Page 82 of Love Bites

His lips curved upward. “Immensely.”

I smiled, opening the cover on the tablet.

The screen lit up, fully-charged and showing a few dozen notifications. Most were calendar requests, but a handful of them were messages.

“How much am I supposed to be in charge of?” I asked him, skimming the messages and requests.

“Just the pool.”

I lifted my gaze to him, raising an eyebrow. “Your vampires wouldn’t have given me a desk in the King’s office if all I was expected to do was run the pool.”

“Historically, a mated leader pair handles everything related to their people together. Equally,” he admitted. “But considering the situation, I don’t expect that from you. You like the businesses you run with your sisters. I can take care of everything on my own.”

“But you did assign me the pool.”

“Technically, my activity planner resigned when she learned why I built a pool instead of a monstrous mini-golf course. My assistants are the ones who assigned you the pool and set up the tablet. Convincing them to take it back and put someone else in charge hasn’t been a priority.”

“The mini-golf course was that important?”

“Not to me.”

I grimaced. “Who else resigned when you mated with me?”

“No one irreplaceable.”

“Damian,” I warned.

“The activity manager, facility manager, and my public relations chairman. Someone else filled the chair, though.”

“Was it Colby?” The requests I’d seen from him about using the pool for the fae had been written formally enough for that to seem plausible.

“Unfortunately.”

I sighed. “You should’ve told me this sooner.”

“I didn’t give you a choice about mating. I wasn’t—and am not—going to force you into a leadership role that you don’t want just because your blood quiets my lust.”

“Do you pay your leaders?”

“Of course.”

“Then asking me to take a job is nothing like forcing me to be your mate. I’ll talk to my sisters about it, but they really don’t need me to run the shops. We only started them because we needed a way to make money, and liked having that independence. I’m sure I can handle running the activities and managing the facility—unless you have someone else doing that already.”

“I’m doing it,” he said grudgingly.

“Would that help ease some of this?” I gestured to the mountain range of paperwork.

“Tremendously. But…”

“But what?”

He drummed his fingers on my desk, his lips pressing in a line and his breakfast momentarily forgotten. “Both of those roles require interacting with my vampires consistently.”

“I thought the goal was for me to get to know people and establish myself here.”

“Of course it is.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

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