“Hi, again.”
“Hey.”
Harper was tired from eight hours on his feet, including the lunch rush, and not so interested in whatever conversation his arch-nemesis wanted to have. Nevertheless, he fell into step as William started walking.
“Is something wrong?”
“No. Why would it be?”
The alpha gave him a look like he was the crazy one.
“Well, you show up at my workplace unannounced, acting all cryptic. Are you organizing a surprise party?”
William stopped and turned to him, frowning. “Party?”
Harper held up his hands. “Don’t look at me like that. You’re the one who has turned up out of the blue. Wait, are you staging an intervention?”
William was looking more and more confused, but Harper couldn’t seem to shut himself up.
“An intervention for who? And why?”
Harper shrugged. “Beckett? For being… too perfect an alpha?”
There was the tiniest quirk of a smile on William’s face before it disappeared, leaving a mildly disapproving look in its place. “Beckett doesn’t know I’m here. And neither does Zac. I’d prefer to keep it that way.”
If anything, that just made less sense.
“Um, okay. But I’ve got to tell you, I’m not big on keeping secrets from Zac. And he and Beckett have that whole married life nothing-between-them-but-love thing going on, so…”
“On this occasion, I’m confident you’ll want to keep this quiet.”
Oh, that didn’t sound good. What could it be? Had one of his exes said something? Done something? Were there pictures of him floating around on the internet? Hell, was there a video? His mind was in freefall, when he suddenly realized he didn’t know where they were going, except that they were leaving the commercial district.
“This doesn’t look like the way to a bar. The nightlife is that way.” He pointed back the way they’d come.
“The conversation we need to have should not be overheard. We’re going to my place. Guaranteed privacy.”
Harper slowed to a stop. “Not to rain on your carefully crafted parade, but… I don’t go home with alphas I don’t know, whatever the reason.”
Not strictly true, but this was not the same as picking someone up on a night out and deciding to have a good time together.
“But you do know me.”
“Barely. We’ve met, what? Twice now?”
“Three times. Not that I’m counting.”
“Good to know. Look, there must be somewhere else quiet enough for us to talk. It’s still early, most of the bars are empty…”
“I need to show you something,” William said. “In my office.”
“I thought you said we were going to your place.”
“We are. My apartment is right above our offices.”
“Sounds… cozy.”
“It is convenient, but sometimes a little confining.”
William, who Harper had never seen without a suit and tie, seemed like the kind of person who thrived on confinement.
“Uh-huh.” He put his hands on his hips, looking up and down the road as he tried to work out how to extricate himself from whatever this was. “I think you’d better just tell me what this is about. All I really want to do right now is go home, and nothing you’ve said so far makes sense to me or makes me want to go anywhere with you.”
There was that frown again, like Harper’s confusion was an irritation.
“Inspire Inc.”
The two words sent a shiver down Harper’s spine.
“Huh?”
Chapter Five
William hadn’t planned to ambush Harper at the end of his shift, but once he saw the omega’s picture, his carefully laid plans were thrown into chaos. He wrestled with denial for a full hour before checking Inspire Inc. a second time. Then he called Micah, wondering about the possibility of repeating the voice test to see if anyone else appealed to him.
Micah hemmed and hawed before admitting, “You’re somewhat rare in the alpha world. If you consider the overlap between alphas and omegas in terms of all aspects of attraction, the average alpha is inspired by the average omega. That provides a large pool of potential matches. You, on the other hand, present quite a specialized, narrow range. Meaning you had a small selection to begin with. The match you did find shows consistently high compatibility across all our metrics. Our statistics tell us your chances of a successful muse partnership with this individual are greater than eighty percent. If you’ve decided against them, you’ll have to wait for us to recruit another match or try another agency. Most agencies don’t choose as carefully as we do; you may find yourself paired with a succession of omegas who don’t truly meet your needs. With us, that will never happen.”
Part of it was sales rhetoric—they didn’t want to lose him as a client. But the other side of it was just common sense. They’d found what William was looking for and were naturally expecting that he’d seize the opportunity with both hands. As soon as they discovered there was a personal connection, they’d cut the cord. They weren’t the kind of agency that would risk their reputation by entertaining such a situation. If William really wanted to do this, he needed to talk to Harper first and preempt any reaction.
Which was how he found himself leading Harper to his office. The omega had been reluctant to come until William had said the magic words. The name of the agency was all it took to get Harper following him instead of arguing.
Once they stepped into the office, Harper picked up where he’d left off.
“How do you know about Inspire? Did Zac tell you?”
William busied himself turning on the lights and powering up his computer.
“I haven’t spoken to Zac in weeks. This has nothing to do with him. It’s private.”
He went into his Inspire Inc. profile, bringing up his potential matches.
“Then what does this have to do with me—oh.” Harper stared at his own picture. “Oh, fuck no.”
“We matched,” William explained.
Harper gestured at the screen. “I can see that. Fucking hell.”
“Right. So, you can see why I asked you here.”
The omega frowned at him. “Actually, no. I can’t. Why don’t you explain it to me?”
“I had to talk to you before you realized I was the person you’d matched with.”
“And here we are, talking.”
“Yes, well…” At a loss for how to explain, he picked up his most recent folder for his passion projects and spread the sketches out across the table.
Harper took a step closer, his eyes darting from drawing to drawing, lingering on some longer than others.
“What am I looking at?”
“These are ideas, things I draw when inspiration hits.” He pointed to three lackluster sketches. “Those are what I’ve drawn in the past six months.”
He gestured to three more, full of life and detail. “And these are what I’ve drawn since I first caught your scent yesterday.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I,” William rushed to tell him. “Not at all. We’re in no way compatible on a personal level, and yet… it seems you are the perfect muse for me.”