But the worry of what she might find at her apartment was overshadowed by the concern she might be pregnant. She clenched and unclenched her hands, then finally said, “Can we stop at a drugstore? There’s one in the strip mall on the corner before we reach my apartment.”
She figured if she had to shop at a drugstore in Silver Town, the whole pack might know what she purchased. That was one bad thing about the closeness of a pack, she was learning. And Lelandi had said most of the businesses were werewolf run. Alicia imagined even Lisa, the manager of the lingerie shop, might have told everyone what Jake had bought for her there. Lelandi wouldn’t have, though. Alicia felt Lelandi was one person who wouldn’t give her secrets away. Unless keeping them might harm the pack.
Jake was silent for so long that Alicia thought she’d spoken so softly he hadn’t heard. But with their wolf hearing, she decided that wasn’t it. She assumed he was trying to figure out why she needed to stop at the drugstore.
He finally nodded and grabbed his phone off his belt and punched a button. “Tom? We’re making a stop at a corner drugstore.”
“They don’t need to come inside with us,” Alicia quickly said. She didn’t need the whole world to know what she was up to.
He glanced at her, then said to his brother, “You can wait outside for us. It’ll only take us a minute. Right.” Then he put his phone away. He didn’t say anything for a moment, but she could tell by his furrowed brow that he was bothered by her request. Then he said, “What is it that you need?”
She raised her brows at him. “Is nothing sacred?”
He gave her the wolfish grin that melted her insides to mush. “Not between us. Not now that we’re mates.”
“Ah, so if I wanted to probe into your deepest, most private fantasies or past history, you’d freely tell me about all of it?” she asked.
He reached over with his big hand and squeezed her thigh in a way that made her shiver with interest. “You only have to ask.”
“All right. Well, I want to get a pregnancy kit, and I don’t want anyone else in your pack…”
“Our pack.”
“Our pack knowing about it. They might get the wrong notion.” Like it was Jake’s child, if she were pregnant. She swallowed hard, hating that she’d have to admit if she was pregnant that it was Ferdinand Massaro’s child.
Jake ran his hand over her thigh in a tender caress meant to console. Then his mouth curved up and his hand slid to her belly. “When Mary called from the gallery with the news you were pregnant, I was angry. I thought you had another man in your life and hadn’t told me. But I couldn’t be more pleased if you’re having a baby.”
“Most men wouldn’t like it if it was some other man’s baby,” she said, trying not to sound so disconsolate.
He drove into the parking lot of the strip mall and parked, then rested his hand beneath her chin and lifted and turned her to face him, his eyes pinning hers with resolve. “I love you. And if you’re pregnant, the baby’s ours. I’ll raise her as my own.”
“Her?”
“Werewolves in our pack statistically have fewer females. So we’re always hopeful we’ll have a few more females—keeps the males from getting too rambunctious.”
She chuckled. “I never thought I’d hear a man say he’d rather have a little girl than a boy.”
“Having two brothers probably had something to do with it.” He cut the engine.
She knew he was teasing. By the way he spoke to his brothers, she could tell he was really close to them. She had barely opened the truck’s door when Jake hurried around the front of the vehicle to help her down.
“I’ll have to add running boards,” he said, as he held her hips and helped her hop down to the pavement. “If you are pregnant, you’ll never be able to climb up into the cab.”
“Not without a forklift,” she teased, trying to feel better about it.
He smiled down at her but then said, “Would you agree to see Doc Weber? He’d be discreet.”
“And what would people think who saw me join the pack, then immediately see the doctor?” She shook her head.
Peter drove up beside them and parked, and Alicia suddenly was aware that he and Tom were watching them both. She hoped the guys couldn’t read lips or hear their conversation through the Suburban windows.
“Be just a minute,” Jake said to Tom as he rolled the window down.“Sure you don’t want us to watch your backs?” Tom asked, his expression concerned.
Alicia was touched by the way he genuinely seemed worried about her, but she quickly shook her head. “We’ll be right out.”
Tom gave Jake a look, and she couldn’t tell if it was because she was making the decisions without allowing Jake to have a say or because Tom suspected something else was going on. But it made her even more self-conscious, and she hurried Jake into the drugstore before her whole heated body gave her away.
***
Tom watched Jake and Alicia head into the drugstore as Peter leaned back against the driver’s seat of his Suburban and said, “Wonder what that’s all about that she didn’t want us to see what she had to purchase.”
Tom didn’t want to speculate, but he couldn’t help it. Alicia was definitely anxious about something. He’d never seen a more expressive woman, unable to hide her feelings like his kind normally could do. He supposed it was because they’d been born as wolves.
After seeing how much Alicia had gotten under Jake’s skin, how much he really cared for her, Tom was damned worried she was going to get herself killed over this situation with Constantino and his thugs, though.
He couldn’t help worrying about both Alicia and Jake, and how Jake would deal with losing her again, if it came to that. He’d been unable to focus on work or anything in the pack during the last several weeks after he’d lost Alicia. But Tom assumed Jake had continued to believe she was all right. Then there was that damnable business of chasing after her without any pack backup when she was in trouble in Crestview. Hell, Darien had curbed his anger, wanting everything to turn out for the best, but he’d been furious with Jake for not waiting for Tom and Peter to catch up to him. Jake wanted her to be safe, sure, but Darien didn’t want to lose his brother in the process.
If anything happened to her now, Jake would be devastated. And Tom couldn’t let him down.
“I’ve never seen Jake allow a woman to order him around,” Peter said, his tone solemn. “I’ve never seen him fall so hard for a woman. She’s something special.”
Those were Tom’s sentiments as well.
Peter glanced at him. “You seem awfully quiet, Tom. What are you thinking?”
That the woman had gotten under Tom’s skin, too. How could she not when Jake had fallen in love with her? Lelandi had found a new friend in her also. Alicia’s sadness concerned Tom, and he wondered whether she’d be happy with their pack. It didn’t even matter that Alicia was new to being a werewolf. They’d make sure she felt she’d been with them forever. But something was the matter, and he suspected there was more to the story than just the trouble with Mario and his gang.
Tom cleared his throat when he realized Peter was watching him, waiting for a response. “Maybe Jake felt we didn’t need to go in. He might have thought we’d be more protection if we watched the front door while they went inside.”
But Tom knew that wasn’t the case. Sure, Jake had to have felt it was safe enough for Alicia since he hadn’t insisted that Tom and Peter come inside even if she objected. But Tom couldn’t for the life of him think of what had her so bothered that she would be afraid for others in the pack to know. Maybe it was a female thing.
Peter rubbed his chin and stared at the door, then dropped his hand away and shook his head. “I heard her vehemently say we didn’t need to come inside. So that made me wonder what she didn’t want us to see that she was buying.”
“Probably a woman’s thing, Peter,” Tom said.
“Oh.”
But Tom still wondered what was going on with Alicia. He couldn’t help thinking about that morning and how red her eyes had been when she’d first come down for breakfast. Jake had been tense, ready to defend her, from the way he had hovered over her. Something was wrong. Not that Tom had thought it had anything to do with the trip to the drugstore. Then again, maybe it did.
A few minutes later when Alicia walked out with Jake, his arm around her waist and escorting her to his truck, Tom eyed the small package she carried. Her expression was glum. Jake’s wasn’t any more cheerful than hers. If it hadn’t been for the trip to the drugstore, Tom might have thought they were just concerned about what they might find at the apartment, and further, what they might discover among Alicia’s mother’s things. But the small package made him think something else was the matter.
“Condoms?” Peter asked, as he started the engine, then pulled in behind Jake as the truck headed back onto the street.
“We don’t wear condoms when we have a mate. Hell, we don’t ever wear condoms. No need.”
Peter didn’t say anything right away, but then he cast Tom a sly smile. “Maybe she’s afraid of having triplets since they run in your family.”
Poor Jake, if that was the case. No wonder he looked so glum.
Normally, Jake and Tom could talk about anything and often did, even about Darien when he had been in such a black mood before Lelandi came into his life. But Jake had refused to tell Tom what had been bothering him while he’d been frantically trying to locate Alicia. Tom and Darien had talked at length about what could have been upsetting Jake, assuming it had to do with the woman who’d been in the shower running in the background that Darien had heard over the phone.
Tom sighed. No matter what, when he found the right woman to mate, he wouldn’t be anything but bowled over with joy.
***
The most noticeable things about Alicia’s redbrick, two-story building were the gardens in front of each of the townhouses. Alicia’s was overflowing with vibrant red roses and golden sunflowers and yellow daisies.