Mated to the Grumpy Alpha

Chapter 7

CIARA | CORBETT’S LANDING

BY FRIDAY THE ALPHA OWED ME TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS IN KISSING FINES. HE PAID THE SECOND ONE IN FRONT OF THE WHOLE TOWN.

It started with a bucket.

The delivery boy from Foodland carried it in at ten. It was a white plastic pail of pink and orange carnations. They dripped all over the floor I had mopped at eight.

“There’s forty in there,” he said. “He bought every single one. My manager wants to know if somebody died.”

“Somebody doesn’t know what flowers are for.” Nancy was already reaching for the card. “Oh, honey. Listen to this.”

“Don’t you dare read that out loud.”

She read it out loud. “This is me asking first. Ferrand’s at two. D.” She held it up for the whole waiting room. “It’s all in capitals. He writes his love notes like ransom letters.”

“That’s sixty dollars of grocery store flowers,” old Mrs. Dunphy said from the bench. “My Harold bought me one rose a year, and I married him.”

Theo came out of the back with a chart and stopped when he saw the bucket.

“He’s thorough,” he said carefully.

“He’s an engineer. He builds everything for a flood.”

“Is dinner tonight still on?”

“Dinner is on. Coffee isn’t a date.”

Theo almost smiled. “Then Ma keeps the tiramisu in the fridge.” He paused at the door to the back. “Cee, be careful with him.”

“I’m always careful.”

“With everybody else, you are.”

***

Declan had come down Thursday night and stared at SUNDAY on my hood without a word. Then he wiped it off with the sleeve of his own shirt.

“Ansel,” he said. “Carrying a message from Silas.”

“Then tell Silas I can read a calendar.”

“I’ll tell him.” He held my car door open for me. “Lock your doors tonight. Call me if you hear anything.”

“Is that an order?”

“It’s term six.” He didn’t smile. “You agreed to it in writing.”

After that, Jonah’s truck sat at the end of Alder Lane every night with its lights off. Nobody asked me if I wanted it there, and I found I didn’t mind.

***

“Nine dollars for a coffee,” Nancy said when I took off my fleece at quarter to two. “For that money they should drink it for you.”

She caught my chin and looked at my face. Then she dug in her purse and handed me a lipstick.

“I’m not wearing lipstick to coffee, Nancy.”

“You’re wearing it to collect fines. Go on, honey. A hundred a kiss adds up.”

“Nobody is kissing anybody.”

“Mm-hm.” She pushed me toward the door. “That’s what I told my ex-husband, and look how that went.”

Declan was already at a table by the window when I walked into Ferrand’s. He wore a pressed blue shirt with the fold lines still in it. He stood up so fast his chair rocked.

“You came,” he said.

“You bought forty carnations. I had to see how this ended.”

“I got here at one. I wanted this table.”

“For the view?”

“For the door. I like to see who’s coming in.”

He pulled my chair out and pushed it in too hard, and my knees hit the table. Then he sat across from me and checked his phone under the table.

“How was your day?” he asked. “What’s your favourite colour?”

“Hand me that phone right now.”

He went red to the ears and gave it to me. Jonah had typed him a list of questions.

“Compliment her hair but don’t overdo it,” I read. “What counts as overdoing it?”

“He didn’t say. I was going to stop at one.”

The last line said DO NOT talk about bridges, underlined twice.

I slid the phone back. “Ask me something real, and I’ll answer it properly.”

He thought about it while a woman at the counter collected her latte.

“If the clinic were yours,” he said. “What would you change first?”

Nobody had asked me that in eight years. I meant to give a short answer, and the long one came out instead.

“The scale is off by half a pound, so every dose starts from a bad number. The supplier pads his bills by six percent. And the waiting room is so loud we sedate cats who only needed some peace.”

“How would you fix the noise?”

“There’s an old storage closet with its own window and its own door. I’d make it a room just for cats. They smell the dogs and they’re terrified before I even pick up a needle.”

He leaned on his elbows and listened with his whole face. “The cat room and a new scale. That’s about twelve thousand dollars.”

“You did that in your head?”

“I’m an engineer. It’s what I do instead of talking.” He turned his cup. “You should have your name on that door, Ciara. Nothing in this town stays sold forever.”

I had to look out the window after that. Nobody had ever said it to me so plainly, not even Gran.

His hand came across the table and covered mine. His thumb moved over my knuckles, slow and warm.

“You’re having dinner with him tonight,” he said.

“At seven, at his mother’s house.”

“What’s he like?”

“Theo?” I had to think about it. “Kind. Careful. He’s never once been late for anything.”

“And you like that.”

“I’ve liked that since I was fifteen. It’s a good thing to like in a man.”

His thumb stopped on my knuckles. “What else do you like?”

I didn’t answer. I was afraid of what would come out.

“Good.”

“You keep saying good. You never sound like you mean it.”

“I keep meaning something else.”

His eyes went from our hands to my mouth and stayed there.

“You have foam on your lip.”

“Where?”

He reached over and wiped it away with his thumb.

He didn’t take his hand back. His thumb stayed at the corner of my mouth. Every nerve in my body went straight to that spot.

I caught his wrist. “Term four.”

“I know. You signed it yesterday.” His voice dropped low. “Fine me.”

He leaned across the table and kissed me in the window of Ferrand’s.

It was slower than the truck. That made it worse, because I had time to stop it and didn’t.

His hand slid from my jaw into my hair and held me there. He kissed me like we had all afternoon.

“That’s two hundred,” I managed. “You owe me for both.”

“Put it on my tab.”

I grabbed a fistful of his pressed blue shirt and pulled him closer. The table rocked, and somebody’s spoon hit the floor.

“Declan,” I breathed. “Everyone can see us.”

“Good.” He said it against my mouth, and this time he meant it. “Let them.”

He kissed me again, and deeper. The town and the video went right out of my head, along with the dinner at seven.

“Oh my God,” a woman said by the register. “Is that Aisle Four?”

The bell over the door rang.

I opened my eyes over Declan’s shoulder. Theo stood in the doorway with his travel mug in his hand and his clinic fleece zipped to the chin.

He had seen all of it. His face told me exactly how much.