Her Billionaires(44)

Oh, that had hurt. She had called him arrogant all the time, as if his self-confidence didn’t have a bedrock foundation for his firm grounding. Here he was a fire-fighter, a paramedic—built, a former model and he was arrogant? He could wave it away most of the time, but now he just chuckled to himself, thinking about the times she had put him in his place. Frankly, he had needed that, needed her steady, sardonic wit, her—

“Oh, stop it Dylan. She’s gone. Just stop it,” he mumbled to himself. He looked up stared at the monitor again, and the nostalgia came to a screeching halt.

He narrowed his eyes.

It was time for the alpha to put the beta in his place.



Whistling some Lady Gaga tune that he’d caught in the car on the long drive home from the mountain, Mike was feeling pretty pleased with himself. He had just proven that he, on his own, could catch the same woman Dylan could catch.

And boy, what a catch Laura was. Way more than he ever expected. She was absolutely, positively nothing like Jill. And yet, he had a feeling that if the two had met, Jill would have really liked her—and probably would have given her approval. Laura accepted the fact that he was quiet sometimes and he was able to sit in absolute silence with her, out in a field, staring at the mountain. The two of them could just coexist in peace together. You couldn’t find that in many people. Very few, in fact.

Jill had been one of them. Dylan definitely wasn’t, but he had other traits that made him worth being with, hard as it might be these days to remember them. As he pulled into his parking spot his mind was filled with nothing but plans to see Laura again. A niggling irritant scratched deep within his brain, though, ruining the absolute perfection of this new beginning.

Dylan.

He had to tell Dylan at some point and it wasn’t going to go well. He and Dylan had been together since high school and he knew him backwards, forwards and upside-down. Even though Mike’s intentions were pure, Dylan would view this as a threat, as a challenge, as some sort of—as Dylan put it—alpha-beta problem.

Mike just rolled his eyes and ignored the alpha-beta crap because he knew that on the surface he looked like a beta. They weren’t wolves, though, and this wasn’t a pack; they were human beings who were complex and nuanced. And he could show Dylan, and himself, that he was capable of going out on his own and finding a woman.

Well, okay, that wasn’t quite fair. Dylan had found the woman. Fair enough—but he could go out on his own and test the waters. Make sure the woman was attracted to him on her own and not as part of some package with Dylan at the lead.

He had just done that today. Quite pleased with himself, that sense of pleasure faded, like a light switch being flipped off, the second he walked in the apartment and saw Dylan’s face.



“You slept with her, didn’t you?” Dylan wasn’t just pissed. Betrayal was too mild a word to describe his feelings. He was itching for a fight, his fingers clenching against his hot palms.

Mike walked through the door, a cheerful smile on his face, a loose, languid quality to his joints that made Dylan want to throw him against the wall and beat the ever-loving shit out of him for taking his woman.

Their woman.

Funny, how history seemed to repeat itself. Because this is exactly what had happened with Jill almost ten years ago when they’d all first met. Mike would deny it, but the reality was that Jill had been Dylan’s girlfriend and Mike had been the interloper then. So, even though Dylan knew that they had this running joke, that he was the alpha and Mike was the beta. Mike was neither—he was really just a snake.

A snake Dylan couldn’t live without.

“You son of a bitch, you went and—you found Laura and you—the morning after my date with her, you contacted her and got her to go out with you!” He couldn’t help but stammer, and the sputtering made him feel small and insignificant, reduced to babbling like a lovesick teen. Fury plumed in him, hot and fast, with a taste like blood.

Mike stopped dead in his tracks and shoved his hands in his pockets, staring ahead at Dylan, eyes boring into his.

“Yep.”

That enraged Dylan more than anything, because he knew at this point Mike would only give one-word answers. Like a robot, the man shut down and steeled himself, becoming an impenetrable fortress of quotidian bullshit.

“So you knew how important this date was, you knew that I was checking her out for us, not just for me, you jerk!” Dylan seethed now, his anger fueled by Mike’s withdrawal. “So, why in the hell would you go behind my back and contact her? And a few hours after I slept with her!”