Mated to the Grumpy Alpha

Chapter 2

CIARA | CORBETT’S LANDING

BY SATURDAY MORNING THE WHOLE TOWN HAD A NEW NAME FOR ME. IT WAS AISLE FOUR.

Nancy held her phone across the front desk so I could see. Corrie’s video had nine thousand views and a sad violin song playing under it.

“She added music,” I said. “Who does that to a person?”

“Corrie does, because she thinks she’s an artist.” Nancy scrolled with her thumb. “A woman in Florida wants your skin care routine.”

“I own a bar of soap and a towel.”

“Then you’re doing great, Aisle Four.”

“Call me that again and I’m telling Amrit who eats his yogurt.”

“He knows already. He labels it now.” She turned the screen back to herself and frowned. “Wait, look at the end. Corrie kept filming after you walked out.”

On the tiny screen Declan Levesque was still on one knee in the feed store. Maud had a hand on his shoulder, and his face was grey.

“Is he sick?” I asked. “That’s not what a man looks like after he wins.”

“Maybe he’s allergic to being an idiot.” Nancy took her phone back. “Maud says he left in his friend’s truck and didn’t say a word to anybody.”

“Good. I hope he’s embarrassed.”

“Liar. You’ve been staring at that screen for a full minute.”

“I stare at sick things for a living, Nancy. It’s a work habit.”

I went to check on a beagle with a sock problem. I didn’t think about that grey face again until lunch.

***

Theo Marchetti came in at eleven with two coffees and the same shy smile he’d had in ninth grade. He wasn’t supposed to start until Monday.

“I wanted to see the place before it was mine,” he said. “Is that strange?”

“It’s yours either way.” I took the cup he held out. “Oat milk and two shots. You remembered.”

“I remember most things about this town.” He looked at the cracked tile by the scale and then back at me. “Cee, I saw the video. Are you all right?”

“A stranger dumped me before we’d even had dinner. He saved us both the bill.”

Theo didn’t laugh. He rarely did, and back in school I’d decided that made him deep.

“He had no right to do that to you in public,” he said. “If he comes in here, I’ll ask him to leave.”

“You’d say please.”

“I’d hold the door for him too, and he’d still be leaving.” He set his cup on the desk. “Can I ask you something about the sale?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing. When did Amrit call you?”

“Back in March.” Theo frowned. “I didn’t even know it was for sale. He said he wanted it to go to someone who’d keep you on.”

“I was doing his books that whole month. He never said one word to me.”

Theo slid an envelope across the desk. “There’s a raise in there, fifteen percent. I put it in writing so you’d know I mean it.”

Fifteen percent was more than Amrit had given me in eight years. It still wasn’t the clinic.

“Can I think about it?” I asked.

“Take all the time you need.” He stopped at the door with his hand on the frame. “Ma wants you for lasagna tomorrow. She says heartbreak makes a girl thin.”

“I knew the man for four minutes, Theo.”

“She doesn’t care. She already bought the ricotta.”

I watched him cross the lot to his car. At fifteen I had pictured a kind vet, a house in town and Sunday lasagna with his mother.

Nobody in that picture had ever rejected me in a feed store.

***

“Dinner’s late because I’m famous now,” I told the three stray cats on Gran’s crooked porch. “Don’t look at me like that, Mustard.”

I fed them first and ate toast with peanut butter over the sink. Groceries had come in eleven dollars short that week, and toast was free.

Nancy called at ten. “Aisle Four is trending in three counties,” she said. “Also, lock your doors tonight.”

“Why would I lock my doors?”

“Because I’ve got a feeling, and my feelings are never wrong. Ask my ex-husband.”

I hung up and checked Gran’s line of salt across my top step. She laid it every spring and fall and never once told me why.

At eleven, two of the cats shot under the porch at once. Mustard didn’t.

“Mustard?” I called through the screen. “Where are you?”

He was out by the side gate, flat on the path with his tail puffed up to twice its size. Past him in the dark something big was breathing.

I turned on the porch light. A grey wolf the size of a pony stood at the edge of my yard. Its head was low and its eyes were on my cat.

“Okay,” I whispered. “That is not a coyote.”

I grabbed Gran’s skillet off the stove. My hands shook so hard the handle rattled against my ring. Then I did the stupidest thing I have ever done, and I went outside.

“Mustard, come here.” I came down the steps one at a time. “Come to Mama, nice and slow.”

The wolf swung its head toward me. I saw then why it had come this way. The salt across the gate path had been scuffed wide open, and there was a boot print in the gap.

The wolf stepped into the gap.

I raised the skillet. “I’m warning you. I have been to a lot of craft fairs and I am not afraid of anybody.”

Somebody grabbed my wrist from behind. I screamed and swung, and the skillet hit nothing but air.

It was Declan Levesque. He was barefoot in jeans with his T-shirt on inside out. His hand stayed locked around my wrist, and he was so angry his voice came out low.

“What are you doing out here?”

“Saving my cat! What are you doing in my yard?”

He didn’t answer me. He pulled me behind him with one hand and kept his body between me and the wolf. His palm was hot on my skin, and he was shaking.

“Ciara.” He didn’t take his eyes off the wolf. “Get up those steps and stay behind the salt.”

“Not without Mustard.”

He made a sound low in his chest. Then he bent, scooped my cat off the path one-handed and pushed him into my arms. Mustard was so shocked he didn’t even scratch.

“Steps,” Declan said. “Now.”

“You don’t get to order me around in my own yard.”

“Tonight I do.” His grip moved from my wrist to the back of my neck. He walked me backward until my heel hit the bottom step. “Up.”

“Who even are you? You dumped me yesterday!”

“I know what I did.” His thumb pressed once against my neck. “Up, Ciara. I’m asking.”

“That is not asking. Pharmacists are nicer than that.”

I went, but only because my legs had decided for me. I stood on the porch behind Gran’s line with my cat and my skillet, and I hated him a little.

Up close under the light he was grey under the eyes and swaying on his feet. He hadn’t shaved, and I didn’t think he’d slept since Friday.

“Ansel. Go home.” He said it straight to the wolf. “She’s not yours to scare.”

“You know that thing?” I said. “Personally?”

“Stay behind the salt and I’ll tell you everything.”

The wolf showed him every one of its teeth.

Declan walked into the scuffed gap and stood in it with nothing in his hands. He planted his bare feet on Gran’s path and squared up to an animal twice his size.

“Declan!” I gripped the railing. “What are you doing? Move!”

He looked back at me once over his shoulder. His eyes in the porch light were not grey anymore. They were gold.

“I’m not moving,” he said. “Not from you. Not ever again.”

The wolf put its head down and ran at him.