My Alpha Stepbrother Called Me a Gold Digger, So I Bought His Father's Note novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Pantry Lock

At the Ness place Sunday supper the pantry is padlocked on his order; Kari eats her own sack lunch at the head of the table next to Dagny, and moves his hand off the mudroom wall herself.

I went to the Ness place for Sunday supper, because my mother asked me to, and because I'd said I wouldn't live there, not that I wouldn't eat.

The house stood on the rise above the elevator, white clapboard gone gray, with a porch that sagged at one end.

The roof had a blue tarp over the north slope.

Nine trucks were in the yard.

Twenty-some people crowded the long kitchen table, all of them pack, all of them looking at me when I came in.

My mother jumped up from beside Halvard.

She hugged me hard and smelled of her good lavender soap.

"You came," she said.

"I came to eat."

"Then eat."

She steered me toward a chair at the foot, and a woman in an apron stepped between us.

She was the pack's cook, and she looked at the floor.

"Miss Brennick," she said.

"There's been a change.

"The pantry's locked, and the kitchen's closed to guests of the family after five.

"Mr. Soren said."

I looked at the end of the room.

A padlock, new and bright, hung on the pantry door.

Soren sat at the far end of the table with a beer, watching me.

Nobody else was eating.

Every plate was empty, every fork was down, and every face was turned to see what I'd do.

"The settlement can eat on her own dime," he said, pleasantly.

My mother's face crumpled.

"Soren," Halvard said.

His voice was thin.

"Son, that's enough."

"Dad, sit," Soren said, without looking at him.

Halvard sat.

The old man put one hand on his chest and breathed through his nose.

That was the moment something went cold and clear in me.

I put my bag down on the floor.

I took out the sack lunch I'd packed that morning for the scale house and hadn't eaten, a ham sandwich, an apple and a bag of chips.

I walked the length of the table past twenty-three people.

At the head of the table, in a high-backed chair with a cane across her knees, sat an old woman with a white braid pinned up and eyes the exact blue of a gas flame.

Dagny Holloran, Halvard's mother.

I had been introduced to her on Friday and she had said nothing at all.

I pulled out the chair at her right hand.

"May I?" I said.

"Sit," said Dagny.

I sat.

I unwrapped my sandwich, took a bite, and chewed.

Down the table a pack hand made a sound that was almost a laugh.

Dagny took a chip out of my bag and ate it.

"Salty," she said.

"I like it salty," I said.

Dagny's whole face creased.

She laughed out loud, a cracked, high, delighted laugh, and every head in the room turned toward her.

Soren put his beer down.

I met his eyes down the long table, with a bite of sandwich in my cheek, and I raised my apple like a toast.

His jaw went tight enough to crack.

Beside the old woman's elbow, on the sideboard, lay a fat leather ledger with its cover gone soft and dark from handling.

I noticed it only because Dagny's hand rested on it.

The edge of one page had come loose, and I could see a column of small neat figures running down it.

They weren't Dagny's, and they weren't Halvard's.

It was a round, careful hand, and I knew it.

It was my mother's.

I didn't read it.

My mother touched my shoulder and I looked up, and she said, "Eat, baby," and I did.

When the plates were cleared I went out to the mudroom to get my coat.

It was a narrow room full of hooks and boots, with one bare bulb.

I had my arm half through the sleeve when the door shut behind me.

I knew his scent before I turned.

Soren stood with his back against the door.

He didn't say anything.

He crossed the room in three strides and put his hand flat on the wall beside my head.

The plaster shook.

His arm was there and his body was there, and neither one was touching me.

I could feel the heat of him down the whole length of my side.

He was breathing hard through his nose.

"You made a fool of me in front of my grandmother," he said.

"You did that yourself with a padlock," I said.

"She likes you."

"She has good taste," I said.

His eyes went to my throat.

I saw him look at the place under my jaw where an omega's scent glands sit, and I saw his pupils go wide.

I felt my own body answer.

It was a low drop of heat in my stomach, a slickness I hadn't asked for, and it frightened me how fast it came.

It was early.

My heat wasn't due for three weeks.

My scent had changed, and he had caught it, because his whole body went still.

"Don't," I said.

"Don't what?" Soren said.

"Don't act like you can't smell it."

His voice came out rough.

"I can smell it."

"Then take your hand off my wall," I said.

"It's my wall," he said.

I took his wrist in my hand.

It was thick and warm, and the pulse under my thumb was fast.

I lifted his arm away from the plaster and set it by his side.

I held it there for one second longer than I needed to.

His fingers curled.

I let go.

"I'll tell you when I want you to touch me," I said.

"Not before."

I wanted to take it back the moment it left my mouth.

It was the wrong thing to say to a man like that.

He had gone completely still, and he was looking at me as if I had handed him something he didn't know how to hold.

"I won't be asking," he said finally, and his voice cracked in the middle.

I got my coat on and walked out into the dark yard.

My phone buzzed against my hip.

It was a text from my mother, and she'd written it in a hurry.

*Soren says you stole from the pantry??*

I stood in the cold with the stars out over the wheat and stared at it.

I hadn't touched the pantry.

He'd said it to her before I'd even left the house.

Then a second text came in.

*And baby, the pension. I should have told you. It's true.*

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