The Alpha's Choice (5 page)

"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 with 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."

"Did they hurt you?" He wasn't laughing
now.

"No." Kat's laugh was a little shaky because
of the look on his face. "Scared me a little. No big deal."

In fact, it had terrified her, but she had a
plan and she needed the money to see it through and so she bought
the uniform and forced herself to go back… and kept a container of
pepper spray in the pocket. Luckily, she never had to use it.

"What happened to them?" he asked with a
little more than curiosity in his tone.

"The two guys? I don't know. They went home
to their unsuspecting wives, I guess." She rose and started
collecting dishes and flatware.

Charles rose, too. "Who stood for you? Who
stood against them? Why were you allowed to work in a place like
that to begin with?"

He reached for her hand, but she pulled it
away, uncomfortable with his concern. He sounded fierce, affronted
on her behalf.

"You mean like who stood up for me? Who
rescued me?" This last was mocking and sarcastic. "No one," she
answered her own question. "There was no one
to
stand up for
me."

Her mother was long gone by then and her
father was reduced to a shadow that flitted in and out of her life
according to how much he drank that week and how guilty he felt
about it. Grams was already confined in their fourth floor walk-up
by the wheeled chair she spent her life in, as effective as any
prison guard.

"There should have been," Charles said and
Kat was surprised at the anger in his voice. "You'll find it very
different here. I stand for those who stand for me. We stand for
those who stand with us. That's what makes us who and what we are.
My father taught me that. It's one of the few things we agreed
on."

Charles looked around as if suddenly
remembering where he was. He grinned sheepishly. "I sound like a
pompous ass instead of a... Oh, never mind," he laughed and the
anger melted away as quickly as it had come. "I'd better get my
pompous ass in gear. My crew will be back here tomorrow night and
I've got money riding on having the place ready for them."

Chapter 5

Charles was right about the weather. By late
morning, the sky had turned into a solid sheet of dull and leaden
gray that leached all remaining color from the gold and pale green
tones of the earth and left it gray and dingy looking, too.

Paint roller held like Liberty's torch, Kat
stared out through the uncurtained windows of what would be her
future schoolroom. They'd torn the window coverings down and tossed
them out the front door when Charles declared them good for nothing
but burning.

She'd spent the morning scrubbing the grime
from those windows while Charles washed walls and prepared them for
their first coat of paint. Then, while he trimmed out the walls
along the ceiling and woodwork with precise even lines, she rolled
on the light, buttery yellow that had been chosen for the walls. At
first, Charles objected to her offer of help.

"I thought you came down here early for a few
days' vacation?" Once he pulled out his paint buckets and brushes,
all flirtatious bantering stopped. Charles was all business as he
skillfully unrolled a line of blue tape along the edge of the dark
stained paneling that ran around the bottom half of the room. "Your
job doesn't begin until next week. Relax and enjoy."

"Truth? I'm not sure I know how. I've never
had a vacation before. I always wondered what it would be like. It
seemed so wonderful to be able to kick back and do whatever you
want even if that's do nothing at all. That's what I did yesterday.
I built myself a fire out on the patio, relaxed in the chaise
lounge, had a glass or three of wine..."

"Swam in the pool," Charles filled in her
list. He snapped off the last bit of tape with his thumbnail and
folded the edge over in a self-sealing flap, ready to be pulled
from the roll when he needed it next.

Kat blinked. "Yeah, how did you know?" She'd
been admiring his taping efficiency and the way his shirt molded to
the muscles of his back when his arms reached forward.

"Lucky guess?" His eyes crinkled at the
corners and he looked like he was waiting for her to say something
more and then looked at her strangely when she did.

"Do you know anything about wolves?"

"Real wolves?"

Now she looked strangely at him. "Well they
weren't stuffed." She turned to the window and pointed with the
roller. "I saw them last night, five or six maybe more, out there
along the trees."

"No you didn't." He sounded so sure of
himself Kat was taken aback.

"Yes I did," she said with more conviction
than she felt. The nerve of the man. She might have been mistaken
about those animals along the trees, but there was no mistaking the
big fella at the pool.

"No. You didn't," he insisted.

"Yes. I did," she snapped, "If they weren't
wolves, then they were the biggest damned dogs I've ever seen." She
turned from the window, shaking her paint roller for emphasis…

…And laid a swath of yellow paint like a
blindfold across his eyes. The stripe, running between the upper
edges of his slightly arched eyebrows and the tip of his aquiline
nose, was perfectly straight and even like the brushwork he'd used
throughout the room.

Kat was so shocked by what she'd done, she
couldn't speak, could only stare at the yellow striped face in
front of her which showed no response to the assault other than to
tilt its chin a little higher. The reaction was all in his hands
which were held closely to his sides and clenched into white
knuckled fists. He made no move to wipe the mask away.

His jaw tightened. His Adam's apple bobbed in
his throat as he swallowed. The yellow lids and lashes lifted
slowly, exposing the flashing eyes beneath. Kat found her
voice.

"Holy shit," she said, steeping back from the
blazing eyes shining from the yellow bandit's mask. "Why didn't I
notice that before?"

Of course, she knew why. She'd been too busy
checking out the imagined beefcake body beneath the loose fitting
clothes. Damn, how many times had she complained about guys
undressing women with their eyes and here she'd been doing the same
thing to the painter. Shame on her.

Charles' jaw tightened some more and his eyes
rolled heavenward in an exaggerated petition for patience. "What,
pray tell, did you not notice before? What could possibly be more
obvious than my face full of paint?"

A tick started in Kat's cheek and then the
corners of her mouth started pulling upward in a smile. She sucked
her cheeks inward to stop both tick and smile, but it was no use.
The laugh snickered out between her compressed lips in a crude and
unladylike spurt.

"I'm sorry, so sorry," she sputtered. She
grabbed the rag that hung from her torn back pocket like a tail and
began to dab at the paint with one hand while resting the other on
his chest for leverage, forgetting the roller still clutched in her
fist.

"Oh! Shit! Sorry!" The bandit now had a
yellow paint beard.

"Give me the damn rag and go stand over
there," he growled, snatching the rag and running it over his face
which only served to smear the paint further.

Kat dropped the roller into its tray and
reached again for the rag. "No, no, you're making it worse. Here,
let me, before you get it in your eyes."

Her hand, now free of the roller, went to the
last clean spot on his face and held his cheek. His hand gripped
her wrist as she gripped the rag. Both painter and painted froze in
place.

A surge of sexual desire such as Kat had
never felt before coursed through her. Like a wave of electric
shock, it began where Charles grasped her wrist and zinged up her
arm and through her chest, a heart attack in reverse. It tightened
her breasts and curled downward into the lower, most private
regions of her body. It made her gasp.

Kat stared into the vivid green eyes that had
startled her into this fiasco, unable to look away. Charles' eyes
held hers for a startled moment, and then dropped to her open and
quivering lips. His tongue darted out, moistening his own lips
before his mouth descended on hers.

Practical and pragmatic Kat knew this wasn't
right. She'd only met the man that morning and as attractive and
charming as he was, she wasn't foolish enough to fall for a pretty
face and form. She knew nothing about him except that with his
charming ways and handsome face, he was probably a great one with
the ladies and she had no wish to be another notch in his belt or
on his bedpost. The only sensible thing to do would be to turn her
head away and her rational mind called to her to do just that.

But fanciful and romantic Kat, the
Kat she kept caged and silent because no good ever came from
daydreams and fantasies, chose that moment to make a break for
freedom and regardless of what good sense dictated; her body sided
with the rebellion. She'd never felt like this before, never felt
this swell of want and need, this rush of heady emotion she'd only
read about in her silly books.

In spite of her desire, she met his mouth
hesitantly, almost timidly, unsure of what to do with this new
craving. She needn't have worried.

Charles' lips met hers with a
demanding force that overwhelmed and put to rest any hesitation she
might harbor. He claimed her with that kiss. No sweet and diffident
touching of lips in a tentative first kiss, this was deep and
devouring. Consuming. And she wanted to be consumed. By it. By
him.

His fingers slid through the loose
curls at the back of her head, holding it in place as he slanted
his mouth over hers. The hand holding her wrist released its grip
to wrap around her waist and mold her body to his. Her back bent
with the pressure and she dug her fingers into his broad and
muscled shoulders to keep from falling backward to the floor. She
could feel the heat from his body searing through the layers of
cloth that separated them and she wanted that clothing
gone.

His lips left hers to work their
way along her chin and neck and her head fell back to give him
access to the sensitive place in the hollow of her throat and she
released a small whimper of pleasure when he found the perfect spot
to attack with fluttering kisses.

Her hands had teased their way
around to his back and after a frenzied bout of pulling and tugging
his shirt from the waist of his pants, she found what she was
searching for, the smooth, warm, rippling muscles of his back. She
felt his body sigh beneath her kneading fingers and another
sensation swept over her.

It, too, was one she'd never recognized
before. Charles' desire was as great as her own. That such a man
wanted her and so desperately, gave her a heady mix of potency and
pleasure. There was power here and it was hers.

Charles moved forward toward the canvas draped
sofa, leading her in a dance of passion toward the next series of
steps and she was ready, oh lord, how ready she was to follow his
lead.

Just before he reached their destination,
Charles stopped so suddenly, Kat stumbled and had it not been for
his strong arms circling her waist, she would have
fallen.