Fated: An Alpha Male Romance (13 page)

“I never thought I’d see the day,” Kellen said. “But, I’m happy for you, E. Love is a beautiful thing. You two make fun of me about it, all the damn time, but finding somebody who feels the same way about you that you do about them isn’t as common as you’d think. I firmly believe in the concept of kismet — that you can be fated to someone. That’s why in some instances, when you thought you couldn’t love someone more than the last, you wind up falling into a connection so deep that it leaves you feeling as though you’ve lost some of your God-given sanity.”

Tayler darted an index finger at him. “We’ll get to your lady friend later.”

The heat from his embarrassment could have melted the polar ice caps.

“How does Alexandra feel about you?” she asked.

“Honestly, I’m not exactly sure how she feels,” I replied, realizing for the first time that I didn’t know if Alexandra’s feelings for me ran as deep as mine did for her, nor did I care.

Tayler and Kellen remained silent, most likely waiting for me to justify why I’d overstepped what I’d once held as a solid boundary.

“But, her relationship is shit and he’s an asshole,” I added. “He, as well as her parents, have certain expectations about how women should act and how she should be.”

“Rich?” Kellen asked.

“Loaded. Both families. You know General James Miller? The former Defense Secretary of the United States?”

“Oh shit, that’s his daughter, isn’t it?”

“If that’s the case, I get it,” Tayler answered. “The way he and his wife carry themselves is enough for me to believe that they grew up in a household where even their rules had rules.”

“They did,” I confirmed. “But, here’s the thing. She told me that she’s willing to risk all of that, the possibility that they might threaten to disown her…for me.”

Tayler’s eyes filled and for the life of me, I didn’t understand how women could burst into tears even when they weren’t upset.

Her grin stretched from our table to the other side of the room. “To me, it sounds like she feels the same way about you,” she declared. “I’m so happy for you, Ethan.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I waved away her words even though I was beaming on the inside. “But, on to other things.” I took a bite of steak and we both turned to face Kellen. “Who’s your lady friend and when’s the wedding?”

He ran his fingers through his hair, lowered his eyes, and grinned.

-----

Alexandra

A typical weekend for Roderick and I usually consisted of him going on a trip out of town, attending a formal event to which I was occasionally invited, or us spending a day around the house doing everything except talking to each other. This weekend, after my two-hour drive back from Eli’s ribbon cutting in Baton Rouge, I’d planned to tell him about me and Ethan. Yet, the minute I walked through the front door, he announced that he wanted to learn how to samba.

Roderick was a Viennese Waltz and maybe Argentine Tango type of guy, but he’d walked into the foyer with a smile on his face and saying that he had a surprise for me in the living room. The surprise turned out to be a dark-haired, olive-skinned woman from Colombia with a smile like Sofia Vergara and hips like Shakira. She was dressed in a tight-fitting single-strapped red dress with curves that could give anyone vertigo. Her heels were high, her calves taut, and her disposition warm and inviting. Her name was Claudia, and she was a professional ballroom dance instructor.

“Are you surprised?” he asked with a look in his eyes that I’d never seen before. “Do you like my surprise?”

“What are we doing, exactly?” I asked.

“We’re going to learn how to samba.” He did a small movement with his hips that could have helped out a lot in the bedroom years ago. “Then the cha-cha, the paso doble, and the…rumba. Right Claudia?”

“Right,” she answered with a melodic, Spanish accent.

A nervous and slightly uneasy titter escaped my lips. “Yes, but why?”

He glided over to me and leaned close to where only I could hear. “You’ve been different, Alexandra. You have been going missing, working late many nights, and we haven’t made love in ages. I was upset, thinking that you were pulling away from me, but then I realized that it was because of my campaign. I was putting so much time and energy into it that I forgot that you hold the number one position in my life. So,” he motioned to Claudia, “I figured that we could have some fun for once.”

Ever have one of those moments where you feel even lower than the first rung on a step ladder? That was how I felt. I could spin it any way I wanted to, even add in the way I felt about Ethan, but that didn’t excuse the fact that I was a cheater. I’d stepped outside of my relationship, time and time again, and had even gone as far as to fall in love with someone that was not the man with whom I’d shared a home and life for the past two years.

“Rick, we have to talk ab—”

“Later.” He grabbed me by the arm, twirled me around, and pulled me into his chest. “First, let’s dance. She charges by the hour and doesn’t come cheap.”

Then he smiled in a way that I’d also never seen — a teenaged-boyish lopsided grin — and I gave in. Truth be told, I wasn’t ready to have the Ethan conversation anyhow. Ethan had offered to be with me when I made my “announcement,” to Roderick, but I’d reassured him that this was something that I had to do on my own. Now, ending things with Roderick no longer seemed as simple as they’d appeared in my head.

We spent the rest of the afternoon learning footwork, how to move our hips in time to the motion of our feet, the difference between samba steps for men and women, and she even threw in some sexy arm styling for me that she’d claimed was sure to “relight” the fire in our bedroom. Roderick had looked at me, winked, and then sent me a Groucho Marx eyebrow wiggle. He was a completely different person.

“So, last one,” Claudia said, stealing my attention from Roderick’s sudden onset of playfulness. “Your turn, Alexandra.”

I looked down at my feet as though expecting them to begin moving on their own. “My turn to…?”

Roderick smiled, the corners of his eyes wrinkling slightly. He walked over, drew my body to his, and took my hands. “It’s our turn to show her what we’ve learned.”

Claudia turned on an upbeat rhythm and we danced around the living room with enough footwork to potentially scuff the old hardwood floors. Roderick laughed and dipped his hands to my hips. I found myself laughing along and straddling the dangerous line between faking my enjoyment and having a genuinely good time.

When we were done with our set, Claudia left amidst a barrage of hugs and thank yous, and Roderick scheduled for her to return the following week. He then retreated to the couch, fell into it, and as I went to plop down in the other corner, he pulled me onto his lap. I automatically cringed because I was sweaty, but he touched his lips to my chest right in the middle of the moisture and pulled back without a grimace or gag.

“Can I say something?” I asked.

“Of course, Buttercup.”

I cringed a second time. “Did you get really good news?”

He tossed back his head and laughed. “Because I was so light on my feet earlier? Not exactly, my love.”

“You’re acting differently, though.”

He rubbed a trail over my knuckles. “It’s like I was saying, Alexandra, I don’t want to lose you and these past few weeks, it became a real possibility. I’ve been neglecting you and I’ve been acting even more uptight than usual. I wanted to show you that I can let loose too.”

I froze. “What do you mean by
too
?”

“You’ve been spending a lot of time with Gia,” he clarified. “I know it’s because she’s more interesting and fun. It made me jealous, so I wanted to show you that I can be fun too. Cut loose a little bit. Alexandra,” he squeezed my fingers, “I
cannot
lose you right now.”

I was officially lower than that last ladder rung. Was there anything lower than complete selfishness? Did my deceit know no bounds?

He touched my chin and brought my lips down to his. Nausea created a disturbance in the pits of my stomach, and I lost all of the will that I’d built to tell him about Ethan. It wouldn’t be right to drop that on him when he was so vulnerable, especially when I’d assumed that I couldn’t hurt him or that he’d never cared about me enough for my leaving him to have an effect. Now, I wasn’t as sure.

He touched my thigh. “Come on. Let’s go take a shower.”

“Together?” My heart began leaping in my chest. He had a look in his eyes that suggested that he’d be expecting sex, and I hadn’t touched him since the first time Ethan touched me. It was a crazy and absurd notion, but at this point, sleeping with Roderick would feel like cheating on Ethan. Sex with Roderick would be betrayal of epic proportions.

“Of course,” he replied, chuckling. “I’ll wash your back if you—”

His phone vibrated on the coffee table, cutting him off. He stared at the number, wrinkled his brows, and then glanced at me. He turned the phone towards me and I recognized the area code from Bristol, Maine, where his parents had retired. They’d bought a quaint, waterfront cape cod on Biscay Pond and spent three hundred days out of the year on the water.

“Hello?” he answered, his frown softening to concern. I listened to snatches of the conversation and from his deep, “what happened,” I could tell that something was wrong. Although extremely healthy people for their ages, a few years ago, Roderick’s father had occasional problems with his heart due to plaque buildup in his arteries.

“Okay Mom,” he said. “I’ll fly out tonight. Okay. I love you too.” He ended the call and gripped the phone in his palm. “I have to fly out to Bristol tonight, Buttercup.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Dad had a heart attack.”

My nausea swirled even faster as I imagined what would have happened if I’d dropped my bomb on Roderick earlier.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry.” I wrapped my arm around his shoulders. “Do you want me to look up our tickets?”

He glanced up at me. “Our?”

“Yes…or do you not want me to come with you?”

“I just didn’t think you would.”

“Why not?”

He shrugged. “No reason, but it’s okay, Alexandra. My mother said that it was mild and that the hospital’s keeping him overnight for observation, so I want to go up there and be with her.”

I searched his face. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” He pressed a quick kiss against my lips and patted my thigh.

“I’ll still book the ticket for you,” I said, sliding off his lap. “You go upstairs, take a shower, and pack.”

He started off but then stopped, turned, and looked at me. “Were you really going to come?”

“I still can.”

“It’s okay. Like I said, I just didn’t expect you to offer. Thank you, Buttercup.”

I smiled. “You’re welcome, Rick.”

“Keep your phone on, though. If things take a turn for the worse, I might still need to send for you.”

I nodded and he hopped up the stairs.

I booked him a first-class ticket and a couple of hours later, we were saying goodbye at the airport. The warmth and mirth from earlier hadn’t disappeared, and he hugged me so genuinely that I felt as though, while he was gone, he would miss me. I had absolutely no idea what was happening.

I crept back into the car and waited until he was out of sight before reaching for my phone to call Gia to tell her about Roderick’s sudden one-eighty. As I went to dial, Ethan called. My hand trembled as my finger extended to press the accept button. “Hey, E,” I greeted.

The person on the other line giggled. “Oh hi. This isn’t Ethan. It’s his friend, Tayler. I just used his phone to call you.”

I quickly recalled that Ethan had mentioned that he was having dinner with his two good friends, Tayler and Kellen, also physicians.

“Oh, hi,” I answered. “Is everything okay?”

“Well, I was wondering if you were busy.”

I paused. “Not really. What did Ethan do?”

She broke out in laughter. “I like you already. But, we had dinner and a couple of rounds at Chophouse, and he and Kellen got into some kind of drinking match. They’re both a bit wasted, but I can only handle one at a time. I’ve managed to get them back to Ethan’s place, but I need some help.”

I checked my mirror, thanked the car behind me, and pulled into the terminal’s exiting lane. “I’ll be there in a bit. Thanks for calling Tayler.”

“You’re welcome, Alexandra. I look forward to meeting you.”

I used the
key that Ethan gave
me shortly after our Colorado trip to open the front door, and found who I presumed to be Kellen lying on his side next to the coffee table in the living room. The woman kneeling over him had a beautiful head of wavy dreadlocks that hung down her back. When she turned to look at me, I was caught off-guard by how stunning she was. Her complexion, eye color, and the way her hair streamed around her face were a lethal combination.

“Hi Alexandra.” She walked over and gave me a tight squeeze. “I’m Tayler.”

“Oh hi,” I replied. “It’s finally nice to put a face to the name.”