“Awesome.” She gave him a brilliant smile. “That means I have time for a nap before I go apartment hunting.”
“Apartment hunting?” His gaze had dropped to her legs and feet in the pretty little shoes again, but he lifted it back to her face with interest.
“Well, I can’t stay with Marguerite and Julius forever,” she pointed out with a wry smile. “I’ve felt guilty staying with them at all. And that’s on me, not because they’ve acted like I’m a burden,” she assured him, as if he might believe Marguerite had made her feel unwelcome. “They’ve been really kind, but I’m not used to depending on others. Fortunately, now that I have not one, but two full-time jobs, I don’t have to. I can use the money I’ve saved up for first and last months’ rent and save the money for my tuition out of my wages.” She shrugged. “So I’ll take a nap and then get up and start searching the internet for apartments.”
“Or you could stay here.” The words were out of his mouth before his brain could filter them. But when she stood with her mouth open, her eyes blinking in surprise, he mentally reviewed what he’d said and quickly added, “I mean in the building. This is one of four apartments above the club. There are two on the third floor and two on this floor. Sofia—she works the bar,” he paused to explain before continuing, “She has one of the apartments on the third floor, and I’m the only one on this floor. There are still two apartments available, one on each floor. I expected one of them would go to the bookkeeper and the other to the dog sitter if they didn’t already have a place in the city. But—” He shrugged wryly and pointed out, “You’re both the dog sitter and the bookkeeper so get your choice of apartments.”
When she didn’t respond right away, he added, “H.D.’s last sitter was mortal. I couldn’t find an immortal to do it, and had to make do with a mortal. Fortunately, she already lived in the city because I wouldn’t have been comfortable with offering her an apartment here. It was risky even having her around the building, but I was desperate. I did make it clear she was never to step foot in the Night Club though.”
He paused briefly, but her continued silence made him add, “Living here would solve your apartment problem, and the rent is cheap. Also, you wouldn’t need to commute to work, just head downstairs, and if an emergency crops up you’ll be nearby, and . . .” He let his voice trail away, not for lack of excuses to move her into the building, but because he realized he was yapping. G.G. wasn’t a yapper. Usually. He was a listener. Women loved to talk and he was always happy to listen. They revealed so much about themselves when talking and he’d always found women fascinating.
“Si, it would be handy,” Ildaria agreed finally, a small smile playing on her lips, and he could feel the wide, probably goofy smile, 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 the offer. 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 precede him 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 introduced herself 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 unlocked that door, he added, “Lucern was good at choosing employees. Sofia is the only one who lives in the building though. She’s basically 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 open space, 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 kicked his 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 inspect the 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 her head, her expression full of regret. “I mean, this place must cost an arm and a leg, and while you’re going to be paying me well . . .” 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 been before 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 rent alone too even though the rental rates for both the apartments and the house were probably a quarter of what he could get if he rented to mortals. But having mortals coming and going from the building that housed the Night Club was not a smart idea. Besides, happy employees were good employees to his mind, and giving them a safe, low priced place to live went a long way toward making them happy. So, G.G. told her the amount Sofia paid, added fifty bucks to it for the extra bedroom, and then 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 the one-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, or Jess 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 sure she was struggling between fiscal responsibility—i.e. taking the less expensive one-bedroom apartment—and the freedom to have people over which was only fifty dollars more a month. Feeling oddly desperate to have her on this floor with him, he reminded her, “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 or something,” he informed her. “Both here and in the UK. In fact, Elijah’s taking courses at the university right now and I paid half his tuition.”
Ildaria frowned. “So you’d pay half mine too?”
“All of it,” he corrected. “I’d pay your full tuition.”
Ildaria had started to shake her head before he finished speaking. “Half is one thing if you do that with all your employees, but why would you offer to pay the full ride for me?”
“It’s a smart business move,” he assured her. “I was desperate for an accountant. I’ve been looking for one since the day I bought this place. Now that I’ve found you, I want you to keep working for me after you get your degree, not run off to work somewhere else,” he said, and that was the truth, but only part of it. He was desperate for an accountant, but he was also oddly desperate to have her live here, close to him, where he could see her every day, even on days she wasn’t working, and G.G. wasn’t sure why. At least . . . well, obviously he liked her. He liked that she cared enough about her friends that one of them being attacked had made her go vigilante. He liked that after being pulled from Montana and dragged down here, she’d risked getting in further trouble to help strangers in peril. And he respected her like hell for taking responsibility for her own actions and accepting the punishment for them rather than trying to blame someone else.
G.G. also liked her determination to get the education she wanted. A lot of people would have given up after being pulled from the same classes for the second time and losing the money they’d worked hard for and invested in those classes, but she was already signed up for the next semester. Angelina Ildaria Sophia Lupita Garcia Pimienta was smart, and brave and determined and he liked her. In fact, he already liked and respected her more than every one of the women he’d dated over the years.