The Heir (22 page)

"Yeah?"

"Is there any chance you can go make peace
with her or something? It's only been a week and I honestly don't
know how much more I can take."

"Is that an order?"

Jessica thought about that for a second.
"Yes, yes it is." She told him and had to bite back a laugh when he
sighed overly dramatic.

“As you wish.”

Listening to his fading footsteps, she leaned
her head against the wall and closed her eyes; enjoying the silence
and solitude. A commodity, hard to find in the last week; before,
with her old body guards, she was free to at least roam her house
on her own, not so with Christian and Axel, they followed her
everywhere.

Everywhere but into her room and the
restroom; and even there they stood a couple of feet from the
door!

Taking care of business with an audience
listening in wasn't easy. Now every time she went into the restroom
she sang off-key and at the top of her lungs to feel comfortable
enough to go, which was redundant because every time she
sang…everyone knew what she was doing.

Unfortunately, according to Nick, there was
only one solution to her problem.

Jessica closed her eyes and recalled the
morning after her date with Nick. When Axel and Christian had
followed her to the downstairs restroom, she had stopped them and
told them to wait for her in the living room. They'd shaken their
heads, apologized and told her they were only following orders.

When she'd asked them why they needed to
follow her around the house, they just shrugged and told her to ask
Nick. Ignoring nature's call, she'd stomped off to do just that.
She'd hurried to her room where she'd forgotten her phone and
jabbed in his number, impatiently she waited for him to pick up. By
the time he'd finally answered she'd managed to rile herself up and
not bothering with pleasantries, she'd ordered him to call his
goons off of her.

"Good morning to you too sunshine." He'd
greeted her. “You know, if you moved in with your mate, you
wouldn't have this problem." He told her sweetly.

In response to that, Jessica shrieked and
flung her phone across the room. She'd forgotten about her
increasing strength due to the serum weakening in her blood until
she was staring blankly at the broken pieces of her phone on the
floor. Seconds later there was a knock on her door; without being
prompted, Axel peeked in and offered her his phone.

"It's for you." He'd told her.

Glaring, she'd taken it from him and placed
it up to her ear and waited for him to speak. Nick, to her
surprise, apologized for the inconvenience of the extra security
measures around her. He explained to her that because she was now
an alpha's mate she needed the extra protection, even in her
house.

"Shane was a wolf and you didn't know it." He
reminded her. "And it would kill me if something happened to you
because no one was there to protect you. Five seconds is all a wolf
would need to kill you."

His apology, the sincerity in his voice and
his logic managed to cool her down and helped her realize that she
was behaving like a spoiled child. Jessica sighed and grumbled.
"Well, when you put it that way...I'm sorry I went off on you."

Nick laughed. "Apologies taste like crap,
don't they?"

Jessica heartedly agreed and soon she found
herself agreeing to go out on another date with him if he told the
goons to back off a couple of feet when she was answering natures
call. Now here she was, half naked in a dressing room waiting for
Danielle to bring her a dress to try on.

Somehow Nick had convinced her to go out to
dinner with him later that night and since she had no dresses,
she'd asked her sister to help her shop for one.

She quickly found out that the safest place
for her sanity was this room.

Danielle and Christian could not stop
bickering and that small fact had escaped her mind when she asked
for this outing. She'd didn't know why but her sister could not
stand Christian. When she asked Dani what was wrong between the two
of them, she always got the same answer.

"Nothing," Dani would tell her. "I just don’t
like his never serious attitude.”

Jessica had almost bought it. Dani was
nothing if not serious and Jessica knew how much she liked order in
her life, but she'd caught her looking at Christian more than once
when she thought nobody was looking.

Thinking about them, Jessica huffed and
looked down at her watch wondering what was taking them so long.
Tired of waiting, she got up and stood behind the door as she
opened it a sliver to look around for them.

What she saw had her jaw dropping and she was
surprised that nobody heard it hit the floor. As quietly as she
could, she closed the door and stumbled back to the dressing room
bench.

Her eyes must be failing her, she decided,
because there's no way she had just seen her always sweet and
composed sister slap Christian. She strained her ears in hopes of
hearing their argument but she heard nothing. She had to grab on to
the bench to keep herself from jumping up and snooping in on
them.

"It is none of my business," she told herself
and waited patiently for Dani to bring her the dresses.

Jessica didn't know it but the reason she
didn't hear a noise from them was because Christian was using the
oldest technique in the book to calm a female down.

He was kissing her senseless.

Danielle struggled and tried to push him away
but he only held on tighter and kept kissing her into submission.
Like a thirteenth century warlord, he laid siege to her walls until
he broke down her defenses. He kissed her until she opened her
fisted hands and laid them tentatively on his chest. Her surrender
had triumph cruising through his blood; it was a heady feeling like
no other he'd felt before.

Fearing the loss of his control; he drew her
bottom lip into his mouth one last time, engraving her taste in his
mind, before breaking the kiss and taking a step back. And when she
looked up at him, with passion clouding her wide eyes, he had to
fist his hands to keep himself from pulling her back into his arms
and kissing her again.

Unused to all these feelings swirling inside
of him; he fell back on his devil-may-care attitude and smiled at
her. Never breaking eye contact, he rubbed his bottom lip with his
thumb and told her. "You kiss as well as you hit and every time you
slap me, I'm going to kiss you."

Danielle gasped and he didn't fail to notice
the jerky movement of her hand. He leaned over and whispered. "Yes
ma'am can I have another?"

Her hand jerked again and he raised an
eyebrow expectantly but she lowered it down to her side and settled
for a glare. "Stay away from me." She bit out. "Stop apologizing. I
will never forgive you." With those last words, Dani snapped around
and headed towards Jessica's dressing room with her back ram rod
straight, never once looking back.

Christian closed his eyes and wondered if
this was what a drowning man felt like. As if his chest was slowly
burning from the inside out. The worst part was knowing that he had
no one else to blame for the pain but himself.

If only he could travel back in time, he
would go back and do things differently.

Before he could fall into a pit of misery
Axel came up from behind him and slapped him in the back bringing
him back to the present. For the last couple of minutes Axel had
been outside taking a breather and now it was his turn.

Putting his problems with Dani away for the
time being, he smiled wryly at Axel and said, "I think she's on the
twentieth dress."

They both shook their heads and sighed.
“women."

After a couple of chuckles Christian saluted
him and went outside to take a much and needed breather. He hoped
that Jessica settled for one of the dresses she was now trying on
because he didn't think he could take another insult from Dani
without dragging her into his arms and kissing her again.

Danielle flung the dresses over the door and
exclaimed. "You better choose already, because we're running out of
time and we have a lot of other things to do."

Knowing that Danielle was in a bad mood,
Jessica took the dresses and kept quiet. She could sympathize with
her about her wolf boy problems. Jessica looked at the two dresses
Dani brought her and immediately fell in love with them. One was a
cream colored lace dress with a black self-tie waist belt with
short sleeves and a v-neckline, the other was a short black tube
dress with a sweetheart neckline and tiered detailing; both were
mid-thigh length.

"Dani?"

"Yes?"

"You were telling me I needed to find a dress
for my birthday, right?" She asked eyeing both of the dresses.

"Yes you do."

Jessica broke into a smile and declared with
triumph. "I found them!"

"You did?" Her sister asked excitedly and
clapped. "Try them on let me see."

Jessica did just that and both Dani and Axel
agreed that the dresses were perfect. Jessica especially loved them
because she was comfortable in them and to her that was the most
important thing. Excited to be done with the dress search, she
hurried back into the dressing room and got dressed in her own
clothes. After they paid, they met Christian outside and headed off
to complete the rest of her to do list.

They shopped for shoes, and then her sister
forced her to get a manicure and pedicure. To Jessica it was the
worst hour of her life! After that she had her hair done and only
then did Jessica realize just how much her hair had grown in the
last couple of months. It just about reached her shoulders and
after showing the stylist the dress she planned to wear on her
date, the stylist did her hair in a beach hippie look.

Jessica barely had time to admire her hairdo
before she was off to the makeup artist. They also showed her the
dress she planned to wear later that night and the artist gave her
a natural look that Jessica felt comfortable with.

She'd never realized how much work a girl
went through to look perfect for just one night. Time flew by that
afternoon and next thing she knew she was shimmying into her lacy
dress; carefully, so as to not ruin her hair or make up.

There was a knock on her door as she was
tying the belt around her waist and Jessica opened it to find her
mom standing there with the jewelry case in her hand.

Jessica bid her to come in with the motion of
her hand. Lauren smiled at her, looked her over with care and said.
"You look beautiful."

Jessica laughed and waved away the
compliment. "I think your bias."

“I think you're right." Lauren agreed. “But I
also think you're missing something." She tapped her chin with the
index finger while looking at her.

Jessica also looked down at herself and asked
worriedly. “What? What am I missing?"

"This." Lauren told her and opened the case
to show her a silver necklace, elegantly simple, with a diamond
teardrop pendant.

Jessica shook her head and backed away from
her. "Oh no, I don't do jewelry." She explained.

Lauren just smiled and shook her head, she
wasn’t taking no for an answer. And after minutes of her mother’s
insistence that she wear it, Jessica finally gave in and turned
around to allow her mother to place it around her neck. When it was
secured Jessica turned around and thanked her; smiling her mom gave
her a kiss on the cheek, told her that no thanks were necessary and
left her to finish getting ready.

Alone in her room again she bit on her lip
nervously, the only thing left to do was to put on her new pumps.
It had been a long time since she'd worn high heels and thought
that maybe she should put in some practice.

By the time there was another knock on her
door she'd managed to wear a whole in her carpet but she also
managed to gain the confidence to walk around in her black
pumps.

She opened the door to find Christian on the
other side and he let out an appreciative whistle at the sight of
her. Jessica couldn't help but blush and swatted his arm playfully.
"Stop it." She ordered.

Christian laughed and placed his hand over
his heart. "I can’t help it!" He confessed. "I see a pretty female
and I want to howl." And, playfully, he proceeded to do just
that.

Shaking her head, Jessica laughed and took
the arm he offered her. Together they made their way downstairs
where Nick waited for her.

His loud intake of breath had her smiling
nervously at him. "You take my breath away." He murmured, taking
her hands and spreading them to the side to take a good look at
her. "Beautiful." He added fervently.

"You don't look too bad yourself." She told
him, trying to hide the effect that his words had on her. She
looked him up and down and realized something. "Either great minds
think alike or there is a mole in my camp."

Nick laughed and looked down at his black
dress shirt and light tan colored slacks. "Pure coincidence." He
promised.

Jessica raised an eyebrow and looked
skeptically at Nick, then at Christian who wouldn't meet her eyes.
"Sure it was." She drawled.

Nick was saved from having to defend himself
with the arrival of her family. She performed the introductions and
after a couple of minutes of talking, Nick shook hands with her
parents and promised to have her home safe and on time. Her smiling
parents nodded and watched them walk out.

When they reached his car, he opened her door
and helped her inside before walking around the front and getting
into the driver’s seat. Jessica looked around in confusion and
asked. "Where are the guards?"

Nick waved his hand. "They are around
somewhere but don't worry about them, tonight it's just you and
I."

He reached for the rose he'd placed in the
back seat earlier and presented it to her. "This is for you-"