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Penelope laughs again, shaking her head. “That’s silly.”
“I mean it.”
“You’ve had too much champagne,” she replies.
I don’t argue with her. Instead, I pull her into my arms even closer, enjoying the feeling of warmth from her body and the way her vanilla warm and lemon sharp scent washes over me. It keeps my focus on her as the song crescendos and starts heading for its end, like there’s no one else in the room right now. She’s not a natural dancer, but she follow my lead well enough that it’s impossible to focus on anything else.
At the end of the song, she steps back, and I let her go, even though there’s something pulling at me, tugging me to gather her into my arms again. There’s a moment of tension where I reach out, but then she’s being whisked away, back into the fray of this reception.
There’s a weird pang of disappointment when she’s gone, leaving only the lingering fragrance of lemon and lavender in her wake.
I watch as she’s swept into a dance with Dominic, who moves the two of them around the dance floor with a commanding grace. Penelope looks surprised and a little starry eyed, but she keeps up with him as well.
Tristan takes his turn dancing with her, and where Dominic radiated strength and control, Tristan just looks stiff and uncomfortable. Penelope sells it though, smiling at him and covering his lack of grace with her own, and when the dance is over, he leaves quickly.
A waiter appears at my elbow, and I take another flute of champagne, twirling the stem of it between my fingers as I watch the rest of my pack.
And that’s still such a weird thing to think. I have a pack now. A group of people I have a responsibility to, beyond my family.
Really, it’s anybody’s guess how this is going to play out. I don’t know Dominic or Tristan super well, despite the fact that we’ve been working together for months now. It’s all been superficial so far, just butting heads at the office and in public sometimes, trying to figure out a way to work together better and keep our company from exploding.
The work hasn’t been enough to bond us, to make us stop arguing, but will this be the thing that does it? Will we be able to put aside our differences and strong opinions for the sake of this arrangement? Will Penelope be able to hold it all together at the center of this, keeping us from clashing too hard with her softening presence?
This whole thing is just for show, but the stakes are very real. The fate of Vantage is at the heart of it, along with our reputations and hundreds of people’s jobs.
As things stand now… it’s really impossible to tell.
The rest of the reception passes by in a blur of food and champagne and more well wishes. By the time we’re filing back into the limo so Jonas can take us home, I can tell we’re all feeling the exhaustion of being on display for so long.
It’s a quiet ride to the new house, at least until it comes into view, and then Penelope’s jaw drops.
We pile out of the car, but it takes Penelope longer to get out than the rest of us, and I duck my head back in to see what the issue is. She’s still just sitting there, staring up at the house with a shocked expression on her face.
“Are you okay?” I ask her.
“I—this…” She turns her eyes to me. “This is where we’re going to live?”
“Yup.” I pull back to look up at the house, trying to see what she’s seeing.
Honestly, I think we did a good job. It’s a sprawling house that takes up two and half acres of land between the house and the yard. It’s done in white siding, with a dark colored roof, and there are windows everywhere to let in natural light.
The house has three floors, four if you count the little attic room at the top, and there’s a spacious lawn on either side of the driveway. The backyard is just as big, sloping down toward the woods at the back of the property, with a massive two story deck that already hosts an outdoor cooking station and space for a hot tub or a pool if we wanted.
It’s big, that much is true, but there are four of us, and we’re all accustomed to having our own space. At least I assume Penelope is. The bickering between the men and I would geteven worse if we had to live on top of each other in addition to seeing each other at the office every day.
And there are appearances to keep up too. It wouldn’t look right for us to start a pack and have a wife and then move into somewhere that didn’t fit our ‘status’. That would start plenty of rumors and none of them would be flattering.
“What’s wrong with it?” I ask Penelope, and that shakes her out of her trance.
“Nothing,” she says quickly. “It’s just…” She bites her lip and then shakes her head. “Nothing.” Quickly, she gets out of the car, taking the time to say goodnight to Jonas before she joins us at the front of the house.
“Here,” Dominic says. He hands over a keyring to her, with a key for each of the exterior doors of the house.
Penelope takes it in her hand and folds her fingers around the keys, like she’s worried if she doesn’t hold on to them for dear life they’ll disappear.
“Let’s do the grand tour then,” I say with a smile, unlocking the door and leading the way inside.
The house is already furnished, with some input from the three of us, but mostly with delegated it to people who actually know about interior decorating. Stepping into the entry way, I can say they did a good job.