Page 2 of The Alpha's Mail Order Bride

“I like it here,” she said automatically. Feeling uneasy, she turned back to the TV, where the handsome leading man was midway through a tortured monologue. “Hey, it’s your favorite part!”

“I haven’t seen this one.”

“Of course you have, it’s a rom-com. This is the part where—”

“—where there’s a huge drama that would have been completely avoided if anyone in the movie had thought to have a five-minute honest conversation,” Suzanne finished, a broad grin spreading across her face. “Oh, I love it. That’s right,” she said, shaking her head as the man turned away and stormed out of the room, leaving his distraught love interest behind. “Run off instead of asking her for her side of the story, go on…you don’t do that crap in your books, do you?”

Claire shrugged, glad that she’d managed to distract Suzanne from the subject of her rapidly approaching homelessness. “Misunderstandings are part of the genre.”

“But do they have to be so damned stupid?” Suzanne gestured impatiently at the television. “I mean, if he’d just let her explain that her feelings for him were pretend at first but they’re real now—”

“—then the movie would be over an hour in,” Claire pointed out.

“Half hour sex scene. Problem solved.”

“Lucky girl,” Claire grinned, sipping her wine.

Suzanne snorted. “What, for getting half an hour? That’s bare minimum.”

“Not with Derek. I was lucky to get ten minutes with Derek.”

Suzanne set her wine glass down, picked up a couch cushion, and screamed into it at top volume. That done, she took a steadying breath. “Derek was pond scum,” she said with immaculate calm.

“He wasn’t so bad.”

“He jerked you around for a year and then dumped you for asking a question about commitment. Not even making a request or a demand. Just raising the subject. And he dumped you.”

“It was more complicated than that,” Claire protested. “He was—I mean, yes, agreed, he treated me terribly,” she said quickly, hoping to stem a little of the murderous rage in Suzanne’s eyes, “but I mean, he had a lot going on with his family, I understand why his mental health might have gotten the best of him—”

“I love you more than anything in this wretched world, Claire, but if you finish that sentence I’m going to have to claw your eyes out. I’m sure you’ll understand, what with everything I’m going through, with my best friend wasting her precious mental energy on empathizing with the worst man on Earth—”

“You really think he’s the worst man on Earth?”

“No, actually, you’re right. That would require actually putting some effort into it. He’s the most nothing man on earth. Pond scum, like I said. Like what collects on the top of stagnant water.”

“Poetry.”

“Seriously, Claire. I know how good you are at empathizing with everyone who’s ever lived, and I know it’s why all your damned books are so good, but I worry about you giving so many losers the benefit of the doubt like that.”

“You’re the one who hates misunderstandings in romcoms,” Claire pointed out, nodding to the television, where the female lead was deep in a tearful conversation with her plucky best friend. “What I hate is when the misunderstanding could have been avoided with a bit of empathy. If she’d only thought about how it must have felt for him to find out she’d gone out with him as a bet, she might’ve been able to stop him storming out to—join the army or move to Michigan or whatever.”

“So you’re saying she should have read his mind?”

“No,” Claire said triumphantly. “Because then the movie would be over—” Her sentence was cut off by a well-aimed pillow which struck her squarely in the face. “Suzanne! We can’t afford to break a wineglass right now, we’re already down to two.”

“I’ll drink from the bottle.”

“I take your point,” she said, wrapping her arms around the cushion and sighing. “You’re right. I’m a doormat sometimes. I just…I don’t know, I see the best in people.”

“And like I said, I love that about you. I’d never want that to change. I just…wish we could find you someone who actually lives up to the potential you see in them.” Suzanne sipped her wine. “Someone rich as hell, ideally.”

“Sure. Six foot five, eyes to die for, built like a linebacker, owns his own tropical island—”

“Slow down, slow down.” Suzanne pulled her phone hastily out of her pocket and started typing. “Tropical island—not subtropical?”

Claire laughed. “I could settle for subtropical, I suppose.”

“Very gracious,” Suzanne said solemnly. “Good to be realistic about climate. Alright. Like a linebacker, you say. I hate football too much to know what that means.”

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