“Point taken,” I said, disgusted by the visual of the nearly seventy year old man doing such a thing. How did he even have the flexibility to get his feet up there in the first place? “Then it sounds like you want to be here. So stop acting so scared of me and be my real assistant. It’s kind of starting to hurt my feelings.”
Alan stepped in closer. “With all due respect, ma’am, it’s not you I’m scared of.”
I looked at his eyes which were shifting left and then right, and waited for him to answer.
“I’m scared ofthem,” he said, leaning forward so he could whisper it into my ear.
He nodded to where Zeke and Maverick were standing against the far wall, talking quietly amongst themselves.
“Them?” I asked, pointing.
“Don’t point!” Alan said, grabbing my finger and gently shoving it down into my lap again. “Yes, them. Those guys are so damned scary I feel like I’m going to quiver out of my skin whenever they’re in the same room as me.”
“They’re not scary,” I said, catching Maverick’s eyes and feeling giddy when he hurriedly looked away and a red blush crept up his neck.
We hadn’t spoken since that day in the kitchen, but making the normally serious alpha react like that was making my inner omega nearly hop with joy.
“Oh, honey,” Landon said from behind me as he dug through his makeup bag. “I know you don’t know much about alphas, but all four of those men are, in fact, terrifying.”
“Yeah,” Lisa said as she combed through my hair. “But in, like, a hot way.”
The other two men looked at her.
“Oh come on, I have eyes. We all might be betas but even I can see that they are a wet dream come to life,” Lisa whispered conspiratorially in my ear just loud enough for the other two men to hear.
Landon just shook his head, like he was used to his packmate’s dirty way of speaking, but Alan looked like he was about two seconds away from melting straight into the floor.
“They won’t hurt you, Alan,” I tried to reassure him as Zeke caught my eye and pushed away from the wall, probably thinking I needed him for something.
“Doesn’t mean they won’t judge me,” Alan said, his eyes bulging out of his head as he watched Zeke approach. “I’m going to go check that everything in the dining room is going well!”
Then he was gone, scurrying away before Zeke could reach us.
“I cannot believe he’s related to Livvy,” I muttered with a shake of my head. “It’s like they come from two completely different planets.”
“The same could be said about you and that brother of yours,” Landon pointed out as he began putting foundation on my face.
“Why?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at the beta. He and Lisa had been with our family for a long time, but if they thought that meant they could say anything about Carter and his issues then they had another think coming.
“Please,” Landon said, good-naturedly, pointedly ignoring my glare. “I’ve seen you try to play the piano—and sing. You are good at a lot of things, sweetheart, but music is not one of them.”
Landon and Lisa laughed, probably remembering the time that my grandfather had convinced me to play the piano at the White House during the holiday season when he was the Vice President.
I still shuddered at the memory.
“Is she that bad?” Zeke asked, having joined us at some point during the conversation.
Today he looked like the picture of a Secret Service agent, his suit crisp and clean and the clear tubed earpiece that all agents wore pushed into his left ear.
All he needed was a pair of dark sunglasses and he’d look just like the hundreds of other agents that swarmed the White House on any given day.
But he wasn’t like any of those agents.
For one, as he stepped in close, he wore a soft, friendly smile that was miles away from the impassive neutrality of the others.
Then there was his scent.
I was done pretending that the fact that the suppressants had little effect on the five of us was for any reason other than biology.
