The Wolf on the Hill Read Free Page A

sure as hell didn’t let her personal problems affect her in public. She blamed him completely for her total work fail. Until yesterday, the last time she’d set eyes on him he’d been a scruffy teenager on the receiving end of a beating from his father. Now her sympathy for Caleb Jackson was definitely being overshadowed by thoughts of a more risqué nature.
    Thankfully, the lunchtime crowd began to filter in and Naomi dropped the inquisition to play hostess.
    “Hey, sis.” Somewhere among the crowd, Rory had managed to slip in unnoticed. Her brother possessed that annoying knack of showing up when she least wanted to talk.
    He stretched across the bar to reach for a menu, though Mia didn’t know why he bothered.
    “I’ll have the soup of the day and a coffee,” he ordered, like he didn’t have the same thing every day.
    He pretended to study the menu but Mia saw the sly glimpses he snatched at Naomi. She grinned. Her macho big brother still hadn’t worked up the courage to ask the attractive brunette out after two years of pining for her, but Mia knew better than to interfere. Naomi kept her private life closely guarded. No one knew anything of her background, save for the fact that she had turned up in town, heavily pregnant, and with enough money to buy the pub outright. Anyone who questioned her about her past was quickly dispatched with a flea in their ear, and Mia’s problems were great enough without adding her boss’s wrath to the mix.
    “So, um, did your new lodger settle in okay?” She turned her back to pour a black coffee so Rory couldn’t read her as easily as she read him.
    “Yeah. I’m thinking of getting a work party together to help him sort his place out. You in?”
    She almost suffered third degree coffee burns at the idea of working alongside Caleb. Caught up in the euphoria of her liberation as a wolf, she’d willingly gone into his arms, unaware that her actions would come back to haunt her so close to home. Mr Jackson certainly couldn’t provide the security her parents expected from a suitor. She would do well to forget him altogether.
    “In what?” Naomi walked in on the end of their conversation to place a bowl of steaming hot tomato and basil soup in front of Rory. “Are you two planning a bank job or something?” The smiles exchanged between her brother and her boss left Mia out in the cold, yearning for a share of the warmth emanating between them.
    “The old Jackson place on the hill was vandalised. I’m looking for volunteers to help fix it up.” Rory’s face, so full of hope, concentrated on Naomi’s response.
    “I will if Mia will.” Naomi threw her under the bus. There was no way Mia could say no now and refuse the big eejit some quality time with the love of his life.
    “Sure. There’s nothing better I’d like to do in my spare time than freeze my arse off in a derelict house with a mop in my hand.” Or spend the whole time pretending I didn’t bonk the house owner like a wild thing.
    The sarcasm was lost on her too-far-gone-to-notice sibling.
    “Great. Hey, Caleb. We’ve got our first two recruits.”
    Another glass hit the deck when Caleb appeared from the gents’ bathroom.
    “Mia, what the hell is wrong with you today?” Naomi pushed her shell-shocked employee to one side and proceeded to sweep up for the second time.
    “Are you sickening for something?” Rory studied her with concern, probably getting ready to bundle her up in cotton wool and ship her straight home to mother.
    Mia didn’t have the chance to make up an excuse as Caleb walked straight into her eye line with a smirk that described his every dirty thought in great detail, sending her hormones haywire and making her panties wet.
    “Yeah, you do look kinda hot.”
    “I think something must have disagreed with me,” she mumbled, wishing Caleb could be a gentleman for once and let the matter drop.
    “You sure about that?” He sniffed the air and she saw a flash of amber fire in