Page 6 of Bully Wolf’s Nanny (Silvermist Wolves #1)

Daisy had barely had a chance to start unpacking Thea’s things before Nicolas had leaned against the doorway, frowning slightly at the meager contents of their suitcases, and raised one dark brow.

“That’s it?”

Daisy clutched some clothes to her chest, pride bristling. “Yes. We’re not exactly billionaires like you.”

The outer corner of his lip twitched slightly, before he jerked his chin towards the corridor. “Come on, we’re going into town.”

“What for?” Daisy asked, wincing slightly at the suspicion in her voice. She was his employee now. It wasn’t her place to question what he wanted to do or where he wanted to go. She just needed to obey him.

Nicolas, to his credit, didn’t seem fazed by her slightly snappy tone. “I told you at the agency. I’ll buy you anything you need. That includes decent clothes and possessions. Besides, you can decorate your rooms however you like. And for that you’ll need supplies.”

Daisy was torn between meekly nodding and a sudden urge to defend herself about her scant items. But even she could acknowledge the holes in the worn fabric of the shirt she gripped, the fraying hems.

“I thought you meant like…food, and a uniform and—and toothpaste. That sort of thing.” He rolled his eyes, and a blush rose high in her cheeks. “I just mean I don’t want you spending any money on me that you don’t need to!”

“Daisy, please let’s not do the whole martyr thing.

You and I both know I’m more than capable of putting you up in Buckingham Palace without it making so much as a dent in my checking account.

When I said I’d pay for anything you needed, I meant anything and everything needed for you to be comfortable and happy. ”

“I know,” she argued, hurrying to finish putting things away in the drawers, “but I really don’t need all that much to be comfortable and happy.”

“Just some toothpaste?”

She blushed harder. “That’s not…I didn’t…”

He held his hands up. “Okay, how about this? I’ll open an account in your name, and put enough money in there for you to buy as much or as little as you would like. That way, you don’t have to go through the apparent pain of having to talk to me every time you visit the dentist.”

Sensing that this wasn’t an argument she would win, she instead nodded. “Okay. Fine.”

“We’re still going into town, though,” he said breezily as he left the large bedroom, “be ready in five minutes.”

As soon as he was out of sight, Daisy collapsed down onto the bed, unable to hide her naked awe at the massive room. And this one wasn’t even hers. It was Thea’s, who was busy leaning over the balcony gasping in wonder at the expanse of woodland beyond.

Daisy’s bedroom was another thing entirely.

For starters, she could fit her entire old apartment into it easily, and that wasn’t including the luxurious ensuite bathroom with a marble bathtub, walk-in shower, and luxuriously fluffy towels and robes hanging from gilded hooks.

The bed was enormous, the sheets soft pink and cloudlike, the polished wooden floor scattered with various rugs and sheepskins to keep her feet warm.

But by far her favorite feature was the enormous marble fireplace opposite, sitting beneath a wall-mounted television and surrounded by inbuilt bookshelves.

She could already picture herself in the cold Maine winter huddling close to it reading to her daughter, both of them wrapped tightly in a blanket and sipping hot cocoa.

For her part, Thea had already announced that she wanted to paint her bedroom walls green to match the forest, and needed six or seven more pillows on her bed so that she could easily make pillow forts.

“Mommy, where’s Gracie?” Thea asked as she traipsed back into the room. “Is she going to come into town with us?”

“I imagine so,” said Daisy as she briskly stood and resumed stuffing clothes into the dresser, “but she’s having a nap at the moment.”

Thea considered this before nodding seriously, “I’ll just have to play with her later.”

“I suppose you will,” Daisy said, chuckling at her daughter.

Thea wandered over, peering into the drawers, her mouth forming a small frown when she realized that the drawers only held her items and not some new fantastical wonder. ‘Mommy, how long are we going to stay here?’

Daisy paused, chewing her lip. She’d done her best to explain the situation to her daughter who had, for the most part, taken it in her stride. It was her greatest fear that her daughter would be unhappy, and she would trade any amount of money in the world to ensure that wasn’t the case.

“I’m not sure,” she said, “maybe a long time. Is that okay?”

“Yeah, it’s fine,” Thea said, half-distracted again. “When will we see Aunty Amelia again?”

“She said she’d visit next weekend,” said Daisy, “she had to go back to work today. But didn’t you enjoy your car trip with her?”

Thea nodded and launched into some story about the gas station they’d stopped off at, and Daisy laughed along with her as she wrestled Thea into slightly warmer clothes.

“Come on you, it’s time to go meet Nicolas downstairs.”

Thea nodded again, her little face screwing up in concentration as they walked down the stairs, no doubt determined to impress the imposing male waiting for them.

Daisy couldn’t help but smile. She knew she was probably biased, but she believed that Thea was the most impressive little girl in the whole world. Anyone would be silly not to think so.

Nicolas stood by the door, his clothes understated yet unmistakable in their quality, and he had a bag slung over his shoulder and Gracie strapped into a pushchair.

“There you are,” he said. “Ready to go?”

“Yes!” Thea chirped before Daisy could answer, racing past him and out onto the drive.

Nicolas turned back, one eyebrow raised. Daisy could only shrug. “She’s very energetic.”

“I can see that,” he said, his voice wry. “How old did you say she was again?”

Daisy swallowed, schooling her features in a perfect picture of calm and composure. “She’s five. Nearly six.”

Nicolas nodded, “She’s very intelligent for a five-year-old.”

“Yes, she is, it’s why she’s skipped a grade,” Daisy said, following her daughter outside, unable to make eye contact with Nicolas.

“She skipped kindergarten?”

“No, she went to kindergarten a year early. Summer birthday. I had the choice of when she started and…well, as you can see, she’s smart. So she’s in first grade.”

Nicolas didn’t respond, or rather, Daisy didn’t give him a chance to. Instead, she busied herself strapping her squirming daughter firmly into her booster seat, tapping her nose and telling her to behave.

Her daughter, who was decidedly not five years old.

Her daughter, who would be turning seven in a few months.

But she could have hardly told Nicolas that, not when he would have easily done the math.

So, she had taken advantage of her daughter’s relatively small size and told a little white lie.

Luckily for her, Thea had found the idea of lying about her age to be utterly hilarious. As she got older, however…

Well, that would be a problem for later.

She could only hope Nicolas, with his cunning eyes and his razor-sharp intelligence, wouldn’t catch on before she figured things out.

***

The town of Silvermist was almost unrecognizable.

Gone were the crumbling, dusty shop fronts, the dirty streets, the huddled, nervous people.

Instead, the streets were thriving with gorgeous pine buildings, reminiscent of some French chalet town, interspersed with houses and bustling shops and wide, happy smiles from everybody they passed.

“What happened here?” Daisy breathed as they walked towards the town square, where a great statue of a wolf carved from pine sat with its head lifted to howl at the moon.

“Felix happened,” said Nicolas as he pushed Gracie’s stroller, his eyes keenly focused on Thea’s little form as she darted from one shop front stall to another, gaping at pretty flowers and breathing in the rich warm scent of spiced cider.

“Yes, but he’s only been the alpha for what, five years? This is like a brand-new place altogether!”

Nicolas shrugged. “There was a lot of damage to undo, for sure, but it was amazing how quickly things started looking up when we overthrew the Old Guard. The number of resources they were wasting on territory squabbles was borderline criminal.”

Daisy gulped. She knew it was just a turn of phrase, but…

well, there had been a lot that could have been considered criminal about the Old Guard.

She remembered well her father’s sunken eyes, his frown lines deepening from stress as the old alpha sent the Vanguard out on yet another scouting mission.

Not everyone came home from those missions.

It was the way of things, and had been since time began; the shifters governed themselves.

There was nothing the police or anyone else could have done.

So the killing continued.

She shuddered. It wasn’t worth dwelling on. Nicolas hardly seemed inclined to share any more with her, and why should he? After all, she’d made her position clear. She wanted nothing to do with the Iron Walkers.

Her attention was quickly stolen by a huge log-style shop just beyond the statue, several grand pianos visible through the windows.

“Is that a music shop?”

Nicolas glanced over. “Oh, yes. Iron Logging has recently expanded into spruce and signed several contracts with major piano and violin manufacturers. That right there is our flagship location.”

Daisy couldn’t help but run over to the storefront, hands pressed against the glass, heart aching at the beautiful instruments within.

“We can go in if you’d like.” Nicolas’s voice was suddenly very close to her ear, and she nearly squeaked as she turned, having to crane her neck upwards to meet his eye.

“Oh…no thank you. I mean, that’s very kind, but…I’ll just get distracted. And you have things to do, I’m sure!”

His eyes turned almost wistful then. “I forgot you used to play the piano,” he said, his voice uncharacteristically soft.

She gulped. “I mean, yes, I did, but…but I haven’t recently. Not for a long time, anyway.”

He glanced over to Thea, who was busy trying to clamber up the enormous wolf statue, his sharp features unreadable.

“Anyway,” she said, perhaps a touch too brightly, “you said this was the flagship location? Seems a bit out of the way. How much demand can there be in a town this size for grand pianos?”

If Nicolas registered her rather clumsy attempt to change the subject, he was at least polite enough not to draw attention to it.

“When the goods in question are genuine luxury, you’d be surprised how far people are willing to travel.

Besides, we get plenty of rich guests with far too much money going spare staying in nearby Iron Ridge Retreats.

There’s a grand piano in every lobby, and those sorts of people like to pretend they’re tasteful enough to appreciate them. Boosts our orders rather nicely.”

“Those sorts of people?” Daisy asked, risking a small laugh. “Wouldn’t you count as one of those sorts of people, Mr. Billionaire?”

The corner of his mouth tugged upwards. “The difference being, I actually have taste.”

As they wandered from shop to shop, stopping every time Thea saw some shiny bauble or Nicolas decided to buy yet another shirt with far too many zeros on the price tag, Daisy couldn’t help but reflect on the man in front of her.

She couldn’t deny that she had spent a good majority of the past few hours on edge, waiting for the switch to flip, waiting for the cruel unfeeling monster she had known all those years ago to reappear.

To insult her, degrade her, to tear his way through her feeble defenses and attack the very core of her being.

And he could. He had all the necessary weapons to go straight for the kill.

But he hadn’t. He’d been…well, perhaps not kind, but definitely…amenable.

Not cruel.

She gave up trying to stop him from buying Thea everything she wanted, her heart warming to see her little girl so happy.

She had done her absolute best over the years to provide for Thea, to make sure she was never left wanting, but there was only so much she could do.

There were corners she had had to cut. Things that she would have said yes to in a heartbeat if she wasn’t paralyzed by fear over rent payments or bills or credit card debt.

It was far too generous of Nicolas to spend so much on a little girl he’d only just met. Daisy supposed that it was only because he was quite so hideously wealthy. It was nothing to him.

Her throat became thick as she remembered the last time she had seen him. It had been quite possibly the worst day of her life. And yet despite that, she had known, deep in her bones, that he would go on to do great things.

And so he had. He had only been two years into his course at Caltech when he had founded Nero Incorporated, the modern tech solution to online banking.

He was a billionaire by the time he was twenty-three.

She’d gotten rather drunk one evening and spent a painful few hours poring over Forbes articles and editorials in the Financial Times.

And then the next morning, she had picked herself back up again, tied back her hair, and taken her daughter to daycare.

But now here she was. Back in Silvermist. Back with…with him.

Nicolas was wrapping up a phone call, his brow furrowing slightly as he hung up and tucked the mobile back in his pocket.

“That was Felix. Pack leadership is meeting this evening. You should come.”

Her throat turned dry, her spine prickled. “Um…what?”

He cast a critical eye over her outfit. “You can swear loyalty and fidelity. Get it out of the way. In the meantime,” he handed her a shiny black card, “go buy yourself some new clothes. Some makeup, too. I won’t hear the end of it if Felix thinks I’m not looking after you.”

Daisy was too dumbfounded with shock and sudden nausea as she accepted the card with shaking hands. Even as her heart tripped over itself slightly at his words.

Looking after her.

She shook her head.

Professionally. He meant professionally.

There was nothing more to it.