Page 95 of Abel's Omega

He got off the phone and grinned at me. “He says there should be no problem with the funding. They meet the day after tomorrow to go over applications.” He stood up and came around the desk to take my hands. “He also congratulated me on my extremely efficient personal assistant. I think he wants to hire you away.”

“He can’t offer me the fringe benefits you do.” I smiled up at him seductively, but food distracted me. “You interested in lunch?”

“It’s only eleven.”

I blushed.

“Oh,” he breathed in comprehension. “Let’s go downstairs and see what they’ve got.”

“Thank you,” I said fervently and stood on tiptoes to kiss him. Abel took my cravings seriously. Actually, he took everything seriously—I’d found him, shortly after our mating, with his nose stuck in a ‘What to Expect’ book. It made him a little…overzealous…sometimes, but I was touched that he cared so much.

His phone rang, my biggest competition for his attention. Some days I wanted to take the thing and toss it in the pond. “Go ahead and answer it. I’ll go check into those valves for the brewery.” I took myself and my cravings back out to the outer office.

“Another phone call, dear?” Louise asked in sympathy.

I sighed and plunked down in my chair, rubbing my two-month bump forlornly. “Yes. And the pup is hungry.”

“What does he want today?”

“Not sure.” Louise was good at distracting me, and I wanted to be distracted from my subtle discontent. I knew it was the pregnancy hormones making me so possessive and easily knocked off balance, but knowing it and not being affected by it were two different things. So I focused on the vague request that the pup was sending and tried offering different things in my head.

Strawberries? No.

Blackberries? Sounds good.

Spinach? Hmmm, has potential.

Sweet peppers and some walnuts. Check.

Baby tomatoes, of course.

Maybe he or she wants a salad.

I snorted and told Louise, “I think I’m having a vegetarian.”

“That’ll be interesting.”

I laughed. “He’s probably going to be a while. Did you want to take early lunch and I’ll take the late one?”

“That’s a good idea.” She began tidying up her desk. “Do you want me to bring anything back in case he takes too long?”

“No. If he isn’t off by the time you’re back, I’m going on my own. Or me and Little Abel, anyway—I have no illusions about who’s running the show now.”

She chuckled and patted my shoulder as she went by, though I could tell she really wanted to pat my minuscule baby bump. “I won’t be long. Then we can roust him out.”

“All right.” I watched her go, then turned back to my computer.

The valves were on their way, thankfully, but it was putting us behind in getting the brewery done. The bottling line was set up and ready to go, and they were bottling small batches for local drinking just to get the hang of it, but we couldn’t go to commercial production without those valves.

Well, if I was stuck here, maybe I could dig back into that True Omega stuff I’d been neglected since we’d started going full throttle at solar panel business. I pulled out another recording and slipped the earbuds into my ears to start the process of transcribing it.

The new shifter, Justin Montana Border, came in the door. “Is the Alpha in?” he asked in that cowboy’s drawl of his. I was pretty sure the drawl was fake—every once in a while it slipped and he had to catch himself, but no one seemed to care. Me? It made me nervous. He’d only been here two weeks, and already he had the omegas and more than a few non-omegas in a tizzy of excitement. I’d heard some of them giggling about how sexy he was, something Holland and I did our best to squash.

Okay, hewassexy, with cropped ash blond hair and eyes a bright blue like the sky sometimes in spring. He walked in a long-legged slink, thumbs hooked in his belt to draw attention to his hips and what lay between them. But Holland and I both agreed that there was something off about him, and we did our best to keep our distance.

Unfortunately, my job meant I had to deal with him today. “He’s on a call right now, I’m not sure how long he’ll be.” I clicked over to Abel’s schedule and scrolled through the rest of his day. “You can wait, but I can’t guarantee he’ll get off in time to see you. I can probably squeeze you in around two if it’s urgent.” I looked up to find the Montana Border shifter standing over me, just a little too close.

“I can wait. But I wouldn’t mind squeezing into you.”