I needed to go after him, smooth things over.
Trina had the same idea. She got to her feet, intending to go after her brother.
“No,” Jackson said, pointing at her. Then he looked at me and gave a slight shake of his head, as if he knew what I was going to do.
Trina thumped back into her seat, eyes wide.
“Let’s finish breakfast, shall we?” Jackson’s voice was easy. “It’ll make Alice unhappy if we waste all this food.”
I didn’t give a shit about the food. Every instinct in me that wanted to keep the pack together screamed that I should go after Len. It was hard to ignore that and sit back down, but I did, the thump of my seat echoing Trina’s from a few moments ago. I forced myself to pick up a sandwich, unwrap it, and take a big bite.
Following my lead, the others began to eat.
Chapter Seven
When breakfast was over, the kids scattered to unpack their things and return their rooms to normal. Holly, always the thoughtful one, offered to help Dan set up his room. Trina naturally wanted to help as well, and tagged along. Before I knew it, they were all hanging out in Dan’s new room, pointing out how he should arrange furniture and asking him what sports he liked, what TV shows he and Jackson watched.
They seemed to be settling in okay. “Jackson and I are going to run and visit the rent houses. You have my number if anything comes up, right?”
They nodded. Holly smiled gently at me. Trina texted into her phone, ignoring me. Heck, things were almost back to normal.
“Okay then,” I said, and left them upstairs. I headed back down to where Jackson was hanging out in the living room. He seemed to realize that hovering would only make everyone more anxious, so had split off from the group once he’d finished eating. I headed in to the living room and his gaze immediately went to me, though he didn’t get up off the sofa. “I want you to come on a business call with me.”
“Sure thing,” he said, voice easy.
“Unless you have somewhere you need to be?”
“No plumbing calls at the minute,” he told me. His gaze didn’t leave my face, though. “Business is slow when you’re new to an area. I imagine that’ll change soon enough.”
Thinking about the future made me all flustered again, especially when he was looking at me like that.
We got into my truck, since I insisted on driving. Jackson was fine with that - again, not something I was used to. Cash would always fight me on this sort of thing, because he liked to be in charge of everything. Just one more way that Jackson was different than the alphas I was used to.
Of course he’s different, I chided myself. The others were your family. This one’s your mate.
The thought of having a mate freaked me out a little. I cast another nervous look his direction, my hands tight on the steering wheel as I turned the truck onto the local farm road.
My phone rang, and I fumbled for it, grateful for the interruption in my thoughts. “Hello?”
“Hi, is this Alice?”
I frowned at the female voice. I hadn’t looked at the number before I answered, my concentration on the road. I noticed Jackson’s posture had changed. He was listening; werewolf ears were so keen that we could pick up phone conversations from several feet away. Likely he was just being protective, knowing I’d been harassed lately. It still bugged me. “Who’s this?” I asked, my voice brusque.
“Oh, this is Bathsheba Ward-Russell, from Midnight Liaisons. I thought I’d call and see how things were going. I noticed your profile was updated and attached to Jackson Wilder’s. Have you guys made a match?”
My mouth worked silently as I tried to process this. I hadn’t updated my profile? A quick glance over at Jackson and he raised his eyebrows at me, as if challenging me to answer her. “Match?” I asked, the nervous squeak in my voice again.
“Tell her we’ve mated,” Jackson said in a low voice, not wanting to interrupt my conversation. Despite the soothing tone of his voice, I still felt that irresistible urge to please my alpha. It was not a comforting feeling. Jackson was an alpha with a strong personality, despite his charming demeanor. Whatever he wanted, he could get, just by a smile and a softly worded command.
“Um. Profile. Yes. I updated it,” I lied. “Jackson and I have combined our packs.”
“Mated,” Jackson corrected again, off to my side.
I ignored him. “So yeah, I won’t be needing your services anymore.”
“Oh, that’s great,” Bathsheba said, her voice happy. She was oblivious to the tension on the other side of the phone. “Then that brings me to my other reason for calling. My husband Beau wanted me to invite you two out to dinner to discuss the possibility of the Savage pack - though I guess it’s the Savage-Wilder pack now - joining the Alliance?”
“I don’t think—“ I began.
“We’d love to go,” Jackson told me, his voice firmer and louder. “Tell her that.”
I cast him an irritated look. “Would you shut up for two seconds?”
“I’m sorry?” Bathsheba said, confused.
“Not you,” I told her quickly, glaring at Jackson and trying to drive at the same time. “I have a backseat driver that won’t be quiet.”
He simply grinned at me, amused by my surly attitude. “Just tell her we’ll go to dinner and I’ll be quiet.”
I didn’t want to go to dinner. Not with the Alliance, who were a bunch of busybodies that stuck their noses in where they didn’t belong. My pack didn’t need the Alliance. That was for shifters that didn’t have pack support. We had everything we needed now that Jackson had arrived to lead us.
Except my new leader? Had some ideas I wasn’t keen on. I glared at him again, and found him giving me a challenging stare. An alpha stare. I continued to glare at him, not willing to break gaze. The first one to look away would lose the challenge.
“You’re about to run over that mailbox,” Jackson murmured at me, eyes still locked with mine.
Shit. I broke gaze, righted the truck on the road, and gritted my teeth. “We’d love to go to dinner.”
“Perfect,” Bath said happily.
We made plans for over the weekend. A double date (god) over dinner. When the conversation ended, I clicked off my phone and tossed it into my purse, glaring at Jackson out of the corner of my eye.
“Challenging me while I’m driving is totally not playing fair.”
“The Alliance would be good for the pack,” he said.
“I disagree.”
“And that’s why I had to challenge.”
“Yeah, but while I’m driving? Not cool.”
“I guess I could have used other methods of persuasion,” he said in a husky voice. “Would you prefer those next time?”
A ripple of awareness ripped through me, and I remembered his mouth on my neck, licking my skin. I sucked in a breath, my nipples going hard. “A challenge is fine,” I said flatly.
He laughed.
A few minutes later, we pulled into a tiny suburb sprawl in the midst of nowhere. Jackson gave me a curious look when we took a right on Alice Lane. “Is that a coincidence?”
“Nope,” I told him. “I own all these houses.”
He looked impressed, staring out the window at the small ranch-style houses, neatly lined up on acre plots. “How many are there?”
“Fifty-six,” I told him. “I wasn’t joking when I said I was a slum lord.”
He chuckled. “These aren’t slums to me. They’re nice houses.”
They were. I was proud of them. “My dad was a builder,” I told him. “Worked for other people for the first twenty years or so, and then came into some money when his father died, and left him a couple hundred acres out in the country. My father decided that he’d do something with that land and that money, and built a bunch of houses so he could rent them out to people that needed housing but couldn’t really afford it.”