“Ummm…” She seemed to wrestle with the decision before letting out a long, languid sigh that made him hold his own breath. “Sure… Yeah, I guess I could use someone to talk to.”
Dominic grinned at the small triumph before they were interrupted by a beeping sound on his end that could only mean one thing. He pulled the phone away from his ear and the screen lit up with an incoming call from Hank.
He wanted to let out a blasting curse at the beta but pinched his lips together before he had the chance. No doubt there was another problem somewhere with someone, and only Dominic could handle it. The news of this new pack coming in had put some shifters on edge all of a sudden. It was as if the impending arrival of another pack had them scared shitless about their own place in Tolstone, which was a non-issue. Gage and Wyatt were constantly bickering. Their packs couldn’t seem to agree on their own spaces anymore. Fights and quarrels broke out all over town among the more dominant shifters for no other reason than they needed to blow off steam. The pressure of being Prime Alpha had never been this severe, never this demanding. He needed this break. He needed Erica.
Dominic rejected the phone call.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he told Erica.
He’d be off the map for just a few hours. Maybe that would teach them about conflict resolution, and that they couldn’t use him as a crutch forever. He had a life too, and he was about to start living it.
*
So much for distracting herself. It was a flying whim to decide to paint the kitchen. There might have been nothing wrong with the mustard yellow kitchen walls, but Erica needed to do something. She couldn’t just sit and tweak her business social media pages or snap pictures of the moon from her back porch. Her hands needed a job, her mind another focus besides Dominic.
The moment the festival was over, and her things were packed away, she rushed down to the hardware store before they closed and bought all the supplies she needed. Just an hour into the project, and she had every edge of the counters and appliances taped off. Two strokes in, her phone rang, and she kicked herself for answering it. As a business owner with her cell phone number everywhere, she couldn’t afford to ignore an unlisted number or a number she didn’t recognize.
Never, in her wildest fantasies, would she have guessed it was Dominic calling her. She hadn’t thought she was ready to see him, wasn’t ready to look into those blue eyes and remember the savage shade of gold they had morphed into earlier that day. The moment she heard his voice, her resolve weakened. Her soft, tender heart, now exposed by his recklessly romantic actions at her booth, needed to be in his company at least for a little while. Maybe then this vague, shadowy image of what she thought she felt for him could be thrust under the spotlight. Maybe tonight, they could figure it out together.
She had ten minutes to set the stage. She put the lid on the paint can, soaked the brushes, turned off her boy band music, and went to change out of her ratty work clothes and into something she could afford to get paint on, but didn’t have anyholes, tears, or stains. Erica settled for a shirt that hugged her frame with short sleeves and a pair of sweatpants that showed off the curve of her hips nicely.
By the time she had changed her clothes and pulled her hair back into a smooth ponytail, a knock came at her door. Erica checked the clock. It hadn’t been ten minutes yet. How could he have gotten there so quickly? Standing at the top of the stairs, she froze, and the thought of the golden eyes came back to her. Before she could allow herself to think the absurd, she shook her head and rushed to the door.
Dominic stood beneath the porch light and smiled. “You haven’t gotten too much done, have you?” His eyes raked from her ankles to the crown of her head, as if inspecting for any speckle of stray paint.
To be under his gaze again made her heart thud harder in her chest. “Not really,” she replied with a nervous laugh. “Not even a first coat.”
Dominic followed her into the kitchen, and she caught herself putting some extra effort into swinging her hips without even realizing it. Once she did, however, Erica stopped herself. Don’t look too eager,she told herself.
He took a seat at the card table, and she noticed the way he glanced at her laptop and camera across from him. She had planned to upload the pictures from the festival while she waited for the first coat to dry.
Erica went to the sink to rinse off the brushes that she had set aside to soak. All the while, she was keenly aware of the way he watched her every move. “You must be pretty bored if you wanted to just come over and keep me company. No one needs you to come save them?”
She heard Dominic’s chair creak as if he were shifting his weight. “Honestly, as of right now, I don’t know.” Surprised, Erica looked over her shoulder to see his hands folded behindhis head with a pleased grin on his face. “I turned off my phone and left it at the shop.”
Erica paused as the cool tap water ran over the bristles of the brush. “Seriously? What if someone tries to call you?”
“Then they can wait until later.”
A swirl of some strange excitement plumed in her chest at what might come later too. “So, you literally dropped everything to come over?”
Dominic’s eyes blazed with delight. “I did.”
“And you didn’t even ask to help me,” she teased before turning back to the sink. “I totally expected you to.”
“Believe it or not, I’m learning. As much as I want to help, you don’t seem to appreciate it. So, why bother offering?”
Erica visibly winced at the mistake she had made earlier that week when she was so mulish. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate it. It’s just…” She lifted her hand as if the words were supposed to drop from the ceiling. They didn’t. “I’ve just done things my own way for so long, and now that there are so many people just lining up to help me, it’s a little weird. I don’t know how to act. When someone offers to help, my knee-jerk reaction is to tell them off or refuse, but I don’t want to be rude, you know? So I accept, but… it’s like petting a cat backward. That’s something my mom used to say a lot. It just feels awkward and uncomfortable to let people think I’m so… so helpless. I’m not.”
The silence that followed her speech made her turn again as she dried off the brush. Dominic’s head tilted to the side ever so slightly, as if he were studying her. If only he knew that what Erica had admitted was the unabashed, unfiltered truth that she wouldn’t have ever told anyone else.
“You have to let people in at some point,” he finally said, soft and gentle. “And as much as I love the fact that you’re probably the only person in town who doesn’t ask for my help, goingthrough life pushing away well-meaning people isn’t going to win you any medals.”
The man hadn’t been in her house for more than a few minutes, and he was already instructing her on how to live her life. For whatever bizarre reason, she didn’t mind quite as much as she would have last week.
Her lips tightened in a line and her face screwed up as if she’d just stubbed her toe on a piece of furniture. Dominic was completely right, as painful as it was to acknowledge. “I don’t know any other way.”
“You can start by admitting when you need help to those you trust.” His voice dropped to a rather grave, serious level that made her listen closer. “Of course, if everyone uses that rule, then I must be the most trustworthy man on the planet.”
