Eight Steps to Alpha
Taylor Sullivan
Copyright © 2018 by Taylor Sullivan
All rights reserved.
Cover designer: Imagination UnCOVERED
Editor: Leona Bushman
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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To my readers. Because without you, this crazy dream of mine would’ve never come true.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Epilogue
About the Author
Also by Taylor Sullivan
Chapter 1
Elliot Prescott walked into the bar, the hem of his oversized shirt halfway untucked, a briefcase slung over one shoulder, and his head pounding. The line ahead of him was so thick, he could barely see past the clique of college girls standing in line for the bathroom, but he shuffled his feet forward, moving toward the bar, where he gained a better vantage point.
“Where is she?” he muttered under his breath, craning his neck higher so he could see over the mass of people. Even at over six two, he struggled to find her. Tonight was Wednesday, which meant half priced appetizers and every seat in the house filled. It also meant they’d be there. This Wednesday and every Wednesday before it. He pushed his black framed glasses higher up on his nose and took a deep breath. If it was up to him, he’d be home now, in his PJ’s, playing video games, and forgetting about his hellish day. But Fe was adamant they meet tonight. Like always, to practice getting over her anxiety of large crowds.
Becca came toward him then, holding a tray of empties high above her head as she made her way to the kitchen.
“Ya seen Fe?” he hollered over a screech of laugher.
She didn’t stop, nor look up in his direction, but a slight jet of her chin gestured to the far corner of the restaurant.
Following her terse instruction, Elliot pushed his shirt sleeves higher on his forearms and found Fe sitting in a booth at the other end of the bar. Her headphones over her ears—even though he knew they played no music—her button like nose hidden behind her tablet, and her long, brown hair covering her face as she ignored the whole world reading her book.
There was something about her sitting there, all alone in that large booth, that tugged a grin right out of his mouth. She looked slightly disheveled, like she’d rapidly pulled a brush through her hair before leaving the house. She wore her “The book was better” t-shirt, with a flannel over top, but it was the look on her face which tickled him the most. Like she was reading something in public she probably shouldn’t.
Dodging tables and people, he made his way toward her and slid into the booth. She didn’t look up, didn’t give any indication she’d seen him other than the slight curve of her lip which showed off her dimple. It was enough. His shoulders instantly relaxed.
“You’re late,” she finally said without looking up at him. “Again.”
He loosened his neck-tie down a few inches, undid the top two buttons of his shirt, and set his briefcase on the seat beside him. He slouched lower in the booth, wondering which one of her stories had her so captivated tonight. “Well you don’t get noticed for leavin’ early.” he drawled out.
Her mouth curved in a lopsided grin as she regarded him with a smile. “Are we talking about your career? Or about the hot new boss you’re always jabbering about? I’m curious.”
He flopped his menu open on the table and analyzed here. “Career, I guess.” But then he thought better of. “Or maybe both.”
Glancing across the table, he took in the hazel eyes staring back at him. Mary Fisher was the new public relations manager at Fredric and Morgan’s. She was intelligent, tall, stunning, and no matter how hard he tried to impress her, she never seemed to notice him.
Shoving the menu to the middle of the table, he glanced away. Fe was smart. Everyone loved her, and he trusted her completely. “What am I doing wrong, Fe? Do I talk too much? Have an annoying twitch I’m not aware of?”
She scrunched up her nose, amused with the notion, but tilted her head as she dug through her purse. She produced a tube of lip-gloss, silently regarding him as she smeared it over her mouth. “You’re fiiine, Elli. You haven’t met the right girl, that’s all.”
He pushed himself higher on the seat and leaned forward. Fine? Was that all he was to her? Fine?
“I don’t get it. I work out, I’m smart, and I’m nice.”
“Humble too.” She nodded.
“But no matter how hard I try, I get nothin’.”
The server came toward them then, interrupting their conversation, which was fine by Elliot. The topic was starting to annoy him anyhow.
Glancing over the specials one last time, he took a breath, and placed his order. Burger, loaded fries, onion rings.
Normally, he didn’t let things like this bother him. Normally, he was the guy who went with the flow and didn’t complain, but work had taken its toll on him today. Life had taken its toll. Not only because of the acquisition which required every bit of his attention, but...
Determined to forget about the whole day, he glanced back at his best friend and set his jaw.
“Maybe you’re too nice,” she said to him. “Ever think of that?” Her brows were lifted high on her forehead, indicating how serious she was.
He frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“To women, I mean. Maybe you’re too nice.”
He scoffed. “Is that even a thing?”
Her head tilted. “We are living in the era of the alpha male.”
He laughed, alpha male. But then he stopped, lifted his glasses, and pinched the bridge of his nose where it suddenly began to ache. “What? You want us to throw you over our shoulder, grunt?”
She shook her head, grabbed her glass of water, but her eyes took on an analytical edge. “You’re right. It’s silly.” She set down her glass, and laid her napkin in her lap. “Be yourself, Elli. When the right girl comes along, she’ll love you just the way you are.”
Glancing back at the TV, he took in the score for the baseball game, but something about her words bothered him. “I don’t like that answer,” he muttered.
Because at twenty-four, Elliot was sick of waiting around. He’d put in his time, paid his dues, and moved half way across the US to unbury himself from the shadow which kept everyone from seeing him. “Do you—" But he stopped himself, trying to form the sentence just right. “And what I mean by you,” he corrected, �
��is the entire female species—want men like that?” He tilted his head toward her e-reader, where the cover to her latest romance novel stared up at him. “Like the guys in your romance novels?” He snatched the tablet away from her fingers, pulled up her library, and began swiping through the content of her device. “Finding Dominic? Chasing Fin?” He laughed. “Do you really get off on this stuff?”
She seized the e-reader away from him and tucked it quickly back in her purse. “They’re fun, that’s all. An escape from reality. I’d probably throat punch half of them in person.”
He actually chuckled, because he had no doubt she spoke the truth. Fe may have been a slight in stature, but she was a girl fitting of her name. Fe, the element for iron. His little iron woman.
He pushed forward in his seat, bracing his forearms on the table. “You could help me you know.” His eyes narrowed with a sense of determination. “Help me to be more like them.”
Her eyebrows pinched together, and she shook her head. “That’s the worst idea you’ve ever had, and trust me, you’ve had a lot of them.”
Holding her stare, he didn’t let up. “Mary will be out of the office for four weeks.”
“So?”
“I thought while she was gone…” But he stopped. Because that familiar voice filled his ears again. That awful echo of a voice he’d been trying to run away from his whole life. That he wasn’t good enough. That he was kidding himself. He let out a breath. “Never-mind.” He took a long gulp of sweet tea, then glanced back to the TV in the corner of the room. But when he met Fe’s eyes again, there was a funny look on her face.
“Why?” she asked suddenly. “Why do you want her so badly if she doesn’t notice you?”
He scrunched up this face. “Does there have to be a reason?”
“I guess not.” She shrugged. “Not for most men anyway, but we’re talking about you.”
Suddenly hating the fact she knew him so well, he leaned forward. “Fine. I guess if I’m honest with myself, I’m tired of being the nice guy. Maybe for once in my life, I want to be noticed.”
Her jaw tightened, and he wondered what she was thinking. If she was jealous, or hurt, or cared at all that he was interested in another girl.
He stared down at the table and shook his head. “But you know what? I don’t just want to be not noticed. I want that girl to want me too. To think I’m so irresistible, she has fantasies about me, to be so affected by my presence, she can’t think straight when I sit too close her. I want to be that guy. Just once.”
He let out a breath and tossed a garlic fry into his mouth. “Or maybe I’ve just had a bad day. It could also be that” He buried his face in his hands and chuckled, even though nothing he’d said was amusing to him in the slightest. He raked his hands over his scalp and glanced up at Fe again.
Like an emotional knee jerk, he suddenly regretted everything he’d said. Fe, who was the least emotional girl he’d ever met, was now staring back at him with a look on her face like she might cry.
Before he could say another word, she pushed herself from her seat and tore her headphones from around her neck. She stood with her legs braced apart, like she had something important to say, and then suddenly, both of her hands were fondling his chin length hair. “We could cut it.” She urged. “Mess it up a little.” She ran her fingers through his hair, moving it away from his face. “Can you grow a beard?” Her eyes narrowed. “How about contacts?” She plucked his black framed glasses from his nose and tossed them on the table.
He wasn’t sure what to make of this, or what to say for that matter. She continued to turn his face this way and that, studying him in a way one would a ripe watermelon at the grocery store.
He pushed her hands away, finally having had enough. “What’s gotten into you? Of course, I can grow a beard. I’m a man, Fe. Men grow beards. That’s what we do.” He anchored his black-framed-glasses back on his nose, but his voice cracked a little. “Do chicks really dig beards? I thought they hated that stuff?”
She tilted her head, continuing to examine him, and proceeded to sit down in her seat. “Not beards per se… Stubble. A five o’clock shadow. It makes men ten times hotter.”
“Is that so?”
She nodded with a grin. “It’s science.”
He shook his head, slightly amused by her impish expression. Everything was science to Fe. Everything.
Pulling a legal pad of paper from her bag, she started to write. “First things first, we need a list.”
“A list?” He laughed, “Like the ones plastered all over our refrigerator door?”
She nodded, moving her tablet out of his line of sight.
“And what will this list say?” he asked, leaning forward.
She bit the cap off the pen and spit it on the center of the table. “Number one.” She wrote in bold letters. “Learn. How. To. Cuss.”
His eyebrows squeezed together with amusement. “Seriously? Cussing is part of your big master plan?”
“All alphas cuss. The worst I’ve ever heard you say is damn.”
He snorted. “I cuss.”
“No, you don’t. I’ve known you for five years, and it doesn’t happen. Maybe once. On a Tuesday, you dropped a plate and—”
“I don’t cuss around you, because you’re a woman, and my mama raised me better than that.” He crossed his arms at his chest to prove a point.
“See!” She laughed. “That’s what I’m talking about. Alpha’s don’t care what their mothers think. Or if they do, their probably dead. They also have some sort of deep dark childhood, and their mouths are filthier than a restroom toilet after a bar fight!” She cocked an eyebrow, pleased with her assessment, and leaned across the table. “If this is going to work, you’ll need to forget about your sweet Texas upbringing and trust me. You need to cuss.” Her lips lifted in a lopsided grin, and she wrinkled her nose. “Cuss, Elliot. I dare you.”
He rolled his eyes, somewhat insulted by how little faith she had in his abilities. “What do you want me to say? Asshole? Shit?”
She tilted her head to the side and cocked a brow. “Fuck. If we’re going to do this, you have to go for the big daddy.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a laugh. “Really?” But the way she was studying him, the way she always did when trying to figure out some complex scientific equation, made him sit a little straighter. “Okay—fuck. What else you want?”
She slapped her hand over her face and shook her head. “You can’t say it like that. You have to say it with meaning. Really mean it, Elli.”
He looked over his shoulder, then repeated. “Fuck! There, are you happy?”
“No.” She frowned. “You looked over your shoulder first. Who does that?”
“I was checkin’ for kids.”
“We’re in a fucking bar, pussy! Say the word!”
He sat up straighter. “Fuck!”
“Deeper, stronger!”
“Okay, fuck.”
She rubbed over her eyes and groaned. “Elliot, I don’t mean to sound rude, but every time you say it, your eyebrows pinch together like you’re in pain. It’s just a word. Say the fucking word!”
“Fuck.”
“Again!”
“Fuck!”
“Elliot, seriously!”
“Okay, you fucking cunt!”
Her face hardened, and she made a T motion with her hands. “Stop.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Don’t ever say that again.”
“Cunt?”
“Shhh.” She made a zipping motion across her lips and peered over her shoulder.
“Yes!” she whisper yelled.
“Wait, so you can call me a pussy, but I can’t— “
“Elliot, I love you, but if you say the C-word one more time, I’m going to kick you in the balls.”
He chuckled.
“Listen, I don’t know how it works in Texas, but in California, we have rules.”
“Rules about the C-word?”
&nbs
p; She rolled her eyes. “Listen, both women and men can call a man a pussy. That’s a given. A woman can call another woman a pussy, but a man can’t call a woman a pussy. Well… unless he’s…” She stopped. “Never mind. What I’m trying to say is—under no conditions, none, do you ever use the C-word. It’s disrespectful and demeaning.” She nodded, eyes wide, and brows up on her forehead again.
He shook his head and laughed. “Where do you come up with this stuff?”
She plucked a fry from his basket. “It’s science.”
They continued talking about the plan over dinner. A meticulous, detailed, plan that Fe herself was only capable of. She flipped through her catalog of romance novels, every once in a while, stopping to jot down a note or two, but eventually she closed out her device and turned to him. “I just figured out who you remind me of.”
He hadn’t realized he reminded her of anyone, but now he was curious. “Oh yeah?” He grinned. “Who? Is it Ian Somerhalder? Someone once—”
She placed her e-reader back in her purse and shook her head. “The Geek Squad.”
He leaned back in his seat, swallowing the sip of sweet tea before he spit it out. “You mean those guys from the computer store?”
She nodded.
“The ones who drive around in mini vans?”
She nodded again. “Yes.”
“That bad?”
She wiped over her mouth, surely to hide her amusement. “Not bad," she argued. “But we can do better.”
He placed his glass on the table, but immediately thought better of it, and took another sip. “Okay, so we cut my hair, I grow a shadow…”
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