Page 8

Jensen

“ D addy, can I have the pizza with peppers again?” Joey asked as she climbed up onto the stool at the breakfast bar.

Gideon nodded as he headed over to the fridge, pulling out an apple and an orange, two fruits that Joey loved. “Sure, we can have that tonight, pumpkin,” he said, placing the fruit on a cutting board and chopping it into small pieces.

Cullen was in the hallway, putting away our jackets. It was one of those rare nights when we were all home for dinner.

“You know, maybe you’ll want to try Daddy Cullen’s pizza next.” I grinned as Gideon handed her apple slices.

“Ewww! No!” Joey grimaced. “He has mushrooms on his pizza.” She said the word in an utterly repulsed tone.

I chuckled, looking at Gideon, who was biting back a smile. We had agreed long ago that fighting with a seven-year-old over mushrooms was going to be difficult and we really needed to choose our battles.

Cullen entered the kitchen, heading to the fridge and grabbing a beer without even saying hello. He had been a surly ass for the last two days, likely because of stress at the restaurant. He had staffing issues nonstop, and that would be enough to send me insane.

“Daddy C! Are you taking me to skate this week?” Joey asked.

“I’m not so sure, sweetie,” he said, and he didn’t quite look Joey in the eye. “I’ll have to check my work schedule, but I know Daddy Jensen and Daddy Gideon will be happy to take you.”

I glanced disbelievingly at Gideon. Cullen was turning down a chance to take Joey to her skating lesson? That wasn’t like him.

“Hey, munchkin, why don’t you go pick out what book you want to read tonight while we order the pizza?” I suggested, kissing the top of Joey’s head.

“Okay!” she declared excitedly, scrambling out of her chair and running down the hallway. Every night, one of us read a few chapters from a book to her. It was our little tradition, and something we had been doing since she was tiny.

The moment she was out of sight, I turned on Cullen. “What the fuck crawled up your ass and died?”

“Nothing,” he grumbled.

“Cullen, you’re being surlier than usual,” Gideon pointed out. “You know talking about it can only help. The moment Joey mentioned skating, you clammed up…so it has something to do with Bethany.”

Our pack mate deflated. “I fucked up.”

What had he done? Was this lawyer territory? A restaurant mistake? I was immediately considering all the possibilities and how we could go about fixing it. We were a pack, and we helped one another without question—that was just what family did.

“Do we really think Bethany is a good influence on Joey?” he asked.

I halted my runaway thoughts, our conversation taking a turn I hadn’t expected. “Of course she is.”

“She’s only encouraged Joey to try new things and taken care of her,” Gideon said.

“She came into the restaurant on Friday.”

“Was she drinking heavily?” Gideon asked, his attention piqued. If Bethany had been exhibiting any behavior like that, he would be quick to dismiss her—Gideon didn’t suffer fools.

Though, she had never given me the impression that she was a drinker or a party girl. If anything, she seemed a little reserved.

Cullen shook his head. “No. Nothing like that. She just…she was on a date with a real asshat. The kinda guy who forgets his wallet every date.”

She was dating a waste-of-space alpha? Men like that didn’t deserve to be in the presence of such a sweet omega.

Gideon cocked his head to the side, deep in thought. “Well, that reflects badly on her date and not her, doesn’t it? What did you do?”

Cullen ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t know! I saw her with that little jerkoff, and I just got so mad.”

“What did you do?” Gideon asked again, his voice level, but I could tell by the way his shoulders tensed that he was concerned.

Cullen took a deep breath. “I kissed her.”

Well, that made me pause.

“You did what? ” I asked in disbelief.

Gideon frowned. “Bethany is off-limits.”

He was talking about our agreement. We had no intention of ever finding an omega for our pack again.

We couldn’t risk Joey having her heart broken.

We had discussed the vague possibility of maybe looking at having an omega join our pack once Joey was an adult and settled herself, but I wasn’t sure that would happen.

We were already getting on in years. Most omegas our age had been snapped up by packs long ago.

That didn’t mean we were monks. We were still relatively young and healthy alphas, and we had urges.

So, over the years, we had all had our own affairs.

Nothing serious; it was merely to scratch an itch.

We had agreed in the early days that we would make sure our partners were always very distant from our personal lives.

Bethany was one of our daughter’s teachers, so she was completely off-limits.

“Don’t you think I know that?” Cullen hissed. “I didn’t intend to do it. It just happened! She was wearing this tiny red dress, and fuck, she looked so good. It was like I was possessed!”

I didn’t blame him. Bethany was beautiful, and every time I was near her, the alpha in me struggled. In fact, I was a little jealous I hadn’t seen this dress.

“Why?” Gideon asked. “Why her?”

“Come on, man,” I said, shaking my head. “You react just as strongly to her scent, and you can’t deny it. When she came to you, asking for legal help, you rushed to help her so damn fast…”

Gideon’s ears turned pink, the only indicator he was embarrassed. “I did feel a little overprotective until she admitted it was her friend in legal trouble…”

“We need to be honest with ourselves—we all like her. We’ve discussed it before,” I said. It was true. She was beautiful and sweet, got along with our daughter, and smelled like fucking heaven on earth. If not for our baggage and need to protect Joey, we probably would have dived in headfirst.

“But she’s a bad idea,” Gideon said.

“I’m not disagreeing. She may not even like us. We are the creepy old men perving on her.”

“Judging by the way she kissed me back, she is most certainly interested. Fuck, I wanted to drag her into the back and taste her properly.” Cullen groaned, rubbing a hand over his face. “It was like all reason escaped me.”

“Let’s be honest with ourselves—we all know she smells better than any other omega we’ve been around. I don’t know if it’s the same for you, Cullen, but my instincts tend to rise to the surface when she’s around. Gideon, what about you?”

He swallowed. “I won’t lie. She is obviously attractive and has a pleasant scent. But she’s not appropriate for us.”

“I agree with you, but we need to treat her with respect, not grope her at every opportunity,” I said as I cleaned away the dishes from Joey’s snack.

“It was one time!” Cullen groaned.

“One time too many,” Gideon countered, turning and focusing on his task, effectively dismissing the conversation.

With a grumble, Cullen turned and left the kitchen, probably to go find Joey and make amends for being so grumpy.

There was no denying that we all liked Beth.

She was beautiful and painfully sweet. If I were slightly younger and didn’t have Joey to think about, I would have been chasing her down for even a chance at a date with her.

My pack was fucked, but we had to make it work.