Page 17 of Impregnated By the Alpha

During lunch, she mixed up a spice cake batter, unable to sit still with her racing thoughts and churning feelings. It was a decadent cake studded with nuts and dried fruits, heavily scented with warm fall spices that perfumed the whole shop, and by the time she pulled it from the oven, her mind had settled.

The afternoon was surprisingly busy. By three o’clock, the case was nearly empty, and she was considering closing early to bake some test layers for the wedding cakes. She wanted to try a lemon-soaked white cake for the middle layer, something that suited the beach wedding. The next time the door opened, she wished she had.

Jonah stood in the doorway, half-in, half-out of the shop, holding the door open with his toe. He pulled his knit cap off his head and kneaded it in his hands, staring at Moira like a deer in the headlights. In the dim light of the pub, she hadn’t managed to get a proper look at him, but she could see him clearly now in the afternoon sun, and it confirmed her worst fears; he’d gotten stupidly hot.

The gangly boy she’d known in high school was gone, replaced by a full-grown man. He was still lean, but she could see the muscle beneath his shirt, unbuttoned just enough to show a triangle of tanned skin at the base of his throat. She found herself staring at that patch of skin, transfixed. Then she looked up and met his eyes.

“What are you doing here?” She blurted out, the words erupting from her.

His eyes grew larger, his grip tightening on the hat in his hands. “Hey, Moira.”

She couldn’t believe his audacity, showing up at her workplace when he knew, must know, that she wanted nothing to do with him. Her grip on the piping bag tightened, and frosting spurted out onto the counter in front of her. Furious, she grabbed a wet rag and started to scrub it off before it could harden, hoping that by the time she looked up again, he’d be gone.

The door closed softly. But he hadn’t left. He was standing properly inside now, though as far away from her as he could. If she had been Vera, she would have cursed him out where he stood. She would have given him the tirade he deserved and sent him scurrying out the door. But she wasn’t.

With Jonah in front of her, she was the insecure, embarrassed teenage girl from high school all over again, the one who never could speak up when he was picking on her. The one who’d walked home each day, crying. Why did he still have this power over her?

They stared at each other across the bakery. Moira wondered what Jonah saw when he looked at her, if he still saw the girl she’d been, or if he saw her as she was now, as Vera saw her, wasted potential.

“I know you don’t want me here,” Jonah said, holding up his hands as if he expected her to lunge at him. As if he hadn’t been the one to turn her spineless in the first place. “And I promise, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to be.”

“Are you here to apologize after what you did to the tree? Because you have some nerve showing up here after that. And it’s Adria you should be apologizing to, not me.” Somehow, she found talking about the pack’s troubles easier than her own. Easier to defend a friend than herself.

“The tree?” Jonah looked confused. An act, she was certain of it, from his puppy-dog eyes to the slumped shoulders. “What happened to the tree?”

Moira crossed her arms over her chest. It helped hide the smear of chocolate frosting across the area, and gave her hands something to do other than shake.

“Someone vandalized it. Tried to chop it down. Doesn’t that sound like the sort of thing a White Winter would do?” She’d almost said something a bully would do, but she’d bitten her tongue. Bringing it up now would just make her seem childish and weak, unable to get over something that had happened so long ago.

He looked over his shoulder, out the big front window of the bakery, like he could see the tree from there. Then he sighed, and his shoulders slumped farther down, diminishing his height. “It does. Or it did, anyway. They’re trying to turn that reputation around.”

Adria had said much of the same to her, but she couldn’t believe it. People didn’t change, and that pack never would either. Jonah was a bully then, and he’d be a bully now. Was there any more proof of that than the fact that he’d joined a bully pack?

She pursed her lips. “Did you do it then?”

“No!” He said, with a vehemence that made her take a step back. For a second, something had flashed in his eyes. Fury? Passion? “No. I didn’t do it. I just came back for my father’s funeral.”

The Silversand Alpha. During her time in the Silversand pack, she'd known him as a distant, unapproachable leader, nothing like Spencer or Adria. Those two gave everything they had to the Rosewood pack, caring for it like a family.

“Fine, but why are you here?” Moira asked, waving around at the bakery. Did she have frosting on her face, too? She could only imagine how disheveled she looked after a full day of work. “In my bakery. Right now.”

“It’s yours?” Jonah brightened, looking around the place with sudden interest. “That’s awesome, Moira. And you made all of those?”

He drew closer, peering into the bakery case with a boyish smile on his face. It transformed him so that even she, despite herself, leaned in to be closer, to watch and see what brought him to life like that. Then, realizing what she was doing, she pulled back and bit the inside of her cheek, hard, to knock some sense into herself. It had been a hot minute since she’d last been on a date, but her body should know better than to react to that man.

A sinking shame filled her that had nothing to do with her unexpected, and misplaced, attraction and everything to do with what she’d led Jonah to believe. That she owned the bakery. No, she was not even the pathetic owner of a bakery in a dead-end town, Vera’s worst fear and Moira’s deepest wish. She was only an employee at the bakery in the dead-end town.

“I just work here,” she amended, and the words felt like lashes against her soul.

It would fill Jonah with joy to know how little she’d accomplished in her life, and she waited for the mockery that was sure to follow.

He drew himself up, leaning one arm against the counter. “Did you make those?”

She nodded.

“Then you're very good. They’re amazing, and this place is lucky to have you.”

Hearing words of praise she’d so often longed for, from the mouth of a man who had only ever hurt her, sent her spinning. She struggled for solid ground. It was probably part of a setup. Something he would use against her later as a longer-running gag.

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