“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 to see her shoes. He’d missed them on first greeting her, but now saw they were shiny, black, high-heeled pumps. Damn. She looked like 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 smiling face. “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 been a necessity. Now, he paused and swung back toward Ildaria, absently petting the still snuggling H.D. as he took in her reaction to the kitchen.
“Nice,” she pronounced, but her eyes were wide and glowing as she peered around the gleaming stainless steel surfaces. Returning her 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 her bottom 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? Shall I 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 did a 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, so he 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 a business.”
“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 it as 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’s important 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 clawed at her stomach, as if trying to tear it open. Robert had been trying to stop her, but she had been unstoppable and G.G. had fled 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 onions and peppers, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he said at once, and watched her relax and start to work at dicing the onion now. He wanted to ask about the attack and how she’d accidentally turned herself, but she suddenly seemed . . . removed. As if she had shut down her emotions. It seemed better to wait. Besides, it had probably been something like how Jackie Argeneau had been turned. Jackie was a private detective and the wife of Vincent Argeneau, one of Marguerite’s nephews. Jackie had bit into an immortal’s arm during an attack, and then had held on, inadvertently swallowing the nano-filled blood as she struggled with her attacker. She’d got enough to start the change. An accidental turn you could say.
The sound of the toast popping caught his ear, and G.G. turned to snatch the hot pieces of crusty bread out of the toaster. He dropped them on the plate and began to slather them with butter.
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
G.G. shook his head in answer, but then realizing she was watching what she was doing and not looking up to see the small movement, he said, “No. Only child.”
“Your mother and Robert haven’t had a child of their own yet?” she asked with surprise.
“Not yet,” he said easily, and then smiled faintly and added, “But I’m sure they will. I think my mother just wanted to wait until I was grown up. Or maybe they just wanted to enjoy each other for a while before getting into diapers and teething.” Finished buttering the toast, he set the knife aside and carried the plate to where she was working, adding, “I can’t imagine teething is fun with fangs.”
Ildaria chuckled at the suggestion. “No. I don’t suppose it is.”
He watched her finish with the onions and gather those up to throw in with the peppers and then commented, “Come to that, I doubt breastfeeding is fun with fangs either.” After a brief pause he added thoughtfully, “Or maybe not. Like mortal babies, immortal ones probably don’t have teeth when they’re born.”
Ildaria seemed to consider his words seriously for a moment, and then confessed, “I don’t know. But the job of the nanos is to see to our well-being. That means getting blood. Immortal babies need blood too, so they might be born with fangs already in place.”
G.G. grimaced at the thought of a cute little cuddly baby with fangs. Except . . . “Your fangs don’t show though. I mean, unless you’re using them. They just look like normal canines until they shift and drop or whatever it is they do.”
“True.” She grabbed a spatula from the metal canister full of cooking utensils and used it to move the diced peppers and onions around in the pan. “So maybe they’re born with their fangs looking like canines as ours do.”
“I’m guessing from your words that you’ve never seen an immortal baby either?” G.G. asked now, curious.
“No,” Ildaria said quietly. “I lived in the poorer areas of the Dominican Republic. The immortals I knew couldn’t afford to buy enough blood to feed themselves properly, let alone a baby. And unlike mortals, they don’t expect the government or others to pay for them or their offspring. They simply do not have children.”
“And lure tourists out to international waters to feed themselves,” he suggested dryly.
Her gaze slid to meet his, unrepentant and a little cold. “Do not expect me to apologize for doing what I had to, to survive. A lion doesn’t feel guilty for eating a zebra, and I don’t feel guilty for what I’ve done. At least, my donors survived, and I made sure they always left with the memory that they had fun and were happy. Which is more than you can say for the poor zebra.”
“Even the ones who attacked you?” he asked.
Ildaria’s mouth firmed, anger flashing briefly across her face before she had it under control. “Even they left feeling happy and believing they had a good time.” Turning back to the pan, she muttered, “Though they didn’t deserve it.”
G.G. immediately felt bad, but when he opened his mouth to apologize, she suggested, “You should put your toast in the oven on low so it doesn’t get cold. This will be another minute.”