Page 69 of Harvest Moon

His glare came back, full force. “Absolutely not.”

“Fine, then yours. Of course I care more about yours, Lex. But that doesn’t mean—”

“It means you have to believe me when I say they already like you, so you can calm down. Birch practically high fived me in the kitchen this morning.”

Alexis’s fingers combed soothingly through the hair just behind my ears. “I promise,” he said, dragging me down to press a kiss against my forehead, “this is so fine. And I cooked you breakfast, so I’m going to be kind of bummed if you don’t come out and eat it.”

With his fingers in my hair, his soft words against my skin, I shut my eyes for a second and took a deep breath. Maybe I’d mess up sometimes, but that couldn’t be the end of the world when Alexis still wanted me.

“Okay. Thank you for making me breakfast.”

He was grinning when he kissed me. “Anytime. So, bacon?”

I groaned, smiling and dragging him in by his hips. “Yes, god, please give me a heaping plate of bacon, you absolute prince.”

His laugh was beautiful, the only sound in the whole world I wanted to hear, and he grabbed me by the hand.

Sure enough, my stomach was doing nervous flips as he brought me through the house, but with Alexis’s hand in mine, I’d face down anything.

Even the wicked glint in Claudia Wilson’s bright eyes.

39

Alexis

“—swear to god, Birch,” Claudia was hissing as we came back down the hallway. “If you keep treating me like I’m an invalid—”

I came around the corner to find him settling her into the chair at the head of the table. Oh boy, he’d carried her from the bedroom. That definitely hadn’t gone over well.

I’d suggested we just take our plates back to our respective bedrooms and eat there, but Birch had insisted that if Claudia found out I’d had Ridge stay the night and not let her play protective mama bear, she wouldn’t speak to either of us for days.

And he was probably right, so I’d given in.

Ridge had paused behind me, hovering in the hallway, looking like he would rather literally be on a gallows than about to follow me into Claudia and Birch’s dining room.

I linked our arms together and practically yanked him into the room. I mean, if he really hadn’t wanted to come along, I couldn’t have made him. The man was a six-foot wall of solid muscle.

I had to stifle a sigh at the thought. It was a damn fine wall, and I wanted another shot at climbing it as soon as possible. If Claudia and Birch hadn’t turned to look at us right then, I might have considered dragging him back into my room and doing it immediately.

The look that crossed Claudia’s face was entirely worth it, though. It was almost cartoonish, the way an evil smile unfurled across her face. “Well, well, well. Ridge, isn’t it? To what to we owe the pleasure so very early on this fine morning? Came to borrow a cup of sugar?”

“I invited Ridge to have breakfast,” I interrupted, but I might as well have been invisible for all the attention she paid me.

“Ma’am,” Ridge said, continuing to stare at his feet. “I, um, think we’ve met before. And Lex, well—he, invited me. Ma’am.”

“Did he?” she asked, and finally turned to look at me, doing a terrible job of smothering a smile. “You’ve never invited anyone for breakfast before, Alexis dear. Something special about today? Is it anoccasionof which I was unaware?”

If it had been us alone, I’d have told her hell yes it was an occasion, and then we’d have spent the next few hours talking about sex and alphas and she’d dish the good dirt about things she knew that I was woefully underprepared to deal with.

But Birch was there, so there was no way in hell I was going to talk about my now-gone virginity. No, I didn’t think Birch was the kind of guy who would judge me for having sex outside of marriage, but that didn’t mean I wanted to chat with him about it.

And Ridge was there, his cheeks already flushed and pink with his embarrassment, and I wasn’t going to put him through any more than I absolutely had to.

“I thought it was a good idea for you to know that Ridge and I are seeing each other,” I told her with a sharp nod, then wrapped my hand around Ridge’s elbow and tugged him over to sit at the table, at one of the two higher-piled plates—the one that wasn’t situated right next to Claudia.

“Is that right?” she asked, looking at Ridge. Clearly, my input was not what she wanted. She wanted to hear it from him directly.

And I couldn’t lie, I sort of did too.

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