Page 25 of His Innocent Omega
“Now, we’ll be back with some things for you and make sure everything is locked up tight at your house,” Miss Rose ran a hand over Julianna’s dark head, not at all fazed by my red-faced, screaming baby. The woman had run a daycare for the past twenty plus years, so I imagined she had tons of experience with crying babies. “You’re going to be fine, Wyatt. No one knows what they are doing when they become parents, so stop thinking that just because your I.Q. is higher than probably this entire building, that you should automatically know what to do. Parenting is fifty percent instinct and fifty percent flying by the seat of your pants. You’re going to make some mistakes, but at the end of the day if everyone is healthy and in one piece, we call it a win.”
She leaned over and planted a kiss on the side of my head, running her hand over my messy mop of light brown curls, much like she had done to Julianna. “Don’t worry about a thing. We take care of our own here in Sweet Alps.”
Overcome with emotions I couldn’t even begin to unravel and decipher, I gazed at her. “I just moved here, I’m not a part of this town. Not really.”
“Oh,” she chuckled, moving towards the door, “I think Fate decided otherwise months ago.”
With a whoosh of the door, the two ladies who I thought might have just unofficially adopted me, left me alone with my decidedly unhappy baby.
Taking a deep breath, I laid Julianna down on the bed and picked up the tiny diaper, turning it this way and that, until I had it facing the correct way. “We got this, don’t we, little miss?”
Chapter Twelve
Becks
Striding into the sheriff’s office after my talk with Jamie, I had a cup of coffee from The Sweet Spot in one hand and the file folder Jamie had given me on Wyatt tucked under my arm. Coffee in the afternoon probably wasn’t my best life decision, but I had earned it. And I needed the caffeine pick-me-up before I headed back to the hospital for the night.
Finn had said Wyatt shouldn’t have the baby in his room tonight so he could get some rest, and while I didn’t disagree with the doctor, Wyatt’s crestfallen expression hadn’t escaped my notice. No one had said I couldn’t camp out in Wyatt’s room and take care of the baby for the night. It seemed important for Wyatt to at least have her close, even if I was doingthe diapers and feedings. Alphas stayed with their omegas all the time in the birthing rooms.
I was sure Wyatt was going to pitch a fit about my presence, but I didn’t care.
I had barely made it through the glass and wood door of the building before I heard the unmistakable sounds of clapping. Jen, our receptionist/dispatcher/admin/kept-the-office-running person stood at her desk, clapping loudly and grinning broadly. Likewise, my three deputies that were currently in the office were doing the same.
Mike Randall, a deputy of ten years who had run against me when the previous sheriff had finally retired, clapped me on my shoulder. I had thought it might be awkward for him, working under me when he had lost, but he had calmly told me he hadn’t really wanted the job and was thankful when someone else had tossed their hat in the ring. His rotund belly stretched the buttons of his shirt, while his blue eyes twinkled. “My omega is due in a month. Can I save on the hospital bills and just call you, Becks?”
“Fuck you,” I grinned widely at him good naturedly, before catching myself and schooling my face back into my usual ‘fuck around and find out’ countenance.Dammit.
“Holy shit, the boss has dimples!” Steve Long, our youngest deputy, pointed out to the room, sounding stunned by this development.
“Forget the dimples,” Jen chuckled, “I’m disappointed he’s wearing a shirt. I don’t know what’s getting talked about more, Becks delivering a baby on the side of the road or his abs. I wanted to judge for myself if they lived up to all the hypebuzzing around town.”
Rolling my eyes at them all, I continued towards my office, calling over my shoulder cheekily, “Oh, they live up to the hype, believe me.”
“Damn shifters and their muscles,” Mike muttered, and I saw him poking at his very human stomach before I shut my office door on all their laughing faces.
Sighing, I sank gratefully into my comfortable chair, taking a much-needed sip of my cinnamon latte. I had always lived on black coffee, but then I discovered The Sweet Spot and my world had been changed. The bakery/coffee shop was owned by Jamie’s brother-in-law, Quinn. It had taken one whiff of the cinnamon cup of heaven to make me a convert for life. Now black coffee just seemed so blah.
Running a hand over my stubbled jaw that could do with a trim, I flipped open the file Jamie had put together on Wyatt and started reading.
Well…Goddess, I’m not sure what I had expected to find but it wasn’t even close to what I was seeing.
My little sub was a certified genius. He graduated high school at age eleven, and college at age fourteen. And not just any college, but fucking M.I.T. He held more degrees than I had wall space for. Electrical Engineer, Computer Science, Physics. He’d then gone to Harvard, and I felt a touch of pride since that was my alma mater. While I’d gotten my law degree, Wyatt had gotten degrees in Philosophy, Psychology, and surprisingly, Early Child Development. The list of degrees was long enough to make my head spin.
He had served on several top-secret military defense programs, taught as a professor of what was considered the hardest class on the campus, Math 55–a class I had scraped by passing by the skin of my teeth–and had his hand in developing severalapps that had ended up making him a shit ton of money.
One of which was the kink app, Taboo, that we had hooked up on. He was listed as a designer, but Jamie had dug deeper and found out he was a silent partner of the app. Like the info on the top-secret projects, I wasn’t surprised Jamie had found that piece of information out.
What had surprised me was that Wyatt hadn’t used his power and authority on the app to find out my true identity and track me down. For a second or two, my overactive, skeptical, see-the-worst-in-people mind toyed with the idea that hehadtracked me down. That his being in Sweet Alps was his way of inserting himself into my life.
But just as quickly as the thought formed, I knew that wasn’t the case at all. Wyatt had been just as surprised to see me this morning as I was to see him. He hadn’t been faking his shock and he hadn’t been faking the fact that he truly didn’t know my name. Years of experience and training had taught me that.
No, I had deleted my profile and Wyatt hadn’t bothered, or felt the need, to dig around for my contact information. That fact should have made me feel happier than it did. Instead, I felt a small ache in the middle of my chest, and maybe a touch of…sadness? Goddess, I needed to figure my feelings the fuck out.
Instead of dealing with my feelings, I went back to reading.
For the last two years, Wyatt had been in New York, teaching psychology at Columbia University while also dabbling in different scientific projects. The lists of papers and college level textbooks he had authored, or co-authored, was almost as long as his list of degrees.
And he was only twenty-fucking-four years old. Fuck, I considered myself a fairly intelligent person, but I hadn’taccomplished a tenth of what Wyatt had and I was twice his age.
