Chapter Sixteen #2
Alan stepped in closer. “With all due respect, ma’am, it’s not you I’m scared of.”
I looked at his eyes which were shifting left and then right, and waited for him to answer.
“I’m scared of them,” he said, leaning forward so he could whisper it into my ear.
He nodded to where Zeke and Maverick were standing against the far wall, talking quietly amongst themselves.
“Them?” I asked, pointing.
“Don’t point!” Alan said, grabbing my finger and gently shoving it down into my lap again. “Yes, them. Those guys are so damned scary I feel like I’m going to quiver out of my skin whenever they’re in the same room as me.”
“They’re not scary,” I said, catching Maverick’s eyes and feeling giddy when he hurriedly looked away and a red blush crept up his neck.
We hadn’t spoken since that day in the kitchen, but making the normally serious alpha react like that was making my inner omega nearly hop with joy.
“Oh, honey,” Landon said from behind me as he dug through his makeup bag. “I know you don’t know much about alphas, but all four of those men are, in fact, terrifying.”
“Yeah,” Lisa said as she combed through my hair. “But in, like, a hot way.”
The other two men looked at her.
“Oh come on, I have eyes. We all might be betas but even I can see that they are a wet dream come to life,” Lisa whispered conspiratorially in my ear just loud enough for the other two men to hear.
Landon just shook his head, like he was used to his packmate’s dirty way of speaking, but Alan looked like he was about two seconds away from melting straight into the floor.
“They won’t hurt you, Alan,” I tried to reassure him as Zeke caught my eye and pushed away from the wall, probably thinking I needed him for something.
“Doesn’t mean they won’t judge me,” Alan said, his eyes bulging out of his head as he watched Zeke approach. “I’m going to go check that everything in the dining room is going well!”
Then he was gone, scurrying away before Zeke could reach us.
“I cannot believe he’s related to Livvy,” I muttered with a shake of my head. “It’s like they come from two completely different planets.”
“The same could be said about you and that brother of yours,” Landon pointed out as he began putting foundation on my face.
“Why?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at the beta. He and Lisa had been with our family for a long time, but if they thought that meant they could say anything about Carter and his issues then they had another think coming.
“Please,” Landon said, good-naturedly, pointedly ignoring my glare. “I’ve seen you try to play the piano—and sing. You are good at a lot of things, sweetheart, but music is not one of them.”
Landon and Lisa laughed, probably remembering the time that my grandfather had convinced me to play the piano at the White House during the holiday season when he was the Vice President.
I still shuddered at the memory.
“Is she that bad?” Zeke asked, having joined us at some point during the conversation.
Today he looked like the picture of a Secret Service agent, his suit crisp and clean and the clear tubed earpiece that all agents wore pushed into his left ear.
All he needed was a pair of dark sunglasses and he’d look just like the hundreds of other agents that swarmed the White House on any given day.
But he wasn’t like any of those agents.
For one, as he stepped in close, he wore a soft, friendly smile that was miles away from the impassive neutrality of the others.
Then there was his scent.
I was done pretending that the fact that the suppressants had little effect on the five of us was for any reason other than biology.
They were scent matches. Specifically, my scent matches.
Ever since I’d kissed Maverick in the kitchen my inner omega hardly shut up about it, riding in the back of my mind like an unwelcome passenger at all times and making it hard for me to focus.
Even now it was picking up the scent of fruity, bubbly champagne—Zeke’s unique scent—and urging me to stand up from my seat and press my nose to the column of his throat to get a better whiff despite the fact that we were in a room full of people.
“If you answer that you’re fired,” I told both betas who looked like they were two seconds away from exposing one of my worst kept secrets.
Being the perfectionist that I was, I’d always tried to be as good as possible at anything I tried and had pretty good luck so far… with everything except for music.
I liked music. Listening to it, dancing to it, watching Carter play it, but unfortunately when it came to actually making it? I was like a bull trying to dance ballet. It just didn’t work.
Our parents used to joke that Carter took all of the musical genetics with him when he was born, leaving nothing in our mother’s womb for me, and I believed it.
“Don’t feel bad,” Zeke teased, his dark eyes dancing as the two stylists laughed. “I have things I’m not good at too.”
“Like music?” I asked hopefully.
Zeke scratched the back of his head sheepishly. “Ah, no, my mom made sure I played a bunch of instruments. So I play violin, cello, flute, and clarinet.”
“So you’re basically Mr. Perfect,” I scoffed, rolling my eyes.
“Says Miss Perfect,” Zeke shot back with a grin.
My face flushed at that, my brain immediately pairing the titles together and drawing a heart around them like I was a thirteen year old girl. “Then tell me something you aren’t good at then, Agent Adams.”
Zeke thought about it for a moment, tapping his chin dramatically before coming to what looked like an a-ha moment. “I am terrible at parallel parking. Never got the hang of it.”
His words immediately made me deflate.
Zeke frowned, immediately noticing the dip in my mood. “What? Did I say something wrong?”
“No, it’s just… I don’t even have a driver’s license.”
Zeke’s mouth opened, probably to comfort me about my inability to do something that millions of other people my age did as a rite of passage, but Maverick’s voice called his name from across the room.
“I’ll be right back,” he promised and then he was gone.
“He’s scary,” Lisa said with a dreamy sigh. “But he’s also so yummy.”
“Lisa, hush,” Landon said to his packmate, clearly seeing that I wasn’t in the mood for their chatter anymore. “Go ahead and close your eyes, sweetheart, so we can get you all pretty for tonight.