Chapter Twelve

A week after having coffee with Dante, Aurora pulled into her mother’s driveway, Dante jammed into the front seat of her Honda Civic.

She grinned at the way his long legs were folded up in front of him. He made it look like a clown car. But even in that ridiculous position he was devastatingly handsome. He wore dark jeans and a deep blue sweater, the same color as his eyes. He’d also gotten a haircut that week and his hair was as short as it was the first time they’d hooked up. Aurora couldn’t help but shiver as she remembered what it had felt like against her hand as she tried to grip him there. The masculine scrape of his short hair against her palm.

“What?” he asked her, undoing his seatbelt. “I have something on my face?”

“No,” she said, lifting her hand to caress the stubble on his chin. “You look just the way you did that first night we were together, with your hair so short.”

“Oh yeah.” He raked a hand over his hair and smiled at the memory of that night.

“You looked so severe in that suit and short hair. All shadows and sharp angles. Have I ever told you that sometimes you can suck all the air out of a room?”

He cocked his head to one side, trying to get a read on her mood. “Is that a good thing?”

“It’s a you thing. Sometimes you’re just too much man for one room. It’s distracting.”

With that, she slid out of the car and heard him follow suit. She was halfway up the brick walkway toward her mother’s front door when Dante caught her by the arm and spun her around.

“You like me,” he said, a teasing glint in his eyes.

“Excuse me?” She raised an eyebrow.

“All this time, I haven’t been sure. You’re attracted to me, of course.” An arrogant look slid across his features. “But that right there? What just happened. You just gave away your cards. You like me.”

“Well, yeah. I should hope that I like the person I’ve been sleeping with for the last month and a half.”

“No,” he said, waving away her dismissive words and pulling her close, swiping her smooth fall of hair over her shoulder and taking her by the chin. She would have been a bowl of jelly at his feet if not for the teasing, arrogant glint in his eye that had the steel in her spine stiffening. “It’s more than just casual regard. You like me like me.”

“What are we, in the third grade?”

“Am I interrupting?”

They looked up to see Aurora’s mother leaning against the doorjamb of her front house.

“Not at all. You must be Cedalie. I’m Dante Callaghan,” Dante said, lightly releasing Aurora and stepping around toward Cedalie, his hand held out.

* * *

Dante was a bit surprised by the older woman’s appearance. Very attractive, she barely looked over thirty-five except for the few gossamer strands of silver in her hair. She wore a man’s shirt, worn and tucked into old jeans. One of her bare feet was propped up on her knee and Dante could see lots of silver toe rings. Three crystals of various colors hung from her neck.

He held his hand out to her and then paused. “Is it bad luck to shake hands with a witch?” he asked her, only half joking.

Cedalie threw her head back and laughed.

“Yes,” she said, stepping toward Dante and hugging him instead. She pulled back and kissed him square on the mouth. A hard kiss, eyes open.

“Bonjou, Manman,” Aurora said, stepping into her mother’s embrace. “Pa li fe pe.”

Don’t scare him.

Cedalie grinned and opened the door to them. “Byinvini.”

Welcome.

“You speak French, Aurora?” Dante asked in amazement as he followed the two women into the small bungalow. He was so surprised by this new tidbit of information about her that he barely noticed the crystals swinging from wires, the wind chimes, the bundles of grasses and herbs scattered on the kitchen table, the half dealt deck of tarot cards.

“That’s Louisiana Creole, bebe,” Cedalie said, patting the side of his face and pushing out a chair at the kitchen table. “I thought you might bring your little one.”

Dante swung his attention back to Cedalie, finally taking a minute to look around her house. He opened his mouth to answer, but Cedalie was already talking.

“No, you don’t have to make up something about her having a busy schedule. The truth is completely understandable.”

“The truth?” Dante asked, a little bemused.

“Sure, bebe. You wanted to check me out first before you brought your little one here. You don’t bring her just anywhere. You’re a papa bear like that. But by the end of our visit, you’ll see that me and she would get along very nice.”

“Oh. I….” Dante’s eyes slid sideways toward Aurora, looking to her for a gauge on the situation.

“I’m not just guessing that we’d get along well. I know for fact. You might have left her at home, but you bring a little bit of her everywhere you go. I can feel her energy from where you hold it close.” Cedalie raised her hand to her lips in the gesture of a lifetime smoker, but dropped it and fished in her pocket for a toothpick. She pointedly ignored the annoyed look her daughter was shooting her way. “She’s curious, but realistic. Imaginative but very grounded. She takes care of you as much as you take care of her. She wishes she could play more sports, but you don’t let her.” Cedalie cocked her head to one side and surveyed Dante. “Why don’t you let her?”

“You don’t have to answer that, Dante,” Aurora said, setting a cup of iced tea in front of him and joining them at the table. “Mama, stop showing off.”

“No, that’s okay,” Dante cleared his throat, recrossed his legs and looked at Cedalie the way he might look at someone across a conference room table. “You can see so much but you can’t see the reason I don’t let her play sports?”

Cedalie sucked her lips in to keep her smile back, the same as Aurora often did. The familiar gesture immediately softened any prickliness Dante may have felt about being read so thoroughly and immediately by Cedalie. The two of them, equally confident, eyed one another across the table.

“I can see a great deal, although my daughter thinks it’s ‘rude’ and ‘totally stalls the conversation’ if I don’t let people tell me some things for themselves.” Cedalie made air quotes, exaggerated enough to have Dante chuckling.

Casually, Dante reached over and laced his fingers with Aurora’s. “My sister has a blood disorder that makes sports, especially contact ones, not possible for her. But if you’re telling me that she’s really pining after it, then maybe I’ll have to look into something she could play that doesn’t have too much risk.”

Cedalie nodded, a small look of chagrin on her face now. “Maybe I was trying to show off a little bit. But I wasn’t trying to tell you how to raise your child.”

“My sister,” Dante corrected automatically. Cedalie’s eyes zipped to Aurora’s and Aurora immediately looked away.

“Shall we go for a walk?” Aurora suggested.

A few hours later, Dante let out a deep, exaggerated breath in the front seat of Aurora’s car as they pulled out of Cedalie’s driveway. He slumped dramatically against Aurora’s shoulder and she lightly shoved him back, unable to do the same with her smile. “I’m driving! And it wasn’t that bad. She lightened up on all the occult stuff after the first twenty minutes or so.”

“Yeah, and the rest was just a walk in the park. I loved the part when she made me balance that rock on my head to balance my chakras.”

“It was a very small crystal and your chakras really needed cleansing. Trust me.”

“That wasn’t the craziest part though,” Dante insisted. “Your mom is HOT. I thought my eyes were going to bug out of my head when I first saw her. The woman could be your older sister.”

“Well, she was only twenty when she had me. She’s not much older than you are.”

“Oh god. Don’t go there. I’m closer to your age than I am to hers.”

“Mmhmm.”

“I don’t have to take this abuse. Drop me off at this bus stop! I’ll find my own way home.”

“No way, I could never live with myself for treating the elderly that way.”

Aurora yelped and laughed as he tugged her in for a kiss. Luckily they were safely stopped at a stoplight.

* * *

A half an hour later, Aurora was on her way home. She’d been so tempted to stay with Dante, and he’d wanted the same thing, but she’d needed some time on her own after the intensity of introducing Dante to Cedalie. And frankly, Aurora really needed to mull over what her mother had pulled her aside to say.

“You have to tell him, child. You have to.”

“I’m not ready, Manman. You’re the one who told me to wait, to gather information as long as I could.”

“That was before. That was before I saw the way he was about his sister. He doesn’t want children, child. I can see this plain as day. He’s not lying. To you or to himself.”

The words had cut through Aurora like a blade through a flower petal.

“But if you wait, the longer you wait, you risk ruining your relationship with him. And I can see what it has come to mean to you.”

“What do you mean ‘ruin it’, Mama? You mean that he’ll be mad that I kept it from him for so long?”

Cedalie had paused. She seemed to mull something over in her mind. Aurora knew that look on her mother’s face. She’d seen it a hundred times. It was the look Cedalie got when she knew more than she wanted to. “No. I don’t mean that. I can’t say more, child. You know that.”

Dante had come out of the bathroom then and there hadn’t been much more to say anyway. Her mother was not going to say much more than she already had. Because to speak about it would be to interfere with it, and that was not her mother’s place. It never had been. Aurora understood that, but she was also deeply disconcerted over her mother’s change of heart.

Aurora pulled into the driveway of her apartment building and parked, hurrying up to her home. She showered quickly and threw on pajamas, needing nothing more than to sink into the oblivion of sleep.

Her head was spinning. Aurora hadn’t realized how much comfort she’d been taking from the plan to wait and gather information. Letting things play out little by little. It had allowed her to keep things as they were, and the only thing changing was her level of closeness with Dante. But now her mother was completely flipping the script. Telling Aurora to turn everything on its head. The thought of having that conversation with Dante chilled Aurora down to the bone. She knew that it would change everything. She thought of the way he’d looked today, walking arm in arm with her mother. His t-shirt straining across his chest. The confident little swagger in his hips. God.

She’d tell him and there’d be no more casual dinner and movie nights with Michelle. She’d tell him and she would lose the right to come knocking whenever her desire for him overwhelmed her. She’d tell him and every time she saw him it would be so awkward that she’d start to dread doing business with him.

Aurora tossed and turned. She wanted the baby and he didn’t. And things were bound to get so tense that either she’d have to dissolve her partnership with Gio or Dante would. Everything would go away the minute she told him. And all she’d have left were these memories.

And his baby.

Not for the first time since she’d gotten pregnant, Aurora pressed the flat of her palm over her belly. She closed her eyes and tried, really tried, to feel the life in there. And of course, she instantly did. Aurora’s eyes came open. There the baby was. A zipping, growing energy inside of her. Aurora could feel the baby. She could feel her future there.

This baby deserved to come into a world where things were clear and calm between its parents. Aurora didn’t think they’d be a classic family. The chances of that went up in smoke the night she’d jumped Dante’s bones. But they did have a shot at peace. All she needed to do was tell him. Come clean. That way, they could move on.

She just hoped they could move on together.