Page 28 of The Alpha’s Unclaimed Mate

“Mia wanted to see Bella.” I gather my dignity back together one piece at a time. “She brought her homework over. Apparently your niece has been out sick, and not one kid in that class would take her assignments across town except mine.”

The laughter fades from his face, and his expression goes soft. “That’s a good kid you’ve got. Really. That’s a kind thing for her to do.”

I shouldn’t glow at that. Pride warms me anyway, because she is a good kid, and I raised her that way alone.

“We’ll drop the homework and let Mia say hi,” I tell him, steering us toward safer ground. “Then we’re out of your hair.”

“Actually, Bella could use the company.” He scratches the back of his neck. “She’s had a rough few days.”

“What happened to her?”

Something shifts behind his eyes, there and then shuttered, a look I can’t read at all. “Allergic reaction. To something she got into.” He picks each word carefully. “We’re keeping her home through Monday so she gets her strength back. Would it be all right for Mia to stay a while? Through dinner, maybe? It’d do Bella a world of good. She’s got nobody to talk to but me, and I’m sorry company at best.” He spreads his hands ruefully. “All I’m good for is tea parties and dolls, and I’m reliably terrible at both.”

The picture of Marcus Steele crammed onto a tiny chair pouring imaginary tea drags a smile out of me before I can lock it down.

I don’t want to say yes. Every careful rule I’ve built tells me to drop the folder and run. Then I think of that little girl with no mother and no father, sick in a vast empty house with only her uncle for company, and I cave.

“I guess that’s fine.”

“Don’t you have to get back to the office?” he asks.

“It’s Friday. I take half days.” I lift a shoulder. “And I do most of my work from home, so my hours bend when I need them to.”

“Lucky,” he says and starts us back around the house.

On the way, he stoops and plucks a gray shirt off a low branch at the edge of the lawn, shrugging into it as we walk.

“Why’s your shirt hanging in a tree?” I ask.

“Dropped it there before my run.”

I think back to that button on his jeans, to the exact moment I came around the corner, and I stop dead on the path. “Marcus Steele. Please tell me you’re not one of those weirdos who strips down and runs naked through the woods.”

Color crawls up his neck. “I don’t run naked in the woods.”

I hold his gaze a long, skeptical beat. “I really hope not.”

“I do not!” He protests weakly as I walk past him to the car. I just shoot him a disbelieving look over my shoulder. As soon as I let Mia out of the car, she barrels toward the man following me.

“Hey, Marcus!”

“Hey, kiddo.” Marcus smiles down at her warmly. “I heard you brought Bella her homework.”

Mia nods.

His eyes gentle. “Thank you. That’s a very nice thing to do.”

She just smiles broadly, and he walks with her to unlock the front door. She rushes through ahead of me with the homework folder clutched to her chest. Inside, the house is even more absurd than the outside promised, all soaring ceilings, pale stone, and a staircase wide enough to march a band up. Marcus leads us to a bedroom on the second floor, where Bella is propped against a mountain of pillows with earbuds in, knees drawn up, looking small and washed out.

Her whole face transforms the second she spots Mia.

“Mia!” She yanks the earbuds free and throws her arms wide, so the girls collide on the bed in a tangle of limbs and overlapping chatter.

“Hi, sweetheart.” I perch on the edge of the mattress and tuck a loose braid behind her ear. “How are you feeling?”

“My whole body hurts.” Bella’s voice comes thin. “Like everything’s sore on the inside.”

“She’s had a hard time holding food down,” Marcus offers from the doorway.