CLAIMED BY THE ALPHA UNDERBOSS

by Candace Ayers

  And would live not much beyond that.

  It was obvious that Zed’s current system wasn’t working. He couldn’t keep traipsing back and forth between the office and the mountainside He needed a better way to keep tabs on his hoard while still managing the office. What he really needed was a person to work the office while he kept his days and nights up on the mountainside.

  Yes, as the morning sun began to bleed into the muted light of afternoon, he was determined he would hire someone to sit behind the desk, to field the needs back at the office, and he would be able to go on almost as he had before this had all started — when it had just been him and his hoard, and that beautiful mountainside, untainted by the humans and their own special brand of greed.

  There was no choice, she reminded herself again, the word becoming ugly and monstrous in her head. She had never had any choice — why should this be any different.

  She paused in front of the little building with the embossed Broker sign hanging above the door.

  If anyone could point her in the right direction for a boarding house or work, it would be the town broker. She took one more deep breath of resolution, held Abigail close to her heart, and swung the door open.

  Zed was making his way through a stack of papers he had absolutely no interest in dealing with when she stepped through the door. Her hair was swept back under one of those oversized bonnets the women seemed to feel were in fashion, but he could see pale strands of hair peeking out from beneath.

  “Hello,” she said, taking a moment to look around the room.

  He nodded, his expression tight. “Good afternoon.” He paused in his paper shuffling, suddenly feeling awkward and unprepared.

  He dealt mostly with men. Mostly with men who had a very clear agenda, and wasted no time or politeness when coming to him. Their interactions were strictly centered on business. There was no need for pleasantries. Straightforward. Easy. There was no decoding, no second-guessing.

  This woman was different. She seemed to hesitate just inside the door, to waffle between one thing and another, though Zed had yet to figure out what those things she was torn between might be.

  She was studying the floor when she said, “I was wondering if you might know anyone who’s employing? Or a boarding house in the area?” She took a deep breath, seemed to hold it, like she needed to know the answer and wasn't sure she could handle the response.

  He gave her a hard look. Her faded skirt. Her worn boots.

  She was just what he needed.

  “Well,” he said, setting down the stack of papers and propping his hands on the desk, leaning forward toward her. “It just so happens I need someone in this office here, during business hours so I can maintain the mine sites up the mountain.

  She seemed to perk up, like a freshly watered plant, color easing back through her and she took another step toward him. For the first time, he noticed the infant she held cradled to her chest. “Do you read? Write?” he asked, gesturing to one of the simple chairs for her to sit. “Not necessary, but it may be beneficial.”

  She took the seat, and Zed had the distinct impression she needed rest more than she should have. She nodded. “I know my letters.”

  “Wonderful,” he said. How fortuitous that she should show up in his office looking for work directly after he’d decided such a position was the solution to his problems. He brought a hand to the back of his head, where it still throbbed from the attack. “When would you like to start?”

  “Well, immediately would be good. I mean,” she corrected, “I have no other obligations, so am available to start as soon as you are ready to have me start.” She was playing with the hem of her sleeve, betraying her anxiety. It didn’t escape his notice.

  “Immediately is what I need. Now, you mentioned needing a boarding space? For you and the baby only?” Zed wasn’t sure why it mattered, but somehow, he realized, it did.

  He had been thinking about the little two bedroom he maintained in the town. The perfect size for the woman and the child. He could already picture them there, making that house their home.

  She nodded. “Just the two of us.”

  Her eyes had become dark, somber, and Zed was sure there was more to her story she wasn’t ready to share.

  “I have just the place.” He remembered he was supposed to smile, that it was considered customary and polite, so he made the effort. “If you’re free, we can take a walk down there now and you can see if it will suit your needs.” He wanted her to say yes. The more time he spent with her, the more time he was sure he needed to spend with her.

  He moved, stepping out from behind the desk and toward the door, swinging it wide. The woman was right behind him, the baby still sleeping against her bosom, close enough now that her sweet, fresh scent drifted toward him. He felt a new tingle at the back of his neck, one unrelated to the dull ache that seemed to have taken up permanent residence there. One he couldn’t place.

  “Zedekiah Martín,” he said, realizing belatedly that he had yet to introduce himself to her, and that he had no idea of her name either.

  “Paulette Johnson,” she said in return, allowing him to take her hand for a brief moment. “And this is Abigail.” She tipped the baby toward him, so he had a clear shot of her sleeping face.

  He tore his eyes away from the child. “So nice to meet you both. I can’t say what great timing you have to come by today. I was just thinking how much I needed someone to help me out around here; the commute was becoming too much.”

  The commute was many things — tedious, annoying, dangerous, apparently — but Zed had never considered it ‘too much’ in the past. What he needed was a way to spend more hours in the mine. More hours with his hoard. Less hours here, dealing with the minutia his business as a broker demanded. Less hours pretending to be what society expected him to be. But this way, perhaps he could scale his visits back to town to once or twice a week. If he could find a way to convince the townspeople he was just like they were even though he spent little time in the town, he could conceivably come back even less.

  Things were falling into place.

  She followed him down the street and toward the little house. He maintained it because it was what people expected from someone like him. A person who expected to work in the community, to be received by the community, had to live in the community as well. As it was, he had a hard time being accepted by the others. He needed all the help he could get. Though, in truth, when he was in town he spent his nights in the office, prowling, waiting for the moments he could be back in his true home. He was never at ease, always looking toward the mountain and the open sky.

  The door unlocked easily, like it had been just waiting for someone just like Paulette. He pushed it wide, ushering Paulette and Abigail into the little house in front of him.

  It was neat and clean, with few furnishings, and looked decidedly unlived in, but even so, it was more than Paulette could have imagined having just a few hours earlier. She had gone from having nothing but her name and her child, to having a job and a place to live, and she was beyond grateful for that.

  “This will be perfect,” she said, turning toward Zed, her eyes bright with something like relief and excitement.

  Zed nodded. He was captivated by them, their very color, like the color of the ocean where it met the sky, at once bright and bottomless. “Very well,” he said, clearing his throat and trying to convince himself that she was just a woman. Just a human, like any other. There was nothing special about her. “We’ll work it into your compensation. I’ll draw some papers up and get you settled in the office and then I’ll be on my way.” He was already moving toward the door. Even when feet separated them, when they were too far from one another for him to actually see her eyes, he could remember them, their shape, that color, the emotion in them.

  Burned in his mind.

  He couldn’t wait to get out of there. The room seemed much too small, like there wasn’t enough space for the three of them there.


  But at the same time, he realized he was dragging his feet. They should have already left the house. There was nothing left to see. He should have pointed her down the street to the woman he knew spent her days watching other people’s children. But instead he was standing there in the small room, watching Paulette as she walked around its perimeter, poking her head through the doorways and into the other rooms, running her hands along the wood walls, the back of the chairs.

  She was compelling, in her way. Every move she made was swift and delicate, tentative and sure at once. He knew with certainty he could spend all day watching her.

  He gave his head a shake. Women were not something he spent his time thinking about. He had no use for them, and they certainly had no use for him. This woman would be no different, he assured himself. Whatever was happening to him when she was close could be controlled.

  “Are you ready?” he asked, and his voice was hard and strained, and even to his own ears sounded angrier and more aggressive than he had intended.

  But if she was put off by his words or tone she did nothing to suggest so, just turned toward him, her smile radiant, and said. “Yes, quite ready,” before crossing the room toward him.

  Chapter Three

  He wasn’t sure when or how it had happened, exactly, but somewhere between leaving the house and arriving at the office, Zed had gone from feeling that having this woman as a tenant and employee was the best plan of action, to thinking that what he really needed was a woman who could be portrayed as his wife.

  Yes, that was what he really needed. An employee, a tenant — those things were nice. They would help his cause, certainly. But the best case scenario would be if he had a wife. Not just a wife— Paulette.

  In name only, of course. He wasn’t looking for anything other than a woman the world would perceive as his mate. Another little checkmark they could place next to his name. Just your every day, average broker who happened to be a little eccentric and spent the bulk of his time meandering through the mines. An instant family.

  Now, he wasn’t as good at the whole human thing as he probably should have been. He’d spent many years away, and to be honest he hadn’t missed humanity much while he was gone. Even with him limited experience, he didn’t expect Paulette would jump at his offer.

  He was still mulling over the best way to approach the topic when he shut the door behind him, closing the two of them off from the rest of the world; the perfect time for the conversation he knew he had to have.

  “So, Paulette,” he said, trying to source every ounce of gentility, every bit of finesse he had. He just hoped he had enough in him to pull off the proposal. “Tell me about how you came to be here.”

  Her shoes. Her dress. Her hair. Even her name marked her as East Coast. Zed didn’t have a lot of experience over there — in fact he predated the existence of the area and had never been — but he saw many of those New Englanders slip through the town, soulless after their journey, weighted by the seen and unseen, burdened by what was in front of them as well as what they had left behind.

  “I came with my husband.” Her voice was hollow, and she didn’t offer any more information regarding him.

  Zed bristled at the mention of a husband, though he should have hardly been surprised, with the young in hand. It did make the most sense.

  And yet, she had not mentioned a husband previously. She had said there would only be the two of them — Paulette and Abigail.

  “What has become of him — this husband?” Zed asked, convinced he needed to know the answer before he broached the next part of the conversation.

  “He was killed on the journey here. But we were too far from home for me to return with Abigail.” She seemed to look through him, past him, into yesterday. “If only we’d been closer to home when it had happened. I could have returned to my mother and father. They would have taken me. A respectable widow.” She shook her head, as though she were dispelling the memory, and then seemed to pull herself back together, pushing the past away from her and returning to the present.

  There was a long pause as he ran her words over in his mind. Even with his limited recognition of social nuances, he was able to pick up on how she had not said she’d wished it hadn’t happened at all — only that she’d wished her current position could have been different. That she could have been back home with her family.

  He nodded, but couldn’t follow her sentiment up with much more than that. He knew he had nothing helpful to offer there.

  He clasped his hands behind his back, pacing from one end of the room to the other. The baby began to fuss in Paulette’s arms, and Zed wasn’t sure if it was his pacing or something else that had set the baby on edge.

  “Paulette,” he said, pausing in front of the door to look her squarely in the face. “There is something I am in even more need of than a tenant, than an employee.”

  Her head tipped to the side in question, and he tried not to study the long, graceful curve of her neck. He drew a hand quickly across his mouth, eager to erase the sudden need he felt to expose his teeth at the wave of desire. “I need a wife.” He was surprised at the growl beneath his words, the sudden urgency, the feeling that accompanied the action of saying those words aloud.

  He had never felt he needed a wife. In all his years on earth, awake and asleep, human and non, he had felt many things for women, but never once that he should want one as a wife. A mate.

  “Now,” he hurried on. “I would not expect…such wifely duties from you.” He waved his hand toward Abigail, finally soothed, her body pressed into Paulette’s. “But, it would be a great service to me if you would appear as though you were a wife to me, to those inside and outside this town. Of course,” he rushed to assure her, “I will maintain you as though you were my wife in every manner. As though your child were my child. You will be provided with food and clothes, and of course, the small house we just came from. I will not reside there with you. When I am in town, I will probably stay here, in the office. But mostly, I will stay in the mountains. It is where I feel the most peace and where I am the most needed.

  “In addition, I will pay you a salary, just as though you were strictly my employee, and I will put no stipulations on what you can and cannot do with that money — and whatever you find you need, you shall ask me for and I will provide it.”

  He waited for her rejection, already sifting through what other things he could possibly offer to her in that case. Now that the idea had come to him, he had latched completely onto it, confident there could be no better way — no other way — than this one.

  She seemed to consider his words a long moment, her teeth pressing down on her lower lip while she thought. “I believe we can make that work,” she said finally. “If you will agree to care for my child as though she were your own, and that she should lack for nothing, even should something happen to me.”

  He eyed her more carefully, appreciative of her shrewdness. An insurance policy. That’s what she was looking for in him.

  Her easy acceptance pleased him, and he was more than happy to agree to those terms. He reached out his hand toward her, and she did the same, not hesitating, certain this is what she wanted for her daughter.

  Their hands met, and there it was again, that little jolt of energy passing between them, igniting something deep within Zed he couldn’t name, didn’t know.

  “I will draw up those papers, then.”

  If his voice sounded more gruff than it should have, a little mean, she certainly showed no fear of it.

  He wanted her the more for it.

  Chapter Four

  Paulette was on his mind.

  Constantly on his mind.

  Had he realized how much things would change when he offered her the role as his wife, he might have considered it a little more carefully, weighed the pros and cons a little more heavily.

  That was what he told himself. But the truth was, he never once believed he would have been happier the way things had been before she’d s
tepped through his door.

  He spent his hours in the caves, sleepless. Moving through the rooms and corridors, his hands running around the precious things he’d kept safe and hidden for generations in the depths of the mountain.

  When she occupied too much of his thought, when the sudden need to see her behind the desk — Abigail safely tucked away in the Moses basket near her feet, or down the street in the arms of the local caregiver —Zed let himself leave the cave, picking his way down the mountainside and back toward the little street his office sat on, the warm glow from within more welcoming than it ever had been before.

  With a little growl of frustration and impatience ripping from his throat, he set off out of the cave and down the narrow path. Now was such a time. He wanted to see her, hair swept back, the high collar of her dress hiding the pale, sensitive skin of her neck, her hands delicate and gentle.

  The path was treacherous, and Zed knew that was why the men had ambushed him down below, where it was easier going, where there was less ledge and more even ground. A coward’s way.

  He may have been a creature of habit, but he had taken to altering that last leg of his journey, no longer following the path worn from use, but trail blazing, following the little trails that may have been created by deer or fox, or even something smaller. Some were overgrown and out of use, others still carried the fresh scent of animal.

  He picked his way down the path easily, in a way no mere human ever could, and when he emerged from the mass of hillside and rock and dirt through an opening that could barely be called such, it was well past the first shade of evening.

  Paulette would be home, he thought, studying the stars as they began to appear in the sky. The office would be closed for the night, and she would be moving through the small house, putting Abigail to bed for the evening, a bucket of wash near the fire, ready to be set out and to dry overnight.