Chapter 3
Chapter Three
“Whatever you’re doing, bro, you need to stop and get to the grocery store, now.”
The second I’d started my truck, I called my pack brother.
Adley. She smells like orange blossoms, reminding me of where I grew up in Northridge.
She smells like home.
She is my home.
A thought nags at the back of my mind, asking if I came on too strong. If I were too pushy. But how could I be any other way? Adley is my destiny. Our destiny. And I could see in her eyes, in her reaction to me, that she knows it, too. So I push the thought away.
“I’m about to go into a video conference with a client. What’s going on?”
A disgruntled sigh tears from my lips. “Can’t you reschedule?”
“No. Now, tell me what’s going on.”
I sigh again, frustration coursing through my veins.
Adam Jones and I are the least likely pairing for pack brothers, personality-wise.
The guy is seven years younger than me and has a business acumen like I’ve never seen before.
He’s more rigid and focused than any of the professional football coaches I’ve ever played for in my eight-year career. And those guys were intense as fuck.
Adam was born in Crescent Lake, went away to university, tried life in the city, hated it and came back home to build his own app development empire. All at the tender age of twenty-five.
I met him a year ago when he moved back, and we both just knew. It was like finding the younger brother I never had and never knew I wanted.
So, now he has two older brothers to bug the shit out of him.
“Our Omega is here.”
A loud crash fills my truck’s speakers where my phone is connected, followed by a long silence.
I cringe. Tact, not my strong suit. Never has been. I like to get to the point as quickly and often as possible. Hence, the reason I’m following my future woman to the grocery store and then to her home.
“You couldn’t, like, ease me into that?”
He’s shouting now. That’s new. Oops.
“Sorry, bruh. I’m just excited, you know?”
“How do you know it’s her?”
“How could I not? She smells like the most divine thing I’ve ever encountered. She’s beautiful, too. She just moved here.”
“Name?”
“Adley. Don’t know her last name.”
His voice grows tight. “Adley is not a popular name. Where did she move from?”
“L.A.”
He breathes long into the phone, like he’s trying to calm himself. Then, his voice is quiet, like he’s talking to himself, when he says, “Adley Pepper. It has to be.”
I frown as I pull into the parking lot and find her SUV, parking next to it carefully. “Look, I don’t know who that is, but I gotta help our girl get some groceries and get settled at home. Do what you need to do, but come by my apartment tonight to talk. Later.”
I end the call and hop out of the truck, landing firmly on my right foot, careful not to jam up my left knee. The bastard who ended my career.
“Thank you for joining me.”
I whip around to Adley’s beautiful face.
Slightly sun-kissed skin, brunette hair falling in waves around her shoulders, big brown eyes like a bar of cacao, dark and rich.
She’s shorter than me, maybe even by eight or nine inches.
Her tee shirt is loose around her torso, but she’s been poured into those blue jeans, and I approve.
At least for my private viewing.
“Any time,” I manage just as her orange blossom scent overwhelms my lungs. My body’s reaction is more immediate than my mind’s, the muscles at the base of my cock twitching, threatening to make me stand at attention.
Aw, fuck.
Algebra. People who don’t cover their mouths when they sneeze. The red version of clam chowder. Those motherfuckers who took out my knee in the N Zone during the championship game.
My dick settles down immediately.
There. That’s better.
I shoot Adley a reassuring smile and turn to lead the way to the store entrance, picking out a shopping cart along the way, checking the wheels for anything wonky, longing to be useful to her in any way I can.
After she’s shopped and I’ve followed like a loyal and devoted servant of my Omega, I learn a few things about her.
For one, she is super organized. Adley goes through the grocery store with a purpose, getting dry goods first, then refrigerated, then frozen, before we check out.
Second, she absolutely lives for lists. She has a list of more lists on her phone so long that she had to scroll to find the grocery list she was looking for.
Third, she likes her vegetables frozen, and I can dig that.
Four, she loves pasta. And a variety of different pastas.
By the time we left the grains aisle, she put six boxes of dried pasta in the cart, lined up neatly, two boxes each of three different forms: elbows, penne, and rotini.
No jar-sauce, though. This beautiful woman picked out an array of plain, canned tomato sauces, picked out some spices, a bottle of red wine, and a bunch of other stuff before we made our way to the produce aisle, and then the dairy cases, where we come to my final observation.
This woman is obsessed with cheese.
I never even paid attention to how many different cheeses there were in the world, but this woman has apparently met all the cheeses, befriended them, is on a first-name basis, and has invited them to dinner. Repeatedly.
I’ve never seen anything like it before.
I know cheddar, American, and always thought Swiss was the fanciest cheese around. Oh, and mozzarella. Love me some ‘za.
But Adley builds a small platoon of cheese to be the front-line of her pasta army, and I’m pretty sure my boring stare is going to melt it all.
Maybe she’ll let me try some of her precious cheeses.
At the cashier, I had to hold myself back from paying by carefully bagging all of Adley’s items.
I may not know her well, but instinct tells me she’d be offended if I tried to pay. Instead, I put my high school work experience to good use, taking her reusable bags and gently filling them, then returning them to her cart.
As I push Adley’s haul back to her SUV, she turns to me, her cheeks pink. “Thank you for all of your help.”
My laugh is immediate. “I didn’t do much, but I’m here any time you need something.”
“I won’t bother you.”
I stop in my tracks. “I want you to come to me, Adley. I want to be here for you. Will you let me?”
She blinks rapidly before her head bobs. “Yeah. I’ll come to you when I need you.”
I smile before resuming my walk. “Good, because I’m retired at thirty-two and mostly bored out of my mind. I love it when I have something to do.”
After piling her groceries between the back hatch and her back seat floor, I turn to her, head inclined. “You’ll still let me help you at the house? I promise I’m trustworthy.”
She laughs quietly while closing the hatch. “If you really want to, sure. But I warn you, there’s a gaggle of dogs and cats at the house, and even a horse and a donkey.”
“In the house?” I feign shock, making her laugh again.
“Thankfully, those two have their own house.” She pauses on a little gasp and pulls out her phone, then sighs with relief. “I have someone coming later this afternoon to help with Pie and Gator, actually, so I have to be there to meet them.”
“Pie and Gator?”
“That’s the horse and donkey. There’s even a dog named Fruitbat.”
Now, I laugh. “Those are some names.”
She smiles, but I think it’s sad around the edges. “Uncle Jim would never re-name them once they came into his care, and neither will I. All their names are good names, chosen for them for a reason by people who loved them.”
The conviction in her tone makes me feel a little guilty for poking fun, but I hadn’t really meant anything by it.
Adley takes the sanctuary and her work there seriously. And I’ll remember that.
“Please, excuse the mess and chaos,” Adley shouts over the barking chorus when we get inside the house.
There are a good handful of dogs here.
“Watch your feet, please. There’s a little cat who’s blind named Odin. He loves hanging with the dogs.”
I freeze, look down to make sure my path is clear, then take careful steps to follow Adley into the kitchen. She’s opened the sliding glass doors into the backyard, and the herd of dogs funnels out, and all the barking stops as they snoop around.
I help with the rest of Adley’s stuff, placing her new pet items on the table while she puts things away in the fridge and freezer.
I look around at the interior of the house, dark and dated, then look at Adley’s designer jeans and sneakers, think about her shiny new SUV, and things don’t fit.
I know this wasn’t her place, it was her uncle’s, but it’s hers now.
I have a feeling renovations are on the horizon, but I keep it to myself.
A little meow rings out at my feet, and I peer down to see the cutest little cat, gray with brown stripes and a little white patch around its mouth.
It dips its head down to pick up a fuzzy blue ball toy, and my heart constricts.
I’m crouching down before I even realize it, ignoring the pain in my knee, letting the cat sniff me, then rub its soft cheek against my knuckles.
“That’s Odin.”
I look up at Adley’s smiling face and grin back at her. “He’s a cute little guy.” I use the chair beside me at the table to help me stand back up, letting out a hiss as I exert pressure on my left leg.
Adley rushes over and takes my arm to steady me, which I both love and hate. I don’t want to need anyone’s help to simply exist and get around, but it’s may fault. I’m the one who didn’t want to go back under the knife.
“Thanks.” The word is a breath as I watch little Odin scamper off with his little toy proudly in his mouth, knock into the dividing wall head-first, then rebound in the other direction. I wince at Adley. “Is he going to be okay?”
She smiles at me a little brighter. “He’s going to be fine. My uncle kept diligent notes about each of the animals here, and Odin is a fierce warrior who doesn’t let a little wall get in his way.”
I laugh and shake my head. “I grew up with cats. I haven’t had one since I was a kid, but my parents still have one. Sonia is her name. Some combination of Siamese and demon.”
Adley bursts out laughing. “Sounds like a rare breed.”
She later shows me around the rest of the house, the backyard, and the fenced-off barn area. I notice the trailer that’s in a terrible state of disrepair just beyond the fence, and Adley’s gaze follows mine.
“I have a lot of work to do. That barn and fencing are the nicest things on the property now.”
“I’m here to help however I can.” I turn to her, taking a couple of tentative steps closer.
We’re still essentially strangers, and there’s an awkward tension between us that borders on discomfort, and I can’t stand it.
I long for some kind of connection with Adley, and I take her small hand in mine, maneuver our palms to join flat between us.
Her fingertips rest at the bases of my fingers as I hold her gaze, those chocolate eyes wide, a slight pinch between her brows as her hand begins to tremble against my palm.
“You know what we are to each other.” It isn’t a question.
She swallows hard. “I do know. I was born into a scent-matched pack. I come from a long line of them, actually.”
I’m a little surprised, given where she’s from, but this is a bonus in my book.
“Good. Then you know we’re going to be a permanent part of each other’s lives from now on.
And you already promised to tell me if you needed my help, so now I’m going to tell you that I am absolutely going to help you, even if you don’t ask.
So that means that all of this,” I gesture around us at the property, “I’m going to help you fix it up.
No arguments.” I cut her off before she can protest. “And there’s something else I need to say, before I go and give you some space to process today.
” I swivel my hand around to grip her finger, pull her knuckles to my lips as I stare into her eyes, a little glimmer of glee forming in my brain at the touch and at her likely reaction to my next words.
“I have a pack brother. You have two Alphas.”