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“I can’t, remember? I’m covering that three-week betasitting gig over in Buckley Place. Get back in there and tell him to eat shit, girl. Tell him how you feel!”
“I can’t!” I yanked my left hand down and pulled the ring loose, along with some of my hair.
Her tone darkened. “Why? Did he bark at you?”
“I’m not sure Tarquin has ever barked, Rain. It’s just… you know how I get.” My voice had risen to a squeak, and she shushed me.
“You’ll have to tell him no eventually. You can’t marry him.”
“I know. But I can’t do it tonight. His parents are on their way over for champagne. I can’t face… all of them.” Especially Tarquin. He was my good friend, and sweet as pie. But the few times we’d kissed, I’d had a visceral understanding of the phraseit felt like kissing my brother.
And honestly, I’d caught him wiping off his lips on his sleeve, so I had a feeling it wasn’t just me.
Rain cursed into the phone, then exhaled. “Okay, two birds, one stone. Between Flora, Val, and me, we were able to cover three of the betasitting jobs that came in.”
I hummed in reply. Rain had taken a longer-term job a few days before. I’d been the one to send our company’s apologies to the final, last-minute request from the personal assistant of an unnamed businessman. The guy wouldn’t give specifics about the job until whoever took the work signed an iron-clad NDA. No details meant that job fell to the bottom of the list.
Rain went on. “That just leaves—”
“I’ll take it.” I cut her off, grabbing a suitcase from my closet and stuffing random clothing and shoes into it. I dumped my whole underwear drawer in, then pulled half of them back out. I was packing like a lunatic, but I really didn’t have time to pick and choose. “How long was it for again?”
“Ten days, starting tonight,” Rain reminded me with a sigh, “and the PA pinged me again this afternoon, desperate. He doubled the rate.”
“I said I’ll do it.”
“You can’t. We don’t have any details, except that the pay is astronomical.”
When she said the number, I gasped. “That would cover an apartment for a year!”
“Threeyears and utilities in my neighborhood. Sun, I don’t like it. It’s too much. It could be a cartel, for fuck’s sake.”
“I’d betasit for Satan if it got me out of marrying Tarquin,” I vowed, grabbing my bottle of Hawaiian Magique perfume from my dresser and spritzing all my pulse points.Normally, omegas didn’t wear synthetic stuff; it made us feel slightly sick. But all our sitters needed to cover up their individual scents. Whether that meant using expensive scent blockers, or just cheap perfume to make people mistake us for betas who were trying too hard. “I’ll fill out the NDA and sign the contract. Can you get your shady rideshare guy to pick me up two streets over?”
“Monty? Yeah,” she said. “But if he asks to see your tits again—”
“I know. Punch him in the nuts,” I replied wryly. For years, Rain had been trying to teach me how to be assertive and badass like she was. It was never going to happen.But I humored her. “I’ll totally break his balls with my ninja-style moves. I’m a trained martial artist, you know.” It was true; the League offered enrichment classes to all its members.
“Sun, you trained in meditative tai chi. If a sloth attacks, you’ll win every time. I mean it; don’t fuck around. Take the pepper spray I got you.”
“Yes, Mother,” I snarked, but stopped when someone yelled in the background on her end. Not a child. A grown man, a stranger. He was yelling her name over and over, demanding to know where she was. Practically barking at her.
An alpha? Shit. We’d both been so busy this week—me with damage control at the League, and her with Blue Skies bookings and helping her mom—that I hadn’t asked about her gig. Come to think of it, she’d been mostly radio silent for a few days now, except for our morning meme check-ins.
That wasn’t like her.
“Rain, are you okay?” When she didn’t answer quickly, my heart raced. I fished the pepper spray out from under my dresser. Forher, I would fight dragons. Or even alphas. “I’ll fuck up whoever that is. Just shoot me the address.”
“Oh no,” she practically purred. She sounded the same way she did when she was about to dive into a giant bowl of pistachio ice cream. “This asshole is all mine. And he’s going to pay, at last.”
I had no idea what she meant, but I heard Tarquin’s parents arrive and knew I had to go. I said goodbye, promising to call later. Then I left a note for Mom telling her I had to leave, but I’d be at my friend Candy’s estate for the week, at the other end of our gated community.
Then I snuck down the back staircase, holding up a finger to my lips when our live-in cook looked up from the television in the kitchen. “Where are you going, Miss Soleil? Your fella’s in the dining room.” Her brow furrowed as she stared at the ring.
Shit! The ring.
“Belva. Keep this for me?” I pulled it off to hand it to her, but she backed away.
“Oh, honey, no,” she said firmly, shaking her head. “I’ll do a lot for you, but I’m not breaking that poor boy’s heart. You put that back on now.”
