Page 5 of In Doubt
“Then why do they have luggage?” Carl asks. “Are they coming too?”
“Looks like it,” Sia whispers as we watch the professor greet the four men. “But Professor Weaver doesn’t have a problem with it so I assume they OK’ed it.” She shrugs.
I flick my gaze Jake’s way and immediately catch his eye. Those deeply blue eyes that have my insides spinning. His scent curls into my nostrils. Crap!
He scowls at me in that way he always does. Then his eyes linger down my form, the crease between his brow deepening.
Yeah, I get it. He disapproves of what I’m wearing. It seems he always does. I assume it’s not cute and omega enough for him. But screw that, I’m going to wear what the hell I like. And if that means my very own interpretation of Indiana Jones, cargo pants and khaki shirt, then so be it. This is the twenty-first century and omegas can define what it means to be a member of our designation now. We’re no longer ruled by alphas and their expectations of us.
And I know all about Jake’s expectations. He brags about it to the boys in our course. Carl told me.
I scowl back at Jake.
“What are your band of merry men doing here? Did you need someone to hold your hand on this trip?”
Jake’s packmate, Aiden, hooks his arm around Jake’s shoulder and frowns at me in an almost mirror image of the expression on Jake’s face.
“You think we’d miss out on a trip like this?”
“I can’t believe Professor Weaver let you come!” There were plenty of disappointed students on our Masters course who couldn’t afford the trip and would be selling a kidney right now to grab a ticket.
But I guess it shouldn’t surprise me. Jake’s pack is wealthy and entitled and probably paid their way onto this trip. Not that Jake did. His good grades guaranteed him a fully funded place like me. It’s always the two of us at the top of the class. A fact he reminds me of every time he nips me to that top spot. Which isn’t as often as he’d like. And that’s the reason he hates me. Alphas don’t like to be beaten. Especially by omegas.
“You don’t even study archeology,” I mutter. Aiden’s enrolled on the economics course, or something equally dull.
“They’re not coming on the dig,” Jake tells me. His scowl morphs into a frown. These are two of Jake Grantham’s favourite looks. Not that it matters. The man is good-looking and knows it. He has the kind of chiselled bone structure reserved for the catwalk.
“We’ve booked this awesome luxury villa with beds to spare,” Aiden tells me. “Plenty of room for anyone who’d like to join us.”
What? Are they going to try to change the scientific assignment of a lifetime into some boys’ trip?
“You know there were people who really wanted to come on this trip who missed out on a spot,” I snap, glaring at Jake and trying to ignore the way the blue in his eyes sparkles like the sea in sunlight, even under the neon strip lighting of the airport.
“Ireally want to come on this trip,” Jake snaps back. “That doesn’t mean I’m not going to have a bit of fun while I’m there. I know you don’t understand that concept …”
My fists land on my hips automatically, my natural posture for dealing with Jake Grantham. “Archaeologyisfun,” I remind him, pushing my glasses up my nose with my middle finger. Aiden bursts out laughing and Jake’s lips twitch as if he’s suppressing a smile.
“Whatever turns you on.”
Yep, and there we go. Typical alpha, turning everything into a sexual innuendo.
“Why are you even coming on this trip if you’re not going to take it seriously?”
“Just because I’m not dressed like some extra fromRomancing the Stonedoesn’t mean I’m not taking this seriously.”
“This outfit is what people wear in the desert. You know it’s going to be over 40 degrees out there?” My gaze runs down his body, assessing his own choice of clothing, shorts, a vest and flip flops. As I do, I try not to notice the tightly packed muscles bulging in his crossed arms or the little twang of something that sparks in my gut. “Flip-flops?” I point at my own sturdy boots. “There are scorpions and snakes.” Doesn’t he care that they could kill him?
“Which is why we’ll be sticking to the villa,” Aiden says. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist, little Geek. We won’t be ruining your important work.” Aiden lifts up his hands and turns to the two other packmates standing behind him.
By avoiding Jake Grantham for the past year, I’ve avoided his pack too. Now it looks like I’m going to be stuck with them for the next two weeks.
I toss my hair over my shoulder and turn my back on them.
Sia’s pouring over the itinerary for the trip and hasn’t paid any attention to my conversation with Jake and the other alphas. But Carl was listening.
“They’re going to try to turn this trip into some fuck-boy excursion,” he mutters with disapproval. “You know about all the stuff those boys get up to.”
I swallow, buffing my glasses on the hem of my shirt. If I’d suspected Jake Grantham was the kind of alpha who used and discarded girls when I first met him, unhappily I’d been proven correct. The exploits of his pack quickly filled the gossip column of the student paper. It seems they are all players, using their star status on campus to sleep with as many girls as they can.
