Bridenapped The Alpha's Choice (2 page)

“He seems to like you more than Regina,” Angela observed. “What’s up with that? Are you sure you guys are ancient history?”

Regina was staring across the room in shock and dismay. Hilda was glaring at her with murder in her eyes. Mary turned her back on Jarrod and walked away, threading her way through racks of clothing and hoping that Jarrod would take the hint. He didn’t, of course.

“Mary!” he called out, and she turned around, forcing a pained smile.

“Jarrod!” she said, gritting her teeth. “What a surprise. Notice that the word ‘pleasant’ was nowhere in there. What brings you here?”

“The pack secretary asked me to come pick up some fishing lures. Even though we also make our own fishing lures. Apparently only fishing lures from this particular store will do. And apparently it needed to be the Alpha Regent who came to get them, because nobody else could figure it out.” He cast an amused glance at the assembled paparrazi, who were standing impatiently with cameras trained on him, waiting for him to go talk to Regina. Mary wasn’t news; Mary was a nobody.

Regina Van Hoffington was news.

“And you?”

“She’s here for work,” Angela interjected. She stuck out her hand. “Hi, I’m Mary’s cousin Angela. Quick but important question, because I’m new in town. Do all the Magister Pack werewolves look like you?”

“Like me?” Jarrod looked temporarily nonplussed.

“I mean totally hot.”

Jarrod laughed. “I’m not really in a position to judge,” he said. “Although pack pride requires that I say yes, there’s no one more handsome than a Magister werewolf.”

“Oooh, can we go visit the pack?” Angela begged, tugging on Mary’s sleeve. “I’m bored. Come on. Can we?”

“Angela, I’ll kill you later, I mean discuss it with you later. Don’t you have somewhere you need to be right now? Like outside the store?”

“Nope.” Angela smiled, blinking her big blue eyes in an innocent fashion.

“I’d love it if you came to visit,” Jarrod said to Mary. “I was thrilled when I heard you were back in town. It’s been ages; we should catch up.” He favored her with that slow, sexy smile that, once upon a time, had made her melt.

That had been back in high school. Since then she’d had her heart broken, lost her drunken mother to a solo car accident, gone away to college and then grad school, and finally come back home. She’d been through a lot. She was no longer the insecure, eager-to-please pushover she’d been when Jarrod had known her as a girl.

Mary coughed into her hand. “Nevergonnahappen. Sorry, something in my throat.”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure it will happen, Mary. Soon.”

“I’m pretty sure that dinosaurs will fly to the moon without rockets first.”

Jarrod put his hand on her shoulder and propelled her a few feet away from Angela. For once Angela didn’t scurry along next to Mary; she just stood back and watched, with interest.

“Here’s what’s going to happen.” His gaze bored into hers with a burning intensity. “You and I are going to finish what we started back in high school.”

She spluttered indignantly, struggling for words. Was that what all this was about? Bastard. They’d only gotten to second base in high school; he’d wanted more, she’d held back. Apparently he thought she owed him a happy ending – after what he’d done to her back then. She’d known he was arrogant, but this was some next-level douchebaggery.

“You’re going to let me take you out to a nice dinner, or cook a nice dinner, whichever you prefer. I grill a mean steak. And then we’re going to—”

Mary didn’t dare let him finish, because there was that treacherous part of her that yearned to be in Jarrod’s strong arms again. “Hey, look who’s here!” she interrupted him quickly, and pointed at Regina, who waved frantically with both arms at Jarrod.

“She’s not having a seizure, is she?” Angela asked, walking over to them and looking mildly concerned but mostly curious.

“Nah, that’s just how she tries to get attention.” Mary glanced at Jarrod. “It’s adorably quirky, isn’t it?”

“Is that what we’re calling it?” He raised an eyebrow.

“Anyway, here she comes.” Regina was elbowing her hair and makeup crew out of the way to hurry towards them.

“Yep. Amazing. She turns up everywhere I do, these days,” Jarrod drawled, with a sarcastic twist to his smile. “It’s almost like she’s stalking me.”

He was flat-out ignoring the fact that his uncle had ordered the bridenapping. He wasn’t going to go through with it, Mary realized, anxiety clutching at her. This was her sister’s most important, most public bridenapping ever, the one that would make or break her agency. And it wasn’t going to happen.

“She was here first, so I believe you were the one stalking her. And I’m sure you’re delighted to see her,” Mary said desperately.

“Not really, no.”

Regina rushed up to Jarrod, breathless.

“And may I say, you’re looking especially lovely today, Mary. The blue of your dress really brings out the blue in your eyes,” Jarrod continued. Almost like he wanted Regina to hear it.

“Why, thank you, Jarrod!” Regina cried out, as if Jarrod had been speaking to her. “And you look good enough to eat,” she simpered flirtatiously.

“Is your name Mary?” Angela wondered aloud. “And is your dress blue? Where I come from, we call that color red.”

“It’s so funny how we keep running into each other everywhere, isn’t it?” Regina added, with a big, desperate smile on her face as she moved to Jarrod’s side, her sharp elbow somehow ending up jammed into Mary’s ribs.

Mary stifled a gasp of pain as she fell back. “Well, gotta run,” she said with a grimace, grabbing Angela by the arm and leading her away from Mary.

“She did that on purpose. Let me cripple her. Please?” Angela begged.

“No. Why must you always cause trouble?” Mary demanded irritably once she’d gotten her over to the other side of the store.

“Because it’s fun?”

Mary glared at her cousin until Angela finally threw up her hands in exasperation. “Come on. It’s obvious he’s way more into you. Didn’t you say you were kind of seeing him in high school?”

“Yes, and it didn’t end well.”

To this day, she burned with humiliation just thinking about it. She should have known all along, though. He’d never be seen with her in public. He’d insisted that they keep their relationship a secret. And worse, her friends had kept telling her they saw him publicly hanging out with the girls from the popular crowd. He’d be seen with them, but not with her.

When she’d finally put her foot down and said that if he didn’t want to be seen with her in public, it was over, he’d actually asked her out to dinner. That had been right after he’d graduated; she’d been two years behind him.

She’d glowed with pride at the thought of being seen with the handsome Alpha. Her, the quiet, chubby nerd from the mobile home park. But it was not to be – because he’d never planned on taking her out. Instead he’d stood her up. And that wasn’t all. Oh, no. She’d showed up at the restaurant to find that he wasn’t there - but everyone from the popular crowd from school waiting there for her.

They’d applauded and whistled when she’d walked in. That was what she got for thinking somebody like him would want somebody like her – as Hilda had made sure to tell her at the time.

And Jarrod had left town immediately after that, without a word to her, heading off to Alpha College early.

Shortly after that, her mother had wrapped her car around a tree, for the third time that year. That time, her mother hadn’t walked away from it. It had been a closed casket funeral, and the year from hell.

“Let me tell you what’s happening. He and his uncle are having a major power struggle, and this is his way of sticking it to his uncle. Back in high school, his uncle couldn’t stand me; he ran into me and Jarrod once and flipped out. I heard him screaming about how he wasn’t going to let Jarrod waste a valuable political alliance on no-good trash like me.”

And two weeks later, Jarrod had stood her up. Surprise, surprise.

“Isn’t he Alpha Regent? Why is there even any power struggle?” Angela wondered.

“Because his uncle has run the pack ever since Jarrod was little, and he’s not thrilled about having to hand over the reins to anybody else. But as soon as Jarrod gets married, he becomes the Alpha.”

“But…his uncle is the one arranging the bridenapping,” Angela said, puzzled. “So he wants Jarrod to get married. And then his uncle would have no power at all, right?”

“His uncle has no choice, unless he wants a stranger to come in. You know how every pack has its own laws and traditions? According to Magister Pack rules, if Jarrod doesn’t marry by the time he’s thirty, the Alpha Congress will select a replacement from outside the pack.”

Angela opened her mouth to say something; Mary held up her hand.

“I know what you’re going to ask. The uncle can’t be Alpha because he was born with cerebral palsy and he walks with a limp. A very slight limp. Although he’ll kill anyone who mentions it or even appears to be looking at it.”

“Hey! That’s…able-ist! That’s prejudiced against the disabled!” Angela yelped, always eager to find a new oppressed class to be indignant about.

“I don’t know, werewolves are different.” Mary shrugged. “There’s a specific pack hierarchy, just like there is with wolves in the wild. The pack Alpha has to be strong. He has to be ready to face Death Challenges and defend his pack at all times. Any type of physical disability is an automatic disqualification.”

She looked over at Regina and Jarrod. Jarrod was walking away, appearing completely indifferent, and Regina was following him, trying to hang on to his arm and jabbering away.

“I’m kind of surprised that Regina would even want him,” Mary mused. “He’s gone through this whole courting thing three times over the past couple of years, when everybody assumed he would get engaged…and then broken it off. He’s not known to be reliable.” Not that she’d been checking her social media pages while she was away at school or anything. Jarrod Shaw could do whatever the hell he wanted. He always did.

“But he’s not courting Regina at all,” Angela said. “He looks like he’s thinking about taking out a restraining order.”

“Mary!” Hilda barked, making Mary jump. She hadn’t seen Hilda sneaking up on her. “What’s going on with you and Jarrod? You’re about to ruin everything!”

“Me?” Mary asked, keeping her voice low. “Nothing’s going on!”

“If this bridenapping goes south, my agency does too. This has to go off without a hitch. And thanks to you, there’s plenty of hitching.”

Mary reached for her list to make another hatch mark, saw that Angela was watching her, and shoved it back in her purse. She was not a slave to her lists!

“Nineteen,” she muttered.

“Nineteen what? Can we please focus here? Why do you keep distracting him from Regina? This is like high school all over again,” Hilda said irritably. Mary felt a sharp jab of humiliation.

“Um, excuse me, it’s obvious that Jarrod is the one doing the flirting,” Angela said indignantly. “And of course he likes Mary better than Regina. Mary’s a wonderful person, and—”

“Thank you, Angela!” Mary interrupted quickly. Angela meant well, but she wasn’t helping. “Jarrod is only flirting with me to get back at his uncle. But he’ll go through with it; it’s for the good of the pack.”

“Well, of course he’s only flirting with you to get at his uncle, but I would have thought you’d have set him straight by now instead of continuing to throw yourself at him.” Hilda shook her head, with an expression of deep, wounded disappointment. “I probably expected too much when I hired you. I shouldn’t have given you so much responsibility.” At least she hadn’t started in on the “You’re just like our mother” lecture. That was her nuclear option.

“I’ve helped coordinate three successful bridenappings already! This is the first time there’s been a problem!” Mary protested desperately. Sweat beaded on her forehead, and she was starting to get that sick feeling in her stomach that happened whenever Hilda got in one of her moods.

Also, Angela looked like she was one step away from punching her cousin. Just what Mary needed right now; the police showing up to break up a domestic disturbance, right in the middle of Jarrod’s supposed courtship.

“Hilda? Why is my daughter’s fiancé paying more attention to your employee than to my daughter?” Kurt had stalked up, with his wife at his heels.

“Yes, why?” Bunny echoed like a parrot, which was all she ever did.

Fiancé. Wow. So far, they hadn’t even been able to get Jarrod and Regina to the coffee date phase, much less engaged. Regina’s entire family was Looney Tunes.

“He’s utterly transfixed by Regina, I assure you,” Hilda said with a big, bright smile. “He has no interest in Mary at all.” Wow, that stung. It was true, but somehow hearing it said aloud really rankled.

“Well, I don’t know. I can’t say I’m pleased with how it’s going so far. I’d heard great things about your agency.” He shook his head, frowning, and walked away. His wife scurried after him like an anxious little terrier, shaking her head just as he was.

Hilda raked Mary with a look of utter contempt. “Control yourself and your hormones, curb your unrealistic expectations that a man like Jarrod would ever want you, or I’ll be looking for another secretary. You’re about to cost me my most important client ever.”