AllFreeNovel
Share Us
A puffy face greeted me in the mirror. I looked like death. I still wore my lace bra and thong, but it was stained with sweat and body glitter. My hair was tangled, matted into a knot around a pink scrunchie.
I flipped on the shower and dropped a jasmine shower melt into the drain.
As the steaming water rained down and the soothing flowery scent wafted up, I attempted to gather my head. It was Sunday, which meant Merrick would be home all day. He might have a business dinner later, but usually we spent most of the weekends at home.
He could cook really well. I could make a couple of things, mainly just instant rice and boiled eggs. So he usually made Sunday dinner while I sat on the counter and had a glass of wine and watched.
My fingers running over my scalp felt heavenly and I considered scheduling a massage tomorrow. The only problem with that was I’d maxed out my credit card and I needed to ask him to pay it off early.
He always did without reprimanding me once. He spoiled and protected me, never once casting judgement on anything I did.
He was everything my ice cold father never was, and in the last six years of being my guardian, he’d created a monster.
And that spoiled monster was me.
But, I mentally argued, I wasn’t the mean kind. I was the nice, pretty monster who made his day better, despite draining his wallet.
Candice was still sleeping when I pulled on a berry pink sweatsuit and braided my wet hair and slipped from the room.
Merrick had a restored estate house, with airy white walls and dark wood furnishings. Everything in it was worth something, shipped from somewhere expensive, at the behest of a handsomely compensated interior designer.
I padded into the huge kitchen. As usual, Merrick sat at the long, rectangular table with his silver laptop open before him. He was gazing at his screen with his lips moving, totally absorbed in his work.
He was handsome and he drew people like a moth to his flame. Those cobalt blue eyes burned with energy, occasionally frightening, but almost always kind when they fixed on me. Surrounding them were dark, thick lashes.
His jaw was broad, his face tall, and his nose was prominent, but slender bridged. He was the kind of handsome that made me feel safe, that let me admire him without wanting him.
His hair was dark and usually slicked loosely over his head. Occasionally, when he was tired after a long day, the waves would start to spring free on top and fall over his forehead. Giving him a kind of casually sexy look. His skin was a light beige and he always had a permanent shadow across his jaw, even after he’d shaved.
I paused in the doorway to stare at him for a moment.
From that first moment in the graveyard, one thing had baffled me.
Why had Merrick Llwyd been such good friends with my ice cold, distant, asshole of a father?
Because Merrick was anything but those things.
He was a warm, magnetic presence everywhere he went. His rich laugh lit up a room and when he spoke Welsh—which I hadn’t admitted to not understanding a word of yet—it sounded like deep, resonant music.
He was funny, he could banter a mile a minute. But he could also be serious and hold his own in any conversation. He charmed everyone and everyone either wanted to be him or be with him.
If I had been older and not his ward, I was sure I’d be head over heels for him. He was that type. Tall, dark haired, and smooth as a fine red wine.
Not that I was looking. Merrick and I weren’t like that.
He was also incredibly anal, in his own words. In our shared spaces like the kitchen, there was a right way and a wrong way to do things and Merrick’s was the right way. I learned that quickly.
He was always kind and patient about it, but incredibly firm.
“Load the dishwasher only after everything is rinsed, cariad.”
“Don’t use the dish soap in the washing machine.”
“I’ll renovate your closet and make it twice as big if you’ll just stop leaving your shoes in the hall.”
I was pretty sure in Merrick’s mind, everything was teeming with germs and the world would collapse if the dish towel wasn’t hung up to dry properly. It was a bit weird for someone who was rumored to have killed twelve men in an arena with his bare hands to win his place as Brenin.
But that was just a rumor.
