Chapter 4 #3
“Again, I’m going to ask you why you care so much if Alaric dates her?
After the showing of yourself last night, she more than likely won’t have anything to do with you anyway.
Because of the way you acted around her mom, you made the little girl cry.
” He flopped down in the chair that was beside the desk in Aaron’s office.
“You’re just lucky that Alaric didn’t find you and beat you to shit last night.
I had to tell him several times how much it would hurt mom and dad if her two boys were to come to blows over your mate when you’ve made quite clear you want nothing to do with her. ”
“I don’t.” Aaron sat down at his desk and said nothing. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I don’t want Alaric to date her. He’s handsy.”
He didn’t ask why he cared again but kept his mouth shut.
After a few minutes of neither of them talking, he made his way out to the desk again to finish what he’d started on yesterday.
There seemed to be an endless supply of paperwork that needed to be done, and he just wanted to go home.
Though he didn’t know what he’d do there.
All his cabinets were cleaned out and ready for new things.
He was going to the grocery store after work if he made it to the end of the day.
Concentrating on the task in front of him, he finally finished up by the time it was his turn to take the cruiser.
His mind had drifted a few times while he was working, to where he was trying to come up with reasons to go and see her.
Dumping that idea over getting himself killed, he decided that he’d be better off leaving it alone.
He didn’t know how that was going to work since he knew nothing about her, but he was going to give it his best shot.
After work, he was in the grocery store when he saw who he thought was the woman.
It turned out that it wasn’t her, and that pissed him off as well.
What did she even do for a living so that he could avoid her?
Where was her little girl when she worked?
All these hundreds of questions muddled up his mind over and over until he felt his head about to explode again.
Putting his things up on the roller, he decided that he was going to go home and go to bed and shut out the world around him.
Just as he was paying, a scent hit him in the face, and he knew that it was her.
Turning to glare at her while they were in line, she lifted her chin up and glared right back. He might well have thought that was funny, but he was still pissed that she was around.
“I was here first.” She didn’t bother saying anything to him, and he was hurting his head was in so much pain. “You’ll have to come back when I’m not here. I don’t like you hanging around with Alaric either. That’s going to stop as well.”
“Where the hell do you get off telling me what I’m going to be doing?
You don’t own me. And I make my own decisions as to whom I’m going to see or not.
” She put her basket on the roller and looked ready to do battle.
“As for you being in here first, I don’t give a good damn.
I have things to buy, and I’m not going to allow a bully to tell me where I can shop. ”
“You will not talk to me that way.” Her chin, if that was possible, went up a couple of more notches. “I’m your mate, and what I say goes. You’ll do as you’re told or find yourself out on your ass.”
“What do you mean you’re my mate? This is the first that I’ve heard about that.” He told her that he could tell by the way she smelled. “So now I smell, do I? You’re such a charmer, it’s small wonder that every woman in town isn’t jumping into your bed. You’re an ass hole.”
The cashier told him his total, and he was sure that it wasn’t the first time.
After giving her all the cash he had in his hand, she told him to wait for his change.
Grabbing up his bags of food, he was out the door before he could tangle with the bitch from hell again.
She was going to have to take it down a few notches, or he was going to set fire to her ass.
There was no way that he was going to allow her to talk to him that way and get away with it.
He was a tiger by God, and she’d better learn her place.
After getting home, he was carrying his things into his condo when the bag split.
Cursing up a storm, he found himself blaming her for that, too.
Just as he was cleaning things up, his cell phone rang.
Without looking to see who it might be, he barked out his name and said that it had better be important.
“I think it’s highly important when I call one of my children.” There was a pause just long enough from his mom that he had to reflect on his choices of life at that moment. “What’s gotten into you now?”
“Nothing.” He knew that wouldn’t fly and told her that he’d found his mate and that she was a bitch. “She actually told me that I wasn’t going to treat her that way because she was a grown woman.”
“What did you say to her? I’m sure that it wasn’t very nice. I’m assuming that it’s the girl that Alaric was telling us about.” He said he had a big mouth. “Perhaps, but he was just as ticked off as you were when I called him. What did you do to that girl to have her talking to you that way?”
“Why are you assuming that I’ve done something wrong? What if it had been all on her?” She asked him if it was. “Yes. No. I don’t know anymore. I don’t want a mate, and Alaric found her for me. He knew better, too. Why is everyone against me right now? I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Of course you didn’t, yet the entire family is having fun at your expense.
Did you know that you made her little girl cry?
That’s not like you, is it? Not to mention, if she was in the store after you, she must not have known what you were about.
” He said he didn’t put it past her that she was stalking him.
“Now you’re just being paranoid. Or something anyway.
I’m going to ask you again, what is your problem with finding a mate?
It’s a done deal now. You’ve found her. What are your plans now that you have? ”
“Nothing. I’m going to avoid her. She has a temper, too, did I tell you that? And she took it out on me.” She didn’t say anything, and that made him think that she was agreeing with him. “Did you also know that I have no idea what she does for a living?”
He thought about how she’d been dressed and realized that she was a postal worker.
As soon as he knew that, he knew something else about her.
She was pretty. Not setting well on his already damaged ego, he decided that he was going to stop his mail from coming to his house so that she’d not know anything about him.
His mom asked him what he was thinking. He told her.
“Stalking you? I don’t think that’s how it works.
Besides, she’d have to like you some if she decided that stalking you was her best way of getting to know you.
I would think, from what you just said, that she’d be avoiding you like you plan to do to her.
Sounds like a good solution for both of you.
Just avoid each other, and that will make it all right.
” He asked his mom if she thought that would work.
“I don’t know Zeno. I’m just saying that you seem to want this not to work, and that’s the best way to do it.
I don’t know that I’d want to have anything to do with you either if you’ve been spouting off at the mouth like you said you had. ”
“I can’t talk to anyone about this. They all, including you, think that I’m wrong for wanting nothing to do with her, well, I know what I want, and I’m going to prove to you all that my way is going to work.
You’ll see. She’ll be nothing but a faded memory in a few days, and I won’t have to have anything to do with her again. ”
“If you say so.” He told his mom that he did say so and told her that he had to go. Just as he was hanging up the phone, his brother called.
“What the fuck did you do to her? She’s been sobbing since I picked her up from the grocery store.
” Great, another person to be pissed at him.
He told Alaric what had happened and his plan.
“Yeah, that’s a good plan. Stay out of her life.
” Then he slammed the phone down in his ear, and he wanted to call him back so that he could do the same to him.