The Alpha's Choice (4 page)

She started the coffee, tossed a package of
bacon on the counter and turned back to the refrigerator to grab a
couple of eggs singing aloud the song her father used to sing to
her Mom before the bad times came.

"Hey there Little Red Riding Hood, you sure
are looking good…"

"You're everything that a big bad wolf could
want," a deep bass intoned behind her.

"Aaack!" The eggs went flying as Kat whirled
to face the owner of the voice.

Two hands shot out and caught the eggs. Those
hands were attached to the best looking piece of manhood Kat had
ever seen outside of a movie screen.

Chapter 4

"Good God Almighty!" whooshed out of her
mouth and Kat wasn't sure if it was fear or astonishment.

"No, I'm not Him," the man said slowly with a
bit of a drawl she couldn't quite place, "But you're not the first
to make the mistake." His smile was disarming, like a small boy who
was up to mischief. Except he wasn't small. Anywhere. "But now that
you mention it, there have been a few women who referred to a
second coming…or third…or fourth."

She changed her mind. His smile reflected a
dirty little boy's dirty little mind. What she found disarming was
that he didn't try to hide it. He was watching her and waiting to
see if she got the joke.

With her hand still plastered to her chest
where it flew to keep her heart from leaping out, she sputtered,
"And probably a few more who questioned their sanity the next
morning. Do you always use such outrageous lines?"

He raised his hand in the Boy Scout sign,
three fingers up, thumb and pinkie folded across his palm. "Never,
but I've been waiting years for the opportunity to use that
one."

"You should have waited longer. Who are you?"
and then her eyes managed to get past his face and physique to his
clothes, "Oh, sorry," because the answer was obvious.
"Duh."

He was wearing a pair of paint spattered
white canvas pants, work boots and a faded blue oxford shirt that
had been washed to threadbare softness. The sleeves were rolled up
to his elbows and showed off a pair of long, muscular forearms
dusted with golden hair that attested to the fact that the golden
blonde locks brushed back from his forehead and held in place by a
pair of sunglasses were natural. Kat marveled at the great cosmic
blunder that had turned this guy into a house painter when he
should have been adorning the covers of magazines or romance
novels.

 
"Move over, Wolfy. You've just been
replaced by a human golden god,"
she thought and then blushed
deep red when she remembered her earlier comment to the wolf. What
if this gorgeous painter had shown up while she was naked in the
pool?

"No need to apologize." He smiled with
gleaming white, even teeth. "I'm the one who came in unannounced. I
didn't mean to frighten you."

Maybe not, but he was enjoying her
discomfiture once he did. She'd met his kind before when she tended
bar during her last two years of college. Men like this one liked
to keep their intended conquest off balance, were masters of the
double entendre and sly remarks and if a girl wasn't careful, the
really talented ones could charm her panties right off her rear end
while her jeans were still in place. Most of the time, their banter
was harmless and they took no offense when their advances were
turned away.

The handsome house painter stepped past
her, placed the rescued eggs next to the stove, and gave her a
friendly wink. His next stop was the coffee maker where
he poured himself a mug and settled his backside against
the granite countertop, crossing his legs at the ankle.

The painter's pants were loose along the leg
and left much to the imagination, but there was no disguising their
length and leanness. A tailor couldn't have fit them better across
the hips and Kat was looking forward to the rear view of him
walking away. She glanced up to find him watching her watching him
and reddened again when he grinned.

"Like what you see?"

What was the matter with her? She wasn't
fourteen! She knew better than to blatantly stare at a man as if he
was a box of Belgian chocolates, even if he was drool worthy. She
turned her back on him and grabbed a frying pan from the rack.

"I was just about to make breakfast. I
imagine you've already had yours," she hinted, hoping he'd go back
to work at the front of the house and leave her alone. Out of
sight, out of mind and all that. "My name's Kat, by the way."

"Cat?" he chuckled, "Meow. That's a bit
unusual or did someone have a sense of humor."

Kat frowned. Her name wasn't common, but
unusual? Funny? "K, not C. It's short for Katarina, after my
grandmother."

He must have heard the snap in her voice
because he seemed eager to make amends. "Ahhh, Katarina. Now I like
that. It's a lovely name for a lovely lady."

Kat gave him a look that said she was on to
him and unimpressed. She began pulling off strips of bacon and
laying them in the pan.

"Don't look at me like that. I was talking
about Grandma. She was a lovely lady, right? They wouldn't have
named you after her if she wasn't, right?" he asked, thus making
her look like the bad guy for misconstruing what he said.

Kat shook her head in admiration. She had to
admit the guy was good.

"I'm Charles and I would be delighted to
share breakfast with you, Katarina. How about you frying up that
package of bacon and I'll whip up the eggs?" He opened the
refrigerator and pulled out the carton with the remaining ten
eggs.

"The whole package?" The package was a full
pound.

"Not enough?" Charles turned back to the
refrigerator.

"No, no! I just meant..." Kat blew out her
breath and laughed. "There's only the two of us."

"That's what I thought," he agreed, "So one
should be enough." He began cracking eggs into a deep bowl.

"Whoa, wait!" Kat held out her hand, palm
forward. "How many eggs do you eat?"

"I don't know. Six, eight? Whatever's on the
plate. Why?" He looked at her curiously.

"Because I can only handle two and a strip or
two of bacon," she said aloud and muttered to herself, "And because
I want to live past thirty-five," as she eased around him and into
the pantry.

Had this guy ever heard of cholesterol? She
risked another glance at the man now working at the stove. That
high, tight rear end was every bit as enticing as she thought it
would be and that long, lithe body of his sure didn't look like a
heart attack waiting to happen. She grabbed the loaf of bread and
removed three slices for the toaster.

"There's steak here if you'd rather," Charles
offered. "I'm partial to pork chops myself."

Kat shook her head. "We'd better wait on
that." He was awfully free with his employer's supplies, but then
again, he'd worked here longer than she had and probably knew what
was okay and what wasn't. "Inside or outside?" she asked as she
took the dishes down from the second shelf.

From the corner of her eye she saw him lean
back from the stove to answer her and do a little checking of his
own. When his eyebrows rose slightly in speculation and his back
arched a little more, Kat flushed, remembering what she wore
beneath the tiny cover-up, which was absolutely nothing at all.

"Well?" She resisted the urge to tug at the
hem of her robe.

"Hmmm?" Charles looked up at her and grinned
and it wasn't a guilty grin. He wasn't trying to disguise his
interest.

"Do you want to eat inside or out?" she asked
again in a reasonable attempt to sound casual. She grabbed the
dishes up and hoped they didn't crack in her tight fisted grip. The
robe was called a cover-up because that's what it did, right? He
couldn't see anything. Then why did the look in his eye make her
feel as if he could see everything?

"Do you want to eat inside or out?"

Charles licked his lips, eyes half closed,
and then shook himself out of whatever reverie he was falling into.
"Oh, outside, definitely. Let's enjoy it while we can. Rain's
coming and I doubt we'll be doing any running tonight. Moon's
waning anyway."

She piled the plates on the tray, reached up
for a platter and looked back over her shoulder. "Ah, you're a
runner."

"Yeah, sure. Aren't you?" He checked the
sizzling bacon, removed some and added more before he looked her
way. "With those legs, you'd have to be," he said
appreciatively.

His eyes said he approved of more than her
legs, so she held the Betty Grable pin-up pose a moment longer than
she had to, watching him watching her. This was something she'd
never done before. She was flirting outrageously and apparently
doing a decent job of it. It was fun. That Charles obviously found
her attractive made it more fun. Maybe Grams was right and she was
a late bloomer, a really late bloomer. Kat did a mental shrug.
Better late than never, right?

She'd always felt like she'd missed some
rungs on the boy/girl attraction ladder. She'd climbed it just fine
until she was twelve or thirteen. At that age, she could sigh and
swoon with the best of them over boy bands or current TV heart
throbs. Her sexual fantasies were normal for girls that age, at
least according to the psych classes she'd taken in college.

But as her body reached its physical
adulthood, something went wrong. She was sure her preferences lay
with the opposite sex. She could definitely appreciate the male
form in the abstract and fantasize about the usual what-ifs, but
she never got that toe curling tingle of desire for any of the boys
or men she'd dated and it wasn't for lack of opportunity. She was
neither a wallflower nor a celibate when she met The Bastard.

Her relationship with The Bastard, she
refused to call him by his name, had been based on common
interests, compatibility, and future goals rather than sexual
attraction and she had been content. They were both busy and their
night time conjugal forays were about physical release more than
passion. It wasn't great. It wasn't awful. It was supposed to
produce two children when the time was right and then, she assumed,
fade into the background. After the two children, if he'd wished to
continue that side of their relationship, she wouldn't have
refused, but she wouldn't have questioned his withdrawal from it
either.

In their eight years together, she'd never
once felt the tingle of anticipation she was feeling now.

"You want butter or jam with your
toast?" 

Thank heavens she'd already laid the plates
on the glass topped table or they would have gone the way of the
knives and forks, up in the air and clattering to the flagstone of
the patio. She hadn't seen, heard, or felt him move up behind
her.

"Oops, sorry," he said sounding not the least
bit repentant. He set the platter of bacon and eggs on the table
and quickly stooped to retrieve the knife that landed by her foot
where he lingered a moment more than necessary.

"That's a good way to get you nose whacked,"
she told him, stepping away and folding her arms across her
chest.

He handed her the knife with the same smirky
grin used by the fourteen year old boys who used a dropped pencil
as an excuse to look up her skirt. Kat didn't let them get away
with it. She wasn't going to let the housepainter get away with it
either. Unlike the boys at school, however, Charles didn't look the
least bit guilty or offer up any lame excuses.

"Can't blame a guy for trying," he
shrugged.

"I can if he's old enough to know better,"
she told him while trying in vain to keep her shame-on-you face
from breaking into a smile.

"Ah," Charles said, rising and raising his
finger. "But then he'd also be old enough to calculate the
risk/reward ratio." He took a step toward her and she took a step
back. He placed the dropped knife on the table. "In this case, the
risk would be minimal. I knew you wouldn't hit me."

"You didn't get a reward either," Kat
laughed. She knew she shouldn't. The man didn't need any
encouragement and while she was having fun, she didn't want him to
think there was anything more to it than that.

"Not yet, but I'm patient," he stated
confidently.

"Good," she said, "Then you won't mind
waiting while I run upstairs and put some clo… something else
on."

"Your breakfast will go cold," he called
after her as she ducked through the door.

"That's why they invented microwaves!" she
called back.

Kat tossed the jean shorts she was going to
wear back in the closet and reached for a newer pair, the ones that
showed off her rear end to best advantage. She had both feet in and
was wriggling them up over her hips when she stopped, frowned, and
wriggled them back down. She retrieved the old baggy pair with the
torn pocket and put those on instead.

She'd had her moment of fun. It was time to
get back to the real world.

Charles nodded his approval of her Race For
the Cure® t-shirt or that was what she told herself since his eyes
dwelt on her chest for an extended moment before the microwave
dinged. He removed her small plate and slid his much larger and
full to overflowing one in. As he passed Kat the plate, he gave her
a look of resignation.

"I was hoping you'd come back in one of those
little black and white jobs," he told her, "You know, with little
bits of white lace up here." He ran his finger along his chest
outlining the twin arches of a bra. "And all around the edges of
the poufy little black skirt. You'd be wearing fishnet stockings
and six inch heels. Oh yeah, and the apron." He rolled his eyes
heavenward. "I love the tiny apron."

Kat shook her head in disbelief. "Here I was,
beginning to think you were original and all you can come up with
is a Halloween costume. A French maid's costume? Really?" She took
her plate from him and headed back to the patio. "In your dreams,
buddy," she said, laughing. She tried to muster some outrage at his
blatant harassing behavior, but she couldn't.