The Alpha's Choice
Read The Alpha's Choice Online
Authors: Jacqueline Rhoades
Tags: #love story, #wolfpack, #romance paranarmal werewolves
By
Copyrighted 2013 by Jacqueline Rhoades
Cover Art: Georgianna Simpson
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To my daughter, Heather,
who took the bull by the horns
and forced me to publish my first book.
I'm so proud of you.
Katarina Bennett stopped believing in
fairytales a long time ago. Prince Charming doesn't exist. Careful
planning is what makes dreams come true and that's what she's spent
her adult life doing. Now those plans have fallen apart. She's lost
everything; her fiancé, her job and her home.
Determined to make a new start, Kat takes a
job as a governess and teacher for five orphaned children and finds
herself in an old Gothic mansion in the middle of nowhere with
people who aren't what they seem.
Charles Goodman is the Alpha of his wolver
pack, the modern descendants of an ancient line of man/beasts
who've hidden among the human race for centuries. Charles has his
hands full with taking his pack in a new direction and dealing with
dissention in the ranks and doubts about his own abilities to lead,
but when he meets his feisty new employee, he begins to believe in
a future he didn't think feasible.
Together, Charles and Kat, Alpha and Mate,
set out to prove all things are possible and fairytales do come
true.
Someone had stolen the idea for this house
from one of those gothic mysteries she used to read as a girl, the
ones where she'd shout at the not very bright heroine, "Don't go
down those dark, drafty cellar stairs in the middle of the night
with only a candle to light your way, you idiot!"
The brainless twits never listened to Kat.
They had to follow the clues to the damp and musty cellar of the
old and creepy house where something awful was guaranteed to
happen. How else was the heretofore unattainable hero supposed to
rescue said twit from the clutches of her villainous
uncle/brother/pseudo suitor/someone-she-trusted? How else could the
handsome, brooding fellow fall in love with the plucky fearlessness
of the heroine unless she went off investigating on her own and
almost got herself killed?
The pragmatic Kat never understood why she
bothered yelling at those books. She knew she was wasting her
breath. That totally-unaware-of-her-remarkable-beauty
ward/governess/poor relation's fate was sealed the moment she
entered that house.
The romantic Kat always shouted her warning
anyway. Worse, she followed the daring darling right down those
cellar steps to whatever fate awaited, praying the hero would
arrive in time to save his one true love so they could live happily
ever after.
Kat was a big girl now and knew there was no
such thing as fairytales or happily ever after and if she was ever
in need of rescuing, she damn well better do it herself. No
handsome hero was going to do it for her. She'd learned her lesson
on that score.
She double checked the directions in the
manila folder she'd received from the agent. Yep, this was the
place.
Mr. Begley, the man who'd hired her, called
it a former hunting lodge and Kat envisioned a rustic country
retreat, a one story log structure perhaps, with a broad front
porch and a stone fireplace. It would be a cozy, masculine place
with worn leather furniture and scattered throws and a moose head
over the fireplace built from stone hand carried from the nearby
creek. She wasn't enthusiastic about the moose head, but she'd
lived with worse and it was a former hunting lodge after all. She'd
add a few softer touches of her own once she saw what was
needed.
The place in front of her had nothing in
common with her bucolic image, unless you counted the stone; lots
and lots and lots of stone. Three stories worth of stone, all of it
square cut and gray. Dark gray. Even the window frames were painted
dark gray. This was not what she would picture as a cheerful home
for orphaned children.
Keeping with her gothic theme, a sinister
looking gardener viciously snapping at the shrubbery with a wicked
pair of shears would not have looked out of place. But if this
place had ever had a gardener, sinister or otherwise, he was now
standing in line down at Unemployment.
Hell Hall, as Kat already dubbed it in her
mind, might not look quite so dreary with a little bit of
landscaping, but the patchy spots of green she suspected were weeds
and not grass, ran from the curved edge of the gravel drive right
up to the stone foundation. There wasn't a shrub to be seen.
Two walls of the same ugly stone jutted out
from either side of the huge square structure, cutting off the view
of the rear of the house. Arches were built into each wall about
halfway down their length, their keystones rising another two feet
above the row of short, iron spikes capped by fleur-de-lis
finials.
This place looked more like a prison than a
home. Torn between investigating what lay behind the garden walls
or facing the horrors she was now convinced lay inside, Kat chose
the interior. If there was a stern looking housekeeper dressed head
to foot in gray bombazine waiting to greet her, she'd best get it
over with.
Exiting her little compact car, Kat felt tiny
fingers of warning crawl up the center of her back and she looked
both right and left and up to the windows towering above her. No
eyes peeked around the corner. No telltale curtain moved. Mr.
Begley assured her the house was vacant, but she had the strangest
feeling she was being watched. She shook the feeling off and
laughed at herself.
"There you go letting your imagination run
away with you again," her practical side scolded. "It's the silence
that's getting to you. No traffic, no car horns, no flashing lights
or sirens, no clatter of feet on the sidewalk. All this quiet is
downright creepy."
Boldly, she walked to the wide front door and
took the key that Mr. Begley had given her from her pocket and
fitted it into the lock. It was an unnecessary action. The door
swung inward at her touch, squeaking eerily.
The little girl Kat used to be was shouting,
"Don't go in that dark and creepy house all alone!"
But the grown-up Kat knew her fate was sealed
the moment she signed the contract and she was done with scaring
herself over nothing.
"You've lived in creepier places than this,"
she told herself and pushed through the door calling, "Hello! Is
anybody home?"
And then laughed at herself again. If anyone
had answered her call, she would have been back in her car with the
doors locked before she finished saying, "Whoa, shit!" The entrance
hall was huge… and dark… and creepy. A ghost wouldn't feel out of
place at all.
Kat's eyes skimmed across the dark paneled
walls searching for a light switch and finally located a row of
four, none of which turned anything on that she could see. The
electricity was either turned off or, heaven forbid, there wasn't
any to turn on. She waited, still as the stone walls, until her
eyes adjusted to the dimness.
Ahead and to the right, a wide staircase
climbed up one wall to the second floor and looking up through the
towering height of the ceiling and a balcony rail, she could see
where it continued from the hallway above up, up, up to the third
floor.
Pocket doors, their glass panes neatly
covered in brown paper and blue painter's tape opened to either
side of the foyer leading to two very large rooms. Both appeared to
be sitting rooms judging by the shapes of the sheeting covering the
furniture. Each of these rooms had four large windows swathed in
dark and deeply fringed draperies that kept out the light. Both
were dusty and dirty with cobwebs hanging in the corners and from
old fashioned chandeliers.
This was not the place she'd envisioned when
she planned to spend a few days relaxing on her own. A highway rest
area would be cleaner and more inviting.
She passed more doors on her way to the back
of the house, but assumed the rooms would be in the same condition
as those at the front.
On the right at the end of the hallway, she
found the kitchen and it made her rethink what she'd seen of the
rest of the house.
"Holy…" She snapped her mouth shut and
wandered into something out of a magazine. Someone had taken great
pains to combine the essence of the house's origins with every
modern kitchen convenience.
A massive bank of windows ran along the back
wall above a row of freshly painted white cabinets. These were
topped by a black granite countertop that ran the length of the
kitchen to either side of a soapstone sink that looked big enough
to bathe in.
Three of the four walls of the long room were
broken up by doors behind which were two large pantries lined with
overflowing shelves; one with food, the other dishware. A large,
minimally furnished bedroom with attached bath was behind another
and then two sets of stairs, one leading up which Kat assumed was
for the long ago servant's use and one leading down to the
proverbial dark and drafty cellar.
A quick inspection of the cabinetry separated
by the doors revealed not cupboards, but appliances; two
refrigerators, a freezer, a fully stocked wine cooler and a series
of drawers holding enough soft drinks to supply the small army
being fed with the food that stocked the freezer and fridge.
A monstrous looking eight burner stove was
centered on one wall capped by an elaborate exhaust hood and backed
by beautiful mosaic tile work. The multicolored tile depicted a
bright and sunny woodland scene of a girl or young woman carrying a
basket as she walked along a path that ran through the forest. The
girl wore an old fashioned red cloak and hood.
She leaned across the stove to get a better
look. This was detailed, intricate work and not your usual
pre-painted tile.
Someone had spent a small fortune on the
renovation of this kitchen. Kat flipped a switch and cheered aloud
as the kitchen was flooded with light from strategically placed
fixtures throughout the room. Maybe this wasn't going to be so bad
after all.
She ran back along the hall, opening the
doors she'd neglected before. Directly across from the kitchen was
another room with a full wall of windows that appeared to be a
small dining room or breakfast room, she corrected when she opened
the door at the end of the dish pantry to what was obviously the
'real' dining room with a table that could easily seat twenty.
There was another small room with a desk and computer and two more
moderately sized that were empty. Every room was clean and freshly
painted.