“There’s nothing wrong with having a routine,” I grumbled, grabbing an empty plate and shoving it at Nick before Aoife could mention the other part of my evening routine involved me taking off my bra and groaning happily as my breasts were released from their underwired prison.
“Do you want some pie?” I asked. Nick eyed the pie and the bowl of salad dubiously. I pursed my lips. “It’s Lan’s. I didn’t cook it.”
Nick’s held his plate out. “Then it’s a yes, I would like some pie. Please.”
I made a face at him but didn’t have the heart to feign genuine offense; I was a terrible cook. Aoife raised an eyebrow and I wrinkled my nose at her. “Someday, I’m going to learn how to cook. And then you’ll all be sorry.”
“No, Des.” Nick shoveled a forkful of pie into his mouth and swallowed it in a single gulp, smirking. “We’ll be relieved. Remember those chocolate chip cookies? I swear, my teeth have never been the same. It was like eating roof tiles.” He perched himself on the arm of the sofa, not even attempting to sit on our rickety dining chairs.
“Hey, nobody forced you to eat the whole tray. That’s all on you.” I took a bite of the pie and my mouth danced happily. Buttery crust, salty chicken—yum.
Nick grinned at me over his plate. “They had chocolate chips; I had to finish them.”
“Destiny’s a very talented girl,” Aoife said. I shot her a warning glance—Nick being in our home was risky enough, he definitely didn’t need to know about my dubious talents. “But her gifts don’t lie in the culinary arts.” Aoife heaped some salad onto my plate beside the wedge of pie I’d served myself. Aoife was determined to counteract my love of stodge and sugar with extra portions of vegetables and fruit—best of luck to her with that little mission.
“Or in hospitality,” Nick added, polishing off the last of his pie and cracking a bottle of beer open with his teeth.
I grimaced, no way were my cookies harder than bottle tops. Not much harder, anyway. I leaned over and pulled a bottle opener from the top drawer, tossing it onto the table. “Which is unfortunate, Mr. Sarkus, considering you pay me to serve your customers.”
Nick opened the second bottle of beer and handed it to me. “Touché. You’re a terrible server, I’m a terrible boss—thank fuck for Lan and her incredible food.”
“And the naked artist who wanders out from the studio every now and then, customers seem to like him,” I said.
“But not the staff. They think it’s disgusting, right?” Nick’s teasing grin coupled with the memory of his chiseled abdominal muscles and broad shoulders sent a flush of heat across my cheeks.
I took a swig of beer. “It’s a matter of hygiene, pal. Read the signs.”
“And on that note, I think I’ll take an early night.” Aoife leaned heavily on the table as she got to her feet and I stared at her untouched plate of food. I protested but she waved her hand. “I’m not hungry. You two stay here and chat, old bones like mine need rest.”
“No, Aoife, please don’t leave on my account. I should go, I’m intruding on your night.” Nick stood up and put his beer bottle on the counter hurriedly. Like most supers in Galway, I guessed Nick had been around long enough to have heard rumors about how the Free Witches of the Silent Quarter could strip a supernatural of their blood oath to a god. Anyone with half an eye could tell Aoife’s body had been ruined by the ritual to release her from my father’s power—the deeper the oath, the more torturous the removal. Most nights she stayed up until the sky was light, reading or practicing her magic. If she slept more than a couple of hours, it was a good night.
Aoife held her hand firmly in the air and pointed her cane at Nick’s bottle. “Young man, you have beer left unfinished and fun to have. Anyway, I’m sick of watching this one folding laundry for fun—don’t let her do any boring jobs tonight. That’s an order.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Nick saluted and settled himself back onto the arm of the sofa as Aoife slipped out of the room. My stomach tightened a little as I watched the door close, leaving me alone with my very handsome boss and a considerable amount of alcohol—a scenario that had been the start of some very satisfying daydreams in the shower. I took a gulp of water as Nick reached for the remote control and slid onto the sofa. “What are we watching? We’ve got half an hour before the rugby starts.”
I pointed a forkful of pie at Nick. “Abso-fucking-lutely not. There will be no rugby, Nikolai Sarkus. No soccer, no hurling, no Gaelic football. See if there’s any ‘London Brides’ on, I missed last night’s episode because Saoirse had a bad dream.”
“London Brides? What? I thought you hated all that crap—designer handbags, fancy makeup, guys with flashy cars,” Nick scoffed.
“I do hate that stuff, kind of, but it’s addictive. It’s like some crazy social experiment, and I want to look away, but they just keep drawing me back in. Plus, I’m pretty certain that Kyle is going to propose to Electra soon.” I stood up to clear the table and Nick strode across the room and took the dishes out of my hands.
“Well holy shit, if Karl’s going to propose, there’s no way we can miss an episode. You sit down and see if you can find it, I’ll do the dishes and drink the bottle of vodka straight.” Nick grinned at me.
“Kyle,” I said. Nick tilted his head to one side and raised his eyebrows. “Kyle is going to propose to Electra, not Karl.” I pulled open the dishwasher and tried to help load it, but Nick swatted me away.
“Okay. Kyle and Electra—got it.” The flash of Nick’s dimples gave away his amusement. I pulled a Tupperware box from a shelf and placed the remains of the pie inside it in case Aoife regained her appetite during the night. Nick frowned at me. “Hey, we agreed you were going to sit your butt down on the sofa and find something terrible for us to watch.”
“Terribly awesome,” I interjected. “And I agreed to nothing, by the way. I can’t sit on my ass and let you clean my kitchen, even I know that’s shitty hosting.”
Nick put the dishes down on the countertop, grabbed me firmly by the shoulders, and walked me over to the sofa. He stared down into my face. “Destiny, you’ve been up since the crack of dawn, looking after Saoirse and then working a ten-hour shift. I know you didn’t take your lunch because Maya told me you spent it helping her figure out that stupid trigonometry crap that I can’t freaking explain to her, and you ran home so you could put Saoirse to bed. Sit the hell down and let me do the dishes.” His tone softened. “Please?”
“Fine, I’ll sit,” I said, my voice muted by the dry sensation in my throat. Nick nodded with satisfaction and made his way back over to the dishwasher, humming under his breath as he walked. I kept my eyes fixed firmly on the television as I flicked through the channels. A warm feeling squirmed inside my stomach but I refused to let my brain engage. There was no sense in following that chain of thought; get too close to somebody and eventually, you’d let your guard slip too far and they’d see what you really were. I couldn’t let anyone see what I was. Not until I was beyond my father’s reach and Saoirse was safe.
“Is that Kyle?” Nick flopped down onto the couch beside me and pointed at the perfectly groomed man on the screen who was preparing to get a spray tan. I nodded and stared at the television as Nick cracked open another bottle of beer with his teeth and handed it to me, along with one of Lan’s cupcakes. On screen, Kyle pulled his shirt over his head slowly, revealing a lickable six-pack, and Nick crossed his arms over his chest. Thick black tattoos wound their way over his golden skin and disappeared under the tight sleeves of his T-shirt, and I found myself picturing Nick’s equally lickable abs. And all his other lickable parts. I crossed my legs tightly and blinked at the screen. Nick narrowed his eyes at the TV. “Why are we watching this shit again?”
“Because I bailed on after work drinks, and instead of going to Taffe’s with one of your mates, like a normal person, you showed up on my doorstep and barged in on my perfect evening of trashy TV, cupcakes, and laundry.” I tucked my feet under my backside and took a sip o
f the craft beer. It was good—surprisingly crisp. I turned the volume down and clinked my beer bottle against Nick’s. “Cheers.”
Nick let his head fall back and a wide grin spread across his face. He tapped the neck of his bottle against mine softly. “Cheers, Des. Thanks for not booting me out onto the street in my desperate, friendless hour of need.”
“Just call me, Saint Destiny—friend to the huge and pathetic.” Nick laughed softly and I began to pick at the label on the bottle with my fingernails. “Want to talk about how things went with Maya and Lexi at the weekend?”
Nick stared down into the neck of his bottle for a moment. His jaw was tight and his thick dark brows were drawn together. “They went bad. Really fucking bad, Des. Lexi wants Maya to throw her arms around her and tell her girly secrets and, shit, I don’t know—look her in the eye? And Maya just can’t, you know? She’s got to do her own thing. I keep trying to explain to Lexi that it’s not personal. Just because Maya would rather do her morning math session than go shopping with her mom, it doesn’t mean she’s unhappy to see her.”
“Nick, it must be hard for Lexi to fly all the way from New York to see her little girl and then watch Maya chose to spend her morning doing a math assignment instead of spending it with her,” I said.
Nick exhaled pressed his fist against his mouth. “Lexi just doesn’t understand Maya, she never could. Even when Maya was tiny, long before I left the pack, there was this gulf between them.” He turned his head suddenly and I froze, caught in the weight of his stare. “I know she’s a good mom and that she loves Maya, but with her other kids, it was so easy for her, so natural. And she expects it to be the same with Maya, and we just keep disappointing her. I know Maya feels it, even if she can’t express it. And I won’t let Maya feel like a disappointment for anyone, Destiny. Not even Lexi.” Nick paused and took a long sip of beer. “I’m thinking of applying to stop Lexi’s visitation.”
“No!” I clamped my lips shut for a second, lowering my voice when I spoke again. “No, don’t do that, Nick. Seriously. She’s still her mom. You need to talk to Lexi first, you can’t just knock her on her ass like that, it’s cruel. I mean, I know you guys must have your scars and battle wounds from the breakup—”
“We don’t.” Nick's voice was flat and he gave me a sad smile in response to my stare. “I know nobody can ever believe that, but it’s true, Destiny. We were barely eighteen when we had Maya and we tried to convince ourselves that it was love, that we were true mates, but when Lexi’s other mates came along the comparison was too stark for us to try and bullshit anymore. The bond she has with her other mates, the bond the guys have with each other—Maya and I didn’t fit. We weren’t pack, no matter how hard we tried to pretend we were. There wasn’t any big battle I told them I was taking Maya and Lan to Europe. Lexi didn’t even put up a fight. I think she was relieved.”
“Shit, Nick. I’m sorry.” And I was. My chest was full of ragged rocks that bit into my flesh as I inhaled. I knew the pain of being the outsider. I knew the bitter ache that came from staring at your beautiful child and wondering would they always be different. Apart. “I still think you should be careful, Nick. Take it slow. Maya’s only twelve, she might feel differently in a few years. Don’t break anything with Lexi you can’t fix.”
“Yeah.” Nick sighed and placed his empty bottle on the floor beside the sofa. “I just wish Lexi could understand Maya the way you do.”
I took a swig of beer and raised my eyebrows. “Seriously, you should wish for somebody with better mom-game than me. Saoirse ate an entire tub of chocolate spread last week.” Nick shrugged. “In the toilet, Nick. Like, sitting on the toilet, eating it with her hands, while she pooped. I didn’t even notice until I suddenly realized how quiet it was.”
Nick grinned twisted his body into mine. “When Maya was a toddler, I forgot to put her diaper on before I put her to sleep. After we’d had spaghetti Bolognese for dinner.”
“Ugh,” I grimaced. “Shit-bomb?”
“Poonami. It was grim. I mean, there was shit everywhere.” Nick spread his arm wide.
I leaned closer. “Ever find any random turds when you were potty training?”
“Fuck, yes. What is that about?” Nick grinned.
I bit the corner of my lip. “One day, Saoirse did a poo in the potty and we cheered and hollered and I ran to put a star on the stupid chart and Aoife ran to get her singing potty book, and when we got back, the turd was gone.”
“Gone?” Nick covered his smirk with his hand.
“Gone. We checked her hands, we asked her a million times, checked the entire flat—nothing. Where could she have put it?” I shook my head. “Like, I keep expecting it to roll out from under my pillow some morning—the prodigal shit returns.”
Nick screwed his face up. “There’s another possible explanation—”
I clamped my hands over his mouth. “La, la, la, la, la—I can’t hear you.”
“Okay, okay,” Nick said. I released my grip on his face. “You’re daughter definitely didn’t eat her own—” I smacked my hands over his mouth again and he chuckled into my palms, grabbing me around the waist and tickling me until I pulled my hands away. He smiled at me. “Thanks for all this, Destiny. I don’t have anybody else who understands this single parenting crap.”
I stared down at my lap and saw that my top was covered in tiny shreds of paper from where my nails had worried at the label on my bottle. I took a swig and lowered my beer so I could speak, but no words came. I turned toward Nick and saw that a sticky piece of my label had attached itself to his shirt. I reached to brush it off and Nick caught my hand. My heart shuddered as I met his gaze. He said nothing, but his thumb stroked the soft flesh on the inside of my wrist. “You’re a pretty special lady, Destiny.”
I sprang off the couch so fast that I sent Nick’s empty bottle spinning across the floor. He bent to retrieve it and I backed across the kitchen. “Saoirse, I think I heard her stirring. She’s been unsettled at night lately, I should get into bed with her.”
“Sure, of course.” Nick’s cheeks were flushed. “I’m gone. Let me just throw these somewhere.” Nick picked up the two full beers and the bottle of vodka and started opening presses to find space to store them in.
I twisted a strand of hair around my finger, unsettled by the storm that was raging in my chest. “Take them with you, honestly, Aoife doesn’t drink and I don’t drink alone.”
Nick emerged from behind the door of the furthest cupboard with a smirk on his lips. “It’s fine, I found somewhere for them. And you never know when I might drop by to have another beer with you.”
I avoided Nick’s gaze and shuffled out into the hall, gesturing for him to be quiet. He paused at the door and looked as though he might say something but I cut him off with a slap on the shoulder and a shove over the threshold. I closed the door and slid the bolts across before he could say a word. My head was spinning as I made my way back to the kitchen to switch off the TV. The memory of Nick’s deep brown stare and his fingers on my skin spun through my mind like a tornado.
I noticed the cupboard where Nick had left the vodka was still ajar and I pulled it open to see what was preventing it from closing. My cheeks burned as I stared at the pile of clean underwear sitting on the shelf, waiting to be folded and returned to its drawer. My underwear. Not the sexy, lacy type—the graying sort of pants that could be mistaken for a parachute if they caught in a strong breeze. Suddenly, Nicks smirk made a little more sense. I pressed my burning cheek against the wall and groaned. Fuck. My. Life.
Chapter Four
I folded the typed letter neatly and slid it inside a crisp white envelope. My fingers were sweaty as the ink formed Nick’s name, and I frowned in irritation. It was just a letter of resignation, and The Paper Heart was just a job—still sounded like a steaming pile of horse manure, no matter how many times I said it. My aunt leaned heavily on her cane and pursed her lips, and I forced the lid back onto the pen with a violent sna
p. “Stop making that face, Aoife. You’re the one who told me it wasn’t safe to get too familiar with people until my petition to join the Free Witches had been approved. If Nick thinks he can pop over here unannounced, he’s gotten too familiar. I’m just doing what has to be done.”
“Don’t twist my words, Destiny. I never said you couldn’t have friends,” Aoife snapped.
I sealed the enveloped with a vicious lick. “Friends? How can I have friends when I can’t tell them who I really am? What I really am? And it’s all your fault anyway, if you hadn’t invited Lan to your stupid poker group, he wouldn’t have thought it was okay to call here. I can’t have Nick snooping around the flat, finding things out that he shouldn’t know.” Making my stomach flip when he touches my skin. Keeping me up all night wondering what might have happened if I hadn’t jumped off the couch. Imagining his fingers undressing me. Looking at my mammy knickers. I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head. I was being a colossal jerk and I knew it. “Look, this is the best decision for everyone. Trust me.”
“I see.” Aoife drew her words out in a way that told me she saw something entirely different. I clenched my teeth and shoved the letter into the back pocket of my jeans. We had been over the same ground fifty times since I decided to hand in my notice. Aoife wanted me to wait and see how I felt in a week, but I knew exactly how I’d feel. I’d known exactly how I felt about Nick since the first moment I saw him with his daughter. But it didn’t matter how I felt. Feelings were dangerous, and there was no room for vulnerabilities in my plan. It was time to cut The Paper Heart out of my life, seeing Nick in my home had proven that, and it was just like ripping off a band-aid; the sooner I got it over with, the better.
Wicked Destiny_A Reverse Harem Urban Fantasy Series Page 3