The Alpha's Choice Read online

  The golden god of the forest stretched out his front legs, and raised his rear end and wagging tail. He pounced toward her, not threateningly but in fun and woofed much like she'd seen his domesticated cousins playing with their masters in the park.

  "Shoo!" Kat splashed water with her fingers.

  The wolf dodged the water and woofed again, daring her.

  She took the dare and drove her flattened hands along the top of the water creating a wide wave the edge of which caught him in the snout as he dodged away. He shook his head and sneezed.

  "Serves you right," she laughed, both thrilled and astounded that she was playing games with this wild creature. Nature chose that moment to send a cold breeze skimming across the open field and yard to remind her it was only spring. She shimmied with the chill. "Game's over," she told her wild friend.

  Starting with his head and wiggling down the length of his body to the tip of his tail, the wolf mimicked her shimmy and playfully bobbed his head.

  "Game's over," she said and pointed to her tightly pointed nipples. "You see these? If I don't get some clothes on, they're going to freeze right off." She started up the steps. "Besides, it must be getting close to seven. What if someone shows up and finds me naked in the pool playing with a wolf. Fine first impression that would make."

  The animal bowed. Kat was sure of it. He bowed to her, her gentleman wolf, and then he turned and trotted off toward the woods and never looked back. She was amazed, astounded and thoroughly charmed.

  Tying the belt of her silky robe, she entered the kitchen in search of breakfast, her mood lightened by her encounter with the wolf. After a lifetime of trying to prove she was just like everyone else and an adulthood of reaching for the life she thought every woman was supposed to want, her exchange with the wild and beautiful creature made her rethink her whole future.

  Maybe, The Bastard leaving her wasn't such a tragedy. Maybe resigning from her teaching position wasn't a catastrophe. Maybe, just maybe, Grams was right and she wasn't meant to be like everyone else. Maybe she wasn't meant to be ordinary. Maybe she was meant to be different. Maybe she was meant to talk to the wolves.

  Her pragmatic side snorted and Kat laughed. And maybe that was the biggest load of fanciful bullshit she'd ever concocted. It didn't matter. For the first time in a long time, she felt happy.

  She started the coffee, tossed a package of bacon on the counter and turned back to the refrigerator to grab a couple of eggs singing aloud the song her father used to sing to her Mom before the bad times came.

  "Hey there Little Red Riding Hood, you sure are looking good…"

  "You're everything that a big bad wolf could want," a deep bass intoned behind her.

  "Aaack!" The eggs went flying as Kat whirled to face the owner of the voice.

  Two hands shot out and caught the eggs. Those hands were attached to the best looking piece of manhood Kat had ever seen outside of a movie screen.

  Chapter 4

  "Good God Almighty!" whooshed out of her mouth and Kat wasn't sure if it was fear or astonishment.

  "No, I'm not Him," the man said slowly with a bit of a drawl she couldn't quite place, "But you're not the first to make the mistake." His smile was disarming, like a small boy who was up to mischief. Except he wasn't small. Anywhere. "But now that you mention it, there have been a few women who referred to a second coming…or third…or fourth."

  She changed her mind. His smile reflected a dirty little boy's dirty little mind. What she found disarming was that he didn't try to hide it. He was watching her and waiting to see if she got the joke.

  With her hand still plastered to her chest where it flew to keep her heart from leaping out, she sputtered, "And probably a few more who questioned their sanity the next morning. Do you always use such outrageous lines?"

  He raised his hand in the Boy Scout sign, three fingers up, thumb and pinkie folded across his palm. "Never, but I've been waiting years for the opportunity to use that one."

  "You should have waited longer. Who are you?" and then her eyes managed to get past his face and physique to his clothes, "Oh, sorry," because the answer was obvious. "Duh."

  He was wearing a pair of paint spattered white canvas pants, work boots and a faded blue oxford shirt that had been washed to threadbare softness. The sleeves were rolled up to his elbows and showed off a pair of long, muscular forearms dusted with golden hair that attested to the fact that the golden blonde locks brushed back from his forehead and held in place by a pair of sunglasses were natural. Kat marveled at the great cosmic blunder that had turned this guy into a house painter when he should have been adorning the covers of magazines or romance novels.

  "Move over, Wolfy. You've just been replaced by a human golden god," she thought and then blushed deep red when she remembered her earlier comment to the wolf. What if this gorgeous painter had shown up while she was naked in the pool?

  "No need to apologize." He smiled with gleaming white, even teeth. "I'm the one who came in unannounced. I didn't mean to frighten you."

  Maybe not, but he was enjoying her discomfiture once he did. She'd met his kind before when she tended bar during her last two years of college. Men like this one liked to keep their intended conquest off balance, were masters of the double entendre and sly remarks and if a girl wasn't careful, the really talented ones could charm her panties right off her rear end while her jeans were still in place. Most of the time, their banter was harmless and they took no offense when their advances were turned away.

  The handsome house painter stepped past her, placed the rescued eggs next to the stove, and gave her a friendly wink. His next stop was the coffee maker where he poured himself a mug and settled his backside against the granite countertop, crossing his legs at the ankle.

  The painter's pants were loose along the leg and left much to the imagination, but there was no disguising their length and leanness. A tailor couldn't have fit them better across the hips and Kat was looking forward to the rear view of him walking away. She glanced up to find him watching her watching him and reddened again when he grinned.

  "Like what you see?"

  What was the matter with her? She wasn't fourteen! She knew better than to blatantly stare at a man as if he was a box of Belgian chocolates, even if he was drool worthy. She turned her back on him and grabbed a frying pan from the rack.

  "I was just about to make breakfast. I imagine you've already had yours," she hinted, hoping he'd go back to work at the front of the house and leave her alone. Out of sight, out of mind and all that. "My name's Kat, by the way."

  "Cat?" he chuckled, "Meow. That's a bit unusual or did someone have a sense of humor."

  Kat frowned. Her name wasn't common, but unusual? Funny? "K, not C. It's short for Katarina, after my grandmother."

  He must have heard the snap in her voice because he seemed eager to make amends. "Ahhh, Katarina. Now I like that. It's a lovely name for a lovely lady."

  Kat gave him a look that said she was on to him and unimpressed. She began pulling off strips of bacon and laying them in the pan.

  "Don't look at me like that. I was talking about Grandma. She was a lovely lady, right? They wouldn't have named you after her if she wasn't, right?" he asked, thus making her look like the bad guy for misconstruing what he said.

  Kat shook her head in admiration. She had to admit the guy was good.

  "I'm Charles and I would be delighted to share breakfast with you, Katarina. How about you frying up that package of bacon and I'll whip up the eggs?" He opened the refrigerator and pulled out the carton with the remaining ten eggs.

  "The whole package?" The package was a full pound.

  "Not enough?" Charles turned back to the refrigerator.

  "No, no! I just meant..." Kat blew out her breath and laughed. "There's only the two of us."

  "That's what I thought," he agreed, "So one should be enough." He began cracking eggs into a deep bowl.

  "Whoa, wait!" Kat held out her hand, palm forward.
"How many eggs do you eat?"

  "I don't know. Six, eight? Whatever's on the plate. Why?" He looked at her curiously.

  "Because I can only handle two and a strip or two of bacon," she said aloud and muttered to herself, "And because I want to live past thirty-five," as she eased around him and into the pantry.

  Had this guy ever heard of cholesterol? She risked another glance at the man now working at the stove. That high, tight rear end was every bit as enticing as she thought it would be and that long, lithe body of his sure didn't look like a heart attack waiting to happen. She grabbed the loaf of bread and removed three slices for the toaster.

  "There's steak here if you'd rather," Charles offered. "I'm partial to pork chops myself."

  Kat shook her head. "We'd better wait on that." He was awfully free with his employer's supplies, but then again, he'd worked here longer than she had and probably knew what was okay and what wasn't. "Inside or outside?" she asked as she took the dishes down from the second shelf.

  From the corner of her eye she saw him lean back from the stove to answer her and do a little checking of his own. When his eyebrows rose slightly in speculation and his back arched a little more, Kat flushed, remembering what she wore beneath the tiny cover-up, which was absolutely nothing at all.

  "Well?" She resisted the urge to tug at the hem of her robe.

  "Hmmm?" Charles looked up at her and grinned and it wasn't a guilty grin. He wasn't trying to disguise his interest.

  "Do you want to eat inside or out?" she asked again in a reasonable attempt to sound casual. She grabbed the dishes up and hoped they didn't crack in her tight fisted grip. The robe was called a cover-up because that's what it did, right? He couldn't see anything. Then why did the look in his eye make her feel as if he could see everything?

  "Do you want to eat inside or out?"

  Charles licked his lips, eyes half closed, and then shook himself out of whatever reverie he was falling into. "Oh, outside, definitely. Let's enjoy it while we can. Rain's coming and I doubt we'll be doing any running tonight. Moon's waning anyway."

  She piled the plates on the tray, reached up for a platter and looked back over her shoulder. "Ah, you're a runner."

  "Yeah, sure. Aren't you?" He checked the sizzling bacon, removed some and added more before he looked her way. "With those legs, you'd have to be," he said appreciatively.

  His eyes said he approved of more than her legs, so she held the Betty Grable pin-up pose a moment longer than she had to, watching him watching her. This was something she'd never done before. She was flirting outrageously and apparently doing a decent job of it. It was fun. That Charles obviously found her attractive made it more fun. Maybe Grams was right and she was a late bloomer, a really late bloomer. Kat did a mental shrug. Better late than never, right?

  She'd always felt like she'd missed some rungs on the boy/girl attraction ladder. She'd climbed it just fine until she was twelve or thirteen. At that age, she could sigh and swoon with the best of them over boy bands or current TV heart throbs. Her sexual fantasies were normal for girls that age, at least according to the psych classes she'd taken in college.

  But as her body reached its physical adulthood, something went wrong. She was sure her preferences lay with the opposite sex. She could definitely appreciate the male form in the abstract and fantasize about the usual what-ifs, but she never got that toe curling tingle of desire for any of the boys or men she'd dated and it wasn't for lack of opportunity. She was neither a wallflower nor a celibate when she met The Bastard.

  Her relationship with The Bastard, she refused to call him by his name, had been based on common interests, compatibility, and future goals rather than sexual attraction and she had been content. They were both busy and their night time conjugal forays were about physical release more than passion. It wasn't great. It wasn't awful. It was supposed to produce two children when the time was right and then, she assumed, fade into the background. After the two children, if he'd wished to continue that side of their relationship, she wouldn't have refused, but she wouldn't have questioned his withdrawal from it either.

  In their eight years together, she'd never once felt the tingle of anticipation she was feeling now.

  "You want butter or jam with your toast?"

  Thank heavens she'd already laid the plates on the glass topped table or they would have gone the way of the knives and forks, up in the air and clattering to the flagstone of the patio. She hadn't seen, heard, or felt him move up behind her.

  "Oops, sorry," he said sounding not the least bit repentant. He set the platter of bacon and eggs on the table and quickly stooped to retrieve the knife that landed by her foot where he lingered a moment more than necessary.

  "That's a good way to get you nose whacked," she told him, stepping away and folding her arms across her chest.

  He handed her the knife with the same smirky grin used by the fourteen year old boys who used a dropped pencil as an excuse to look up her skirt. Kat didn't let them get away with it. She wasn't going to let the housepainter get away with it either. Unlike the boys at school, however, Charles didn't look the least bit guilty or offer up any lame excuses.

  "Can't blame a guy for trying," he shrugged.

  "I can if he's old enough to know better," she told him while trying in vain to keep her shame-on-you face from breaking into a smile.

  "Ah," Charles said, rising and raising his finger. "But then he'd also be old enough to calculate the risk/reward ratio." He took a step toward her and she took a step back. He placed the dropped knife on the table. "In this case, the risk would be minimal. I knew you wouldn't hit me."

  "You didn't get a reward either," Kat laughed. She knew she shouldn't. The man didn't need any encouragement and while she was having fun, she didn't want him to think there was anything more to it than that.

  "Not yet, but I'm patient," he stated confidently.

  "Good," she said, "Then you won't mind waiting while I run upstairs and put some clo… something else on."

  "Your breakfast will go cold," he called after her as she ducked through the door.

  "That's why they invented microwaves!" she called back.

  Kat tossed the jean shorts she was going to wear back in the closet and reached for a newer pair, the ones that showed off her rear end to best advantage. She had both feet in and was wriggling them up over her hips when she stopped, frowned, and wriggled them back down. She retrieved the old baggy pair with the torn pocket and put those on instead.

  She'd had her moment of fun. It was time to get back to the real world.

  Charles nodded his approval of her Race For the Cure® t-shirt or that was what she told herself since his eyes dwelt on her chest for an extended moment before the microwave dinged. He removed her small plate and slid his much larger and full to overflowing one in. As he passed Kat the plate, he gave her a look of resignation.

  "I was hoping you'd come back in one of those little black and white jobs," he told her, "You know, with little bits of white lace up here." He ran his finger along his chest outlining the twin arches of a bra. "And all around the edges of the poufy little black skirt. You'd be wearing fishnet stockings and six inch heels. Oh yeah, and the apron." He rolled his eyes heavenward. "I love the tiny apron."

  Kat shook her head in disbelief. "Here I was, beginning to think you were original and all you can come up with is a Halloween costume. A French maid's costume? Really?" She took her plate from him and headed back to the patio. "In your dreams, buddy," she said, laughing. She tried to muster some outrage at his blatant harassing behavior, but she couldn't.

  "Exactly!" he called after her, undaunted. The microwave dinged again and he followed her to the table. "A dream come true! A fantasy! But it doesn't have to be Halloween," he laughed as he took a seat, "I mean, who says you can't play a little dress-up outside the holidays. You pick the day and I'm there."

  It was one of those times when she wished her hair was long enough to hide behind, but even wit
h her head bent and her eyes on her plate, she knew he could see her trying to control her smile. "Does this routine usually get you where you're trying to go?"

  Charles frowned in disappointment and sat back in his chair.

  "It's the outfit, isn't it? You don't like the idea of playing a lowly maid."

  "I've worked as a maid, actually," Kat said, hoping to steer the conversation in another direction. "A hotel maid and I don't consider it lowly, just very hard work."

  She forked another bit of egg into her mouth and watched Charles steadily plow through his breakfast. He didn't shovel his food, but he never laid his fork to rest, either. He started at one side and worked his way across the plate barely leaving a crumb in his wake. Where did he put it?

  Swallowing the latest bite of bacon, he asked, "What hotel was that?"

  "A very respectable one." Kat watched him over the rim of her mug as she took a last sip of coffee.

  Charles left off eating long enough to wave his fork back and forth. "Ah, ah, ah," he admonished, "I smell a teensy little pile of bullshit in there." He sounded very serious, but his eyes danced.

  "Okay," Kat confessed with a regrettable laugh, "It was a seedy motel that did most of its business in hourly rates, but the owner was willing to hire underage help and the money was good, especially when you added in how much change you could find on the floor or under the bed where it rolled from the men's pockets. Some of the working girls tipped pretty well, too, to keep the sheets in their favorite rooms clean."

  She was barely fifteen and desperate as only a teenaged girl can be to have the clothes and things other girls had and there was nothing left of Gram's Social Security once all the bills were paid. They didn't dare call Children's Services for fear Kat would be taken away.

  "The uniform came from the thrift store. It was dull gray polyester with a white collar and huge buttons up the front. It was two sizes too big and hung like a sack on my skinny teenaged frame, which was exactly how I liked it because it said very clearly 'I am the maid'. I bought it after two guys mistook me for, well, not the maid."