Page 18 of Alpha's Forbidden Bond

“Right,” she said with a nod. “Together. That’s a good idea.”

I offered her the most genuine smile I could muster at that moment and then told her I would be back to pick her up by the bakery in an hour. She agreed to be there waiting for me, and with that, I shut the door and drove away.

Chapter 8

Diana

Iwatched the beautiful, almost elvish-looking woman stand off to the side as Andreas drove away in his truck. Her flowy dress billowed a bit in the wind, but she held it down with her slender hands. Was she Andreas’s soon-to-be wife? If so, I didn’t understand why he would be in such a bad mood. He won the lottery when it came to arranged marriages because that woman was one of the most gorgeous people I’d ever seen. When she turned to walk back onto the sidewalk, she smiled at me through the window. There wasn’t even a speck of anger or jealousy in her eye.

Okay, it’s official—that man does not deserve her.

“So,” Georgie said after the woman walked away. She went to close the door and put up the ‘gone to lunch’ sign. “That was pretty insane.”

“Sorry I flipped out like that,” I said. “I truly don’t know what came over me. He was just standing there acting like he was this nice guy who hadn’t been totally rude to me yesterday, and it drove me nuts. I needed him to know that I wasn’t going to forget what happened, you know? That I wasn’t the kind of girl who just rolls over the second a cute guy smiles at her.”

“He was cute,” Georgie agreed. “You left that part out when you told me the story yesterday.”

“I didn’t think it was important. Especially considering you were so dead set on me never seeing anyone from the compound ever again.”

“And now you understand why!” She threw her arms up in the air and then let them fall to her sides. “As cute as he is, it is totally weird that he came into the shop looking for you. Do you really think he was here to check up on your story?”

“Kinda, yeah,” I said. “I know that might sound a little crazy, but I don’t know… This is someone I’ve never seen around town before, have you?”

“No. And I would’ve remembered a face like that.”

“Right. So clearly, he doesn’t come around here often. Plus, he had that lame excuse about running errands, but what errands? The market is five blocks over, and he would’ve passed the dry cleaners and the post office before getting here.”

“The woman he was with had some bread,” Georgie said. “Maybe she asked him to stop by the bakery.”

“Maybe…” I thought about how I’d been worried someone was following me home the night before, but it turned out to be nothing at all. Perhaps I was getting myself worked up again for no reason. “But hey, as long as I never go back onto their property, I’ll be okay. If he did come in here to check that I was actually an employee, it would be because I scared him yesterday. He doesn't want people from town trespassing on his land, and thankfully, that’s something I can easily avoid doing.”

“What if he comes looking for you again?”

I shrugged and tried to appear less scared than I was. “We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it. But in the meantime, I wouldn’t mind some company on my walks home.”

“As if you even have to ask.”

Thankfully, there were no incidents or strange noises on our walk home. Georgie stuck around the house for a while, and we visited with her grandmother and shared a slice of homemade cheesecake. By the time I crawled into bed a few hours later, I felt much less anxious. Whatever I’d heard the night before was most likely nothing, a scurrying animal perhaps, and I had no reason to think that Andreas or anyone else from the compound would continue harassing me. He’d confirmed that I was telling the truth about the book delivery, so if he kept coming around to bother me, he would only be drawing more attention to himself. Based on the two short interactions he and I had, I assumed that was the last thing he wanted.

Cozy under the covers, exhaustion washed over me, and I fell asleep much faster than usual. Drifting through my subconscious, I found myself back in the bookshop. Georgie was in her office filing paperwork, and I was standing on the top rung of the ladder, returning paperbacks to their rightful place on the shelf. Suddenly, the wood underneath my feet gave way, and I slipped. Losing my grip on the sides of the ladder, I fell back and closed my eyes, bracing for impact.

But instead of landing on the hard, linoleum floor of the shop, I dropped into a pair of strong arms. I opened my eyes and stared up in disbelief.

“You?”

Andreas smiled, and my heart skipped a beat. This wasn’t his ‘I’m just trying to be polite smile’—this was a real smile aimed directly at me.

“What are you doing here?”

“Saving you from a nasty fall, it would seem,” Andreas chuckled. “Are you alright?”

“Yes. I’m—fine. Thanks to you.” I smiled back and took a moment to appreciate how

nice it was to be held in such a way. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a man’s arms around me, and I realized with a bit of embarrassment that I didn’t want Andreas to put me down. “I don’t know what happened. The damn thing just broke!”

Andreas looked up at the ladder. “I’m guessing you haven’t had that ladder replaced or reinforced in a long time?”

“If ever.”

---