Page 7 of The Alpha's Mail Order Bride

Claire blanched as Suzanne reached for her laptop. “Suzanne!”

“Just to prove he’d be interested! You don’t have to take it any further after that, I just want to show you that you don’t give yourself enough credit.” Claire hesitated, torn, but Suzanne was already opening her laptop, fingers flying as she activated the various privacy settings that she’d run Claire through earlier that week. “I see you’ve been frequenting the sites,” she pointed out, raising an eyebrow.

“Research!” Claire protested, but it sounded weak even to her. Suzanne snorted.

“Yeah, research on your futurehusband. Now, where’s that hunk from the tropical island we were looking at?”

Claire could feel herself blushing scarlet. “Don’t be ridiculous. His profile’s probably been taken down already.” No way would a guy that good-looking still be on the market, right? But it wasn’t long before Suzanne had found it. There he was again—and Claire leaned a little closer as she looked at the screen over her friend’s shoulder.

“Darion,” Suzanne said, elongating the syllables of his name. “I don’t think I’ve ever met a Darion. Oh, it says his brother posted it.”

“I know.” Claire cleared her throat. “I read it.”

“Yeahyou did,” Suzanne said, her grin widening. “I bet you read it over and over. A bit of light bedtime reading—”

“Don’t be gross,” Claire said with as much dignity as she could muster. “I was taking inspiration for a character, that’s all.”

“Sure you were,” Suzanne said, eyes dancing as she clicked the button at the bottom of Darion’s profile. Claire would be lying if she said she hadn’t lingered over that button herself during the week, tempted to reach out to confirm whether the man on the screen could possibly be real…but she’d always stopped herself. And as Suzanne blithely started filling in the form as casually as if she was ordering a pizza, Claire realized with a giddy rush that she was actually glad they were doing this. Suzanne had always been the reckless one, but she was the brave one, too.

Screw it, she decided, taking a fortifying sip of the wine. Why not throw in an application? What was the worst that could happen? She’d been rejected from what felt like three hundred apartments in the last month alone; it would be a refreshing change of pace to be rejected by a man instead. With the rom-com playing silently in the background, completely forgotten, Claire and Suzanne worked together on a message that would strike the right balance between flirty and practical, adventurous and safe. It felt like she was in some kind of strange dream state when they gave the application a final proofread…and then Suzanne set the laptop in her lap, eyes dancing.

“Aren’t you going to submit it?”

“It’s your application,” Suzanne said, shaking her head. “It’s up to you to hit send. I just wanted to force you to say nice things about yourself for half an hour.”

Claire couldn’t help but laugh. She had to admit, it had been a strange exercise, but an oddly affirming one. She spent a lot of her life looking for the silver lining in everything around her—it seemed strange that she hadn’t thought to apply that lens to herself. “Well, now that my ego’s the size of a building, I suppose I don’t even need a rich husband.” For a moment, she lingered over the button that would close the browser and delete the message. That was the only sensible thing to do, right? Delete this fun little exercise in imagination and go back to her life…to packing up her things and getting ready for a bleak, uncertain future in a crappy motel. And before she knew it, she’d moved the mouse back across the screen and hit ‘submit’.

Suzanne whooped with delight as Claire sat back against the couch, shocked by her own recklessness, but somehow unable to bring herself to regret the decision. “I can’t believe I did that,” she said faintly.

“You’re engaged!” Suzanne was standing on the couch, the old springs groaning their protest as she bounced up and down with delight. “We’re celebrating!”

“He’s not going to respond,” Claire protested, pointing at the rather anticlimactic laptop screen, where a line of text confirmed submission of their message. But Suzanne’s delight had always been infectious, and it wasn’t long before the two of them were laughing together, planning a tropical destination wedding and discussing holiday schedules. They had always joked like this, and it wasn’t long before Claire had almost forgotten that what they were joking about had come from a very real submission of a very real expression of interest in a very real man. A man who was out there somewhere on an island in the middle of nowhere…a man with enchanting silver eyes and a guarded expression that made her yearn to find out what was going on in his head…the kind of man she’d been dreaming about her whole life, ever since she’d started writing down her romantic fantasies in those lonely teen years.

She woke up the next morning, a little disoriented by the slightly altered view from the floor. Her bedframe was already packed and stashed safely in the storage locker, which meant she was sleeping on the mattress on the ground for the last few days of their tenancy here. An ignoble end, she thought as she sat up in bed, reaching blearily for her phone to silence the alarm.

Blinking sleep from her eyes, she tapped on her habitual morning apps—messages, social media, a quick check of her bank account (never good news), and finally, her emails. Half a dozen rejections from apartments she’d applied for knowing full well she didn’t have a chance at—she deleted those without reading them. But the last one…the last one pulled her so sharply out of autopilot that her head spun.

“No way,” Claire whispered, staring down at her phone as that same eerie unreality came creeping back in. “No way, no way, no way…”

The suspicion that it was some kind of prank persisted even when she tossed her phone aside and grabbed her laptop, wanting to look at the email properly. It had come from the site Suzanne had signed her up for, and in language that made no direct reference to the website’s purpose, informed her that she had a message waiting for her. That could only mean one thing. Women who signed up to browse the site couldn’t be contacted or even seen by anyone unless they reached out first. And Claire hadn’t reached out to any of the profiles on the site…not until last night.

She scanned the message quickly, her heart thudding in her chest as if she’d just finished a race. It was Darion’s profile, alright—but the first few lines told her it wasn’t the man in the photos who’d actually written the email, something that set off a strange twinge of disappointment in her. It was his brother writing on his behalf, the same way he’d written his profile. He said he was interested in meeting with her to discuss the proposition in more depth…and he’d attached another photo.

Claire opened it, expecting another candid shot of the broad-shouldered man whose profile she’d lingered over for longer than she’d admitted even to Suzanne. Another flash of disappointment—but then her eyes widened at what she was looking at. A photo of a charming little house, nestled amongst lush green vegetation that indicated a location on whatever distant tropical island these men called home. Compared to the motel she was preparing herself for, it looked like paradise.

Claire slammed the laptop shut, shocked by how readily she’d been considering the prospect of living there. She really was in a bad state if the idea of marrying a stranger held more appeal than figuring out her situation here. Unsafe, she told herself briskly as she got up and got ready for the day, trying to put the profile out of her mind. Incredibly unsafe, a great way to become one of those women who disappear mysteriously and are never found again. This was all Suzanne’s fault, she thought irritably. Led astray by a bottle of wine and her most reckless friend’s silly ideas about adventure.

But try as she might, it wasn’t long before her mind returned to the subject. Darion’s brother had included his full name and a link to his company’s website…it wouldn’t hurt to have a quick look, right? Just to satisfy the last of her curiosity. For a moment, she was convinced they were messing with her. The link led her to the website of a New York-based company. She’d expected some tiny operation with a name she couldn’t pronounce, not a tech company that even she knew as one of the major players in the industry. This had to be bullshit, right?

Frowning, she clicked through the website, looking for some sign that she was being deceived. If it was a fake, it was a convincing one. There he was on the staff page, a man with dark hair and silver eyes, grinning confidently at the camera. CEO and founder…she stared at the polished, professional headshot. He was the spitting image of the man from the profile—there was no denying the family resemblance. And yet somehow, this photo lacked that raw magnetism of the ones she’d been poring over for the past week.

Before she knew it, she’d spent an hour reading about Reeve and his company. Profiles, interviews, old news articles about the company’s growth and successes since its humble beginnings…and nothing she could find online indicated that Reeve was anything other than who he said he was. There was no way he could have faked this convincing a paper trail. And if it was somehow fake, why not give his brother the same treatment? Because when she searched for Darion, she found nothing at all—only a handful of social media profiles belonging to men with the same name but decidedly different faces.

In the end, she wasn’t sure what made her write back to Reeve. Maybe it was curiosity, maybe it was politeness…hell, maybe she had some secret death wish. But when her phone buzzed a scant few seconds later with an enthusiastic confirmation of their appointment, Claire couldn’t stop a huge smile from spreading across her face. Her twenties were quickly coming to an end, and Claire hadn’t done a single reckless, stupid thing. No wild parties, no impulsive adventures, no crazy stories to tell her grandkids someday.

Was she really going to miss this golden chance to change all of that?

Chapter 4 - Darion

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