“Why not?” he asked.
“Yeah, why not?” my traitor brother piped up.
I shot my sibling a glare before focusing on Wyatt’s mouth again. “I don’t want to trouble you. Clearly, you’re busy with Abraham here. I’ll just book two hours for next week.”
Wyatt turned toward Abey. “We’re about done here, aren’t we, Alpha?”
Abey shrugged. “Yeah, we’re good.”
Wyatt faced me again, his lips tipped into a smile. “See? No worries. I’ll go pull around to the front.”
“It’s not big enough,” I blurted.
Wyatt, who was halfway out of his seat already, paused, his mouth curling with a frown. “How do you know it’s not big enough?”
Because I stalk you and I already know your Jeep won’t be big enough for everything I need to bring to the lab.
“Oh. Uh. I’m just assuming. I have a lot of samples I need to transport and that’s why Abey was taking me in his truck. Do you drive a pickup?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.
Wyatt shook his head. “No.”
I pursed my lips and shrugged. “Well, thanks anyway.”
I turned to leave when his voice stopped me. “I can borrow Wes’ Suburban. That has to be big enough.”
I winced at the office door before slowly spinning around again. “A Suburban?”
Wyatt smiled at me again and, darn it, that made the butterflies in my stomach sit up and take notice. “Yeah.” He turned to his brother who was in the next chair over. Honestly, I hadn’t even noticed him sitting there. That’s how all-encompassing Wyatt’s presence was. And that’s exactly why I needed to find a way out of this.
“No, that’s not neces–”
“You don’t mind, do you, Wes?” Wyatt asked, completely ignoring my weak protests.
Wes shrugged before digging in his pocket and tossing a set of keys toward his brother. “Knock yourself out.”
Wyatt turned to me, keys dangling from one of his fingers and another grin on his face. “Looks like it’s all settled.”
I pulled my lips into the best smile I could manage. “Looks like it.”
Unless I can come up with some other excuse in the next thirty seconds that gets me out of this.
I wracked my brain as I stood there like an idiot, but nothing came to me. There was not a single reason I could come up with that would make sense. I needed to get to the lab and a packmate was willing to drive me. It was as simple and convoluted as that.
“Great,” I lied. “I’ll meet you downstairs. I just need to run to my room for some stuff.”
“Do you need help bringing anything down?”
My eyes widened while my heart thumped once painfully.
Wyatt. In my bedroom.
Heck no.
“No. That’s not necessary. I just need to grab something quick and I’ll meet you down by the garage.”
“Okay, I’ll see you in a few then.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
I opened my mouth to say okay again but, thankfully, snapped it shut at the last minute. I’d already sounded like enough of a moron for one afternoon. With my lips pressed tightly together, I spun back around and left Abey’s office as quickly as I could without actually running. I heard Wyatt saying his goodbyes to his brother and mine and hurried down the hall so I wouldn’t have to be in it alone with him.
Not that it mattered much.
I was about to spend the whole drive to downtown Asheville inside a moving vehicle with him. Alone.
My stomach fell at the thought as I continued to distance myself from him.
I sped around the corner and into my hall where I finally took off at a run. Thankfully, none of my sisters were around and therefore there was no one to witness my mad dash to my bedroom. Once there, I slammed the door closed and collapsed against it, drawing in big breaths of air that were doing nothing to calm me down.
Two months.
I’d been able to avoid this guy for two whole months and one tiny mistake had led to me not only having to talk to him again, but being stuck in a vehicle with him. How was I going to get through twenty minutes alone with Wyatt right next to me? How was I going to stop myself from looking into his warm brown eyes again, or making an idiot out of myself like I did every time I talked to him?
I thumped my head against the wooden door as my mind raced with ways out of this. But for all my brainpower, I was coming up empty.
I glanced at my watch and realized I was out of time, anyway. If I was going to get anything done at the lab, I needed to go now. I would just have to take the Wyatt problem minute by minute and somehow make it through. There was no other option.
Gathering a couple notebooks and my backpack, I left my room, feet dragging the whole way. I walked slowly down the stairs, my mind in overdrive as I thought through my situation.
It was clear there was no getting out of it. I’d already agreed, and truthfully, I needed to get to that lab. Which meant I needed to find a way to deal with my awkwardness toward Wyatt and somehow rein in the attraction I felt because I could not go there with him.
That left me with only a few options.
One was, I could do my best to ignore him. Keep my answers brief, keep my gaze out the window, and just grit my teeth until we got there. The problem with that solution was it would be incredibly rude to ignore him, especially because he was doing me a favor. It didn’t matter that I had a perfectly good reason to keep my distance. Our parents raised us to have better manners than that, and even the thought of going against our upbringing made me itch.
So that was out.
And if I couldn’t ignore him, that meant I’d have to talk to him. Interact. Something that would be hard to do when I felt like a bumbling idiot around him. But maybe that was what I’d been missing this whole time.
Maybe instead of avoiding him, I needed to expose myself to him more. Maybe I’d been making a big deal out of nothing this whole time. Maybe Wyatt was just another wolf in a pack full of them and I could treat him as such.
I didn’t have high hopes, but I also didn’t have any other options, so that was what I’d have to go with.
When I made it down to the garage, Wyatt was already there, standing beside a large maroon SUV, his back turned to me. I took a moment to appreciate his large frame and broad shoulders. When he spun around, that maddeningly attractive smile was back on his lips and I had to look away.
“You all set?” he asked.
I swallowed once and nodded toward the garage door. “I just have to grab my samples.”
Without waiting for another response from him, I punched in the security code and stood there with fisted hands as the door rose to reveal the depths of the garage. I felt Wyatt come up close behind me, but I did my best to ignore him as I walked over to my racks of samples. Hefting the first load into my arms, I turned to find Wyatt with a frown on his face.
“Want me to get those?”
I shook my head. “If you could just open the trunk, that would be great.”
His brows were still furrowed, but he hurried to open the tailgate on the borrowed SUV. Once I’d deposited my first armload, I turned to grab more and almost walked into Wyatt coming up behind me with a mountainous pile of sample racks.
“I can handle this. Why don’t you just sit in the car?”