Ultimate Alphas: Bad Boys and Good Lovers (The Naughty List Romance Bundles)

by Synthia St. Claire

  When I looked back down at the dress, I realized that I’d balled it up in my hands. That was how Hale and I’s relationship seemed to work most of the time, happiness mixed with disappointment. It was enough to make me have second thoughts about even wearing the thing. I’ve never been one to subscribe to superstition, so surely the dress wasn’t some dark talisman or anything like it, but I had my moment of doubt.

  Shane’s different, I told myself. Not like Hale. Not at all. Not in a million years.

  I smoothed out the wrinkles in the dress and held it up in front of myself in the mirror. It would be beautiful, and I was sure it would still fit. The hem at the bottom came up to my thighs and barely covered most of the curving, pink scar from the accident. It would be enough.

  After Abby finished saying the prayer over the dinner table, Momma was quick to ask, “What was all that racket earlier? You came runnin’ in here like you was bein’ chased by the hounds of hell.”

  “Oh, sorry Momma,” I said through a mouthful of candied sweet potatoes, “I was just excited.”

  She rolled her eyes, which was her standard response most of the time. “Well, pray tell Mary Katherine, what’s got you so fired up now?”

  “I have a date tomorrow night.”

  “A date? With who?” Abby sputtered, nearly spraying the table with her tea.

  “With the man who saved me,” I answered back. “Is it so hard to believe your big sister is going out on a date?”

  Abby rolled her eyes and made a silly face.

  “I’m glad you’re seeing someone else for a change. That Ellis boy was nothing but trouble from the get-go,” Momma said.

  “Yes, Momma.”

  “Uh-huh! ‘Bout time you got away from him for a while. And now you’re seeing the one from the accident! Now that is fortune, isn’t it? What’s his name?”

  “Shane. He found me down at Stokes Pond today and returned the locket that grandma gave me. That’s when he asked me out.”

  Momma’s eyes opened wide and she stammered, “T-the locket? Why did you-”

  “That the feller who stopped by this afternoon lookin’ you?” Daddy interjected. “He didn’t say who he was, just that he wanted to bring you somethin’. If I’d a known he was the one that pulled you out that burnin’ bus, well, he’d be sittin’ right here and sharing supper with us, so help me.”

  I nodded. “I still don’t know his last name, but yeah, he’s the one I was telling you all about. I don’t think he likes talking about what happened much, though.”

  “Well, that explains it,” Daddy said. “What’s this Shane feller do, anyhow? He didn’t look like a farmin’ man to my eyes. City slicker if I ever seen one.”

  “He’s a lawyer for the EPA. Said he’s got a big case down here somewhere.”

  At that, my father coughed loudly and nearly choked on his tea.

  “George?” mother asked concernedly, and started patting him on the back until he held up one hand.

  “S’ok Carol…reckon it jus’ went down the wrong pipe. She surprised me is all.” Recovered, Daddy coughed once more and then turned to me. “Lil’ Bit, you got any idea who this Shane feller is takin’ to court?”

  I shook my head. Why did a sudden wave of fear just sink into my bones? “Just some big company near Wilmington, I guess. He never said.”

  “I’d bet every ear of corn in my fields that he’s after PCR Phosphate. ‘Bout two years ago they got in a heap of trouble ‘cause all those people getting sick that lived near or worked in the mine. The government sent some folks out to measure the air and everything else they could test and, to my understandin’, they said the damn place was more toxic than rat poison. Killin’ all the fish and birds and everything else out there. People too, I ‘spect.”

  “I was away,” I answered slowly. “I had no idea.”

  “Ol’ Mister Reid was goin’ nuts on the TV, tellin’ everybody that if he had to shut down it would cost Kirkland a couple hundred jobs. I reckon he was more worried about himself though, knowing that greedy son of a gun. From what I recall, the government’s been after him to clean that place up since the late eighties.”

  “Patterson Reid gets what he deserves,” Momma said proudly. “It’s a shame about all the people that might lose their jobs, though. Most of ‘em is just normal, hard-working people tryin’ to make ends meet.”

  I thought about Cindy Reid and how this news might affect her bad attitude. She didn’t deserve to watch her family’s fortune go down in flames, but thinking about the look on her face when she found out about Shane made me turn up one corner of my mouth into a smile.

  “That whole family is rotten to the core,” I said, and happily scooped up another spoonful of sweet potatoes.

  “That may be, Lil’ Bit,” Daddy said. “But your new friend that’s come into town is sure gonna have a lot of folks ‘round these parts all kinds of upset. Ain’t no telling what some of them might try to do. Patterson’s plant is a big part of what keeps this whole area from going under and plenty of people depend on a paycheck from ‘em. You watch yourself.”

  Nine

  Logan.

  That was Shane’s last name. I learned it while sitting with Momma at her clinic appointment the next day when all of a sudden, there he was on the television screen by her chair. He was being broadcast in high definition, standing in front of the steps at the old Federal Courthouse in the historic section of downtown Wilmington. He was dressed in a similar tailored black suit to the one I’d seen him wearing on the day we met, and for the first time, he was wearing a tie.

  His voice was confident and sure as he answered the questions of about a dozen reporters. A woman in a conservative, peach-colored outfit and three older gentlemen also clad in suits stood behind him.

  “Mr. Logan, why has the government brought suit against PCR, the phosphate plant owned by Patterson Reid?” A balding man asked and shoved his microphone in front of Shane.

  “Patterson Reid’s plant has poisoned the people, the wildlife, and the land for long enough,” he said, shaking his finger. “They’ve skirted the regulations time and again, and the EPA, along with other government agencies, has turned a blind eye for far too long. We aim to rectify that in the coming days.”

  There was no doubt about it; the EPA was going after Patterson Reid’s phosphate plant with guns blazing.

  “So that’s him?” mother asked curiously and I affirmed her with a nod. “Well, I can certainly see why you was so excited before. He’s a handsome one.”

  The sequence at the courthouse ended with a brief statement by Reid’s gaggle of attorneys, which outnumbered Shane’s team by more than three to one. They vehemently denied the allegations that the plant had willfully ignored restrictions set forth governing the expansion into the coastal wetlands, and denied the environmental testing results as inaccurate. When asked by one reporter how they intended to fight back, the lead defense attorney simply stated that they had, “Hired an outside consultant.”

  The rest of mother’s appointment went as usual, and despite her harping that I needn’t stay there with her, I wasn’t going anywhere. I needed to stay by her side, even in such a melancholy place, and I couldn’t just come right out and tell her how worried I was getting about her because she’d only dismiss it again as me fussing over nothing. In only the last few days she’d lost much weight; so much so that her cheekbones were plainly visible, becoming sharp edges that seemed to cast a dark shadow on her weakening smile, and her eyes had sunk into grayish circles that swallowed them like two sinking brown pebbles.

  At least her radiation treatments were going well. We went there every day, just across the street from the clinic, after her chemotherapy was complete. The oncologist we talked to had good things to say about her progress and didn’t seem overly worried about her appearance. Whatever bits of cancer hadn’t been removed by surgery were being zapped away by the radiation or destroyed by the cocktail of drugs she was getting. As far as he could tell u
s, it had not spread beyond her breast or the lymph nodes of that area. Before we left, the oncologist encouraged her to try and eat more and prescribed a handful of new medicines for her to try as a combat for the ever-present nausea that was slowly starving her.

  Back at the house, she adjusted her reading glasses and tried to decipher the complex language on the pill bottles. “Lorr…azz…eepam,” she said, and frustrated at that, picked up another bottle. “Pa-hen-ergan. Heck kinda name is that? Lordy me. Now they’s giving me chicken drugs.”

  “That’s Phenergan, Momma. It’s to help with your nausea. The other one is for your nerves. We administered both of them often when I was in nursing school.”

  “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with my nerves! I’m as cool as a cucumber!”

  “Not like that. It’s supposed to help you rest,” I tried to explain.

  She set the bottle down and pushed it away. “Don’t need no help with that, Mary Katherine. All that other stuff they put in my arm wears me plum out, along with watchin’ all those folks sleep and snore at the clinic.”

  I had to admit, she had a point. Sitting around for hours and being surrounded by people sleeping had me yawning most of the day. A time might come when she would need some help getting a little rest though, so I stored the bottle away in the medicine cabinet.

  “How’m I supposed to keep this thing down?” She asked, holding out the small white pill between her shaking fingers. I could tell she hated to sound like she was complaining, but it was a blessing that she was asking for my help at all.

  “Just try your best, Momma. If it stays down for thirty minutes or so, you ought to start feeling a lot better. If it doesn’t, then we can try again.”

  “Ugh.”

  With a look of absolute disgust, she tossed the pill into her mouth and washed it down with a gulp of apple juice. When she was done, she already looked like she was getting sick. Thankfully, after some time passed, she began to settle down.

  “Better?” I asked.

  She closed her eyes and nodded lightly before she spoke again. Her body language screamed that she was exhausted and stressed beyond even her uncanny capability to hide it. “Still not hungry though, honey. Cancer was what killed your grandmaw, you know. Not breast cancer mind you, hers was in the lungs. This was back when the farm used to grow tobacco, and didn’t nobody know how bad for you it was. Nearly everybody around here grew it and smoked the stuff, not like it is today.”

  “I remember. Hard to believe it’s been almost seven years since she passed,” I said, remembering my grandmother’s cheerful face. Her smile seemed to last all the way to the end.

  “She knew she was dyin’ for a good while. The doctors wanted to treat her for it, but she told ‘em all to go to hell.”

  I nodded and agreed, “Sounds like grandma, all right.”

  “She wanted to be in heaven, back together with your grandpa. That’s why none of us could talk her out of it. We jus’ about begged her to listen to that doctor. ‘When it’s my time, it’s my time,’ she’d say.”

  “They’d been together for a long time.”

  “Goin’ on fifty years. I’m sure you don’t remember him, though. Your grandpaw passed on when you was still learnin’ how to walk and wearin’ diapers. He was a good man, though. The best.”

  I touched my shirt, and felt the locket hanging on the other side, cool and round against my skin. The gift he’d given my grandmother was a symbol she’d held onto, and once she knew in her heart that she would feel his love again in the next life, that symbol was passed on to me.

  “I wasn’t trying to stop her from giving you that because I thought you shouldn’t have it,” mother said complacently. “If it belonged to anyone it was you. She’d always said that she wanted you to have it one day, but I was worried with you being so young, that you might somehow lose it.”

  “I did, Momma. In the accident.”

  “No honey, you didn’t,” she said, shaking her head knowingly. “You gave it to someone, and they brought it back to you. That locket was never lost, not for a minute.”

  Two hours later, I was in my room, getting ready for my date with Shane. Momma had gotten an appetite after all, and before I’d left her downstairs, she and Daddy had decided to go out on a little date of their own. She told me that it had seemed like forever since she’d been hungry, and if that man of hers didn’t take her out for a steak and an ice cream sundae he’d live to regret it. I don’t think Daddy ever looked so happy in all his life.

  In front of my mirror and fresh out of the shower, I did some gussying up. I chose a deep red lipstick that I hadn’t worn in ages and puckered up, showing my reflection the best kissy-face I could manage to hold without laughing as I put on the finishing touches. A thrill ran through me from my toes to the top of my head when I thought about what it might feel like to have Shane’s lips against mine before the night was out.

  What a man. Not even here, and already he was driving me mad.

  After reminding myself that the date hadn’t even started, I refocused on getting ready. A look at the glowing alarm clock on my nightstand told me that I only had another twenty minutes before Mr. Special came a-calling. Since my hair was cooperating once it was dry, I combed it out and teased the strands half-way up with the curling iron, leaving wavy lengths that fell in an auburn cascade across my shoulders. A bit of fluffing here and there, and the look was complete.

  Next, I dug out the sultry black dress from the closet and stepped into it, marveling in the slick, smooth feeling of the fabric as it glided over my skin. It hugged around my hips just enough to look good without restricting me, and the tight fit of it stretching around my breasts gave my bra a run for its money. After nearly twisting my elbow in half to get the tiny zipper in the back up, I spun in the mirror, and then promptly wondered who the gorgeous woman staring back at me was!

  “Hello Shane,” I whispered to my reflection with a lusty smile, and then blew it a kiss. It was silly, but I hadn’t been so excited in a long time. Sue me.

  By the time I finished my show in front of the mirror and put the last touches on my makeup, the doorbell chime rang out. “Coming!” I shouted, while simultaneously hopping into my little black shoes and then trying to rapidly navigate the steps down into the foyer. It was a lucky thing that our date didn’t end with me lying at the bottom of the hardwood stairs with a broken neck.

  Just as the doorbell rang again, I swung open the door, and my happy expression fell flat. Standing before me, wearing naught but his old boots and a pair of oil-covered blue jeans was Hale. He wiped his chiseled, sweaty chest with a cloth and gave me a burning look from underneath the faded baseball cap on his head.

  “Kat…” he started, and his eyes opened wide. “Hot damn, girl.”

  “Not right now, Hale.” I looked down the winding dirt road towards the street. God, Shane would be here any minute. “What is it? What do you want?”

  “Hang on, hang on, I want to take a mental picture-“

  I slapped at him with my purse, but missed by a mile. “You better tell me what you want right now or I’m slamming this door in your face.”

  “Alright, easy. Damn. Your old man home?”

  I anxiously looked around him, towards the street again. “No, he ain’t. Won’t be back till tonight, later. Him and Momma went out.”

  “Well, let him know one of the barrel housings on the harvester is shot. He’s gonna have to order a replacement if he wants me to fix it.”

  “Uh huh.” Was that a car coming towards the house? “Can’t you just tell this to Daddy in the morning?”

  “I reckon I could,” Hale said before slapping the cloth back over his shoulder and sticking out his stubbly chin for a scratch. “Say, ain’t that the dress I bought you for Valentine’s one year? What you all dressed up for, anyway?” His eyes traced the path of my own, which were still searching the long drive from the street to my house. “Ooh, I see. Kat’s out on the prowl already. No wonder you like
to be called that.”

  That is definitely a car. His car.

  “Just get out of here, Hale. This ain’t none of your business, remember?”

  “Maybe I’ll stay. Get to meet this gentleman caller and make sure he’s up to snuff. I reckon I can give him a few pointers about you. Tell ‘em what you like, and all that.”

  “Hale Ellis, if you don’t get away from this door and get back to that dirty ol’ garage so help me-“

  “Easy,” he said and raised his hands. “I’m gone. Don’t let me stop ya. I got my own plans tonight anyway with a smokin’ hot blonde.”

  With that, Hale duck-stepped off the porch and towards the garage, throwing up a big, overzealous wave to the incoming silver BMW and the dust cloud trailing in behind it.

  My heart felt like it was stuck in my throat as I watched Hale strut away, only disappearing from sight when the squeaking, rusted garage door shut loudly behind him. I knew there was a chance that he and Shane might cross paths eventually, but the last time I wanted that to happen was moments before we went on our first date. I could hardly believe Hale so easily passed up an opportunity to ruin my evening.

  Probably trying to act like he’s changed, I thought. It’s not sincere. He’ll never learn.

  “Wow-whee! He’s sure got a nice car,” a little voice from behind me said. It was Abby, and she was pressed up against the screen window and watching everything.

  “Abby! Get out of here!”

  Her nose pushed against the thin screen and she crossed her eyes comically. “Is that why you like him, Kat? Is he really rich?”

  “No! I…I don’t know if he’s rich or not.” I stepped closer to the window and reached back like I was about to pop it with my hand. “That has nothin’ to do with it, you! No go on, get!”