A Is for Alpha Male (9 page)

If this were yoga, it would be called “Outward facing Alpha” or “Alpha Pose”. Or something equally as cute.

But the stance itself wasn’t cute. It was rugged and manly and sexy as all get out.

Several seconds passed with no one saying anything, but two sets of eyes, one brown, one an extraordinary hazel, stayed locked and loaded on me.

It only took a few more seconds of awkward silence for me to realize they expected me to take the ball and run with it in this situation.

It may seem weird, two seemingly dominant men giving up control to a woman, but it really wasn’t.

Some sort of medical situation, say a venomous snake bite or a gunshot wound to the face, they’d be all over. But a woman’s emotional breakdown was complete don’t-even-touch-it-with-a-ten-foot-pole territory.

Right.

Making my way across the rest of the room, I bent at the knee and squatted down next to the couch, and consequently, Allison, with my ass to my heels. I wouldn’t be able to last long this way without my legs cramping up, but I hoped this wasn’t going to be all that long of an undertaking.

Allison’s eyes struggled to focus on me, but when they did her smile brightened, a subconscious action because she was excited to tell me all about Tim.

I cut her off before she even had a chance to start, stating, “This isn’t Tim McGraw, Mamalicious. He bears a striking resemblance, yes, but his name is—” I paused hoping someone else would fill in the gap because I still didn’t know his name.

No one said anything, so I cut my eyes over and up to them. Finally, properly chastened by my glare, someone piped up.

“Wade,” Wade (apparently) said.

Swinging my head back to Allison, I continued, “Right. This is Wade, Mama.” She looked over at him, looked back at me, and then waited for me to say more.

“The good news is, since it’s not Tim, but someone who looks a hell of a lot like him, this one isn’t married,” I said taking a stab in the dark.

Once again, I paused, looked up at Wade, and questioned, “Right?” When he didn’t answer immediately, I kept going, adding in my usual commentary. “Because you aren’t wearing a ring. And I have to tell you, if you
are
married and you’re not wearing a ring, that’s skeevy. It suggests you’re looking to pick up chicks despite your taken status.”

Wade took on a defensive stance, uncrossing his arms, raising both of his hands, and putting them palm out in a placating gesture. “I’m not married. And I’m not “skeevy”,” he added with a frown-like crease in his brow, making sure to make air quotes to reflect what he thought of my word choice.

Danny was chuckling in the background, finding the whole thing more than a little humorous, but I did my best to tune him out.

Giving my attention back to Allison, I reiterated, “See, like I said, not married and not skeevy.”

I could already tell things were on the upswing. The color was back in her cheeks and her eyes were looking more and more focused and normal.

My theories were confirmed, however, when she looked at me, smiled, and informed me, “And he doesn’t have man boobs either. I could feel a nice hard chest when he carried me in here.”

Danny’s chuckle turned into a full roar, Wade was confused but smiled with amusement nonetheless, and I beamed big and bright down at my mom before agreeing, “Yep. Perfectly man-boob-less. Good news.”

“So Wade, what do you do for a living?” a far more coherent Allison asked.

In attempt to relax and get to know one another better, we had made our way out to their covered porch that jutted directly off of the back of the house. Wicker furniture with big taupe colored cushions lined the perimeter of the room and the center held a wicker coffee table with a glass top. Wicker itself was kind of girly, but the color scheme was all man.

Wade’s eyes flashed to Danny and back, but it was no more than a fleeting glance, so I figured it didn’t really mean anything. Plus, it wasn’t even a couple of seconds before he was focused on Allison, an attractive smile framed by his mustache and goatee, and answered her, “Oh, I own “The Cabin”, where Danny works.”

“Have you always been in the bar business?” Allison investigated further.

“No, Danny and I just moved here a couple of years ago and decided to give it a try.”

“Well,” I cut in. Ready to put my two cents in. Danny muttered a “Here we go” under his breath, but I didn’t let it discourage me. “If you’re ever in need of work, you could make big money as an impersonator.”

Everyone ignored me, including Allison. She was in flirt mode, and therefore wasn’t in the mood for me to be sarcastic. Instead, she kept the conversation going, smoothly saying, “I’m surprised. You seem to be pretty successful for only doing it a couple of years.”

Danny looked over at me to see that I was restless, fidgety, and probably looking like I was going to wet my pants.

The reason was pretty simple. I wanted to go ride the four-wheelers. My excitement was just too great to sit completely still and listen to Allison and Wade make blandly flirtatious small talk.

One corner of Danny’s mouth curved upward and he shook his head slightly, but there was an appreciative light in his eyes. He stood swiftly and effortlessly, let the other side of his mouth move up to complete his smile, and said, “Come on. We’ll go now.”

In my head I was screaming, “Yippeee!” but on the outside I tried to act my age, asking, “Hey mom, is it cool if Danny and I go—”

“Yeah, Haley. Fine, fine. See you later,” she cut in with her own version of a brush off, her eyes never leaving Wade once.

Danny didn’t waste any time grabbing my hand, dragging me down the hall to his bedroom, into his closet, tossing a long sleeve t-shirt at me, and crowding me back out of the closet and into the bathroom, explaining, “I tried to trim the trails up, but this way your arms shouldn’t get cut up if I missed anything.”

He didn’t give me time to do a detailed perusal of my surroundings, but the perfunctory look I had gotten on the fly suggested it was the same as the rest of the house. Beautifully plain.

Getting my rumination out of the interior design sector of my brain, I thought of how thoughtful and protective (P is for Protective! Check!) it was of him to think that out and take care of me. But then I thought of how I liked my legs even better than my arms, especially when they were sporting a tan like they were. Therefore, I sent him out to the car to grab my little pink tote bag that held both my jeans and my cowboy boots (and socks) to change into.

Lost in daydreams about him, time passed pretty quickly, and he was back before I knew it.

Either that, or he was a vampire and thus moved with superhuman speed.

If I was a betting woman (which from time to time, after a few drinks, seated at a penny slot machine, I was), I would put money on the daydreams.

I even managed to only snicker once at how cute he was carrying a pink tote bag before getting my shit together and closing myself in the bathroom again.

I made short work of changing, and barely delayed myself at all by taking a couple of sniffs of his shirt before surrounding myself with it.

Danny’s shirt hung long on me, down to around mid thigh, and its sheer size made me feel like a dwarf. When I walked out of the bathroom and into Danny’s line of sight, the look he gave me said he clearly agreed with the dwarf reference.

Or maybe he was thinking “Smurf”. The shirt
was
blue.

“Good. Now that I can’t tell you’re a girl anymore, I think you’re ready,” he said.

“A girl? I’ll have you know I’m all fucking woman,” I protested just for the sake of protesting. I really did have a kind of girly face, young looking and a little cherub-esque.

“Are you this full of drama all the time?” he asked.

“A solid 95 percent of the time,” I replied truthfully. “Is that a problem?”

He muttered something under his breath, but I couldn’t make it out. All I heard were the words “hard” and “all the time” as he turned away to move out of his bedroom and down the hall, but that could be anything.

Sure, it could be the dirty version, “It’s fine if you want me to be
hard all the time
.”

But it could totally also be, “It will be
hard
if you’re like this
all the time
.” Or, “I like
hard
ice cream, and I get leg cramps
all the time
.” I know that doesn’t seem all that relevant, but you never know.

It would seem that I would never know the real answer. I wasn’t going to ask him because that was the whole point of someone muttering under their breath. They hadn’t intended for you to hear it. I would have to let my imagination do the picking.

And my imagination would always pick the dirty interpretation.

A dazzling smile broke out on my face thanks to my perversion, and Danny turned back to look at me at the same time. Apparently my smile earned me an answering one, complete with dimples.

He also clearly thought I was taking too long, as he grabbed my hand, clasped his together with it, his long fingers curling around the side of my hand by my pinky, and then proceeded to drag me down the hallway and out the front door.

Down the steps and off of the porch we went, across the gravel driveway, through a fence, across a field, and up to a shed. He only stopped when we had covered quite a lot of ground, we were standing beside a yellow four-wheeler, and I was rocking a significant sheen of sweat.

My breathing was ragged, and I had a cramp in my side. Danny was the complete opposite, his breathing steady, still crisp and freshly dry, and apparently, in far better shape than I was.

He was still wearing his short sleeve Fox Racing shirt though, and I immediately decided his protection of my arms was no longer nice, but instead, an attack against women. “How come you get to wear short sleeves and be cool and breezy with the kiss of the air on your arms, and I have to be all stuffy and sweaty?”

“The kiss of air on my arms?” Danny asked, letting his brows raise up half the height of his forehead.

“Just answer the fucking question,” I snapped.

A verbal answer to my lunacy was something he didn’t give me. Instead, he found the hem of his shirt, lifted it up slowly to ascertain that I had kept my camisole on underneath it, and then continued up with it.

When he got high enough to clear my breasts, I understood what was happening and regretted my decision to complain. I didn’t want to lose the feel of wearing
his
shirt.

Jumping into action, I slammed my arms down, knocking his hands away and successfully keeping his shirt on.

“Never mind. This is my shirt, and you can’t have it,” I whined like someone a quarter of my age.

“There’s something seriously wrong with me,” he responded.

To me, this was a weird thing to say. I figured he would say that there was something wrong with
me
, not him. But he seemed to have known exactly what he was saying.

Strange.

Reaching out and grabbing a helmet off of each side of the handle bars, Danny turned to me and extended the blue one, stating, “Here. This one will match your outfit.”

Giddy with excitement, too giddy to make fun of him for sounding like a girl and talking about my clothes, I accepted the helmet, tucked it between my knees, grabbed my ponytail holder off of my wrist, and pulled my hair into a low ponytail. Once I finished securing the tie, I grabbed the helmet, arranged all of the straps so that they were out of the way and pulled it on my head.

I tried to fasten the strap around my chin myself, but I couldn’t see anything and it turned into an epic struggle, my fingers fumbling and knocking into each other nonsensically. Danny chuckled, pushed my hands out of the way, and buckled it for me, letting his forefinger trail along the line of my chin after he finished.

God, that was nice. I wanted him to use that finger to touch me other places. Dirty, dirty places.

Well, not dirty literally. I’m not dirty or anything. I’m clean. Very clean.

Illicit
places. But illicit, illicit places doesn’t sound as good. Whatever. I wanted him to touch me. Like immediately.