Mated to the Grumpy Alpha

Chapter 4

CIARA | CORBETT’S LANDING

THE ALPHA PAID HIS FIRST NIGHT OF PORCH RENT IN ROLLED QUARTERS.

He lined up four paper rolls on my top step at nine o’clock on Sunday night. Then he sat down on the step below them and waited for me to notice.

“Did you rob a laundromat?” I asked through the screen.

“Maud owed me change from Friday, and you told Jonah you wanted cash.”

“I meant paper money. Grown men pay their rent in twenties, not in laundry change.”

“You never said that.” He kept his eyes on my lawn. “I’ll bring bills tomorrow night.”

I came out and picked up the rolls, which weighed more than forty dollars had any right to weigh. I took them inside and dropped them in the CLINIC jar.

Go ahead and laugh, because I counted them twice before bed.

Gran raised me to feed anyone who sat on her steps for more than five minutes. So I made two cups of instant coffee, and I put three sugars in his out of pure spite.

“Here.” I held out the mug. “It’s instant, so don’t get excited.”

It was Gran’s old cat mug, the one with a chipped orange tabby on the side. He looked at it for a second before he took it from me.

He drank the whole thing in four swallows and set it down on the step without a word of complaint.

“Nobody can drink three sugars,” I said. “I’ve seen grown men cry over two.”

“You made it.” He said it to the empty mug, not to me.

I sat in Gran’s wicker chair at the far end of the porch with my own coffee. I wanted answers, and I was not going to get them from inside the house.

“Why did you say it?” I asked. “The words in the feed store, in front of everybody. You had known me for about six hours.”

“It was the safest thing I could do for you.”

“Safe from what? From you?”

He turned the empty mug around in his big hands and didn’t answer.

“I spend all day with dogs who hate baths,” I said. “I know a dodge when I see one.”

“Then stop chasing me around the yard with the soap.”

Ten minutes later he was asleep against the post with his mouth open. Jonah’s truck sat at the end of my drive with its lights off. I could see him in there eating chips in the dark.

“Sour cream and onion!” Jonah whispered out the truck window. “Want some?”

I shook my head and put Gran’s blanket over Declan’s shoulders. Then I went back to my chair. I stayed out there the whole hour, and I told myself it was only because the hour was paid for.

***

Monday was Theo’s first day as my boss. He brought blueberry muffins for everybody. Then he asked Nancy how she took her coffee, though he has known her since kindergarten.

“Two milk,” Nancy said. “And a raise, while you’re writing things down.”

“I’ll start with the milk,” Theo said.

Nancy leaned over to me once he had gone into the back. “He wrote my coffee order on a sticky note, Ciara. Nobody has ever written down anything I wanted.”

“He’s a careful man.”

“He’s in love with you, and you went to his mother’s on Sunday and let her feed you three helpings.”

“She made lasagna. I’m not made of stone, Nancy.”

At lunch Theo found me in the back, eating a peanut butter sandwich on a stack of kibble bags. He stood in the doorway with his hands in his pockets.

“Have dinner with me on Friday,” he said. “Not as your boss. As the boy who sat behind you in chemistry and never had the nerve to say anything.”

“You set your sleeve on fire in chemistry.”

“And you put it out with your water bottle. I’ve been working up to this ever since.” He smiled down at the floor. “You don’t have to answer me today.”

“Can I tell you tomorrow?”

“Take until Friday morning, Cee. I’ll be here either way.”

That night Declan stopped on my bottom step and went still. He lifted his head and breathed in, and his eyes went straight to the arm Theo had touched at lunch.

“What?” I said. “Do I smell of muffins?”

“No.” He sat down and laid two twenties on the top step. “Paper money this time.”

I brought his coffee out in the cat mug again. I’m petty, and I wanted to see if he would drink it twice.

“Theo asked me to dinner,” I said. “On Friday, at the Landing Grill.”

“Good. He’s human, and he’s kind to you.”

The handle came off the mug in his hand with a small c***k. Hot coffee ran down his knee, and he didn’t even flinch.

“That was my grandmother’s mug,” I said.

He turned the handle over in his fingers for a long second. When he raised his eyes, he looked sorry about something for the first time since aisle four.

“I’ll fix it,” he said.

He took both pieces home with him in his shirt pocket.

***

The next day I locked up alone at five because Theo had a farm call.

“Miss Cortez?” a man said as I came down the clinic steps.

He was standing beside my Corolla, which Ferris had charged me a hundred and ten dollars to fix. He wore a grey wool coat and good shoes, and he kept his hands folded in front of him.

“My name is Silas Brandt.” His voice was soft and unhurried. “I speak for the Council on the Ridge, and I owe you an apology.”

“For what, exactly?”

“For Friday. A Ridge man shamed you in public, and that should never happen in our town.” He tilted his head. “And for what it’s doing to him now. That isn’t your fault either.”

“You know about that?”

“Everyone on the Ridge knows. Declan hasn’t shifted in four days, and he sleeps on a stranger’s porch for one hour at a time.” He said it without any meanness at all. “It can’t go on, for his sake or for yours.”

“Why do you care what happens to a vet tech?”

“Because I care what happens to him. I have known Declan since the day he was born.”

“Then tell me how to stop it.”

“You say four words to his face, and you mean them. I accept your rejection.” He took an envelope from inside his coat. “He’ll be well by morning, and nobody from the Ridge will ever bother you again.”

He set the envelope on the hood of my car.

“This is for your trouble,” he said. “Please don’t open it until I’ve gone, because I find these moments embarrassing.”

He nodded and walked to a grey sedan at the edge of the lot. I waited until his taillights turned onto Main Street before I opened the envelope.

It was a cheque from the Ridge Council, and it was made out to me.

“Four hundred and twelve thousand dollars,” I read out loud to the empty lot.

I knew that number. It was the sale price printed on the fax Amrit had left in the printer tray.

On the memo line Silas had written three words in neat blue ink. For the clinic.