“Si, it would be handy,” Ildaria agreed finally, a small smile playing on her lips, and he could feel the wide, probably goofysmile, stretching his own lips. Damn, this woman affected him oddly.
“Well, can I see them?” she asked finally when a full minute had passed in silence.
“Oh, yes, of course,” he muttered, realizing while he’d stood there gaping at her, she’d been waiting for him to make theoffer. Turning, he hurried into the kitchen to grab the keys to the empty apartments.
Rejoining her in the hall, he shifted H.D. under one arm and unlocked his apartment door, then held it for her to precedehim into the corridor.
“As you know the Night Club takes up the first two floors of the building, but there are also a storage room and laundry room for the club on the third floor. So the two apartments there are smaller with just one bedroom each. The apartments on this floor are much larger and nicer and have two bedrooms each. Sofia was already in one of the third floor apartments when I took over the place. I offered her the chance to move up to the other larger apartment on this floor, but she didn’t want the hassle of moving,” he explained and then added, “Sofia usually works behind the bar. I think you met her tonight. Well, last night now,” he corrected, remembering that it was now morning. Working the hours that he did, it was hard to keep the days straight at times. To him, this was still yesterday and would be until he went to bed. For the rest of the world, it was already a new day.
“Si,” Ildaria said, distracting him from his thoughts. He could hear the smile in her voice as she added, “Sofia introducedherself to me. So did the other servers in the club; Char, Ruby, Ryia, Rowan, and Elijah. They all seemed nice.”
“Yeah. They are, and good at their jobs too,” G.G. said as he led her across the hall to the second apartment. As he unlockedthat door, he added, “Lucern was good at choosing employees. Sofia is the only one who lives in the building though. She’sbasically the manager. Runs the place when I’m not here and so on. The rest of the servers all share a house nearby. And,here we are,” he said as the door swung open.
Stepping aside, he let her enter and then followed, absently rubbing H.D. under the chin as he glanced around the large openspace, trying to see what she was seeing and hoping she liked it.
“It’s huge. As big as your place,” Ildaria said with amazement as she looked around the living room area and the kitchen.
“Yeah. It’s the same size, the mirror image of my apartment,” he murmured, absently setting H.D. down when the dog kickedhis feet, making it known he wanted to explore.
“Oh, G.G., it’s beautiful,” she breathed, staring at the wall of windows, before turning to move up the short hall to inspectthe bedrooms.
He smiled wryly at the claim. It was a huge empty room really. Although there were appliances in the kitchen, a long island separating it from the living room, a fireplace in the living room, and a stacked washer and drier in a closet in the hall to the bedrooms. But other than that, it was an empty space waiting to be filled. Not what he would call beautiful.
“I couldn’t possibly afford this,” Ildaria said a moment later as she came back into the living room. She was shaking herhead, her expression full of regret. “I mean, this place must cost an arm and a leg, and while you’re going to be paying mewell . . .” She sighed unhappily. “If I didn’t need to finish my degree, I could afford it. But I have to—”
“I give employees a cut rate,” he said quickly, and it wasn’t a lie. He’d left Sofia’s rent at the same low rate it had beenbefore he’d taken over the Night Club. And the house the others lived in was part of the Night Club sale. He’d left that rentalone too even though the rental rates for both the apartments and the house were probably a quarter of what he could getif he rented to mortals. But having mortals coming and going from the building that housed the Night Club was not a smartidea. Besides, happy employees were good employees to his mind, and giving them a safe, low priced place to live went a longway toward making them happy. So, G.G. told her the amount Sofia paid, added fifty bucks to it for the extra bedroom, andthen held his breath, waiting for her decision. For some reason, he really, really wanted her to live in this apartment.
“You’re kidding?” she asked with disbelief. “That’s all?”
“That’s it,” he assured her.
Ildaria bit her lip and peered around the apartment silently, but then murmured, “I suppose I should at least look at theone-bedroom too.”
“Of course,” he said at once, and then on inspiration added, “I just thought this way you’d have a spare room for Vasco, orJess and Raffaele to stay in if you wanted them to visit.”
That made her pause and her eyes widen, as she no doubt considered being able to invite people to visit. He was pretty sureshe was struggling between fiscal responsibility—i.e. taking the less expensive one-bedroom apartment—and the freedom to havepeople over which was only fifty dollars more a month. Feeling oddly desperate to have her on this floor with him, he remindedher, “And I of course, will pay your university tuition now that you’re working for me.”
Ildaria had started to turn to survey the apartment again, but swung back at that, eyes wide and mouth agape. “What?”
“I pay half the tuition for the courses any of my employees want whether at college or university or just Dale Carnegie orsomething,” he informed her. “Both here and in the UK. In fact, Elijah’s taking courses at the
