Page 100 of Knot Her Beta

“I do,” I say before she even finishes asking. “Anywhere you want me to move, I’ll be there.”

Grady stays quiet in thought, and no one pushes him.

“Running Wilson Construction from Misty Pines isn’t practical.” Emily rubs the back of her neck. “I can’t ask a homeowner to take a boat every time they want to discuss a kitchen remodel.”

“Blake and Nathaniel said they wanted to invest and expand.” Despite the coffee in front of him, Jared reaches over to the sideboard and grabs another bottle of wine, popping the cork. “We could open an office space on the harbor. Nothing fancy, just a storefront with a meeting room, and you could use it as your base of operations. Dominic could meet clients for design consultations there, too.”

Emily’s eyebrows lift. “That…could work. They’ve been talking about buying a space to replace the hotel suite they keep on reserve. We could kill two birds with one stone.”

Grady pushes his empty wine glass over for Jared to fill. “An office on Harbor Street would work. There’s a building that’s been empty for a while on the corner of Harbor and Spruce. It has good light, with parking in back.”

“You’ve been scouting office space?” I ask.

His mouth quirks. “My realtor tried to sell me on the space when she thought that the Finch family was planning to set up office space in town.”

Jared runs to the office to grab the work laptop and pull up the listing, and Grady switches seats to sit beside him, the two men discussing how each room could be used.

Emily gives input when asked, but otherwise stays quiet.

At first, I think she’s overwhelmed with all the changes being discussed and fighting down her anxiety. But then I note how the color in her cheeks has deepened, and sweat glistens along her hairline.

Of the four of us, she’s the only one who hasn’t been drinking, and she’s been flushed all night.

She shifts in her chair, rolling her shoulders, unable to settle, and she rubs her forearms as if her skin itches.

When she reaches for her water, her hand trembles before she wraps her fingers around the glass and steadies herself.

“We’ll need a warehouse to store stock, too,” Jared is saying. “The lockers on the docks won’t work if the business is expanding.”

Emily nods, still staring at the table, and I’m not convinced she’s actually listening. Her pupils are dilated, black eating into the steel, and when she lifts her glass to her lips, I catch a whiff of her pheromones.

Crushed clover. Warm flannel. But beneath it, a muskier scent that has my dick twitching with awareness.

My stomach tightens, and I take a long sip of coffee before I set the mug down with more care than it deserves.

“Emily.” Grady’s voice cuts through. “How much office space do you think you’ll need?”

She blinks and lifts her head. For a second, her face goes blank, the way it gets when she’s been pulled from somewhere deep inside her own head.

She focuses, her jaw setting. “It will need to be big enough to hold a table for blueprints, material samples, and a few people.”

She sounds steady, but the flush has crept down her neck beneath the collar of her flannel, and when she reaches for her water glass again, her hand shakes so hard the water sloshes.

She catches me looking and tucks her hand back under the table.

“Em?” I whisper. “Are you okay?”

I catch a flash of fear before it’s gone, buried under that familiar stubborn set of her jaw. “It was a long week.”

Jared doesn’t pick up on it. He can’t. His scent-blindness means the pheromonal shift washing through the cottage might as well be happening in another room.

His hands gesture through the air, energized by the planning. Grady listens, contributing when needed, also not noticing.

Why would he? Betas don’t read pheromones the way Omegas do, and what I’m reading turns the wine in my stomach sour.

Emily pushes back from the table suddenly. “Dessert. I baked a cake.”

She stands, and the motion is too quick, too graceless as her chair scrapes across the floor. She steadies herself with one hand on the table.