Page 12 of Alpha Wolf's Nanny
Felix wouldn’t let them. Perhaps he had turned her down, reaffirmed all the things about herself she knew to be true. She wasn’t pretty enough, funny enough,goodenough for someone like him to want to be with her. But he wouldn’t let her get hurt; she could sense that much.
Now, she just had to focus on not letting herself get hurt by doing something really stupid like falling in love with him.
“I know this is…” Felix started, his gaze resolutely on the road in front of them, his jaw working as he tried to find the words, “...surprising. I had no idea you were the nanny the agency had recommended to me before meeting you today. They’re big on maintaining privacy, which I suppose is a good thing. However, in this case…”
Cassie glanced over, waiting for him to finish speaking, but he seemed at a loss.
“Yeah, privacy,” she said, her skin growing hot under the pressure of the silence between them. “It’s worse for the nannies. Not that, you know, it’sbad,” she winced, “just…I think they have some quite high-profile clients. Secretive types. Important. Like you, I guess.”
He huffed, the corners of his mouth turning up, but a strange tightness lingering around his eyes. He wasn’t pleased with her assessment, it seemed.
“And what exactly did the agency tell you about me?” His voice was neutral enough, but the hairs on the back of Cassie’s neck stood up with some animal instinct to run and hide.
“Um,” she said, with much less confidence than she would have liked, “just the basics. You’re an alpha. But also, like,theAlpha of the Iron Walkers. Wolf shifter. Two sons. The rest was more about what you would expect from me. I mean, not fromme, why would you expect anything from me? No, I mean, of course you would, but like, as yournanny.”
Jesus. She wanted to fling herself out of the car.
Felix let her ramble; his hands gripped tight on the steering wheel. “So they didn’t tell you anything about me personally? About who I am?”
Cassie picked at a hangnail on her finger. “Molly told me you were gentle.”
The word dropped like a stone between them.Gentle. Cassie had a sudden, all-encompassing dread that she’d said something fundamentally wrong.
“Gentle?” Felix hissed, blue eyes narrowing.
“I don’t think she meant it to mean, like…weak,” Cassie said hurriedly, panic swirling in her gut. “Nothing like that at all, I think she meant—”
“Please don’t get me wrong,” he interrupted, his voice like ice, “there’s nothing wrong with being gentle. It’s a good, honorable thing to be. I only wish I had the luxury of beinggentle. But my upbringing, the circumstances of the pack, meant that ‘gentle’ was not something I could ever be. Make no mistake, Cassie, I am not agoodman. I have not done good things.”
Before she could stop herself, Cassie opened her mouth. “I think you’re wrong.”
“Excuse me?”
She gulped, but carried on regardless, “I think you are gentle. Whatever you were, whatever you had to do, you hadyour reasons. But youchooseto be gentle. At least, you were gentle with me.”
He shook his head, his shoulders set. “You don’t know anything about me.”
Cassie didn’t reply. She sank lower into her seat, crossing her arms over her midsection.
Of course, he was right. She didn’t know anything about him at all, and she’d be an idiot to think she did. She didn’t even know what had made her want to defend him, to insist that Molly had been right, that he was gentle. Maybe it was that he was the first shifter she’d ever had a proper conversation with, and he’d been nothing but respectful and curious andfun. Maybe it was how he treated her during their night together. How the next morning, he had ordered them breakfast…
And then promptly rejected seeing her again.
She forced her face into a neutral expression, even as her throat grew thick and slightly painful. God, the last thing she needed to do right now was start crying. It was his presence, she decided. His scent. It was making her brain go all fuzzy and stupid. She was better than this.
Pull yourself together.
He had been nice to her. So what. Plenty of people werenice. It didn’t mean they weregood. She’d looked him up, shamefully, while locked in the bathroom back at Phil’s, and was met with loads of articles and press releases and the like on the golden boy of shifter politics. Thehumanistalpha. Lots of talk about peace and coexistence and tolerance.
But not that much onhim, as a person. The few online forums dedicated to tracking various famous shifters by strange, groupie-like humans had plenty of theories about how he cameto lead the Iron Walkers, but nothing definitive. Shifter culture was, apparently, very secretive indeed. No outsiders allowed. Nohumans.
And she was a human, and he was a shifter. He had told her as much. Two different worlds. Peace was possible, but integration? If Felix didn’t seem to think so, then who was she to question it? The sensible thing to do would be to drop it and move on.
Cassie didn’t always consider herself to be a very sensible person.
“Why me?” she asked suddenly, a bitter stubbornness emboldening her. “Why a human nanny?”
He didn’t look over as he replied, “Those’re two different questions.”
