle name. It wasn't, nor did it accurately describe her, but Natasha decided that she would have to learn in this case.
"I had a shitty job. I was the assistant GM in a high-end restaurant back in Seattle. It paid okay, but not great. My boss, though, he was a real gem."
"My sarcasm detector is going crazy over here," he remarked.
"Oh yeah. He was a huge dick. Always making inappropriate jokes and comments toward the female staff, promising better wages if we 'did things' for him, stuff like that. Never enough for us to be able to get him fired, because the owners loved him. But enough that it made working there hell for three years."
"Why did you stay there for so long then?" Bryce asked, not understanding.
"It was a good restaurant. Several years of experience there, and I would have a much easier time getting into other exclusive places."
"Ah," he said, nodding in understanding.
"I was resigned to that, until Thomas hired me away. Better pay, an easygoing workplace. I jumped so fast I'm still coming back down to Earth, trying to believe this is happening. And that's that," she said, clapping her hands together softly.
Bryce was going to reply, but the door opened, letting in another member of security. She shook her head, recognizing the man, but not remembering his name. It was insane to have this much security! She and Joanna were going to have a serious talk about it. It was a restaurant for goodness' sake!
"Sorry Natasha, but looks like we have to do security stuff, if the look on his face is anything to go by," Bryce said apologetically, clearly unhappy to have to leave her side.
"It's okay Chief," she said, looking up at him through her eyelashes. "I'm not going anywhere."
