by Virna DePaul
She looked up. It seemed rude to pry, but he was offering and more information was a huge part of the reason she was here in the first place. “Your parents are…”
“Both alive. My mother is flighty, unreliable, rich as chocolate and somewhere in Thailand right now. And she’s not Michelle’s mother. We’re related through our dad. Who is…” He paused, a dark expression coming over his face. “Unfit to be a father. So, when Michelle’s mother passed away when she was five, I knew that it was up to me to make sure she had a good life. It took about a year, but I gained custody over her when she was six.”
“How old is she now?” Aurora asked, looking around the house for more clues that a little girl lived there. She saw a purple article of clothing tossed over a chair in the corner of the living room.
“Ten going on thirty. I swear, she’s smarter than I am.”
Aurora soaked in the little smile on his face as he talked about his sister and felt, for a moment, like she was staring into the sun. She felt like there were two Dante Callaghans. The one who had hit on her relentlessly for years and the one who lovingly grinned into his food when he was talking about the little sister he was raising. A headache started to form behind her left eye.
“So how come you never bring her around? You’ve had her for four years and the only time I’ve ever met her was two years ago at that picnic?”
“She hates doing work related stuff. Every once in a while I’ll bring her into my office and she’ll entertain herself for an hour. And after that I pretty much wish I’d never been born.” He grinned again.
Aurora felt as if her stomach had turned into a fist. A giant, clenching fist.
“But the picnic was outdoors and there were going to be other kids there, so she wanted to go. Plus,” he raked a hand over his stubble for a second, a look coming into his eyes that she’d never seen before. “I was what you’d call a nervous new parent. I was so scared when I first took her in. We barely knew each other, and her mom had just died. I just wanted her to be comfortable and happy. So we spent a lot of time one-on-one. And I guess I just got used to it that way.”
Aurora filed the information away for later. She felt like she could barely breathe, let alone comprehend what he was saying right now. She thought back to the little girl from the office picnic. Rat’s nest hair, a Little League softball t-shirt. She’d been sweet. She’d asked Aurora to take her to the restroom because Dante wasn’t allowed in. Another memory trickled through. “She got hurt at that picnic. Banged her knee or something?”
Dante’s eyes darkened again. “We left early for the hospital.”
“The hospital for a banged knee?”
Dante pushed his empty plate away from him and reached for his water. “She has a blood disorder called Von Willebrand’s. It’s similar to hemophilia, for all intents and purposes. And any time she gets a bruise, she risks internal hemorrhaging.”
“Wow. Oh my god, Dante. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s manageable with regular health care, but we have to take stuff like that really seriously.”
“Wow,” she repeated again. Aurora lowered her chin to her hand, pressing her eyes closed against the pain that was growing in her head. This was all so much. Almost too much. Definitely too much.
“You alright?” He reached across the breakfast bar and cupped her elbow, a look of concern etched onto his face.
“Yes.” She waved a hand through the air and pushed her empty plate away from her the same as he had. “I guess I’m just having trouble reconciling Dante Callaghan, Moneybags Ladies Man, with Dante Callaghan, Devoted Brother.”
Dante leaned back in his chair, a serious look on his face. “There’s only one Dante Callaghan, Aurora.”
“Sure, sure.” She stood and started clearing plates. “I guess I’m just surprised at how little we know one another.”
“Yeah, well, blame yourself for that one,” he said as he came up behind her while she started loading up the dishwasher. He nuzzled his nose into the crook of her neck. “You’re the one who’s been keeping me at arm’s length for years. Hmmm. You smell like my soap.”
Aurora turned in his arms, squinted at him, and tried to get her brain to catch up with reality. “Dante Callaghan, family man.”
He scoffed and tightened his arms around her waist. “Family man might be pushing it a little far. Michelle and I have made it work for us over the years, but I’m not exactly a ‘kids’ person.” He shuddered. “Raising her has been hard enough and she’s like the best kid ever. I’m not interested in doing it again.”
Well.
Well.
That answered that.
Aurora gulped. Okay. That was information. He hadn’t said it to hurt her. She couldn’t allow herself to linger over the pain and fear settling into her stomach.
It was simply a fact about him. He didn’t want kids. She wasn’t getting closer to him because he wanted to be World’s Best Dad to the kid in her belly. No. She was getting closer to him in order to figure out who the hell he actually was. And she’d just gotten a shit ton of information all at once.
Any of the fatigue that dinner and a bath had soothed instantly came back full force. The pain behind her eye increased ten fold and the only thing Aurora wanted to do was crawl under her covers and sleep for a week. His arms around her waist suddenly felt as if they were trapping her.
She stepped out of his grasp and smoothed her shirt down with one hand. “I’m going to go.”
She inwardly winced at the rude note in her tone, but she couldn’t really help it. She needed to get the hell out of here.
“Oh,” he cleared his throat. “Sure.”
“Thanks for dinner,” she said over her shoulder as she padded down the hall toward her shoes.
“Anytime.” There was something in his voice that wasn’t usually there, but Aurora was currently full up on things to interpret. He followed her to the door and opened it for her, reaching out and clasping her elbow as she passed.
Was he looking for a kiss?
“What are the odds that this happens again, Aurora?”
She shrugged, completely unable to answer that question. “I’ll let you know.” And then, before he could kiss her, before she could kiss him the way she was seriously wanting to, she walked out the door and forced herself not to look back.
* * *
Dante watched her go. He watched her get into the driver’s seat and pull smoothly down his driveway. He watched her taillights disappear. He held onto the doorknob as if it were the only thing holding him to earth. He couldn’t believe that that had just happened. He turned and looked back in his entryway. Well, they’d certainly christened it.
That helium balloon that had been growing underneath him suddenly popped with a vicious, stomach sinking finality. The reason they’d christened his entryway settled over him.
She’d come over to do what he’d propositioned. She’d come over to use him. To exorcise her feelings for Gio.
Had she thought of Gio while they’d been together? Had she left because she’d decided Dante had been a piss poor substitute for the man she really wanted?
Dante frowned and closed the front door behind him. He couldn’t fault her for doing exactly what he’d told her to do. But as he stepped back into the kitchen to box up the rest of the food, he couldn’t ignore the clenching in his gut.
She’d been fucking him, kissing him, sure. But she probably had been thinking of Gio.
And that was something that angered and saddened him in ways he couldn’t comprehend.
His plan had backfired and he had no one to blame but himself.
Chapter Eight
Aurora frowned at the single red tulip currently sitting in a simple glass vase in the cup holder of her car.
She had no idea what possessed her to bring that particular flower home. Dante had sent her an entire flower shop since that first night she’d slept with him all those weeks ago. Armfuls of flowers everyday. And then, this mornin
g, she’d come into work and there it had been. A single, juicy little tulip in a simple glass vase.
And her dang heart had skipped.
It had taken her a few days to sort through all of her feelings and she still wasn’t there. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be.
She pulled into the driveway of her mother’s small bungalow and, on a whim, brought the tulip with her into the house.
“Bonjou, Manman,” Aurora greeted her mother in Creole. Hello, Mama.
“Bonjou, piti. My lamou.” Hello, daughter. My love. Cedalie paused in the solitaire she was playing for a kiss on the cheek from her girl. “I can see by the look on that face of yours that the flower is not for me.”
“What? Oh.” Aurora looked down at the tulip she had firmly in her hand, genuinely confused as to why she’d brought it inside. Not like anything would have happened to it in the car. “No, it was a gift to me. But I’ll leave it for you, Mama.”
Cedalie clucked her tongue. “No, piti, it’s bad energy to give away a gift as personal as that one. You know that.”
“Sure,” Aurora said absently, sitting next to her mother at the small kitchen table and fiddling absently with two small rose quartz crystals that sat next to the deck of cards. Aurora’s fingers tensed over the stones as she sensed a funny vibration from them, subtle, but recognizable.
Cedalie lightly slapped Aurora’s hand away. “Don’t touch. Those haven’t been cleansed yet.”
Cedalie was talking about the energy of the crystals being cleansed, which her mother would do by burning sage. Aurora pulled her hands back. She wasn’t as talented as her mother was, but Aurora wasn’t immune to the knowledge.
Cedalie sat back, shuffling the cards in her skilled hands. As she did so, she stared at Aurora, likely studying her aura as she was prone to do.
“Put that tea in a jar,” Cedalie said, nodding toward the counter where a pot of tea was steeping. “We’ll take it on our walk.”
“I’m not in the mood for a walk, Mama. I’m tired.”
“You need a walk, trust your mother.”
Aurora didn’t argue further. She poured the earthy smelling tea into a little glass jar and waited by the door for her mother to slip on her tennis shoes. Cedalie tucked her hand through Aurora’s arm and they started their stroll through Cedalie’s neighborhood.
The neighborhood was filled with families just trying to get by. The homes were often shabby, but clean. Owned, not rented. Neighbors sat on their porches with a drink or a cigarette, some of them picking away at instruments.
Cedalie waved at a few people as they walked. Aurora couldn’t help the surge of affection for her mother. Her black hair shot through with silver, the small green crystal on a chain around her neck, the plain blue hoodie accented with the colorful scarf. God. How would she ever get through this if not for Cedalie?
“I’m confused, Mama.”
“I can see that, bebe.”
“In my aura?”
Cedalie nodded.
“He doesn’t want children.” Aurora watched the sun set in the distance and almost immediately felt calmer for having said her truth. The truth that had been choking her since her evening with Dante a few days ago.
“No one knows what they want, Aurora. Like I said, time tells the truth.”
Aurora said nothing. Just took a sip of the tea out of the jar, grimaced at the flavor, and nodded her head.
“You keep doing what you’re doing, daughter. You’re doing right by your child, getting to know what blood your child will carry. You get to know the father, it will only serve you. The difference between walking into a room with your eyes open or closed.”
Aurora nodded again. “So you think I should keep doing what I’ve been doing?”
“The baby is calm. You’re doing right. You’re doing right.”
Twenty minutes later, Aurora sat in her car and contemplated what her mother said. Then she finally did what she’d been wanting to do ever since she left Dante’s house. She texted him.
Chances of us happening again = 100%. Tomorrow night?
* * *
The night after Aurora texted him, she showed up at his house after work. This time, they’d managed to make it to his bedroom, but not by much. And then a few more tomorrows after that came and went in the same way. She’d come over, they’d fuck one another’s brains out, and then he’d feed her. It never failed to amuse him how ravenous she was after sex.
Soon, two weeks had gone by and Dante was under the distinct impression that he was starting to date Aurora LeMonde. He just wasn’t sure that she’d agree.
He stared out the window of his office, twenty stories up in downtown Los Angeles, and tapped a pencil against his desk.
He couldn’t remember a time in his life when he’d been so satisfied and so frustrated at the same time. He had her. He had her many times a week. That body, those lips, that voice, that hair. It was his. Ripe for the taking.
And at the same time, he didn’t have her.
She was in love with Gio. And if she wasn’t thinking of Gio during sex, then she certainly was knocking on Dante’s door to work off some energy after a day of working side by side with Gio.
The pencil snapped in his fingers.
He knew he had an ego. What man didn’t? But it was more than that. He didn’t want Aurora just because she was another man’s and it pricked at him. He wanted her because he wanted her. And yes, because she wanted him. Plain and simple.
“What’s wrong with you?” Michelle asked from the other side of his desk, her head popping up from the pages of a Percy Jackson novel. Her after school program had been cancelled today so Dante had had to pick her up and bring her to work while he finished up a few things.
She didn’t usually mind an hour of killing time, but he knew they were fast approaching the danger zone. The time of night when she’d be hungry, tired, and bored.
“Nothing.” He tossed the two halves of the broken pencil into the trash and kicked out from behind his desk. “You ready to get going, kid?”
She nodded her messy brown hair. “Finally. I was about to gnaw off my own arm.”
“From hunger or boredom?” He picked up Michelle’s black and white striped backpack and threw it over his shoulder, leaning down and helping her stand up.
“Hunger, obvi. I haven’t had anything since lunch.”
“Well, why didn’t you say anything, pipsqueak?” He looked back at her and opened his office door. “I woulda gotten you something from the vending machine. I’m not a monster.”
“Oh.”
Dante whipped around to face the open door of his office. Aurora was standing there, her bag slung across her shoulders and a file in her hands. She wore a coral colored dress, tight at the waist, with a pattern of little cut outs around the neck that gave tantalizing glimpses of her golden skin underneath. Her hair was swept halfway back in a knot and the rest fell around her shoulders.
Dante clapped his mouth closed before he drooled all over himself. “Aurora.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, taking half a step back. Her eyes zipped from the backpack on Dante’s back to Michelle’s messy hair and the oversized t-shirt that currently had a jelly stain on the front. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just wanted to drop off the Peterson contract. I saw the light on from downstairs and thought…”
Was she rambling? Was she blushing? Peterson contract, his ass. Dante would bet any amount of money that she’d come to fuck. Well. He would not have complained.
Alas, hungry kid, school night, his life. “No need to apologize. We were just headed out. You remember my kid sister, Michelle?” He pulled Michelle in front of him and gave her shoulder a little squeeze to remind her what to do next.
“Hi,” Michelle said, holding out her hand for a shake. “You’re Aurora, right? You took me to the bathroom at that picnic thing a few years ago.”
Aurora bent to shake hands with the girl, her hair falling over her shoulder. “Good memory.”
>
“Dante was just going to take me to get some Chinese food. Wanna come with us?”
Dante dropped his eyes down to Michelle as she tipped her head back and grinned up at him. “I was?” he asked wryly.
“Sure,” she shrugged. “Least you can do after starving me up in this cage all afternoon.”
“Yeah. Callaghan Inc. is a real Alcatraz,” he said, gently shoving her forward and flicking the light off in his office as the three of them walked toward the elevator.
Aurora was still peeking around at both of them, presumably having a bit of trouble believing what her eyes were seeing.
“What do you say, gorgeous? Wanna join us for dinner?”
“Um. Sure,” she said, laying one hand over her belly in a way that made Dante think she must be really hungry.
“Can we do it take out, Coco?” Michelle asked, naturally taking his hand as they exited the elevator toward the parking lot.
“Coco?” Aurora repeated in complete disbelief, humor and surprise warring in her eyes.
“An old nickname from when she was younger,” Dante muttered, ruffling Michelle’s hair. He could have gone a long time without Aurora LeMonde knowing that his little sister sometimes called him Coco. “Why do you want to do it take out, Michelle?”
She opened the backseat of the car and started climbing in. “One, because then we can eat at home which is better because the air conditioning in that restaurant is flipping cold. And two, because they only give you the good fortune cookies if you order take out. You get the boring ones if you eat in.”
“She’s right,” Dante said, smiling at Aurora, who was still looking a little shell-hocked. “The take out is all around better.”
“Oh. Okay.” Aurora brushed a hand over her hair. “Well, maybe I’ll just go home then.”
“No! Come have dinner with us, Aurora! Dante never brings friends home. Please?”
* * *
Aurora hesitated, but how could she say no to the little girl with the messy hair, big blue eyes and the big, hopeful smile? And how could she say no to the man whose shoulders stretched that business suit like it was their job? The man who still had his little sister’s backpack over his shoulder. The man whose big hopeful smile matched, exactly, the little girl’s beside him.
