12. Xavier
Chapter 12
Xavier
Penelope blushes, and it’s a good look on her. She ducks her head, hiding her smile a little bit, but then looks up so I can see it. “All right,” she replies softly.
I grin at her and offer her my hand, leading her out to the dance floor.
Without me even having to do anything, the band changes the music to something easier to dance to, and I settle one hand at Penelope’s waist and hold on to her hand with the other.
It’s clammy, the hand holding mine, and I can feel a tremor go through her body from this close. But she doesn’t back down. She sets a hand on my shoulder and lets me lead her in the dance.
“How are you feeling about all of this?” I ask her, keeping my voice down.
“I don’t know. Nervous, I guess? Well… yeah, definitely nervous. This is bigger than I was expecting, somehow.”
My lips quirk in a smile, and I spin her out before pulling her back to my body. “You don’t have anything to be nervous about,” I tell her. “Every man in here is watching you right now.”
Her eyes flick around the room, and I don’t have to follow her gaze to know I’m right. Everyone has been interested in her since we stepped into the reception, and Penelope has been doing a great job of handling herself.
She laughs a little, shaking her head. “That’s just because I’m the bride,” she says. “They don’t actually care about me outside of that.”
It’s a little of that, but there’s a lot more to it really. Penelope has this way about her. She radiates something that draws people in. Maybe it’s her scent or the way she just seems to know how to talk to people without even knowing them or anything about them. Maybe it’s a Southern thing, like her accent when she’s flustered.
Whatever it is, it’s alluring.
“You know, if you weren’t already my wife, I’d be jealous of the attention you’re getting.”
Penelope laughs again, shaking her head. “That’s silly.”
“I mean it.”
“You’ve had too much champagne,” she replies.
I don’t argue with her. Instead, I pull her into my arms even closer, enjoying the feeling of warmth from her body and the way her vanilla warm and lemon sharp scent washes over me. It keeps my focus on her as the song crescendos and starts heading for its end, like there’s no one else in the room right now. She’s not a natural dancer, but she follow my lead well enough that it’s impossible to focus on anything else.
At the end of the song, she steps back, and I let her go, even though there’s something pulling at me, tugging me to gather her into my arms again. There’s a moment of tension where I reach out, but then she’s being whisked away, back into the fray of this reception.
There’s a weird pang of disappointment when she’s gone, leaving only the lingering fragrance of lemon and lavender in her wake.
I watch as she’s swept into a dance with Dominic, who moves the two of them around the dance floor with a commanding grace. Penelope looks surprised and a little starry eyed, but she keeps up with him as well.
Tristan takes his turn dancing with her, and where Dominic radiated strength and control, Tristan just looks stiff and uncomfortable. Penelope sells it though, smiling at him and covering his lack of grace with her own, and when the dance is over, he leaves quickly.
A waiter appears at my elbow, and I take another flute of champagne, twirling the stem of it between my fingers as I watch the rest of my pack.
And that’s still such a weird thing to think. I have a pack now. A group of people I have a responsibility to, beyond my family.
Really, it’s anybody’s guess how this is going to play out. I don’t know Dominic or Tristan super well, despite the fact that we’ve been working together for months now. It’s all been superficial so far, just butting heads at the office and in public sometimes, trying to figure out a way to work together better and keep our company from exploding.
The work hasn’t been enough to bond us, to make us stop arguing, but will this be the thing that does it? Will we be able to put aside our differences and strong opinions for the sake of this arrangement? Will Penelope be able to hold it all together at the center of this, keeping us from clashing too hard with her softening presence?
This whole thing is just for show, but the stakes are very real. The fate of Vantage is at the heart of it, along with our reputations and hundreds of people’s jobs.
As things stand now… it’s really impossible to tell.
The rest of the reception passes by in a blur of food and champagne and more well wishes. By the time we’re filing back into the limo so Jonas can take us home, I can tell we’re all feeling the exhaustion of being on display for so long.
It’s a quiet ride to the new house, at least until it comes into view, and then Penelope’s jaw drops.
We pile out of the car, but it takes Penelope longer to get out than the rest of us, and I duck my head back in to see what the issue is. She’s still just sitting there, staring up at the house with a shocked expression on her face.
“Are you okay?” I ask her.
“I—this…” She turns her eyes to me. “This is where we’re going to live?”
“Yup.” I pull back to look up at the house, trying to see what she’s seeing.
Honestly, I think we did a good job. It’s a sprawling house that takes up two and half acres of land between the house and the yard. It’s done in white siding, with a dark colored roof, and there are windows everywhere to let in natural light.
The house has three floors, four if you count the little attic room at the top, and there’s a spacious lawn on either side of the driveway. The backyard is just as big, sloping down toward the woods at the back of the property, with a massive two story deck that already hosts an outdoor cooking station and space for a hot tub or a pool if we wanted.
It’s big, that much is true, but there are four of us, and we’re all accustomed to having our own space. At least I assume Penelope is. The bickering between the men and I would get even worse if we had to live on top of each other in addition to seeing each other at the office every day.
And there are appearances to keep up too. It wouldn’t look right for us to start a pack and have a wife and then move into somewhere that didn’t fit our ‘status’. That would start plenty of rumors and none of them would be flattering.
“What’s wrong with it?” I ask Penelope, and that shakes her out of her trance.
“Nothing,” she says quickly. “It’s just…” She bites her lip and then shakes her head. “Nothing.” Quickly, she gets out of the car, taking the time to say goodnight to Jonas before she joins us at the front of the house.
“Here,” Dominic says. He hands over a keyring to her, with a key for each of the exterior doors of the house.
Penelope takes it in her hand and folds her fingers around the keys, like she’s worried if she doesn’t hold on to them for dear life they’ll disappear.
“Let’s do the grand tour then,” I say with a smile, unlocking the door and leading the way inside.
The house is already furnished, with some input from the three of us, but mostly with delegated it to people who actually know about interior decorating. Stepping into the entry way, I can say they did a good job.
It feels light and airy, even though the sun is setting. The decor is tasteful and unobtrusive, adding splashes of color here and there. The walls are neutral shades, but there’s art and the furniture is in different jewel tones. It all looks sophisticated and elegant, and it seems the other two Alphas agree as they take it all in.
Penelope hangs back, her eyes still so wide. As the others start to move through the entry way into the living room, she seems rooted to the spot, like she’s afraid to go anywhere or touch anything.
“Hey.” I go over to her and nudge her shoulder with my arm. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she says again, too quickly. I give her a look and she relents a little. “It’s just that I’ve never lived anywhere like this before. I’m not sure what I should… do.” Her nose wrinkles at that, like it’s not what she wanted to say or she’s embarrassed to have said it.
“It’s your home for the next year,” I tell her. “So you can do whatever you want. Decorate your spaces, change out the furniture, go wild. We want you to be happy here.”
She looks at me, and there’s something hesitant yet hopeful in her mismatched eyes. “Really?”
I shrug. “Sure, why not? Listen, shortcake, this is new for all of us, right? We’re all figuring this out together. Maybe we have more experience living in big, fancy houses, but living all together is going to be a completely new experience for us all.”
Dominic nods and even Tristan grunts his agreement.
Penelope bites her lip, looking around at the three of us and then tipping her head back to take in the sky light in the front part of the living room.
“I guess… it’ll be an adventure for the four of us,” she murmurs.
I give her what I hope is a reassuring smile, and I notice that Dominic and Tristan are both watching her with intense eyes. No telling what they’re thinking in this moment, really.
We all stand there, and something that’s not quite tension but not quite comfortable silence grows as the moment stretches on.
Unsurprisingly, it’s Tristan that breaks it, turning to go up the stairs, presumably to find his own room.
Dominic follows, and Penelope gives me a shaky smile before going up behind him.
I stand at the bottom of the stairs for a while longer, looking around and soaking up the lingering traces of Penelope’s scent. Already it’s making the house feel more like a home. When we picked this place out, it smelled sterile, empty, but Penelope’s sweet scent washes away anything impersonal about this place.
I savor it for one more moment and then head up the stairs to my room.
It feels good to strip out of my fancy wedding clothes and take a shower, letting the day wash off me and swirl down the drain. One of the big things for this house was the fact that there are four large bedrooms with their own private baths, so no one has to wait for anyone else to finish bathing or peeing or whatever before they can have their turn.
Growing up with siblings, I know how important that is.
Once I’m clean, I flop onto the bed, letting the quiet wash over me. It’s nice, after a long day of putting on a show, to be able to just relax for a bit.
I lose track of time, and when someone knocks on my door, it startles me out of my thoughts. “Come in,” I call, moving to sit on the edge of the bed.
The door creaks open and Penelope steps in. She’s also showered and changed, and her face is clean and free of her wedding makeup. Her hair is damp, and it falls around her shoulders in a soft curtain. The wedding dress looked amazing on her, but so does the oversized t-shirt and sweatpants she’s in now.
There’s just something about her that’s naturally beautiful. Something that makes it hard to look away.
As she stares at me, I realize I didn’t bother to put a shirt on after I showered, and her eyes flick over my chest and arms before darting up to my face. Something like a blush spreads over her cheeks, and the tension from before is definitely back.
It’s not the same tension, not the loaded semi-awkwardness from downstairs, but there’s a moment where the air seems to grow thick.
My fingers itch with the need to touch her. To sweep her damp hair back out of her face and trace the shell of her ear. To follow it down to the soft column of her neck to the place where one shoulder peeks out of the wide neckline of her shirt.
There’s something almost hungry in her gaze, and it looks good on her.
“If you keep looking at me like that, I might just lose my gentleman card,” I say, teasing her with a grin.
Her cheeks flood with color, and she snaps herself out of it, her tongue darting out to lick her lips. “I’m sorry,” she says quickly. “I didn’t mean—I just wanted to say… um, thank you. For earlier. Today has been a lot, and you keep being there to stop me from freaking out, and I really appreciate it.”
“No problem. Really. I mean, we sort of dragged you into this, right? I know you agreed to it and laid down your own boundaries, but at the end of the day, this is mostly something you’re doing for us. To save our company. So if there’s anything I can do to make this easier on you, I want to do it.”
“So I don’t blow the whole thing?” she asks, her smile tipping into something teasing.
I laugh, shaking my head. “I don’t think you’re going to blow it. I think you’re going to do just fine.”
I move in closer, holding her gaze. She doesn’t back away, doesn’t do anything to stop me, so I reach out and set two fingers under her chin, tipping her face up to meet mine.
Slowly, giving her time to move away or say no if she wants to, I lean down and kiss her. It’s softer than the kisses we shared today at the wedding and then the reception, but it’s better in almost every way. Her lips are so full and plush, like velvet beneath mine as our mouths brush together.
Penelope inhales in surprise, then presses up, returning the kiss briefly before we separate.
“What was that for?” she asks, her fingers coming up to touch her lips. “There’s no one watching right now.”
“I know,” I reply with a shrug. “That one wasn’t for an audience. That one was just for me.”