Winning the Alpha Read Online Free PDF Page B

was dressed in a suit and had the air of someone who knew how to enter a room with confidence. I assumed that he was going to be the host of the show, though I didn’t recognize him.
    He waved his hand , knowing that of course we were all curiously looking at him, and beckoned us to the center of the room.
    “Hello, ladies,” he said when we were all gathered around him. “My name is John Stone, and I’ll be hosting this show.”
    John was good-looking, but not overly handsome. His voice was slightly high-pitched and he wore a wedding ring. I suspected that these were typical traits of the host of a reality show. The producers wouldn’t want him to outshine the leading man, after all.
    “I’ll be the person you come to with any complaints or concerns, and you can trust me. It’s my job to act as a sort of go-between. Also, I’ll be guiding you through the process of things like the parties we’ll have, when you’ll get to meet with Craig, and I’ll be announcing the assigned dates and so on.”
    The women chattered suddenly, like a flock of birds going apeshit in a tree because a hyena had come around.
    My brain started working: a ssigned dates? Craig? Right. Craig must have been the single man we were all pursuing. Jesus, what a boring name. They should have changed it for the show to Basil Horsetongue or Damien Wellhung. I’d almost forgotten that there was a man involved, and dates. How utterly bizarre to watch women get so excited without knowing what we were fighting for.
    I heard the continuing murmur of women speaking under their breaths, as though hearing the name of the man we were going to compete for like wolves over a deer’s carcass ignited their imaginations. Suddenly he had a name, which meant that he had a conjured face. I wasn’t sure what face “Craig” was really supposed to evoke in the imagination. To me it sounded too much like “crag.” I began to picture a grey-faced man with little to no sense of humour.
    B ut of course all that mattered was that he was the prize, and that would be enough to keep the ladies interested and drooling.
    Somehow, I wasn’t excited in the way that knew I should be. My initial nervousness had been replaced by mere curiosity, and I convinced myself that I was merely an objective observer. Nothing about this surreal experience made sense so I had to take ownership of it. Perhaps any igniting of flames had already been done in the form of Tristan, who occupied my thoughts more than he should.
    John walked us through some of the rules and regulations, most of which we’d all heard before.
    Things didn’t really become interesting until he finally beckoned someone to wheel rows of dresses in for the first meeting with Craig, which was to be filmed a few hours later. If I thought the candidates were animals before, now they’d gone seriously rabid. When the dress racks rolled in shrieks filled the air, as if the room had suddenly filled with clothes-worshipping banshees. I thought the ladies would tear each other limb from limb over the garments though I couldn’t see why; they all pretty well looked the same to me: low cut, too sparkly, too shiny. Too small.
    “Hanging back?” asked Julia, who’d sidled up next to me as I watched the mayhem unfold. She wasn’t going in for the kill either.
    “I figure I’ve seen all the women by now, and you and I know perfectly well that there’s probably only one dress on those racks that fits me.”
    “True,” she said. There was nothing insulting in her tone; Julia was si mply a no-bullshit kind of girl and I liked it. “And I’m not rushing in because I couldn’t care less if they threw me into a burlap sack. I’m all about personality, baby, not showing my tits,” she added.
    As I watched the other girls at work, I realized that my new friend had a point; the cattiest, most violent competition seemed to be over the dresses with the least fabric.
    “Jesus,” I said. “I should go in and fight them.