“Actually, I have that information for you right now. It just hit my desk.” He pulled the phone away from his ear to whisper, “Can you email that to the regulatory agency?”
I nodded and trotted back to my desk to forward the file, then came back to stand in the doorway and ogle my mate.
He got off the phone and grinned at me. “He says there should be no problem with the funding. They meet the day after tomorrow to go over applications.” He stood up and came around the desk to take my hands. “He also congratulated me on my extremely efficient personal assistant. I think he wants to hire you away.”
“He can’t offer me the fringe benefits you do.” I smiled up at him seductively, but food distracted me. “You interested in lunch?”
“It’s only eleven.”
I blushed.
“Oh,” he breathed in comprehension. “Let’s go downstairs and see what they’ve got.”
“Thank you,” I said fervently and stood on tiptoes to kiss him. Abel took my cravings seriously. Actually, he took everything seriously—I’d found him, shortly after our mating, with his nose stuck in a ‘What to Expect’ book. It made him a little…overzealous…sometimes, but I was touched that he cared so much.
His phone rang, my biggest competition for his attention. Some days I wanted to take the thing and toss it in the pond. “Go ahead and answer it. I’ll go check into those valves for the brewery.” I took myself and my cravings back out to the outer office.
“Another phone call, dear?” Louise asked in sympathy.
I sighed and plunked down in my chair, rubbing my two-month bump forlornly. “Yes. And the pup is hungry.”
“What does he want today?”
“Not sure.” Louise was good at distracting me, and I wanted to be distracted from my subtle discontent. I knew it was the pregnancy hormones making me so possessive and easily knocked off balance, but knowing it and not being affected by it were two different things. So I focused on the vague request that the pup was sending and tried offering different things in my head.
Strawberries? No.
Blackberries? Sounds good.
Spinach? Hmmm, has potential.
Sweet peppers and some walnuts. Check.
Baby tomatoes, of course.
Maybe he or she wants a salad.
I snorted and told Louise, “I think I’m having a vegetarian.”
“That’ll be interesting.”
I laughed. “He’s probably going to be a while. Did you want to take early lunch and I’ll take the late one?”
“That’s a good idea.” She began tidying up her desk. “Do you want me to bring anything back in case he takes too long?”
“No. If he isn’t off by the time you’re back, I’m going on my own. Or me and Little Abel, anyway—I have no illusions about who’s running the show now.”
She chuckled and patted my shoulder as she went by, though I could tell she really wanted to pat my minuscule baby bump. “I won’t be long. Then we can roust him out.”
“All right.” I watched her go, then turned back to my computer.
The valves were on their way, thankfully, but it was putting us behind in getting the brewery done. The bottling line was set up and ready to go, and they were bottling small batches for local drinking just to get the hang of it, but we couldn’t go to commercial production without those valves.
Well, if I was stuck here, maybe I could dig back into that True Omega stuff I’d been neglected since we’d started going full throttle at solar panel business. I pulled out another recording and slipped the earbuds into my ears to start the process of transcribing it.
The new shifter, Justin Montana Border, came in the door. “Is the Alpha in?” he asked in that cowboy’s drawl of his. I was pretty sure the drawl was fake—every once in a while it slipped and he had to catch himself, but no one seemed to care. Me? It made me nervous. He’d only been here two weeks, and already he had the omegas and more than a few non-omegas in a tizzy of excitement. I’d heard some of them giggling about how sexy he was, something Holland and I did our best to squash.
Okay, he was sexy, with cropped ash blond hair and eyes a bright blue like the sky sometimes in spring. He walked in a long-legged slink, thumbs hooked in his belt to draw attention to his hips and what lay between them. But Holland and I both agreed that there was something off about him, and we did our best to keep our distance.
Unfortunately, my job meant I had to deal with him today. “He’s on a call right now, I’m not sure how long he’ll be.” I clicked over to Abel’s schedule and scrolled through the rest of his day. “You can wait, but I can’t guarantee he’ll get off in time to see you. I can probably squeeze you in around two if it’s urgent.” I looked up to find the Montana Border shifter standing over me, just a little too close.
“I can wait. But I wouldn’t mind squeezing into you.”
His smile left a greasy feeling on my soul. “Could you step back, please?”
“Now why would I want to get farther from a charming little piece like you?”
“Please move away.” I stood up and stepped out from behind my desk.
He followed me. “Come on, I’ve heard the stories. You’re all over here looking for a mate. When I get back to Montana, I’m going to be an important shifter. I’ll need a mate and I’m taking applicants on a trial basis.”
“I’m not interested.” What the fuck? How did he not know I was mated? “Go sit down, I’ll tell the Alpha you’re here.”
He grabbed for my arm before I could escape into Abel’s office. “Now, I know you omegas are taught to be shy, but we’re both adults here.” He started to tug me toward him.
I was about to yell for Abel, or kick him, or something, when the hallway door opened again.
“Bax, what’s that man of yours—Hey! Get your hands off him!” Duke strode across the room and grabbed the Montana shifter by the wrist and the back of the neck. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, pawing at the Alpha’s mate? Get the hell out of here, and count yourself lucky it wasn’t him that caught you.” Duke forcefully removed my wrist from his grasp and dragged him back to the door, tossing him unceremoniously out into the hall. “You okay?” he asked as he crossed the room again.
I nodded, still a little shaken. “I’m fine. He’s young.”
“So are you.”
“I was going to add stupid too.”
Duke barked a laugh. “Well, that you aren’t.”
“I try not to be. Are you looking for Abel?”
“Yeah. Is he busy?”
“On the phone. Just let me check, see how it’s going.”
I poked my head in the door. Abel held up two fingers and I nodded.
“Two minutes, he said.”
“I’ll wait then.”
It wasn’t quite two minutes before Abel stuck his head out the door. “You ready to go eat?”
I shook my head. “I sent Louise to lunch. Duke’s here to see you.”
“Oh.” He looked disappointed, but he rallied and jerked his head at Duke. “Come on in.”
I gave Duke a quick imploring look as he passed and he nodded at me, but he didn’t look happy about it. Abel didn’t need to know about the incident; he had enough on his plate as it was.
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
“Would you like to go visit in Buffalo Gap again?” Abel asked me one morning. It was still early, early enough that even Fan wasn’t up, and we were basking in the sated relaxation that followed an uninterrupted night’s sleep. His hands drifted lazily over me, and their touch made me shiver in delight.
“You cold?” he asked, and reached for a blanket.
“No. That wasn’t cold.” I burrowed closer and breathed deeply to take in his scent. “What time is it?”
“Twenty to Fan,” he joked.
I snorted in laughter. “Not really enough time then.” I sighed and snuggled back in as close as I could with a three and a half month belly getting in the way. “Are you going
to Buffalo Gap again?”
He nodded. “To set up the solar panels. The technicians are as competent as they’re going to get.”
“What about Jackson-Jellystone and Montana Border?” I really wanted to see Justin gone. After Duke had thrown him out of the office, he’d been sullen and had sent more than one dirty look my way. Some of the other omegas had taken to avoiding him too, hopefully getting that same vibe I was getting. But Bram, and Iszak, who’d come to us from Arkansas’ Greening Moon pack, appeared to be enthralled by him. And Justin encouraged it, which worried me. I had occurred to me that our offer for Jason might not have cooled all the anger in Montana Border.
“The Jackson guys are going too, but Justin’s staying. He’s going to apprentice with Jason’s dad over the summer. They need more tradespeople there.”
We did…they did. Not me anymore. But Justin? “Does he have to?”
Abel kissed the top of my head. “You’re not the only one responsible for them. I’ve talked to Bram’s parents, and to a few other responsible shifters. They’ll be more closely supervised. All of them.” He put extra emphasis on those last words. “So, road trip? I think that’s what the humans call it.”
I laughed. “I have no idea. But yes, I’d love to visit.” I hadn’t seen my family at all the last time, though Abel told me my mother had been by. I didn’t remember it at all. “When do you want to go?”
“Couple of days? Let me wrap a few things up here first.”
Wait a minute… “What are you going for?” Abel didn’t know the first thing about hooking up solar panels.
“We’re signing the papers for Jason once the panels at Montana Border are hooked up.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful.” I hugged him hard. “Will we bring the pups?”
“We can. We’ll be in the truck and the van anyway. We can send Justin and whoever comes to do the plumbing part back with the truck after we’re done in Montana Border, and take Mac with us to Buffalo Gap. Kind of a long trip, but we never got a honeymoon.”
“He won’t want to get right back to Jason?”
“I talked to him yesterday. The problem is seating—unless we tie someone to the roof of the van, we don’t have enough seats to take extra security until after Jackson-Jellystone. And it’s not like we can leave Mac behind, since he’s the one getting mated.”
“I see.” I guessed I saw. It was still a shame, though. “That’s a long time to be gone. You sure you can take that much time off?” Coming from a man I practically had to knock over the head like a caveman to get him out of the office, this struck me as odd.
“I’ll bring the laptop—all the hotels have internet. Quin put in for the last of his leave and finally got approved, so he’ll take over the day-to-day running of the pack. Not much of a vacation for me, but it gives me a chance to sweep you off your feet.”
“You did that ages ago,” I replied absently, my mind already racing ahead.
A vacation. I’d heard of them, read about them, but no one in the packs really took a vacation. Mercy Hills shifters had more spare time than I’d seen in either of my other packs, but they all still worked long, hard hours. Now that it was summer, it felt like half the pack was out working in the gardens, plus doing whatever else they did in the winter. The school-aged shifters were also out of school, working in gardens or trying out different jobs by following around established shifters. I wished Buffalo Gap could see this; it might give them hope.
“So, you want to go?” Abel asked again.
“Yes. Definitely.” Except… “What about?” I gestured at my belly.
Abel began playing his fingers over the back of my shoulder. “We’re not going to be able to hide a new baby in the fall, we talked about that. I say we treat it as nothing special, and deal with the consequences when they come. If we’re casual enough about it, maybe they won’t be so bad.”
I was glad to hear that he expected some repercussions, though I thought his hope that they wouldn’t be terrible and upsetting was a bit over-optimistic. Then again, as an omega, I’d been pretty sheltered. I had to trust that he knew what he was doing; he so often did.
“All right.” If we were going, though, there was another problem to deal with. “I’ll need clothes before we go.” I’d been willing to stretch things and get by with nice tops and one or two pairs of pants of stretchy material, but I remembered those rare times when Uncle Mitchel had gone visiting and how nice the clothes his mate packed were. And Patrick, even, had insisted I have ‘company’ clothes, though he never took me outside walls with him. I didn’t want to show Abel up.
He shifted his weight a little, pulling me more on top of him. “Yes, you’ll need something to show you off. Bram will know who the best person is, I suppose. Call him today and have him introduce you.”
“I will.” And maybe if Bram and I had something to bond over, he might listen to my advice about Justin.
The baby poked, hard. “Oh!” I cried and smiled as I put my hand over that spot. I’d felt flutters before, but nothing to run to Abel for. There was no point teasing him until he could feel it too. “Give me your hand!” I placed it over that spot and held my breath, waiting. Abel’s muscles were tense beneath me.
Poke.
“I felt it!” He spread his fingers wider, pressing more firmly against my skin, head bent close to my body as if he could hear as well as feel. “He’s really in there.” Then he looked sheepish and slightly embarrassed. “I suppose there’s nothing exciting about this for you.”
“It’s always exciting.” I placed my hand over his and marveled at the difference between this pregnancy and my others. I’d never have done this with Patrick. But Abel… I kind of wished I’d told him about the flutters and let him try to feel them. “There’ll be more from now on. It’ll get easier to feel.”
“They get stronger?”
I smiled at him and this time it was my turn to kiss the top of his head. “A lot stronger. Sometimes you can see my belly change shape.”
“Really?” His fingers tapped against me, a sure sign that he was thinking. “So this is what Mac was talking about.”
“Probably.” I hadn’t been around for those conversations, but I could guess. “So what do you think, Pap?”
“I,” he declared, laying a kiss against the swell of my womb, “think that I am the happiest shifter in the world right now.”
I smiled, and didn’t contradict him. But I was pretty sure that lucky shifter was me.
CHAPTER SEVENTY
Jackson-Jellystone would be what Abel called a ‘flying visit’. We’d get the panels installed—on Roland’s house, of course—and Abel even threw in one for heating water, which I thought was generous of him, but I suspected he had some plan in mind. He didn’t like Roland enough to just give him things.
I would be glad to be out of here. The memories were bad enough, but we’d hardly been here an hour before I noticed people strolling by the yard while I played with the pups. It was hot, which I was used to, but there was enough moisture in the air to wash yourself with, which I’d never quite accustomed myself to. So I’d taken the pups outside, wearing my lightest clothes and the pups in absolutely nothing. Roland had set out a half barrel under a tree and filled it with water, and the pups and I played in it, trying to cool off.
My t-shirt was soaked through, as were my shorts—my figure showed plainly. And that was the source of all the curiosity.
I did my best to ignore it all, giving friendly nods to those whose eyes I managed to catch. Despite Abel’s assurances, it was hard to ignore the looming explosion I was sure was going to happen.
I saw the two other omegas in Jackson-Jellystone hiding behind some trees, trying to be casual in their inspection. I wondered what they wanted—we’d never been friends. They’d resented my position as Alpha’s mate, and after his death had gone out of their way to make me feel my loss of status. It wasn’t very mature of me to want to rub my new mate in their faces, let alone my highly unusu
al pregnancy.
Why not? A little bit wouldn’t hurt, right? “Raleigh, Vitale, hello!” I stood up, set Noah on my hip so I didn’t have to worry about him in the water, and strolled over to the small group. Their eyes widened, and more than a few of them stared in horrified fascination at my burgeoning belly. “How are you?” I noted Robin’s last pup—now a toddler—at his side, and the six-month-old on Vitale’s hip. Raleigh’s pup had a runny nose. “Vitale, new pup? How lovely.” I let my hand come to rest on my soon-to-be new pup and hitched Noah a little higher on my hip, to show how healthy he was.
“Yes,” Vitale said slowly. “Just this spring.” His gaze was stuck on my belly, but I’d be damned before I’d help him out, so I pretended I didn’t notice his fixed stare.
“And Raleigh, this is your youngest, right?” Of course it was. “He’s grown.” Not a lot. I wondered how much they were getting to eat and immediately felt ashamed. “Would the pups like to come play in the water? I was about to make a snack for everyone.” Roland had bought in guest food—I remembered seeing a big wheel of cheese. Cheese and crackers would make a good snack, high in protein. The pack gardens were producing as well. Strawberries to go with the cheese?
Little Abel kicked to show his or her agreement with that idea.
“Oh, we couldn’t…” Raleigh said, but his tone wasn’t at all firm.
“Of course you can,” I insisted. “I’d love to catch up on everything that’s been happening.” And, surprisingly, I was. This had been my home for four years and, while I didn’t exactly miss it, I felt something. As we wiped little Henry’s nose and got both him and Eldon out of their clothes, our chatter went from being strained and polite to having a casual randomness I remembered from when I lived in Buffalo Gap and my cousins and I would gossip while doing our chores.
If the other onlookers had expected a blowup between us, they were sadly disappointed, and once it became obvious there would be no more gossip to spread, they gradually drifted away.
Abel's Omega(Gay Paranomal MM Mpreg Romance) (Mercy Hills Pack Book 2) Page 32
