Page 4 of Duke's Baby Deal
CHAPTER FOUR
Rosie dropped by at the end of my shift. “Come to Supplies with me!” she said gleefully and grabbed my arm.
“Why?” I asked, but was there really any point? Rosie was as headstrong as Fan, and I was going to Supplies, whether I wanted to or not.
“There’s new cloth in, and they’re saving me a bolt.” She jumped in place and giggled.
“What’s so special about this cloth in particular?”
“It’s a perfect color for both of us.” She dropped my arm and whirled around in front of me. “I’m going to make a blouse, and you can make a shirt, and we’ll be twins!” She grabbed my arm and hung off me again.
“We don’t look that much alike,” I told her. Apart from our coloring, and something about our noses, we didn’t resemble each other at all. Rosie was round-faced and pink-cheeked—hence the Rosie, since her real name was Gertrilda, or something equally horrible. My face was leaner and more square. She was also a hell of a lot shorter than me. I pried my arm out of her grasp and went back to putting away the last of the toys from free-play time so that Tayana wouldn’t have to clean up at the beginning of her shift.
“Close enough,” Rosie said. “Come on, it’ll be fun. We can go back to your place and start putting them together.”
“My place?” I stopped and put my hands on my hips. “Why my place?” Not likely. My parents would besooooohappy to see me settling down, doing traditional omega stuff, like they even really knew what that was. Bax had been telling me different things he was learning going through the old histories, and being a stay-at-home bearer wasn’t the only thing an omega could do. But my parents were convinced that I was going to find a nice alpha or beta wolf and settle down with him or her, and then we’d start producing pups for them to spoil.
Okay, maybe I did want pups, but I didn’t want to do just that for my entire life.
Rosie huffed. “Well, if we take it over to my place, we’re going to have the brats all up in our business and then someone will get a pin stuck in them, and it’ll be all hell to pay after that and we’ll never get anything done.” She blushed a little. “And I really wanted to try out this new pattern I found. It’sseeeexyyyyyyy.”
Rosie wanting to be sexy? Now I wanted to see this blouse. “Fine. But we’re not both wearing the same color at the same time, like we’re some sort of twins from different mothers.”
“As long as I get to wear it tomorrow night. Ales asked me to dance with him.”
“Whooo!” She’d been talking about him on and off for about a year. Nice to see she’d finally gotten through to him, little socially-unaware nerd that he was. Or maybe he’d gotten through to her—who knew? But Ales had just started with Abel’s software company, and Rosie liked tinkering with the insides of computers, so once she got her training they’d be even more perfect for each other. I was absolutely willing to help my friend out with that. “Deal. But you have to help me pick out something to wear tomorrow night. And help me finish cleaning.”
“Yes, sir!” she said, and saluted. “What do you want me to do?”
“You can wipe down the tables. There’s a spray bottle and rags in the cupboard over there.” I handed her my keys, and went back to putting everything in its place.
We ended up getting four different kinds of cloth, which we then spread out over my living room floor—Mom was home and that meant that my bedroom wasoff limits, because the moon forbid I have anyone up there without a chaperon or someone to make sure I didn’t do anything Ishouldn’t be doing.
They weren’t big bolts of cloth—sometimes we got stuff that was deliberately ordered, but most of the time we got things that were the stuff left over after a business was done with them. I didn’t mind—it usually meant a lot of choice, and I was good enough with a needle that I could put something together that you’d never guess had been made out of scraps.
“I love this,” Rosie crooned, stroking a length of chocolate brown velvet.
“You know,” I told her, tugging over a piece of cotton the color of coffee with tons of milk in it. “We have enough between this and the other cotton and that velvet to make a dress, not just a blouse.”
“But then there wouldn’t be enough for you!”
I shook my head. “I think I can take this turquoise—” I lifted a corner, shiny and slippery like satin, and shook it. “—and use it to change up one of my old ones.” I did have one that I’d grown out of years ago, black, with embroidery over the front and the sleeves. It didn’t fit anymore, but with the extra material I could make it work. And the turquoise was a good color for me; laid against the back of my hand, it made my skin look like rich cream with a hint of caramel in it.
Rose looked doubtful, but the lure of brown velvet eventually won. “Well, I’ll have to owe you, because the velvet’s way more credits than the blue, and I spent a bunch of mine last week on money to buy stuff on Amazon.”
“Buy me lunch next time you get your disbursement.”
“Deal.” We shook on it and I got my measuring tape out.
Mom left and Dad came home. It didn’t make much difference—it was more a changing of the guard than anything else. Another reason I liked having outside work—I could do what I wanted when I wasn’t around them. And I was tired of being treated like I had no sense.
In the small gap of time between Mom leaving and Dad walking in the door, though, Rosie and I had a conversation about my stupidity this morning.
“So, yeah, he’s pissed now. I think. But even if I had a chance, I’m pretty sure I screwed it up big time,” I told her glumly as I sketched out the pieces for a wide A-line skirt with a nub of white chalk. My sewing was a lot better since Jason got hold of me. It wasn’t that I couldn’t do it, but I deliberately refused to do it because it was pushed on me so hard as a traditional omega skill. But now I could resize and adapt clothes, and even design something if it wasn’ttoocomplicated. Like the dress I was planning for Rosie.
She paused in cutting out a section of the top. “Duke, pissed? That doesn’t sound like him.”
“It is when he’s around me.” I set aside my chalk and reached for my big scissors.
