He didn’t even have a stupid picture of himself holding some large fish.
No. Instead of the fish, he had a picture with a fancy-looking dog—one of those designer poodle mutts that cost about a million dollars. Another picture showed him smiling while holding a cup of coffee. The smile was decent, and I liked to drink coffee too. What more did somebody need in a life partner?
Zane knocked at my door, in the most impatient facsimile of asking for permission—likeever,before he just barged into my room as if he had some legitimate reason to be there.
He sat on my bed, his fingers steepled in contemplation. Zane’s raised eyebrow was saying:so, how did it go?Wordlessly, I unlocked my phone, showing him the app.
“Nice! You’ve got a lot of matches. Are you interested in any of them?”
I flipped to Mark’s profile and held it up for Zane’s inspection.
Zane was watching me as if he was expecting the punchline to a joke.
I just glared at him, deadpan. This wasn’t a joke; this was my entire wedding at stake.
“Okaaay… why him?” Zane was actually bringing the phone closer to his face as if he needed the help to see what he wasn’t seeing.
“He’s the most normal beta man I’ve seen on this app so far.”
“Wow, imagine the stories that you’ll tell your future kids. That on the dating app, your dad was the most normal guy you managed to find.” Zane clicked off of Mark’s profile, flipping to a drool-worthy panty-dropping gorgeous specimen of a man with the brightest green eyes I’d ever seen, and a smile that I needed to look away from, before it made me melt. “What about this guy?”
“Obviously, I scrolled past him because he’s an alpha.”
Zane crossed his arms. “And what’s wrong with alphas?”
Oh,shit.Had I insulted my very alpha brother somehow? I forgot that he was an alpha. I mean, he looks like a stereotypical alpha, with the muscles and the charisma… but he’s my brother, so like, it doesn’t register. That’s just him.
“There’s nothing wrong with alphas.” No, the problem, obviously, was with me. “I just don’t want to get dropped for the first omega that comes along.”
Zane enlarged the picture of Mark to somehow prove his point… as if I was having vision problems or something. “Sothisis what you want? Because you think that alphas aren’t going to give you a chance.” My brother shook his head at me, as if he couldn’t understand what the hell I was thinking. “I would date betas. There’s no rule that betas and alphas can’t date.”
“Yeah, but would you marry a beta?”
Hewas the one who didn’t seem to get that my whole wedding was on the line. I couldn’t fuck around with something as fickle as an alpha’s attention span. What I needed was to think realistically.
“If she was the right woman, yeah.”
“Only problem is that I can’t marry you, and the alphas I’ve met don’t think like that.”
Whatever. Zane didn’t know what he was talking about. I wasn’t about to waste my time letting my brother talk me out of my future.
I scrolled back to Mark’s picture and swiped right.
CHAPTER 4
AVRIL
The Thirsty Pearlwas everything I needed for my little date. I’d actually gone on my first date with Dylan here—we never did end up coming back, after Dylan complained about the way that they had undercooked his steak. Thinking back, that was definitelyhisfault. If he wanted his steak tougher than old boots, he shouldn’t have ordered a medium rare.
What I liked about going to The Pearl was that the booths were a royal sapphire velvet, and not vinyl or cracked leather that would stick to the back of my thighs if I wore a short skirt. It was also usually quiet enough that I was able to talk without screaming over the music. Personally, I feel like the music shouldn’t be blasting to get my heart pumping—being with my date should do that. Throw in the fact that The Thirsty Pearl was also a bar that served my favorite drinks meant that a good cocktail wouldn’t be far off if the night went to shit.
Stepping inside, I locked eyes with the bartender.
Oh, damn.
He was new. He was definitely new. I would have remembered a man likethat.His eyes were so blue that they were piercing straight into my soul, knocking me off my feet and crashing with me onto the shore of a Caribbean island—on whitesand under the shade of palm trees, rolling around with all those defined muscles pressed right against me.
He was tall. His hair was chocolatey-brown, and flowed in waves that I wanted to sink my hands into. I bet his hair would feel like silk beneath my fingertips if we kissed.
