Lola & the Millionaires: Part One (Sweet Omegaverse #2)(41)

Please let this secretly be a handful of apartments, I thought, staring up at the vast old brick building that looked as though it might’ve been a school of some kind at one point. The gate of black iron fence was cracked open, and I wondered if Leo and his pack didn’t worry about locking it or if Rake had left it open for me.

But it wasn’t Rake who answered the door when I rang the bell.

“Oh.” I stared up at Caleb with wide eyes, the tall alpha hanging back in the open doorway.

“Hello, Lola. I’m sorry, Rake hasn’t made it back yet and Leo was a bit frantic so I didn’t want to worry him. I can leave now that you’re here, though,” he said in a breathless rush, reaching up a tan hand to comb back golden blond strands. He was dressed casually in a rumpled button-down and jeans, with his toes peeking out from under the frayed hem.

“You-um, no. No, you don’t have to go,” I said, standing frozen on the front step. “I—it’s your house.”

Caleb nodded and winced at the same time. “I don’t want you to be uncomfortable. I don’t mind.”

I caught my breath and looked over my shoulder. The cab was already gone. Not that I really wanted to leave. I faced Caleb again and shrugged. “I don’t want you to leave on my account. I’ll be all right.”

Caleb stepped back, and between his courtesy and the absolutely massive old oak door, I had plenty of room to step inside. It was just that once I was inside, I would be alone with an alpha I barely knew.

But Leo knew him. Was bonded to him. I badly wanted to believe in this pack being different than my experiences with alphas, for Leo and Rake’s sake.

I stepped inside, and with one glance away from Caleb, I was suddenly too stunned by where I was to care who I was with.

“Oh!”

It was definitely not a series of apartments.

It was…breathtaking.

The floor was made of small boards cut and angled into a diamond pattern. The walls were a deep shade of natural gray, textured in panels. It took me a moment of gawking—at the works of art on the walls and the greenery filling the open space and the contemporary lighting that warmed the space—to remember the name for the room I was in. A foyer.

This pack lived in an enormous house and they had a foyer. In the city. Until I was eleven, my mom and I had lived in an apartment without a second bedroom. When we moved, the second bedroom hadn’t had a closet.

“The downstairs is really for show, business entertaining. I can… You’re welcome to go anywhere you want, or I can show upstairs to the family areas. They’re rather less intimidating,” Caleb said. For all the rasp Leo had naturally, Caleb was entirely smooth and clean. He was super fucking British too, his words arching prettily even as he rambled at my back.

“Is it all this pretty?” I asked, studying the delicate, golden light fixture hanging above me, all angles and fine round bulbs.

“Oh? Do you like it? Thank you, I—yes, I think it’s all quite nice.”

I remembered then that Leo had mentioned in passing that Caleb was an interior designer. And then, with a sudden and humiliating wave, I realized that Leo lived here and he’d voluntarily spent the night in my shitty apartment.

“Fuck,” I whispered. I closed my eyes, and my body wavered.

I heard Caleb’s step, just the one, like he was prepared to catch me if I fainted or passed out or whatever this was.

“Let me show you upstairs to the den,” Caleb said gently. “Rake will be back soon. And Leo’s about to try and commission a flock of birds if it’ll get him home any sooner.”

I shook my head and swallowed. Maybe I needed to go. This was all too much, and I was only standing in the foyer. If I saw any more of the house, I might seriously lose my shit. And that wasn’t what my relationship with Leo was about. Logically, I’d known he and his whole pack were wealthy as fuck, but I’d never in my life seen wealth in context as clear as this. It wasn’t ivory pillars and crown molding either, it was pure, contemporary, thoughtfully considered class. This place was sexy.

“Is it me?” Caleb asked. “I can’t tell if I should go or shepherd you somewhere to sit down or—”

Caleb’s persistent panicking at having me standing in shocked silence did the trick. I giggled nervously and pulled my hand from my face, scrubbing it lightly over my eyes first.

“Sorry. I haven’t really slept, and today started all wrong. I’m okay.” I turned to face Caleb and tried to offer him a reassuring smile, but both he and I were too nervous in front of the other for it to be believable. “Upstairs would be nice.”

Upstairs would probably be divine, if I weren’t so totally overwhelmed it made it impossible to enjoy. Caleb sighed and nodded, walking carefully past me to give me plenty of breathing room. No amount of Leo’s reassuring that his pack was different than the alphas I’d known would ever be as effective at calming me as Caleb’s blatant concern for frightening me. Or maybe that stereotypical British awkwardness of his was just really soothing.

I followed him out of the foyer and into an enormous open room, twice as tall as the first room I’d been in, and clearly designed for open entertaining. The walls were a deep navy, and there were giant teardrop chandeliers hanging from the ceiling over spacious couches. On the far end of the room sat a full wet bar and a reading nook with shelves as high as the ceiling and a terrifying sliding ladder. My eyes bugged, but I bit my lips as Caleb all but jogged for the stairs, as if he might lessen the impact of the dramatically lavish room by shortening my exposure to it.