“Toast?” Ildaria exclaimed with dismay and he heard the tap tap tap of high heels behind him. With H.D. tucked under his arm like a football, G.G. couldn’t resist glancing back and down tosee her shoes. He’d missed them on first greeting her, but now saw they were shiny, black, high-heeled pumps. Damn. She lookedlike a sexy secretary.
“A big guy like you needs protein not just toast for breakfast,” Ildaria said now, drawing his gaze back up to her smilingface. “I’ll make you an omelet.”
Grunting, G.G. turned and led the way into the Night Club’s tidy kitchen. It wasn’t as large as one would find in a mortal club, but it wasn’t tiny either. Most of the room was taken up with industrial refrigerators to store the blood, but there was also a grill, oven, microwave, and pots and pans dangling from a center rack.
G.G. had renovated the kitchen when he’d taken it over. He worked from well before dusk, to long after dawn in the Night Club,and as a mortal, he had to eat. He hadn’t wanted to be running out to fast food joints for every meal, so a kitchen had beena necessity. Now, he paused and swung back toward Ildaria, absently petting the still snuggling H.D. as he took in her reactionto the kitchen.
“Nice,” she pronounced, but her eyes were wide and glowing as she peered around the gleaming stainless steel surfaces. Returningher gaze to him, she raised her eyebrows. “So? An omelet. Si?”
“I don’t want you to go to any trouble,” G.G. said mildly, but the mention of an omelet had made his mouth start watering,and he was glad when she went to check out the refrigerators, quickly finding the smaller one with food inside of it.
“No trouble,” she assured him. “And look. You have the ingredients.”
G.G. looked, but not at the eggs, cheese, onions, and peppers she was retrieving. Instead, his gaze landed and stayed on herbottom where her skirt had pulled tight over her generous curves as she bent to check the shelves.
“How can I help?” G.G. asked, forcing his gaze away from her behind when she straightened.
“Make toast,” Ildaria instructed, carrying what she’d found to the stainless steel prep table before returning to the refrigerator for milk.
He watched her set the milk by the other ingredients, but when she grabbed a knife and began to clean and dice the vegetables,he set H.D. down and moved to fetch bread, butter, a plate, and a knife, before pausing to ask, “Have you had breakfast? ShallI get you a plate too?”
“No. I’m good,” she assured him. “Marguerite makes big breakfasts every morning and I ate before we left.”
Nodding, he carried the items to the counter where the toaster waited, and set everything down.
They worked in silence for a minute, and then Ildaria asked, “So . . . you never did answer my question yesterday. How dida mortal end up owning and running an immortal Night Club?”
G.G. looked around at that question, his gaze sliding over her figure as she worked. He would have expected her to ask Marguerite,or for Marguerite to volunteer the answer, but apparently not. Or perhaps she wanted to hear it from his point of view, sohe divulged, “My mother and father bought it for me for my eighteenth birthday.”
“Wow.” She kept her gaze on the knife as she quickly chopped the peppers, both red and green, he noticed. “I’ve heard of watches,bracelets, and even cars being given on special birthdays. But this is the first time I’ve heard of someone being given abusiness.”
“Yeah.” G.G. made a face she didn’t see and quickly opened the bread. “It was a bit over the top. I paid them back for itas quickly as I could out of the profits.”
“Really?” She turned to eye him with surprise.
G.G. nodded, but didn’t comment further and turned his back to her to set four pieces of bread in the double toaster.
Ildaria was silent for a moment, the only sound in the room the clack, clack, clack of the knife hitting the stainless steel surface, and then she commented. “You call Robert your father.”
G.G. shrugged. “He’s the only father I know. I don’t remember my birth father. And Robert has been my dad in every way that’simportant since I was five. That’s thirty-two years. He’s earned the title.”
G.G. glanced over in time to see her nod and curiosity made him ask, “What about you?”
“What about me?” she asked easily.
“What about your parents?” he clarified. “Are they—?”
“Dead,” she said, her voice flat. “Long dead.”
G.G. considered that, but then asked, “They weren’t immortal?”
“No.” Ildaria’s voice was almost hollow.
“So you were turned at some point,” he said, frowning now as the memory of his mother’s screams of agony rang in his ears,and the vision of the skin on her face jumping and rippling as if it were boiling came to mind along with the way she’d clawedat her stomach, as if trying to tear it open. Robert had been trying to stop her, but she had been unstoppable and G.G. hadfled at the first sight of blood appearing under her clawing fingers.
“I was turned in a back alley in Punta Cana when I was fourteen.”
The words drew G.G.’s mind from his memories and he peered at her sharply. Her voice sounded empty, emotionless on the subject. He frowned briefly, and then said, almost with disbelief, “Your life mate turned you in a back alley?”
“He was not my life mate,” she said grimly.
“A rogue turned you?” he asked, his brow furrowing with concern.
“No. Si. I don’t know,” she said finally. “He was an asshole who attacked me, but I do not know if that makes him rogue.”After a pause, she admitted, “I turned myself, by accident, while fighting him off.” Sweeping the peppers up in her hands,she dumped them into a frying pan with butter and then plucked up the onion only to pause and purse her lips. “You like onionsand peppers, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he said at once, and watched her relax and start to
