“The drawer in your vault. It had a piece of wood or maybe wood and a nail sticking out. Honestly, all I know is it hurt. It bled a lot. And here we are.”
“Ouch damn, baby, I’m sorry. I feel like shit.”
“I forgive you, but only because you wrangled me some cookies.” I set the pain medication aside. “I just took four Advil. I have no desire to take another pain pill. All they do is knock me out.”
“Sleep helps the body heal. And so does food.” He steals a torn-off piece of the bread. “It’s almost as good as her cookies.” He takes a bite and then offers it to me.
I accept and the intimacy of the shared food is right there between us, thickening the air and ripening the awareness between us. I taste the warm bread and nod my approval. “It’s wonderful.”
“Good. I’m glad you like it. Jenny will be as well.” He hands me my spoon. “Eat, baby. You’ll feel better.”
Despite his frequent use of the endearment, this time it does funny things to my belly. In defiance of what has happened these past few hours, there is a new intimacy between us that cannot be denied. I accept the spoon and begin to eat, finding the soup delicious. “Speaking of the perfect godparents—” My brows dip. “Actually, are Jerry and Jenny, your actual godparents?”
“Not officially, but that’s what Jenny calls them.”
“Well then, as I said: speaking of the perfect godparents, you had cookies, good food, and clearly love, from what I saw with you and Jenny.”
“The love is mutual,” he says. “And they are pretty perfect.”
“You said they were good friends with your parents?”
“Jerry and my father went to school together. Jerry actually owned another bakery and had about fifty locations before he sold out. He doesn’t have to work, but he kept this one location because he enjoys it. And why tell you that part of Jerry’s life? Because if he wasn’t that successful, my father wouldn’t have had anything to do with him.”
My spoon halts midair with the offer to slide under his wall, and glimpse a bit more of the real man he shelters beneath his rock star image. It’s not exactly penance for the secrets he’s kept from me, as that really isn’t appropriate here, but rather a message I understand. He’s telling me that he hasn’t taken what he will not give. I set my spoon down. “Your father was really that cold?”
“He was,” he confirms, and I don’t miss the tic in his jaw, that tells a story. He’s willingly toed this territory with me but the topic of his father is not a gentle one.
“Jenny is so sweet. I assumed Jerry would be a kind person, as well.” In an effort to ease the intensity of the full force of my interest, I pick my spoon up again and scoop up a big, wonderful dumpling.
“He is. He absolutely is.”
My brows furrow. “Then I’m confused. He and your father seem an odd pairing.”
“It was all about money and convenience to my father. He invested in Jerry’s bakeries. He controlled Jerry to some degree. And he turned him into a babysitter, which thankfully also created a bond between me and Jerry. And Jenny,” he adds, “when she came into the picture.”
“Babysitter? Why would they need a babysitter when you were always traveling?”
“I wasn’t always on the road. I had windows, months at a time, when I was home. When my parents would travel during those months, they’d leave me with Jerry and Jenny.”
I set my spoon down again. “Wait. So, when you were here, they would leave?”
“When business called, my father answered.” He grabs another piece of bread. “And now you know why I have a sweet tooth. I was always around those damn cookies.”
“We aren’t so different. You lost your father, too.”
There’s a sharp spike to his energy but his answer is matter-of-fact. “I never had my father.” In a swift change of topic, he asks, “What happened to your father, Aria?”
He’s officially moved the discomfort from him to me. “I haven’t told you?” It’s not really intended to be a question.
“No. You haven’t told me.”
“Right well—he disappeared. My mother got us out of bed one night, packed us up and we came here.”
“He just disappeared? And your mother left instead of looking for him? There’s clearly more to the story.”
“She told us she knew he was dead. She wouldn’t talk about the details and believe me, I tried to get her to talk, over and over again. So did Gio.”
“Could he be alive?”
“Gio and I have had moments when we’ve both leaned that direction, but we’re always grounded back in reality by one certainty: if he were alive he would have found us. There’s no way he would have stayed away.”