“Of course I can. She’s my life mate, I—”
“Your very new life mate,” his mother interrupted. “And we all know how that would go. You’d mean to talk and reassure her,but it would end up in shag city.”
“Shag city?” he echoed with disbelief.
“You know I’m right,” she said firmly.
“Yeah, I just can’t believe you’d call it that,” he rumbled.
“You have tattoos, I have a potty mouth,” she said with a shrug and then headed out of the kitchen. “I will go talk to her.”
G.G. started to protest with alarm, but his mother had burst into immortal speed and was already disappearing up the hall.
“Oh hell,” he said with dismay.
“It will be fine,” Robert said, moving to his side to pat him on the back. “Your mother is just going to reassure her thatthere’s nothing to be embarrassed about and welcome her to the family.”
“Right,” G.G. breathed, but didn’t feel reassured himself. His mother could be . . . mother.
“His parents! The Enforcers would have been bad enough, but his parents,” Ildaria told H.D. with disgust. The dog sat patiently next to her in front of the closet, head tilted to the side, seeming to listen intently, as Ildaria pulled clothes out of the closet and ranted to him.
“Oh my God! His father saw my bare bottom,” Ildaria realized, stopping to press the top she’d just pulled out to her cheeksas she felt them heat at the memory. Her eyes then widened and she added, “And everything else when I jumped up ready to fighthim. Oh Madre de Dios. Thank God I did not knee him in the groin.” Glancing down to H.D., she explained, “I nearly did. I was about to when hesaid G.G. had told him about me.”
H.D. didn’t respond. He merely tilted his head to the other side now as if thinking.
“If he hadn’t said that when he did . . . ay yi yi.” Ildaria shook her head and pulled out a black skirt next. A glance atthe clock as she’d entered the bedroom had told her that it was nearly eight o’clock. She and G.G. usually started work aroundeight. It gave him an hour to prepare for opening. That meant that Ildaria started at eight as well because one of her jobswas looking after H.D. She usually took the little fur ball down to the office and worked until four a.m., sometimes five if she was in the middle of something, and then she took him up to her apartment until G.G. came to get him.
Ildaria suspected G.G. wouldn’t be working tonight now that his parents were here, but she had every intention of working. It would allow her to avoid facing them again.
God, the humiliation. She’d wanted to make a good impression on them. Not that she’d ever even considered meeting them untiltoday. There had been so many other things on her plate of late; she just hadn’t got that far in the scenario. But once he’dmentioned his parents coming over, she’d started to fret about it in the back of her mind as they’d talked with Lucian andhad breakfast.
Finding her naked and unconscious on top of their baby boy had not been part of her plan.
“Yes, well, you know what they say about best laid plans.”
Ildaria swung around sharply at those sympathetic words and found G.G.’s mother standing in the open door of her bedroom.She’d left it open again. She usually did. She lived alone here, after all; there was usually no need for closed doors.
“What do they say about best laid plans?” Ildaria asked finally as H.D. apparently decided she didn’t need him to listen toher anymore and walked over to jump up on the bed.
Mary Guiscard opened her mouth, and then closed it again and smiled wryly. “I don’t really know. It’s just what they alwayssay when things go sideways . . . and they often go sideways,” she added gently.
“Si,” Ildaria sighed and carried the clothes she’d chosen to the bed to lay them out. “Always for me they go sideways.”
“Surely not always?” G.G.’s mother said, taking a couple of tentative steps into the room as if half expecting Ildaria to throw her out. She wouldn’t do that of course, no matter how much she might want to. The woman was G.G.’s mother.
“Si. Always,” she assured her, walking to her dresser to retrieve a bra and panties. White cotton as usual.
“Well, I think your luck has changed then. You’ve met your life mate,” Mary Guiscard pointed out, sounding extremely pleased.
Ildaria tossed the underwear on the bed and then turned to survey the woman’s happy face. G.G.’s mother was positively beaming.You’d think she was the one who had just met her life mate. But Ildaria knew the truth was she thought her son was safe now,that he would turn and she would never need fear losing him to age or the frailties of mortals.
“Even that has gone sideways,” Ildaria confessed unhappily. “I know you are happy thinking G.G. is safe now. I know you hopedhe would meet the woman he was a life mate to and agree to the turn, but I am not that woman. He still refuses to turn. Ihave failed you.”
Coward that she was, Ildaria didn’t stick around to watch the woman fall apart at that news. She never cried and had neverbeen good with women who did. She suspected Mary Guiscard would be a weeper, so she turned and walked into the bathroom, hopingG.G.’s mother would have her little cry and then perhaps go back out to the others now that she knew what a dud she had gainedin her son’s life mate.
The moment Ildaria had reached her bedroom after leaving the kitchen, she’d come into the bathroom, taken off her boots and then turned on the water in the shower to allow it to warm up while she searched for clothes. A quick check showed it
