“This is Jasper,” I replied, moving to sit up and he watched my every move with a kind of cool fascination. Bonus points for him for staring at my mum bod, when Sophie’s perfection was on display in a tiny bikini. “He’s Ben’s brother.”
He forced his eyes away, smiling broadly and offering his hand to Sophie. “You must be the formidable Sophie. Taylor literally does not shut up about you whenever we run into him.”
She shook his hand, but inspected him closely through narrowed eyes. “Nice to meet you. But you are not supposed to be here right now. The interim parenting agreement specifies that Ben is to do the initial supervised visits and you’ll be included if and when we think Evie is ready.”
“I’m not here for the cub.” His eyes slid across the sand, his smile faltering as he watched the three of them at play, something intent rising in his expression instead. Seeming to realise he was being observed, he dragged his attention back to us and then the grin was back. “Not yet. I’m here for my mate.”
“You better mean your buddy and pal, Taylor,” I said in a low growl.
His lips twitched as he stared, those pale grey eyes going more silvery by the second.
“It was always Ben was buds with Taylor, not the rest of us. He’s a bit of a dark horse, our brother, sloping off to do his own thing. But…” He took a long breath in and with it I felt a sliver of fear slide down my spine. “We do share one thing in common.” He took in my sensible one piece bathing suit, dark and ruched to try and hide my mummy pooch. “Excellent taste in women.”
I snatched my coverup from my bag and pulled it over my head, but that just seemed to make him grin more.
“Now, providing for our mate is something we alphas take very seriously and apparently we have a lot of time to make up for. Coffee?”
In the endI’d taken the latte because, damn: good coffee is good coffee. Sophie took the floofy one begrudgingly, keeping an eye on him the whole time as he drank the chai tea.
“You know you can’t go around calling Lils your mate,” she told Jasper.
“Oh?”
I held out my fist and she bumped it.
“You have to win her over first.”
“Hang on,” I snapped. “What?”
“A bunch of hot alphas falling all over themselves to impress you?” she replied. “It’s past time someone did that for you, Lils. Ben should’ve done that from the very start, then none of this would’ve happened.”
“Trust me when I say this.” Jasper ground his words out. “We all feel the same way.”
“Really? He didn’t tell you about Lily or anything?” Sophie asked, leaning forwards now, obviously warming to the man.
“Sophie…”
“He did, when he was drunk,” Jasper replied, shooting me a sidelong look. “Straight Ben was tight-lipped about… well, fucking everything, but get a few beers into him? Let’s just say I had him crying into my shoulder and my brothers’ over this ‘Lily’ more than once. It put all the omegas in town off our pack and, for good reason, it appears.” All the good humour and friendly banter was lost. “We’ve spent the last nine years looking for our mate, and yet here she is.”
“Your mate is an omega,” I snapped back. “She’s out there some—”
“No, she’s not.” He grinned then, but there was nothing gentle or good humoured about it now. I saw fangs flash, his tongue flick out to touch their sharp points. “Y’see, we have quite a different skill set than a beta might. I have a wolf inside me, Lily, and once he got a whiff of you, he went fucking nuts. As soon as I realised, I wanted to drag you out of that waiting room and into the nearest supply closet, sink my teeth into your neck and claim you first.”
Just like that, wolf Jasper was packed away and human Jasper came back to the fore.
“But as the fair Sophie has ascertained, we need to woo you first. Latte, with one sugar,” he said, as if filing my order away.
“A flat white, bucket size, is probably more accurate,” I replied with a frown. “I like to put my own sugar in.”
“Noted,” he said, his eyes jerking sideways as he scrambled to his feet, treating us to the sight of his massive frame looming over us. Jasper only wore a pair of board shorts, hanging almost indecently low upon a pair of hips so lean the V of muscle leading down to his—, leading down was cleanly delineated. “Now, my brother is about to storm over here to drive me off because I’ve been a very naughty boy again, but before I go.”
He glanced down, suddenly serious again.
“Logan will call a meeting with your lawyer on Monday to try and hammer shit out. He’s hurting in ways I can’t go into, and basically that will mean he will come across as a colossal dick. Try not to junk punch him. I have to fight the urge to every day and sometimes I fail, so if you do too, I’ll understand. Just… We’ll try to make him see what we have here.”
Jasper’s eyes jerked back to Evie again, like she was his true north or something, and that made me bristle.
“What we could have here, if we can just get out of our own fucking way.”