The broken Alpha - Healed by innocence

What he wants to ask

*Chase*

I pound the nail into the floorboard. This Sunday is turning out to be much the same as last Sunday.

I work on the loft while my brothers lollygag. I'm surprised we have managed to get the walls put in on the first floor.

I hear the deep rumble of laughter, followed by the gentler giggles. Against my better judgment, I unfold my body and carefully walk across the beams until I get to the edge of the second floor. I lean against the open frame.

Callista stands at one end of the yard. Everyone else is positioned in different places. She turns her back to them, and everyone moves up. Wade takes one big step and stops. Briony takes three tiny steps. Maggie skips and falls to her knees. Blaise runs.

Callista spins around. Blaise staggers to a stop. She points a finger at him. “I saw you running.”

“The heck you did!” he yells while everyone else laughs.

She wags her finger at him. “Go back to the beginning.”

He stomps to a rope stretched along the ground several yards away from Callista.

Callista pivots, giving them her back, and everyone starts moving again.

I shake my head. No doubt another one of Briony’s games. The woman has more games than a tree has leaves.

I smile as Maggie and Wade get sent back to the rope. Wade lifts his daughter onto his shoulders.

Callista turns her back, and Blaise’s legs churn faster than the blades of a windmill when a norther blows through. I clamp my teeth together to stop myself from yelling a warning.

Callista spins around too late. Blaise scoops her off the ground. My chest tightens as she throws her arms around Blaise’s neck and laughs. Blaise twirls her around, his laughter mingling with hers.

Maggie yells that she wants to play again. Blaise sets Callista on her feet. She glances toward the house and her gaze slams into mine, her smile withering like all the flowers I have pulled for her over the week and never given her. I turn away and walk to the other side of the room, wondering when I have grown so old.

A few minutes later I hear the footsteps on the stairs… the stairs I built this morning. I can’t fault Wade. If I had a mate who looked at me the way Briony does and a daughter who adored me, I wouldn’t be up here pounding nails into wood either.

“I thought you might like some lemonade.”

I glance up at Callista. She stands uncertainly in the doorway, holding a glass. I cross the short space separating us, take the glass, and down the drink in one long swallow. I hand the glass back to her. “Thanks.”

I walk back to my corner, line up the board, and hammer the nail into place.

“You put me to shame,” she says softly.

Furrowing my brow, I glance over my shoulder. “Why?”

She walks across the floorboards I have already nailed into place and kneels beside me. “I have a clearer understanding of how you spend your days now. All week long you manage a ranch, you oversee the building of a town, and on what should be a day of rest, you’re building an addition onto your brother’s house while I’m playing silly games and purchasing rugs.”

"I like the rugs," I say.

She tilts her head sideways. "Do you?"

I regret that I haven't mentioned it earlier. "Yeah, I do. I like the quilt you hung on the wall in the parlor too and those curtains."

"I thought they made the room seem more cozy. I have ordered some furniture for the parlor." She says hopefully.

"Good." I tell her.

Since the night she first began to read to me and the day I first started explaining the managing of the ranch to her, the wariness has slowly faded from her eyes. She watches me now with no fear. I consider leaning over and kissing her, but I discover that it isn’t enough that the fear has left. I want to see a warmth reflected in her gaze when she looks at me. I want her to want me as much as I want her.

A damn foolish thing to desire.

She drops her gaze and scrapes her fingernail over the nail I just hammered into place. "Is it hard to build a floor?" she asks.

"Nope." I extend the hammer toward her. "Do you want to try?"

A sparkle lights her eyes. "Can I?"

"Sure." I tell her.

She takes the hammer, and I hand her a nail.

"You want the nail to go through the top board and dig into the beam running lengthwise. That holds it in place. Keep your eye on the nail and tap gently."

"It always sounds like you hit the nail hard." She says.

I smile. "I have experience behind me so I’m less likely to hit my thumb."

"Oh." She mumbles.

I watch with amusement as she sets the nail in place and grips the hammer. Her brows come together to form a deep furrow. She pulls her bottom lip between her teeth.

I swallow, remembering the feel of that lip against mine.

Her eyes darken with concentration. I want to see them darken with passion.

Gently, she taps the nail, the furrow deepening, her teeth digging into her lip, her knuckles turning white. I think about giving her some more instruction, but some things in life are better learned through trial and error. After a dozen hits, the nail has settled into its new home.

She rubs her fingers over the nail. "Is that what building a town feels like?" she asks.

Ihave never thought about it, don't know how to answer her question.

She looks at me with wonder in her eyes. "Children will crawl over this floor. Then they will walk over it and run across it. If this house remains for a hundred years, what you have done today might touch children you will never meet. It's the same with your town and your ranch. Everything that you do reaches out to touch so many people. The things I do touch no one."

She lays the hammer on the floor and rises quietly to her feet.

I fight the urge to grab her ankle and halt her steps away from me.

"I could use some help," I growl. "Tell Wade to get his butt up here."

She disappears through the doorway. I press my thumb against the nail she had embedded in the wood, and damn my pride. I hadn't wanted her to leave. I don't want to hear her laughter and not be part of it. I don't want to witness her smiles from a distance.

I hadn't been able to bring myself to ask her to stay, to share the task with me, to lighten my load with her presence.

If I can't ask her for something as small as that, how in the hell do I think I'm going to ask her to welcome me into her bed?