Free Web NovelChapter 13: Rowdy Ricky
Richard’s POV
Something had changed and Richard wanted to know what it was.
He’d been trying to work it out for the better part of two weeks, running back through everything he’d observed since the kitchen incident, sorting the data the way he sorted everything, with the particular patient attention of a man who liked puzzles and liked advantage and understood that the two were often the same thing.
The name change was the biggest obvious shift. James had gone from giving her that name in the first place to growling at the pack through a mindlink for using it, which was not a subtle evolution. The pups incident had been something to watch. Three kids, eight and nine years old, playing in the yard and calling after her the only thing they’d ever heard her called, and James had come out of the pack house with an aura so sharp that every adult wolf in the vicinity had gone still. The kids hadn’t known what they’d done wrong. Their parents had found out fast.
Then there was the kitchen window. The forty-minute block after lunch when the kitchen was off-limits. The way James’s eyes tracked her during meals with an attention he clearly thought was subtle and wasn’t.
Richard had been putting pieces together and he was starting to get a picture he found very interesting.
He finished his sparring set and grabbed his water and sat on the ground, breathing through the cool-down. Across the yard he could see Trishelle coming out of the side door with her garden basket, heading for the kitchen plots.
He looked at her properly. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t before. She’d been here the whole time, just part of the background, always working, always quiet. But the background had apparently been hiding something, because looking at her now with actual attention, she was something to look at.
Tall. Long legs. The green dress she was wearing today did the work of showing that the baggy clothes had been covering up more than anyone had given thought to. She moved with a kind of natural ease in her body that some women had and most didn’t, like she wasn’t thinking about how she looked because she’d never been given a reason to.
Richard tilted his head and did some mental math.
"Hey," he said to no one in particular, loudly enough that the guy sitting three feet away looked up. "How long has Trishelle been with the pack?"
"Fifteen years, give or take," the wolf said, already losing interest.
Richard nodded slowly.
Fifteen years. She’d been about two or three when she’d come in, according to the story he’d heard. Which put her at somewhere around seventeen, maybe eighteen at the outside. Most omegas had their first heat at eighteen. Some a little before.
His finger tapped his knee.
He had a reputation that he’d earned honestly and maintained without apology. He liked people, liked being with them, liked the particular fun of the chase more than almost anything else. He didn’t have many hard lines about it. Willing was the main requirement. Everything else was details.
He looked at Trishelle disappearing around the corner of the building and thought about timing and opportunity and the particular advantage that information gave you when you were patient enough to wait for the right moment to use it.
He had an idea.
He sat with it for a minute, turning it over.
He was going to need the Alpha’s permission, or something that looked enough like it. That was the trick.
He stood up and went to find James.
James’s POV
He lost the sparring match and he was annoyed about it.
Not because losing to Richard was a catastrophe, Richard was good, always had been, and James was secure enough in himself not to need a perfect record in practice matches. He was annoyed because he knew exactly why he’d lost and the reason was embarrassing.
He’d been up half the night.
He’d gone back to the lake, watched her, come home, and then lain in his bed thinking about the green dress on the stone and the calluses on her hands and the particular way she’d said "thank you" in the kitchen like she’d been saving it up, and he’d gotten maybe three hours before his alarm went off.
He was running on fumes and Richard had clocked it and used it, which was smart boxing and also infuriating.
The sand in the eyes had been cheap though.
They were walking off the field, Henry redirecting the others back to their sets, when Richard fell into step beside him.
"You’re brooding again," Richard said.
"I’m walking."
"You’re brooding while walking." Richard’s tone was easy, that loose good-humored quality he used when he was about to say something he knew would land badly. "It’s about the kitchen omega, isn’t it."
James’s jaw tightened. "Drop it."
"I’m not judging. I get it, I was just looking at her properly myself and she’s--"
"Richard."
"I’m just saying, objectively--"
James stopped walking and turned. Richard stopped too, hands up slightly, the picture of someone who was not actually backing down but understood the value of looking like he might.
"I gave her that name when I was seven years old," James said. "That’s on me, and fixing it is the right thing to do. That is the full story. You understand?"
Richard looked at him for a moment. Something moved behind his eyes that James didn’t fully catch. "Sure, Alpha. Absolutely." A beat. "I just think it’s interesting timing is all. A name change. The kitchen window. The way you--"
"Say one more word."
Richard mimed zipping his mouth. They walked in silence for approximately ten seconds.
"She’d look good in that dress," Richard said.
James stopped again.
"The green one," Richard continued, completely unperturbed. "I saw it the other day. She was wearing it on the way to the garden and you should have seen--"
"She was wearing it?" James heard himself say it before he could stop it, and from Richard’s expression he understood he had just handed something over.
Richard’s smile was slow and satisfied. "Yeah. She was." He paused, tilting his head. "You know what she needs? A reason to actually wear it somewhere. Dress up a little. I bet she cleans up something incredible."
James looked at him. "You have a point to this."
"I might have an idea." Richard shrugged with the exaggerated casualness of someone who had been planning this conversation. "Something that would let her enjoy herself a little. Which, obviously, I’d only do with your approval."
James was quiet for a moment.
The image of her in the green dress had been sitting in his head since he’d seen it at the lake. He’d been telling himself it was just a dress. He’d also been lying. freewebnøvel.com
"Tell me what you’re thinking," he said.
"With pleasure, Alpha."
James looked at him and felt, briefly, the prickling awareness that he was being managed in some direction he couldn’t fully see yet. Richard was his friend. He was also not always straightforward about the gap between what he wanted and what he told you he wanted.
But the idea of seeing her somewhere other than the kitchen, somewhere she had a reason to exist beyond function, somewhere she might just for one evening be something other than invisible, cut through his caution faster than it should have.
"Talk," he said.
Richard talked.
