Page 6 of My Begrudging Scent Matches

“Grant got dragged into a training with legal,” Logan chimes in. “Everyone wants a piece of the new guys.”

Alice had almost forgotten about Grant moving to the office as well. The Thing 2 to Caleb’s Thing 1. When Caleb was hired to manage the QA department, he was a package deal with the much friendlier legal and compliance expert Grant Jones.

They came from the same company and have added a load of value, both individually and together, since starting. If only Caleb could be as perfectly pleasant as his counterpart.

Lily has speculated that the two are boyfriends, but Alice isn’t so sure about that idea. For one thing, Grant is nice and cool, and Caleb fucking sucks.

“How’s that onboarding slide deck coming?” Logan asks Alice with his eyebrows waggling.

Alice shrugs. “Oh, you know. . . tedious. But just fine.”

She deserves honor and accolades for not violently rolling her eyes when Logan pretends to look sympathetic—as if the slide deck wasn’t one of his tasks he’d pawned off to her after procrastinating it for five weeks.

“Glad to hear it,” Logan snaps his fingers again and grins, but Caleb doesn’t. He’s too busy looking at Alice like he knows her, or at least knows something about her. “We’ll let you get back to it then.”

Caleb doesn’t say goodbye when they walk away, but the look he gives simmers on Alice’s skin. With all the deodorizers and scent blockers she wears, there’s no way he can tell she’s an Omega. Still, he’s noticed her. There’s no avoiding him like she could if he was in another department; they collaborate weekly, if not daily.

Shit.

two

Alice doesn’t get to meet Grant until the following morning when she shows up to work, twenty minutes early for once. She slides into the elevator just as it’s about to close and doesn’t recognize him at first. As a rule, she tries not to make eye contact in elevators in case the stranger on board wants to start a conversation that they won’t have enough time to finish. Grueling.

“Alice?”

She looks up at the massive man who’s built like a fucking linebacker for some reason, and recognizes the short dark hair, the mustache, the crooked smile. He’s got a small gap between his teeth she hadn’t noticed in their digital meetings. It might be the cutest thing she’s ever seen.

“Grant! You are . . . so much taller than I thought you’d be.”

“And you are just as tall as I thought you would be,” he says.

“Really?”

“No, I thought you would be shorter. Your height is much more average than I expected.” Alice grins at the admission. She’s always liked Grant; he’s sweet, sends emojis in his Slack messages, and always compliments her newsletters. He’s a lot like a golden retriever if golden retrievers had sleek black hair, gray-blue eyes, and could probably squat two hundred and fifty pounds.

“I’m 5’8”,” Alice says. “Some call that tall.”

“Oh, I’m sure they do,” Grant winks—honest to God, a wink before 9 AM. It disrupts Alice’s breathing. “I’m glad to have run into you. You seem like just the person who can show me how to use the coffee contraption in the kitchen.” Grant bumps his arm into hers as the elevator door slides open to their floor. She’s still smiling up at him when she steps off and almost runs directly into Caleb Everett. Caleb’s hand settles on her bicep to steady her.

Standing so close to him, Alice feels that recognition again, the connection on a cellular level drawing her to him as an Alpha. She knows better than to listen to that feeling, though, and steps backward.

“Good morning,” Caleb says.

“Yeah. Morning,” Alice mutters and readjusts her shoulder bag. Her shirt is damp and sticking to her stomach under her bra, thankfully covered by her puffy jacket. It doesn’t matter what she wears, nothing feels like it lies on her skin right, especially with an Alpha standing in the small hallway.

“You two have met, then,” Caleb says. Alice swears the look he’s giving Grant is a meaningful one, like the men have a language gained from years of knowing each other. Maybe Lily was right about them being boyfriends after all.

“Yes, I was just hoping Alice here would show me how to make a cup of coffee without ruining the fancy machine,” Grant says, his face breaking from the secret conversation at hand to turn his charm back on Alice.

“Let me just put my stuff down. I’ll meet you there in five?”

“Great,” Grant veers off from Alice and, after a moment of hesitation, Caleb follows suit.

Other than the incident in the morning, Alice effectively avoids Caleb for the rest of the day. She’s mostly stuck in meetings with various product teams which isn’t ideal since she has three projects that need to be delivered before lunch tomorrow. This means another evening in the office.

Logan snaps his fingers and sings her praises as he leaves promptly at five, notably not offering help or an extension on any of the tasks he’d assigned to her. Lily tries to get Alice to call it, but eventually acquiesces and gives her a few snacks from her desk before leaving.

It’s seven before Alice stands up again, a draft of what she’s been working on sent to both Grant and Caleb for review first thing tomorrow if possible with a fervent peppering of no worries if that deadline is too tight! though she is totally worried.

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