Every year around the anniversary of his husband’s death we could see the stress start to build. Over the last few years it’d started to fade, but this year it seemed to be getting worse. Instead of just cleaning out a closet or rearranging furniture, he’d completely remodeled the bathroom.
“That’s wonderful.” I was hoping the energy he’d expended had helped him work out some of his emotions, but I wasn’t sure it’d done the job this time.
Judging by the looks Bradley and Dakota exchanged, we were all on the same page with that. “I can’t wait to see it.”
Making a mental note to stop by and see him later in the week, I gestured toward the door. “You guys ready?”
“Starving.” Bradley was still in hison time is latebit, so I just gave him a smile and followed him in. Pointing out his bad behavior never really helped.
He was another misbehaving omega who needed a keeper.
We were creatures of habit, so we were seated and had everything ordered in minutes. As we relaxed in our favorite booth at the back of the restaurant, the conversation turned to the club again. Wade set his glass down and smiled. “How are the last of the plans going?”
“Good.” I fought the urge to look at my phone and see if Graham had texted back. “I think we need one more meeting to iron out the last of the details and then he’ll start the remodel.”
Our unwillingness to explain the real purpose of the club had been reasonable, but when Graham had figured out it wasn’t just a social club, he’d insisted there were hundreds of little details that needed to be addressed. My schedule was the most flexible, so I got to spend the time deciding most of the crazy details Graham was convinced were terribly important.
I was probably the easiest to deal with as well, but he was too polite to point that out.
“It feels like it’s coming together so fast.” Wade glanced between Dakota and Bradley. “What do you guys think?”
The cranky-pants omegas knew better than to bring Wade down, so they actually smiled. Bradley even sounded slightly cheerful as he spoke up. “I think the timetable is looking very good. Redoing so much of the plans has put us behind where I wanted to be at this point, but I think it’s for the best.”
“Yeah.” Dakota nodded, fiddling with his pen. “I think the overall functionality of the rooms will be much better this way.”
Being able to answer Graham honestly had made some things much easier, but it was also even more awkward now. When all I’d had to do was smile and pretend to be a boring omega, it’d been easier to ignore how he pulled at me. Being honest was much harder.
It’d been one conversation after another about kinks and fetishes and what people might need to use in each space. How was I supposed to talk about all that with a hot alpha I was pretending wasn’t hot and more than likely kinky as hell because nothing he mentioned seemed to shock him at all?
I had so many questions that all had to go unanswered.
Wade grinned. “And the fact that Jonah gets to spend all that time with the sexy alpha isn’t bad either.”
I groaned. “Nothing’s happened. And really, I’m pretty sure he’s seriously involved with someone.”
Shaking his head, Wade picked up his glass. “Shane seems to think he’s single.”
“Shane thought he was vanilla too.” But what family had those kinds of conversations? I would have assumed Graham was a traditional alpha too. “He gets a lot of texts from someone who makes him smile and he just comes across very taken.”
No single guy felt that guilty about flirting or checking someone out.
Yeah, we’d played the game of discreetly checking each other out and pretending we hadn’t, but he’d radiated some kind of confused guilt. At first I’d thought it was because of Shane or because of the kink confusion, but now I wasn’t so sure.
“That sucks.” Wade frowned, taking a sip of his soda. “I wonder why Shane doesn’t know?”
Bradley rolled his eyes. “Because he’s clearly seeing someone their family wouldn’t approve of. If he’s a single, kinky, or at least open-minded alpha, he should have flirted more with at least one of us. So far all he’s done is exchange longing glances with Jonah.”
“Hey, I haven’t beenexchanging longing glanceswith him.” They were insane.
Wade and Dakota both laughed. Even Bradley cracked a smile as he responded again. “Oh yeah, you two have repressed sexual longing down to an art form.”
“You two are nearly as hot as Austin and Silas are when you start staring into each other’s eyes.” Wade started fanning himself dramatically.
“No one can top those two.” Changing the subject seemed to be the best idea, so I focused on Austin. “Speaking of Austin and Silas, are they still on for their interview tomorrow?”
Unfortunately, Austin’s love life was now major tabloid news. One of the asshole cops who’d been hassling Silas had leaked photos of Austin and Silas. They’d decided to handle it by doing a big TV interview, hoping that would take attention off anything else.
Being in the spotlight like that would have killed me, but Austin liked the attention, and Silas liked anything that made Austin happy.
