Page 5 of Duke's Baby Deal
“Well, any wonder?”
Ouch.
Rosie kept going, her tongue moving as fast as her fingers as she pinned the pieces of the top together. “And besides, he’s related to Dad on his mom’s side, and he’s just like my cousin Landon. Total peacekeeper, looking after everyone around him, making sure everything goes fine. He’s like an alpha, without the asshole.”
“Hey, Abel’s not an asshole!”
She raised her eyebrows at me. “Really? You remember his mating ceremony? Hewantedthat fight. Abel just hides it better than most.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but she was right. And honestly, though I’d never really thought of it like that before, that lack of assholiness was what I found so intriguing about Duke. I was diva enough for the two of us.
Rosie clinched her argument with, “And he grew up in Quin and Abel and Cas’s shadows. I wouldn’t be surprised if he thought you didn’t like him, because there’s so many guys always trying to dance in the limelight for you.”
Ouch again. “I’m going to have to apologize.”
“More than that.” Rosie bit off a length of thread and wet the end, then peered at me through the eye of the needle. “I think you need to ask him to dance, and tell him straight that you think he’s the best looking man in the pack and if he wants you, you’re his. And then drag him into the trees. I’ll run interference with your parents for you.”
“I couldn’t!” It was one thing to flirt and push against the rules when I was in plain sight, but if I dragged Duke into the trees… “Rosie, you’ll ruin me! I can’t do that!”
“Would you if he said he wanted you?”
I opened my mouth to say no, but the words wouldn’t come. Because the truth was, if Duke said he wanted me the way I wanted him, I’d throw him over my shoulder and carry him away. Well, I’d try. Most likely, I’d immediately be crushed beneath him, but I thought it would get my point across. And Iabsolutelywouldn’t mind being crushed under Duke. “You’re right,” I said, and then frowned at Rosie’s exaggerated gasp and recoil of shock. “Oh, stop. It’s not like I’ve never, ever admitted I was wrong before.”
Rosie broke down in tear-streaming laughter and it took threatening to appliqué monkey faces all over her dress before she crammed it all back down inside. She wasn’t done, though, I could tell. Every once in a while a giggle would break free and she’d clamp her hands over her mouth while I growled in mild annoyance. It wasn’t real anger, because I could never be truly mad at Rosie. She brought me down to earth when I got worked up, and when I’d lost sight of what was really going on, she could always point it out to me. My best friend ever.
Dad came home and put an end to our conversation, but it was okay. I knew what I needed to do. Rosie and I stayed up late working on the dress, a wide A-line skirt with a halter top, kind of a Marylin Monroe look, though Rosie looked nothing like Marylin. I tweaked the neckline so it was more sweetheart than straight up and down and by the time we had it all pinned and basted together, it looked amazing. We cut the velvet into the skirt so it was hardly noticeable until she moved, and then the flow of the material made it flare and catch the eye.
“See,” I told her while she peeled herself out of it in the bathroom. “Way better than the blouse.”
“It’s gorgeous, Bram, thank you,” she said as she came out. “But what about you?”
“I’m off tomorrow, and I know exactly what I want to do with my pieces.” I spread the dress out over the floor again and folded it up carefully. “It won’t take me long to get this sewn up.”
“Tomorrow,” my dad yelled from in the kitchen. “Your mom will be home soon and she can’t sleep with you running that machine.”
I rolled my eyes, and Rosie called back, “Yes, sir. I was just leaving anyway.” She leaned and planted a kiss on my cheek. “I really do owe you one.”
“Just make sure he doesn’t get away on you.”
A feral grin broke out on her face. “Not a chance.”
CHAPTER FIVE
After Rosie left, I put everything away except for my new turquoise cloth and took it all upstairs to my room. I spread the turquoise out on the floor and looked at it for a moment. It was kind of startling how happy it made me. Duke liked blue, and I hoped he’d like me in it. I started rummaging in the back of my closet for the shirt I’d been thinking about before, already planning how I would cut the two different colors together. This was the most excited I’d been about sewing in…ever. I was really only as good as I was because I refused to constantly wear T-shirts, like all the other males in the pack—like most everybody in the pack. And Jason’s determined tutorials. So a lot of my hard-earned pack credits went to things like cloth and thread, just like the girls before they mated and settled down.
I froze as soon as that thought crossed my mind, then shook my head and pulled the shirt I wanted off its hanger. No way was I turning into an old mated omega.
Mom came home from her job just then. She worked looking after older pack members who needed a little extra help to get along in their own homes, doing a little cleaning, checking up on them, cooking sometimes. Dad went to bed, because his job as an electrician usually had him up and going early in the morning. I said good night to him, and “Yes, Mom,” to my mother when she reminded me, like usual, to be quiet so my father could sleep. Not that I made much noise. Except for that episode on my sixteenth birthday. Oh, and the summer the girls and I were trying to form a rock band without any instruments. We were going to hire musicians after we got our songs down, but we spent so many hours practicing we got sick of our songs and stopped.
The songs kind of sucked, anyway.
And okay, there might have been a few other incidents as well, but really, a guy couldn’t be absolutely silent twenty-four-seven, could he?
I settled down on my bed with my old shirt, one of the first really elaborate things I’d ever made. It had taken me months to piece it together and, life being how it was, I almost immediately grew out of it. I’d never been able to bring myself to pass it down, though, so it had been hanging in the corner of my closet for almost three years now, waiting for me to figure out something to do with it. I stroked the embroidery, black silk floss on black cotton, for a moment, then bent to my work.
Of course, as I began picking out stitches in my old shirt and drawing out patterns on the blue cloth, my mind started to drift away in the direction it usually wandered off in when I wasn’t paying attention—Duke.
With Rosie’s advice in mind, I went back over the encounter today—the parts that went okay, and the disaster at the end. Until today, I didn’t think I took my crush on Duke seriously. I didn’t think there was any future in it, when I really looked at what I felt about him. But what if there was a possibility? Immediately, I realized that I didn’t care a hoot for Justin, except for being able to lord him over the other omegas. I liked Duke’s careful calmness, how capable he was, how he never seemed to do anything without thinking it through first.
