My pink and gold beauty puffed up her cheeks. “Quit saying things that make me wish I didn’t have a baby with me right now.”
A thrill shot through me. The slightest acknowledgment that she might be interested in me was potent as hell.
I couldn’t help noticing the way she white-knuckled the stroller or the flush that went from her cheeks all the way down to her chest. Not a sunburn. A reaction—tome.
This was all too fucking messy. If I was smart, I would go right back home and forget about her. She had a baby with a pack she wasn’t with, but obviously had been, and fairly recently too. A pack and a child were complications I didn’t know how to approach.
Taking the angle of spontaneous fun was fine from my end, it wasn’t exactly ideal from hers. Even if the other alphas in her life were involved parents, getting into things with a mother came with specific responsibilities. My pack and I couldn’t have her and not the kid. I would never suggest such a thing, anyway. I wasn’t against kids; I just wasn’t used to them, but either way I couldn’t imagine she was anxious to get with another pack after the last one hadn’t worked out.
I knew how to wine and dine, but how the hell was I supposed to get a baby to like me so I had an actual chance with their mom? The Internet probably had some answers. Babies couldn’t bethathard to please at this age. They didn’t evendoanything when they were this small. It wasn’t like I could supervise swimming lessons or take them to Little League.Though, I had seen videos of people teaching infants to swim, but being responsible for a human potato without any actual survival skills sounded stressful. Better to not risk it.
Somethinghadto be going on. Maybe I had inhaled too much exhaust and it was affecting my brain. No strings made things so much easier, and here I was thinking about how I could get tangled up with this omega.
“Do I get to know your name?”
She plucked up her water bottle, taking a long enough drink that I worried she wasn’t going to answer. “Do I get to know yours? You haven’t exactly been free with the personal information on this walk.”
I hesitated. If she knew my name, then she could look me up, and if she looked me up, then I might be faced with the reality that she would agree to a date only because of my money. Was my first name sufficient to give her what she wanted and still protect my identity? Some people needed so little to find every skeleton in your closet.
“You don’t have to,” she said slowly, “but I’m not telling you mine if you’re not sharing. I gotta say, it does make you pretty fucking suspicious if you won’t tell me, though.”
Fuck.
“It’s Logan.”
She eyed me shrewdly. “Clover.”
I swept my gaze over the grass we passed, looking for the wayward weed the HOA was always at war with. “Where? They’re gonna get in shit if they have it on their lawn.”
“No, mynameis Clover.”
“Oh. That’s cute. Pretty name for a pretty lady.”
“Liar,” she said with a laugh. “It’s a weird name, you don’t have to love it. I’ll be offended, but I won’t hold it against youtoomuch.”
“No way. Itiscute, but I’ve never heard it as a name for a human before.”
“Happy to be your introduction to non-boring names.” She frowned at the yard we’d briefly paused in front of. “I will never understand people’s obsessions with their lawns. Flowers are prettier and feed the bees! You’re not a lawn guy, are you? I’m gonna have to judge you if you are.”
Shit. I wasn’t, but Parker was. Our front yard was manicured to within an inch of its life. “What people do with their own bushes is their business.” My cheeks warmed. That was probably the wrong terminology, so I quickly added, “I honestly haven’t given that much thought to what people do with their yards.”
Clover did the adorable cheek puff again. “You’re missing out on the time-honored hobby of judging the taste of strangers when you walk around.”
“What if I just agreed with you on how you judge their taste? Unconditional support and all that.”
“I like the way you think.” Clover nodded decisively.
I had never actually paid attention to how my neighbors decorated their yards, but I was definitely treated to a dissection of styles and ornaments while we walked. It was more interesting than it had any right to be. In a weird way, it felt like I was gaining insight into the people that had surrounded me for years, but more than that, it gave mea lotof information on Clover herself.
Terra-cotta roof tiles? She loved them, along with the rest of what she called Spanish colonial style. She didn’t like the colonial part of that, only the aesthetic. Garden gnomes? She worried about those coming to life in the night. Poppies of every color? She wanted a whole yard of them. Sunflowers were a close second, but poppies grew faster.
Logan:
Order poppies for the front yard
Parker:
No. Why?
