Chapter 42
King
Leo was already at the newsstand when I arrived the next morning.
He was leafing through the paper, giving me the chance to take him in without being noticed.
His olive-green T-shirt stretched across his lean chest, and my heart fluttered at the way his curls fell over his forehead.
I swallowed as my eyes raked down his body.
His dark jeans clung to his thighs and ass and were cuffed at the bottom.
That detail, along with his leather work boots, gave him an air of effortlessness that I could never achieve but was wildly attracted to.
I’d realized I was bisexual in college after a string of drunken nights forced me to confront that it wasn’t the alcohol that made kissing guys so much fun. I’d never taken it farther, but now I couldn’t stop thinking about the sexy beta.
He glanced over his shoulder and did a double take when he caught me staring. His expression transformed into a smirk. “Morning.”
“Good morning. Thanks for getting the paper.”
“Of course. I’ve actually never read the horoscope section. Now we just need…oh, there he is.”
Wilder jogged down the street toward us.
“Morning.” Leo waved at the alpha. “How was your shift?”
“Fine.”
I rolled my eyes. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
It had been a while since I’d read a physical paper, but I didn’t think it was normal for the horoscopes to take up a full spread.
“I looked it up and I’m a Libra. Seems like a missed opportunity for me to be a Leo, but I guess that’s not how the universe works,” Leo quipped. “What signs are you?”
“Uhh, how do you know?” Wilder asked.
Leo grinned. “It’s based on your birthday.”
The top of the paper had a chart. My January third birthday made me a Capricorn, and Wilder’s November twelfth made him a Scorpio, whatever that meant.
I finally found the appropriate horoscopes.
Horoscopes
Libra sun, lover of beauty! How could you ever express your appreciation? The ladies at the Groovy Bookclub need someone to serve them tea and snacks. They’ll appreciate the help (and the view).
Scorpio, feeling like standing strong in your independent spirit today? Well, there’s a one-man job just for you. The gutters at Spring in Your Stitch haven’t been cleaned in a while, and the forecast calls for rain! Get to cleaning.
Capricorn, you’ve always been so ambitious! Today, ignite that same ambition in the town’s youth. The stars urge you to head to the kid’s career day happening at the elementary school. Don’t forget your presentation!
“Huh.” Leo looked up from the paper. “I didn’t expect them to be so…”
“Specific?” I added dryly.
A low chuckle rang through Wilder’s chest, making my jaw drop in shock. This was the first time I’d seen him emote.
“Those omegas are definitely fucking with us,” he said with a grin. “We’ve got our tasks for today. I’m on shift for two days starting tomorrow morning, but I should be able to get away to meet you here at the same time tomorrow.”
Before we could respond, the huge alpha walked away, whistling.
“I guess I’m hosting a book club today,” Leo said, his grin matching Wilder’s. “Hope you have a career day presentation ready.”
I groaned. “Want to trade?” Why couldn’t the universe tell me to clean Lucy’s gutters? Or better yet, her shop—not just because it would give me the chance to be close to her, but also because the state of her store stressed me the fuck out.
“Nah, we can’t piss off the stars.” He handed me the newspaper. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning, if not sooner. Have fun at school.” He winked and headed down the street. My eyes stayed on his ass for much longer than appropriate.
I folded up the paper and headed to Beans ’n Bliss. If I was going to be around children, I needed an extra large latte.
The coffee shop was bustling this morning, but it fell silent when I walked in. I thought I was imagining things until I stepped up to the counter and Ella fixed me with a vicious glare.
I glanced over my shoulder to make sure she was actually looking at me.
She was.
“Good morning?”
“Hmm,” she said, raising her eyebrows. “Good for some.”
“What?”
She exhaled loudly, like I was inconveniencing her. “What do you want?”
What the fuck? Every other time I’d been in here, the young barista had enthusiastically regaled me with detailed updates of her favorite K-drama.
“Is everything okay?” I asked against my better judgment.
Ella crossed her arms. “I’m very busy, so if you’re not going to order…”
“Right, well, I’d like an extra large iced latte with strawberry cold foam. I also want to pay for Lucy’s coffee in advance.”
She paused her angry tapping on the checkout screen. “What?”
“Whenever she comes in, I want to make sure her order is free. I could buy a gift card that you keep for her?”
“Oh. That’s…nice.” She grabbed a gift card and wrote Lucy’s name on it. “How much do you want to put on it?”
“Let’s start with two hundred.”
Her jaw dropped. “Dollars?”
I nodded. “Just let me know when she’s running low and I’ll put more money on it.”
“I…okay.”
I stared at Lucy’s shop through the coffee shop window. Leo had told us she liked to sleep in and never opened her shop on time, but I couldn’t look away. I didn’t know how it was possible to miss someone I barely knew, but my chest ached at her absence.
Ella called my name. When I went to grab my latte, the barista fixed me with a piercing glare. “You know you can’t just win Lucy over with lattes, right?”
I swallowed hard. “Yeah, I know.”
Her words stuck with me as I headed out of the shop. The few brief relationships I’d had were more acquaintances-with-benefits situations. There had been no depth to them, and any mistakes I made could be fixed with gifts or money. But Lucy was so much more than that.
I started walking in the direction of the school only to stop short when I spotted a white-haired man crouched down by my car. He was holding a measuring tape with a cat by his side. The cat placed his paw on the measuring tape, and the man nodded before standing.
“Excuse me? This is my car. Is there a problem?”
The man scribbled something on his clipboard. “You are in violation of town ordinance twenty-four point two, subsection C, which states that all cars must be within six inches of the curb when parallel parked.”
What? I prided myself on being an exceptional parallel parker. “I’ve always heard you should be within a foot of the curb. How far away am I?”
He thrust a parking ticket at me. “Six and a half inches.”
“You’re giving me a ticket because I am half an inch too far from the curb?”
He crossed his arms. “Rules are rules. I understand you visitors don’t always understand how things work in our town here, but it is my job as mayor to ensure no one causes problems.”
Oh. Lucy had told me a lot of stories about the town mayor during our road trip. I dug deep to suppress my irritation and turn on the charm.
“I’m King. You must be Felix,” I said, holding out my hand.
The man scowled. “What? No, I’m Stanley O’Sullivan. That is Felix.” He gestured at the cat.
My brow furrowed. I could have sworn Lucy had said the mayor’s name was Felix.
“My mistake. I apologize, Mayor O’Sullivan. I’m certainly not here to cause problems. Since I wasn’t aware of the parking ordinance, maybe—”
Stanley cut me off with a dramatic flourish of his clipboard. “Ignorance of the law is no excuse.” As he marched away, I swore he muttered, “And you’ve caused enough problems.”
I glanced down at the cat. “Well, that could have gone better.”
I held the small Post-it note with the map the Starlight Grove Elementary School receptionist had drawn to help me get to Ms. Winter’s classroom.
It wasn’t until I stepped inside that I realized Ms. Winter was Ivy, Lucy’s friend.
She slapped her hand over her mouth when she saw me, stifling her laughter.
Oh yeah, the omegas were all in on this. While I struggled to find the hilarity of this situation, it would take more than this to scare me off.
“Okay, class, our guests are here!” She clapped her hands to get the attention of the horde of small children. “First up, we have Mrs. Isla Andersson-Spring here to talk about her job as a graphic designer!”
Time stopped as I slowly turned my head. Sitting in the back of a classroom was a petite blond woman who bore a striking resemblance to my omega.
Welcome to my nightmares.
“Then we’ll hear from Mr. King about his, uhh, work.”
She clearly had no idea what I did, which I might have found funny if I wasn’t trapped in a room with one of Lucy’s moms.
Thankfully, the classroom of children prevented her from doing more than narrow her eyes as she passed me on the way to the front of the room.
I took her chair in the back, my anxiety only growing as she delighted the class with her presentation on logo design.
She showed different logos she’d made and had the children vote on which version was their favorite.
There was much screaming and passionate debate.
I shrank down in my tiny chair. How the fuck was I supposed to follow that?
“Thank you, Mrs. Andersson-Spring! I’m sure you’ve inspired many budding graphic designers today. Next up is Mr. King.”
I walked to the front of the class to a smattering of applause.
“Hello.” I gave an awkward wave. “I’m the CEO of Empire Enterprises in New York City.”
At that, several children perked up.
“You live in New York City?”
“How tall is your house?”
“One time my dad took me to New York and we ate a hot dog from a cart!”
“Have you ever gotten a hot dog from a cart?”
The children stared at me, riveted.
“Um, yes. I have.” Not in a long time, but I had to admit those hot dogs were damn good.
“What do you get on your hot dog, Mr. King?”
“Ketchup, mustard, and relish,” I responded. If all of their questions were this easy, this would be a breeze.
“Mustard?” a child squealed. “I hate mustard!”
“I love mustard! But only the yellow one.”
“All mustard is yellow!”
“No, it’s not! Some is orange!”
“Orange and yellow are the same!”
I sought Ivy, desperate for her help, but she and Lucy’s mom just sat in the corner, smiling. I had been abandoned.
“So you work at a hot dog stand?” a redheaded girl asked.
I scrubbed my hand down my face. “No, I’m the CEO of a big company.”
“Oh.” She looked so disappointed I was tempted to change my career.
“What does a CEO do?” another child asked.
“I have meetings with clients, look over contracts, and make big-picture decisions about the fiscal direction of the company.”
The children’s eyes glazed over and one boy in the front shouted, “Booooooringgg.”
“Tanner, let’s keep our words respectful,” Ivy chided.
“What did you want to be when you grew up?” another child shouted.
I was fucking sweating. How did I turn this around? “Um, well, I worked in ocean conservation for a while.”
“I like the ocean!”
“What’s a conservation?”
“It’s where you play music! My mom told me!”
“That’s a conservatory,” Ivy said. “Conservation means to protect something. So ocean conservation is…”
“Protecting the ocean!” the children shouted in unison. Well, that was mildly cute.
“Fish James comes from the ocean!” A girl pointed at a fish tank in the corner containing a betta fish.
Excellent. Time for me to shine with my trivia knowledge. “Betta fish actually live in freshwater, not the ocean.”
Tanner crossed his arms. “So you don’t care about protecting Fish James?”
Last year I negotiated a two-hundred-million-dollar merger. That was leaps and bounds less stressful than this. “Conserving freshwater habitats is also very important to me,” I said seriously.
Tanner narrowed his eyes but then he nodded.
Phew.
“Did you protect the ocean from sharks?”
I chuckled. “Nah, we worked to protect everything inside the ocean, including sharks. I actually swam with sharks once.”
The kids gasped.
“Did it eat your arm?”
“No,” I responded dryly. “I still have two arms. I was in a big cage underwater to protect me, but most sharks are actually really peaceful. Sometimes they attack people, but we have to remember that the ocean is their home.”
“Ms. Winter, can we swim with sharks?” a girl shouted.
“Probably not, Madison,” she said, receiving a resounding round of “Boo”s. “But remember, we have our field trip to the New England Aquarium in a few weeks.”
The children cheered. “Mr. King, are you going to come to the aquarium with us?”
“Oh, no, I don’t think—”
“We do need chaperones,” Ivy said, an evil glint in her eye.
The children cheered.
When I left the classroom a while later—Lucy’s mom at my side and a form confirming me as a field trip chaperone folded in my pocket—I wondered how my life had gone so off the rails so fast. But if I was honest with myself, I’d had more fun talking about ocean animals with Ivy’s class than I ever had at my “boring” job.
I held the door open for Lucy’s mom and we stepped outside. I tried not to squirm under her piercing gaze.
“Ivy says you’re important to Lucy, but my daughter hasn’t said anything about you.” She cocked her head. “So, are you? Important?”
I opened my mouth and closed it again.
“I hope to be.”
She hummed. “Lucy deserves the world. If you plan to give her anything less than everything, you should step back now. Because while I might seem very intimidating, I have three alphas who wouldn’t hesitate to destroy you.”
With a sweet smile and flounce of her hair, she walked away.