Rescued Alpha (Billionaire Alphas #6) - Skye R. Richmond Page 0,37

make this move since I was the one who blew off all his calls."

"It does show initiative," Jace pointed out. "And we both know you’re great at that."

What would he do without Jace?

"I know you’re only covering the bakery, not the cafe today, but all the order should have been picked up, right?"

"We have one more." Eli wasn’t sure where Jace was going with this line of questioning. "Although the cafe is quite busy.” The bell rang as he said that.. "The customer for the last pick up is here, I better go. I’ll talk to you later." He disconnected the call before Jace could even respond.

He grabbed the cake for pick-up and walked out, managing to plaster a smile on his face. "Welcome to Sweets and Such, do you have your receipt, please?"

She handed it over to him, and he made sure it was the right order. Once she paid the balance for the gender reveal cake, she gave a big smile before leaving.

There was a part of him that kept hoping that Jack would show up. That was the real reason he hadn’t left after Colt had shown up.

But Jace was right. He needed to find a way to get to Jack, explain everything to him. Tell him he hadn’t been trying to hide Damon.

He hadn’t really dated since Damon was born, and he’d refused to introduce Damon to anyone unless he knew it was right.

Although maybe he should have done that from the start so he knew where he stood; if the person even wanted kids.

But Jack loved his nephews and nieces. He’d even said that thing about children when they looked at the house together.

Maybe he meant his children. Maybe he was one of those alphas that needed the child to be theirs biologically.

But that wasn’t Jack…

How do you know? It’s been ten days. Not ten months.

No, he knew it in his heart. Jack wasn’t that guy. He wasn’t.

15

Jack

They had it all worked out. Aiden took Quinn and the kids out for the morning, giving them time to set up everything in their home. He was supposed to bring them back sometime after one o’clock.

Jack glanced at his watch. They still had about thirty minutes before the guests would start to arrive, not that he knew most of them. But his brothers apparently knew enough people to invite. It wasn’t huge, but they had a good number of people who’d said they’d be attending.

But he wished he could have invited Eli. He’d tried. He’d called and called but to no avail. And then he’d had to ask Colt to pick up the cake because he’d had to go into work for a couple of hours.

The moment Colt walked in with the cake, he asked. "How’d Eli look?"

Colt looked up at him and frowned. "Tell me why you didn’t just grab the cake on your way from work?"

"I didn’t want to hold up the party without a cake,” he defended himself.

Colt raised a brow, and Bray said, “I call bullshit.”

"I didn’t know if I would leave in time," he said again, looking between them.

"I’m not buying it." Bray looked at Colt, "Are you?"

"Nope. Sorry, brother, that sounds like crap. If the cake was late, it would have been fine. The caterers have enough food."

"So why are you avoiding him?" Bray asked.

"I’m not avoiding him," Jack argued. "I called him, and he hasn’t answered any of them."

Bray pursed his lips and looked thoughtful for a moment before he finally spoke. "Mmm, well, if I were in his shoes and the guy I was dating met my kid and ran out saying he had a work thing come up, I may ignore his calls, too."

Okay, so that probably hadn’t been the smartest move on his part. He was kind of embarrassed about how he’d left things. But the merger…

That sounded dumb even to his ears. They could have waited. Fuck, he’d fucked up.

"How was he?" Jack asked again.

"Well, he wasn’t bawling, if that’s what you’re asking," Colt said, chuckling. "He seemed fine, but he was definitely upset by the fact that you weren’t there. He asked, actually, and I don’t think it’s because he didn’t want to hand the cake off to someone else. I got the feeling he was hoping he’d see you."

"Are you just saying that?" Jack hoped beyond hope Colt wasn’t wrong.

Colt laughed. "No, man. I’m not just saying that. But what’s the real deal? Like, what happened between the two of you?"

Jack stood there for