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She crossed her arms over her chest playing coy. She was pleased by his reaction. “If you tore it off me, then you would have destroyed the only dress that I own that’s appropriate for this shindig you are throwing tonight,” she said.
“I can have another dress here before the party,” he said with a raised eyebrow.
She laughed. “Down, boy. I need to start getting ready. Is Jessie still outside?”
He nodded. “Is that working out all right?” he asked as he approached her. He put his arms around her and gave her a kiss on the nose.
“I am still getting used to the idea, but she’s been a big help,” Kelly said.
He gave her a long slow kiss then that started a bubble of burning desire in her belly. Maybe a little roll in the hay wouldn’t be such a bad idea.
“Kelly? I’m ready to start helping you with your hair if you’d like?” Jessie’s voice drifted into the room from what she could tell was a respectable distance on the other side of the door.
She heard the low growl deep in Marc’s chest at the interruption. She peeked around his shoulder and saw Jessie looking hesitantly around the corner. Then Kelly looked at her watch and realized with a sigh that Jessie had been right to interrupt. She had an hour before the guests started arriving, and Jessie had told her that the chef wanted her opinion about the menu. It seemed as if the mistress of the household duties extended far beyond what she expected.
“I’ll see you downstairs shortly,” she said as she reached up on her tiptoes and brushed her cheek against Marc’s. She heard something that sounded almost like a purr. All of his animalistic qualities were incredibly sexy. She was starting to wonder how she had ever been satisfied by a human male before.
Less than forty-five minutes later, she descended the main staircase feeling like some kind of princess. She could see that the entire main floor was lit up with candles, and flower arrangements were artfully displayed everywhere. It looked like it was going to be one hell of a party, and she was still feeling nervous that it was all for her.
Jessie helped direct her to the kitchen, and she met with the chef briefly. It turned out he wanted to give her a small taste of the different items that were to be served on the menu just to get her approval. She sensed that this was important to him, and she oohed and ahhed over the food appropriately. This earned a wide smile of gratitude from the chef. She made her way back out into the main hall just in time to take Marc’s arm as the first guests arrived.
Her head was spinning several hours later after the exquisite meal and meeting all the people in the clan. They were all friendly, and she sensed their curiosity about her. She never felt that interesting before, but everyone was asking her opinions on everything, so she was starting to believe that maybe she did have something to offer. The only person that didn’t approach her was Margot.
Despite their rude interaction previously, Kelly found she was still curious about Margot. She saw Jessie across the room and made her way over to her. She gently took the woman’s arm, and Jessie immediately snapped to attention. “What you need, ma’am? What can I help with?”
“It’s okay, Jessie, and call me Kelly, remember? I don’t need anything; I just wanted to ask you a question. There’s something that’s been confusing to me, and I was hoping that you could clear it up.”
She knew that she had asked Reid the same question a couple of days before, and the man had been elusive. Men were generally elusive when it came to these types of things. She thought that she would have a better chance of finding out what was going on by asking Jessie. Plus, there was somewhat of an obligation for Jessie to tell her the truth given she was Kelly’s assistant.
“Of course. What you want to know?”
“Margot. What’s her story?”
Jessie’s eyes immediately started to dart around the room. “It’s really nothing that you probably want to know,” Jessie said.
“I’m pretty sure I do,” Kelly said. “If I were to guess, based on your reaction, I would say there used to be something between Margot and Marc?”
Jessie closed her eyes and sighed. She was clearly uncomfortable with the question and struggling with how to answer it appropriately. “Yes. I guess you could say that. Margot is different. She has lots of strong opinions, and she doesn’t hesitate to tell people about them. She causes a lot of problems in the clan,” Jessie finally said.
“What kinds of problems?”
“She questions things that she shouldn’t question. I think that she felt like she could do that because she and Marc were together for so long.”
Now this was interesting to Kelly, and it would also explain why Margot was being so aloof. “Together for how long?”
“Something like two years? They broke up fairly recently, I think? No, several months. She still came around often. I don’t think she took it well,” Jessie confessed.
This made sense now. This was the jilted woman who was having to deal with her lover’s new mate. “Any idea why they broke up?”
Jessie looked at her like she was crazy. “Well, even if there hadn’t been problems before, which I heard there had been, she wasn’t his mate. You are.”
“Oh.”
“Marc had wanted an heir for so long; it was expected as the Alpha. But Margot couldn’t give him one. I’m sure you know that our kind only mated with someone who could give them cubs? A childless couple means that they aren’t fated mates.”
“Marc told me about that.” Kelly listened to these words and tried to think about if they satisfied her or not. Then she thought about how genuine Marc’s words had been when he said that he loved her unconditionally and that he knew everything was right between them. He believed it with all his heart. She was the one who had been the one dancing around it and refusing to fully commit.
Kelly looked across the floor at Margot. The woman stood slightly apart from everyone else. She was beautiful in the tall skinny model kind of way, but Kelly could sense even from this distance the chilled, chipped façade that made her utterly unapproachable. This wasn’t a woman to be jealous of, this was a woman to pity.
