Hot Alphas by Lora Leigh Page A

even realized they still existed.
    Perhaps that should have been a warning sign. The whole thing was actually … archaic, now that she thought about it. Especially when she’d been set up with that guy. Never mind what she’d been thinking. What had her matchmaker neighbor been thinking?
    Instead of climbing the stairs to her own brownstone apartment, she headed straight to the one next door, intent on picking that bone right then. Jaylene Kim had never been the type to procrastinate. She eyed the group of guys drinking beers on the stoop as she approached. When she’d left to meet Blake Donovan for her disastrous dinner she’d seen the men carrying a sofa into the building. Which one—or ones—of them were moving in?
    The scruffy one with the shaggy hair caught her gaze. Oh, God, please let it be him. He was too beautiful to not have a girlfriend—or boyfriend, they were in the hippie part of town—but who the hell cared? She didn’t expect to cuddle up with him. Just having him as next-door scenery would be scrumptious.
    Scrump. Tious.
    But even the face of a potential hot new neighbor was not enough to distract from her mission. “Excuse me,” she said, stepping between the men to get to the door of the building. A couple of them nodded a hello as she passed. The cute one, however, he remained straight-faced, uninterested. Too bad.
    Though, when she threw a glance back at him over her shoulder, she found him staring after her, a shy smile curling on his lips. Damn, if that didn’t send shivers down her spine. There was nothing like the sight of a beautiful man. See how her nipples perked up in this guy’s presence? Take that, Blake Donovan, aka blind date from hell.
    She grinned smugly to herself as she walked through the door and started up the stairs toward the Dawson unit. When she caught sight of the sisters outside their door, a basket of laundry in each one’s arms, her smile vanished and her eyes blazed.
    Pausing in her tracks, she pointed an accusing finger at the elder. “You!”
    Lacy, the younger sister, looked up from her task of unlocking the door one-handedly. “What did I do?”
    â€œNot you,” Jaylene said. She gestured to Andy who was attempting to hide behind her mane of auburn curls. “Her.”
    Lacy turned to face her sister. “What did you do to piss off Jaylene?”
    Andy shrugged. As if she were innocent. As if she didn’t know what she’d done.
    â€œHey, you two know each other?” Andy asked before Jaylene could commence her attack.
    Lacy scowled at the question. “We’re neighbors, doof.”
    â€œBut she’s not in our building.” Andy was clearly trying to deflect the spotlight from herself. “And you don’t know any of the other neighbors by name except Mrs. Brandy and that’s only because she’s over here once a week to scream about the volume of your stereo.”
    â€œJay’s different.” Lacy winked at her. “She’s cool. She used to be running buddies with Lance. They did the marathon a couple of times.”
    At the mention of Lacy’s late fianc é , Jaylene found her temper cooling a degree or two. But only out of respect for the dead, not because she actually felt any less pissed at Andrea Dawson. Truthfully, she hadn’t known what to say to Lacy after her loss and had spent most of the last year avoiding her. Guilt kept her from mentioning Lacy when she’d met Andy. It was no wonder that Andy didn’t realize the neighbors had once had a connection.
    Lacy cocked her head, her eyes focused on Jaylene. “Wanna come in? We’re planning a laundry-folding party, which will not be the finest of the parties I’ve thrown, I admit, but we do have wine.”
    Without hesitation, Jaylene resumed her walk up the steps. “Don’t mind if I do. I’ve never needed a drink so badly in my life.” As