Sweet Sinclair (Masters of the Castle) Read Free Page B

a standing ashtray/garbage combo can by the Castle entrance.
    “Do you smoke?” Jackson asked.
    Sinclair shook her head and he moved ahead to get this door for her too. He held it wide, gesturing for her to precede him into a very busy kitchen. There had to be at least twenty men and women at various cooking stations, all of them costumed to look like people straight out of Downton Abbey—except the skirts were rather high—chopping vegetables, basting meat, whipping cream and mashing potatoes. The constant clatter of pots and pans and dishes—both the dirty being shuffled to the sink for washing and the clean being shuffled onto a massive serving cart—was deafening.
    “Don’t burn the bread!” a burly woman near a massive commercial stove snapped back over her shoulder. Standing over a series of steaming pots, she barked her orders while rapidly whisking flour into a thick gravy. “Useless kitchen bitches, don’t just stand there. Get the damn bread out of the oven!”
    “Evening, Connie,” Jackson called as he led Sinclair through the kitchen rush.
    “Not now, damn it!” the woman barked back. “Out, out! I don’t have time for this!”
    Seemingly unaffected by her cross dismissal, Jackson took Sinclair through a second doorway into a private dining room, furnished by a single long table. “Take a seat.” He waved her into one of the chairs. “He’ll be with you in a moment.”
    “Sam?” Sinclair asked, sliding into a seat near the head of the long table.
    “Nope.” Jackson grinned back at her. “Marshall. He’s the, uh… president of the company, I guess you’d say.”
    He left her sitting there alone at the table to wait.
    Minutes ticked by, each punctuated by minor clatters and the occasional grumpy shout from the woman in the kitchen. Hands folded tight in her lap, Sinclair looked around the dining room. Electric sconces on the wall flickered, looking awfully similar to real fire-lit torches. Hanging on the wall nearest the table, an old-fashioned oil painting depicted Roman soldiers surrounding three slave girls. Two were bound in chains and on their knees; a third was being lashed across the naked buttocks with a multi-tailed whip. She had one arm thrown up in artistic despair, but she wasn’t trying especially hard to escape. All in all, it was an odd picture to have hanging over one’s dinner table. Of course, this was a brothel, so naked bodies were to be expected. But chains and flagellation?
    Rubbing her hands upon her thighs, Sinclair wondered if she ought to be more offended than she, in fact, felt. But then, women on the verge of losing their stores didn’t have the luxury to be offended by anything as silly as a paying employer’s paintings. She wasn’t vacationing here; this was work. If she did i t well enough, it might turn into an annual event that could really save her store. Depending on how this all went, she might even expand her business to include candy catering to other companies in the area. This was going to breathe new life into her store and be the much-needed financial boost she’d been wracking her brain to find. So bring on the naked women, Roman guards, play-acting damsels in distress and all the whips they could muster; Sinclair saw nothing to be offended about here.
    The door Jackson had disappeared through moments before abruptly swung open again, admitting a tall, blond man with the most piercing blue eyes she’d ever seen. Like everyone else she’d so far seen, he was dressed in costume, but he was no servant. Rather, he looked more like a regal Han Solo—his black breeches and knee-length riding boots contrasted sharply with the whiteness of his open-to-the-chest shirt and black vest. All he was missing was a weapon and a wookiee.
    “Good evening.” He came to the table, claimed the first chair to her right and sat down facing her. Laying a small stack of papers on the table between them, he uncapped his pen to set it directly on the table by