chapter eleven

“Lunch,” Dante said a minute later, taking her hand and dragging her from the office.

Aurora couldn’t help but glance back at his desk, all cluttered and messy from where he’d just bent her over it. She couldn’t believe she’d just stormed into his office and devoured him. And with Gio on the other end of the line! It somehow made her feel both proud and horrified.

“It’s four o’clock in the afternoon, Dante.”

“Happy hour drinks, then. I just don’t want you to go yet. Come out with me, Aurora. We don’t even have to call it a date.”

Her stomach flipped, as it so often did these days. She wasn’t sure if it was from the baby growing inside her or from the idea of going on a real date with Dante.

“Coffee,” she finally said.

Ten minutes later, they settled themselves at a small cafe a few blocks from Dante’s office.

“Want to play a game?” he asked.

“Um, I thought we already did,” she said with a smile.

He laughed. “You’re right. And it’s my favorite game of all. But for the sake of variety, let’s play a different kind this time. One I used to do with Michelle all the time.”

“What is it?”

“It was something we did when she wanted to be a detective. I called up this guy I knew in college who ended up being a P.I. and he told me the best way to train to be a detective was to observe as much as you could about every person you were with and every place you went. So everywhere she and I went, we played the observation game. For like a full year. By the end, it sort of became second nature. But then she got into her Harry Potter phase and it all went down the drain.”

“You didn’t call up a wizard you knew in college to give her some tips on harnessing magic?” Aurora asked dryly. Although inside she was quaking, stunned at the sweetness inside him. He’d called up a P.I. for career tips because his little sister wanted to be a detective. It was almost painful it was so cute.

Dante shrugged. “So you wanna play?”

“The observation game?” Aurora looked around, taking in the doilies on the tables and the geriatric clientele. “Sure.”

“Not about the place though, just about one another.”

“Oh. You want me to tell you what I observe about you?”

“And vice versa. I’m pretty sure I already know what you think about me, but let’s give it a shot.”

“Alright.” She smoothed her hair back in a nervous gesture. “You go first.”

“There are two Aurora LeMondes.”

“What?”

He leaned back in his chair, his large hands spread on the delicate table cloth, his coffee cooling in front of him. His eyes were so blue in that moment, Aurora swore they made her thirsty. “There’s the woman that I’ve known for years. The version of you that works at the Esposito Group. Polished, calm, never misses a deadline. Deadly beautiful, of course, but you keep it behind a glass case. Like the rose in Beauty and the Beast. I didn’t know why, but I knew that the polished version of you wasn’t the whole picture. And I thought, why is she hiding? But now I get it.”

Aurora took a sip of tea, trying to keep her hand from quaking on the cup. He was freakishly accurate so far. She didn’t trust her voice so she said nothing.

“It’s because you have to keep the other part of you under wraps. I got a glimpse of her every time I would flirt with you and it would annoy you. I’d see just a little bit of the spice. The temper. The flare of heat. But I wasn’t prepared. I had no idea what it would be like when you finally raised the gates and let it loose. The night you asked me to take you home? I’ll never forget it. Part of me is still recovering. It was like pressing my tongue to a battery. The other part of you, the other version, is so passionate, so fiery, so free and wild, that you have to keep her in the cage. Or else nobody will ever get any work done.”

She took another sip of tea. “I don’t know if that’s true. But…my first year of college, I had not one, but two married professors try to hook up with me.”

Dante’s brow instantly furrowed. She didn’t miss the way his hand balled on the table.

She shrugged it off though. “My body, my nature, it all worked against me. No matter how smart I was or the grades I got or the ideas I had, it was all liable to go down the drain the second I got labeled a slut. I realized that the only way to rise in the business world was to become an ice queen. Untouchable, as you called it.”

“Except for your crooked teeth,” he quipped, making her smile just as he intended.

“Right. I knew I should have sprung for the Invisalign.” She sighed and looked out the window for a second. “The ambition I have to survive in the business world isn’t just for personal satisfaction. It isn’t a game. For me and my mother, my job is a matter of survival.”

He almost interrupted, but she opened her mouth again, her eyes blurry as she watched her own finger play in a ring of condensation left behind by her tea cup. “You know, I think it became even worse when I started at Esposito. The cold and polished version of me intensified, crystallized. Gio recognized my talent right away, but part of me was so worried that I’d slip up and he’d see the other part of me. The part that spent the first eight years of my life in shelters while my mother sold fortunes on corners for five bucks a pop. The part of me that never knew my father and secretly had absolutely no idea how to talk to men. The part of me that every once in a while, lost her shit and had to find a man to let loose on. I was so scared that Gio would see that part of me that I locked her away, never to be seen or heard from again.”

* * *

Dante was riveted. Absorbing every piece of information from her like it was the coolest, cleanest water. He hadn’t realized how thirsty he’d been to know her. Her story was hard to hear but he wanted to know more. He wanted all of it.

“Well,” he said, sliding his hand across the table to hers, a little smile on his face. “Maybe not ‘never’. She’s been known to come over to my house a few nights a week.”

Aurora smiled down into her tea. “Fair enough.”

He paused for a second, and then decided to do what his intuition told him to do. “When you say shelters, you mean homeless shelters?”

Aurora gave him a sad little smile then nodded. “Yeah. My mom is a free spirit in a lot of ways and she wasn’t planning on getting pregnant with me. She was young.”

Aurora turned to look out the window, watch the pedestrians pass by as she told her story. The afternoon light slanted across her face and lit her hazel eyes from the side, making them look like a glass bottle. Dante had the sudden urge to take her to the beach. Somewhere tropical where she could full-out lay in the sun. Take that full, deep breath she never quite seemed able to take.

“She’d been couch surfing, I guess. Which isn’t too much of a hardship at age twenty. But then she was plus one and a lot of those couches were suddenly occupied. She had a few friends who stuck it out with her. But we were often in shelters.” She straightened her top suddenly, as if she was having to remind herself that she was here, now, a successful woman, not the vulnerable child she’d once been. “It wasn’t as bad for me. When you’re a kid, you don’t really know what’s going on. And I always had her there with me, so I always felt safe. She was a fierce protector. But it must have been terrible for her.”

“God.” Dante tried to imagine what that would have felt like with Michelle. “I’ll bet she barely ever slept. I know I wouldn’t have if Michelle and I were in that position.”

Aurora looked at him for a minute, her eyes inscrutable x-rays.

“What changed?” Dante asked. “How did you get back on your feet?”

“My mother started taking a few courses that they offered at one of the community centers we used to go to for dinners sometimes. She got just enough under her belt that she made a fairly decent secretary. She did that for a while at some accounting office. It was enough to put us into a little apartment and give us health insurance. One of the accountants started to get a little handsy, so she moved on to a therapist’s office. But pretty soon, the clientele started talking more to my mother about their problems than they were to the therapist.”

“Because of all the witchy stuff?”

Aurora smiled. “Because my mother sees a lot of things other people don’t. And it makes her pretty easy to talk to.”
“Let me guess, the therapist fired her out of jealousy?”

“The opposite, in fact. The therapist was very impressed with her. Fired her as a secretary and renovated this big old coat closet to be her office.”

“Her office for what?”

“Fortune telling, advice, aura readings. It all sounds so mystical, and a lot of clients thought it was hooey. But there’s plenty of people in New Orleans who need occult help with their lives. And not only is my mother the real deal when it comes to that kind of thing, but she also wasn’t trying to squeeze every dollar out of every client’s pocket. She really wanted to use her gifts to help people.”

He leaned forward, loving how open she was being. Wanting even more from her. “Do you have any of those gifts?”

“Not nearly as potent. But probably more than you do.”

He nodded slowly, leaning back. “Can you predict the future?”

Aurora snorted. “Of course not.”

“Can you, like, see my aura?”

Aurora raised one eyebrow. “Dante, I can see your aura from fifty paces.”

“You’re kidding.”

She shrugged.
“You’re not kidding?”

She shrugged again.

“Come on. Tell me! What color is my aura?”

“As red as the day is long.”

“Really?” Dante held up one hand in front of his face as if he could look hard enough and see it for himself.

Aurora bit her lip. “People with red auras are very physical. Sexual. Grounded in the here and now. They believe in what they can taste and feel and see. They’re stubborn. They think they know how the world works. They’re passionate yet practical. Successful.”

Dante found himself clearing his throat. “Well. I guess that sounds about right.”

“The aura reading didn’t count as my turn for the observation game.”

“Okay. Your turn then.” Dante shrugged, seemingly casual, but his heart rate had definitely picked up.

Now it was Aurora’s turn to lean back in her chair. Dante refused to shift in his seat. “You’re a natural caretaker. But you’re uncomfortable with that idea because you view yourself as a survivor, selfish even. But you’re not. The furthest thing from it, actually. You protect the people you care about. Even nurture them. You’re good at it. It comes naturally to you. But it also comes naturally to you to be a dick. Top dog.”

Dante laughed. “You flatter me.”

Aurora cocked her head to one side. “You don’t like Gio. You two were never best friends, but now you can barely stand to be in the same room as him.”

“Do you blame me? He has your heart, after all.”

* * *

At Dante’s bold words, Aurora practically jerked in her seat. But why was she so surprised. Of course he’d think that. She’d never taken Dante’s proposal seriously, to fuck Gio out of her system by using him. She hadn’t ever thought that would be possible. She’d just been hungry for Dante himself. But now, looking into Dante’s deep blue eyes, remembering his intensity when he’d fucked her across the desk as he’d been on the phone with Gio, she realized that Dante still thought that’s why she’d been with him over the last few weeks.

She didn’t want to deliberately mislead Dante, but considering her main reason for starting anything with him, in addition to her desire of course, had involved being pregnant with a child he didn’t want, Aurora wasn’t sure she should relieve him of the misconception yet. She certainly wasn’t ready to tell him she thought she was falling in love with him.

“It was your idea, Dante.” She spoke in a soft tone.

He looked away from her, then.

Sometimes she just didn’t understand him. He cared about her, she was sure of it. But she still had absolutely no idea how he’d react to her having his kid. Oh, she was sure that she could trust him not to force her into anything she didn’t want. And despite what he’d said about not wanting kids, she was sure she could count on him for financial support. But she wasn’t sure he’d still want to be with her. What if he wanted to end things? What if he simply said thanks, but no thanks, and wished her luck? She wasn’t sure her fragile, hormonal heart could take it. She’d grown used to his affection for her. Depended on it. Needed it.

She didn’t know what to do!

But maybe if she introduced Dante to her mother, her mother could help her decide.

“Dante, do you want to meet my mother?” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them.

“Really?”

Aurora cleared her throat. “It’s not a big deal. She’s a casual person.”

“Sure. I just thought you wanted this thing between us to be more… secret than that.”

Well, she had. At the beginning. But now she was all tangled up, totally confused, had no idea which way was up. And she needed to call in the big guns. “I’ve met Michelle.” She shrugged. “You should meet my mother. Unless you don’t want to.”

“No, I want to. I mean, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous to meet a practicing witch…”

Aurora rolled her eyes. “I’m not going through this with you again. My mother is not a witch.”

“You only say that because if she’s a witch then you have to admit you’re a witch too.”

Aurora bit back her smile. “If I was a witch, I would have cast an expulsion charm against you a long time ago.”

“Ah, that was back when you didn’t like me. I’m not so worried about that these days.”

But he was worried, she thought. She saw it in his eyes, his lingering unease about her feelings for Gio. Oh, Dante, she thought, if you only knew. I love you. I love our child.

I just want you to love the both of us too.