Page 22 of Holiday Surprise

Sydney rolled her eyes at me and smiled, beginning to relax some as we sat down to dinner. Conversation flowed easily with all of us and I couldn’t feel any further anxiety coming off of her. All in all, it was a great evening.

I could tell my mate was exhausted. She had said work was good, just busy and constant all day, but it clearly was wearing on her. I made an excuse that I had a lot to do the next day and suggested we call it an early night.

Sydney agreed and we thanked Peyton and said our goodbyes to the family. As Sydney picked up their toddler, Eve, and hugged her close, it felt like someone had just punched me in the gut. I could clearly envision her holding our child. Just from that brief interaction I knew she was going to be an amazing, loving mother. She kissed the little girl on the head and passed her back to her mother.

We walked out together in silence. I wanted to see her home safely, but I didn’t know if she’d let me.

“Um, Sydney,” I asked fumbling for words like a horny teenager. I felt way out of my element with this woman. “Can I follow you home? Jesus, that makes me sound like a stalker,” I said aloud, unable to believe what I was saying. I had dated before. I had game, not that it was showing through tonight.

“You’re already halfway home and I know you have a lot to do tomorrow. I’ll text you when I get there. You don’t need to worry.”

“I only said that because you looked tired and I didn’t want to pressure you into staying late. Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve. I don’t have anything to do. Everyone should be busy enough with their own celebrations not to need me every second of the day even,” I confessed.

“It must be hard being Alpha,” she surprised me by saying.

I shrugged. “Most days it’s all good.”

She gave me a strange look then smiled. “You can follow me home, but you can’t stay long. I really do have an insanely busy day tomorrow.”

“Really?” I asked again defaulting to that of an insecure child.

“Yeah, but if we hang out here much longer, Peyton’s going to come out and drag us back inside and I’m really not up for socializing any longer.”

“You didn’t have to come if you were that tired. I would have understood, if someone had just texted me,” I teased her.

“It’s fine, and I’m glad I did,” she confessed.

When we reached her car, she started to hesitate again, but I didn’t wait as I opened her door and held it for her until she was buckled up safely inside. Then I left her to jump in my truck and I followed her home.

I was surprised when she pulled into a neighborhood that looked deserted. There were a couple dozen houses and hers was a large cape cod style at the end of a cul-de-sac. It was quite impressive. I jumped from my truck and was holding her car door open before she even had the engine shut off.

“Thanks,” she said. “Well, this is home. It’s a bit big for just me, but I got an awesome deal on it that I couldn’t refuse.”

“Does anyone else live in this neighborhood?” I asked seeing very few lights on in the surrounding area.

She shrugged. “A few people. When they built this neighborhood it quickly got a bad rap for well, um, being too close to your pack line. If you look out of my back door you can actually see the tracks that separate our territories. It’s still a good mile away, and a narrow section of the river runs through it, but a lot of people decided it was just too close and therefore not safe.”

“Yet you bought this here anyways?” I asked surprised to hear it knowing how she felt about my pack.

She shrugged. “A good deal is hard to turn down. It’s not far from work, and honestly, who’s going to breech that river to come over here? Really, it was dumb and unfounded, but I’ll take it. I like it out here. It’s pretty quiet and I have a gorgeous back yard with lots of room to run.”

“I’d love to see it sometime in the daylight,” I told her.

“We’ll see,” she said teasingly. “Come on in. I’ll give you a tour of the place.”

I followed her inside as she showed me around. Each room was decked out in Christmas and made the place feel much cozier than a house that large generally would for me. Everywhere I looked there were signs of Christmas. I had never seen so many holiday decorations in one building before. The woman had four Christmas trees.

She shrugged. “What? It doesn’t always look like this, I just really love Christmas.”

As we finished the tour, she admitted it was a five-bedroom house but that she only used the master bedroom on the first floor. The four bedrooms upstairs were kept clean but never really used. Everyone she knew and cared about already lived in Collier and had no reason to stay over.

“It’s a great place,” I said. I really wanted to say, “It would be a great place to raise a family,” but we hadn’t discussed such things and I was still walking on thin ice afraid she would vanish before my very eyes.

After the tour we settled into the living room. I took a seat on her couch and was pleasantly surprised when she joined me there. When she yawned, I was about to excuse myself.

“Nettie told me about your family,” she said, and I immediately stiffened. It wasn’t something I talked about, ever, but this was my mate which left me torn on what to do or say.

“What exactly did she tell you?” I asked through gritted teeth.

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