Enamoured (The Enslaved Duet 2)

His mouth pulled even higher in the barest hint of a smile. “Allow me?” I stared at him as he offered me his coat, putting it around my shoulders before gently leading me over to the small café beside the restaurant I’d applied at.

“Do you normally like to play with life and death by standing out in the freezing rain?” he queried drolly as he stepped forward to grab the door for me.

A surprised laugh bubbled up as I thought about it. “Not in this particular way, no, but you’d be surprised how often I straddle that fine line.”

He cocked an eyebrow at me, a hand hovering over the small of my back in an old-fashioned gentlemanly way as he led me into the café and over to a small table. “You look like a goddess from the underworld. I don’t find that surprising at all.”

I beamed at him, surprising even myself with the vividness of my expression. His comparison had solidified my regard for him.

Anyone who likened me to Persephone, I decided, had an unerring sense of character.

“And you the miraculous Hermes who could cross into the underworld unscathed to rescue me and take me back to my mother?” I asked him, testing him because only someone well versed in mythology would know the details of Hades and his Queen’s story.

His eyes twinkled even though his lips stayed flat. I took him for a man who didn’t smile often and wondered what I would have to do to change that.

It was a surprising thought, but I let myself have it because I’d been obsessing over the wrong man for so long, it felt good to care even momentarily about a good one.

“Unfortunately, I think I am the messenger who will be forced to take you back to my mother,” he explained as the small bell above the café door sounded and a beautiful dark-skinned woman swept into the room.

I recognized her immediately and not only because she was fairly well known in the fashion world. I knew the perfectly coiffed head of caramel highlighted waves and the gorgeous slant of her cheekbones because I had met her before.

Willa Percy had been a judge at the St. Aubyn panel when I’d auditioned what seemed like a lifetime ago.

And she had not been very kind.

I pursued my lips in a mirror image of hers as we took each other in.

“Cosima Lombardi,” she said slowly, dredging up my name from the depths of her memory. “Intimissimi campaign, if I’m not mistaken?”

“You’re not.”

She eyed me, then her son, though clearly not biologically as he was red haired and only lightly tanned. “If you are attempting to sleep with my son to get me to patron you, you’ll be sadly mistaken.”

“Willa,” my new friend protested, partially standing to glower at her. “Sit down and be silent if you don’t have anything kind to say. I ran into this…I ran into Cosima.” He tasted the name, rolling it properly the way Italians do and then did his lip twitch smile before continuing. “She was outside in the rain, and I offered her a coffee to warm up. Neither of us had any idea of our ties to you, and frankly, I still doubt either of us care. Really, Mom, you think too much of yourself sometimes.”

My mouth gaped a little at his strong tone and audacity, but surprisingly, Willa sat down on the chair he pulled out for her and accepted his kiss on the cheek with only a mild sniff.

“Go get us those coffees, will you?” she asked him, patting his cheek and inciting a grimace from him.

A little giggle escaped at seeing them interact. This man was older than me, strong and sure in his movements and actions in a way that spoke of inherent confidence and unflappability.

He reminded me, in small ways, of Alexander.

And those small ways were both just not enough and enough to make me feel comfortable around him.

“Now, what’s a girl like you doing out in the rain looking like a drowned rat?” Willa asked me pointedly as she unwound her Hermes scarf and opened her sleek designer raincoat.

“Enjoying my freedom,” I told her honestly because I didn’t know her, and I had nothing to lose.

Not anymore.

“Is freedom a euphemism for unemployment?” she asked me pointedly, scraping her scathing brown gaze over my seated form. “I haven’t seen or heard of you in any circles in months.”

“I was living abroad for a while,” I hedged.

“Modelling?”

I shook my head but didn’t explain even when she shot me a frustrated look to continue.

“Career suicide to be gone so long. Models age quicker than dogs, my dear. You’re what now, twenty?”

“Nineteen,” I told her as her son returned with three lattes.

He frowned at me as he handed over the small warm mug. “Jesus, you are young.”