Fated An Alpha Male Romance - K. Alex Walker Page 0,2

bear to see the little girl whose eyes used to light up like fireworks whenever Ellis and I would take her and her sister farming (simply because it was a chance to get dirty), spend the rest of her life cold.

Alexandra’s waving me down. We’re supposed to have lunch together. I will see you all later.

Jessica Watkins Presents

Red Velvet Punch Series: Book 1

-Fated-

By

K. Alex Walker

Chapter One

Alexandra

My grandmother was standing in the doorway of my office on the day before Christmas Eve, but she was supposed to be back at my parents’ house preparing for a Christmas Eve fundraising banquet taking place the following evening. To be honest, being around my father, a retired military general, for too long could wear down anyone’s nerves, so I didn’t completely blame her for wanting to get away. He was the epitome of military order both inside and outside our home. Even his gait was as ramrod straight as books on a shelf. Yet, despite his ability to transform even the most informal events into a black-tie affair, I still didn’t feel comfortable just letting her traipse around the streets of Louisiana as though she didn’t have a care in the world.

“Don’t fuss,” she said, putting up one hand to stop the gentle scolding I was about to throw her way. The second hand was wrapped around a glass pitcher filled with a red liquid. “Your father knows I’m here.”

I leaned back in my chair and took in her seventy-two year old face. Always the fashionista, a self-proclaimed Dorothy Dandridge of her time, she was dressed in a yellow Pea coat with the hem of a checkered black and white dress peeking out of the bottom. She’d traded in her usual mid-heeled pumps for flats, and the fancy blue cloche hat on her head pulled the entire outfit together.

“Does he really?” I asked. “He didn’t call me to tell me that you were coming, and you know how Daddy is.”

“Well, maybe he thought I was going to the market,” she answered, walking over and placing the pitcher on my desk. She tugged off her black leather gloves and a perfect French manicure gleamed beneath my office lights.

“Uh huh.” I stared into the pitcher. “What’s that?”

“Where is that handsome doctor friend of yours? I was hoping to see him today.” Her cheeks lit up beneath her rose-pink blush. “I wanted to take a look at him. If they’d made men like him back in my day—”

“Grandma, it was illegal for you to be with a man like him back in your day,” I reminded.

She smiled wickedly. “Like that would have been the only illegal thing I did.”

I shook my head and laughed.

My grandmother came from some of the most well-known, high-society circles around the state of Louisiana. She and my late grandfather, General Ellis Richard Miller, had rubbed elbows with some of the nation’s most elite due to his impressive rank in the United States military. However, when he died, Grandma Evelyn slowly removed herself from the spotlight in order to take some time to mourn, eventually coming to the conclusion that she didn’t want to return to their prestigious social circle. She claimed that she’d left the honor to my father, their only child, but would always put the word “honor” in air quotes.

She and Grandpa Ellis had been the real deal, best friends ever since meeting on the concrete steps of Xavier University. She’d been an education major at the time; he’d been studying political science. Grandpa Ellis eventually had to leave school to join the military, but later enrolled at West Point after receiving several glowing recommendations from some of the higher-ups in the U.S. government.

According to her, it was love at first sight — she’d always known that Grandpa Ellis would be her husband. My grandmother had a notion that people were something called “rooted” to each other whether they knew it or not, and that she could always tell when a couple belonged together. She claimed that it was an ability that was passed down to her through my West Indian great grandmother’s side of the family, but the reason that Gia and I didn’t have the ability was because it conveniently skipped a generation.

She also claimed that she could tell the opposite — when two people were so unsuited for each other that a union of any kind would result in misery. Although we were always tempted to denounce her opinions as indigenous folklore, the day that