Page 42 of Bedding the Baby Daddy

He almost interrupted, but she opened her mouth again, her eyes blurry as she watched her own finger play in a ring of condensation left behind by her tea cup. “You know, I think it became even worse when I started at Esposito. The cold and polished version of me intensified, crystallized. Gio recognized my talent right away, but part of me was so worried that I’d slip up and he’d see the other part of me. The part that spent the first eight years of my life in shelters while my mother sold fortunes on corners for five bucks a pop. The part of me that never knew my father and secretly had absolutely no idea how to talk to men. The part of me that every once in a while, lost her shit and had to find a man to let loose on. I was so scared that Gio would see that part of me that I locked her away, never to be seen or heard from again.”

* * *

Dante was riveted. Absorbing every piece of information from her like it was the coolest, cleanest water. He hadn’t realized how thirsty he’d been to know her. Her story was hard to hear but he wanted to know more. He wanted all of it.

“Well,” he said, sliding his hand across the table to hers, a little smile on his face. “Maybe not ‘never’. She’s been known to come over to my house a few nights a week.”

Aurora smiled down into her tea. “Fair enough.”

He paused for a second, and then decided to do what his intuition told him to do. “When you say shelters, you mean homeless shelters?”

Aurora gave him a sad little smile then nodded. “Yeah. My mom is a free spirit in a lot of ways and she wasn’t planning on getting pregnant with me. She was young.”

Aurora turned to look out the window, watch the pedestrians pass by as she told her story. The afternoon light slanted across her face and lit her hazel eyes from the side, making them look like a glass bottle. Dante had the sudden urge to take her to the beach. Somewhere tropical where she could full-out lay in the sun. Take that full, deep breath she never quite seemed able to take.

“She’d been couch surfing, I guess. Which isn’t too much of a hardship at age twenty. But then she was plus one and a lot of those couches were suddenly occupied. She had a few friends who stuck it out with her. But we were often in shelters.” She straightened her top suddenly, as if she was having to remind herself that she was here, now, a successful woman, not the vulnerable child she’d once been. “It wasn’t as bad for me. When you’re a kid, you don’t really know what’s going on. And I always had her there with me, so I always felt safe. She was a fierce protector. But it must have been terrible for her.”

“God.” Dante tried to imagine what that would have felt like with Michelle. “I’ll bet she barely ever slept. I know I wouldn’t have if Michelle and I were in that position.”

Aurora looked at him for a minute, her eyes inscrutable x-rays.

“What changed?” Dante asked. “How did you get back on your feet?”

“My mother started taking a few courses that they offered at one of the community centers we used to go to for dinners sometimes. She got just enough under her belt that she made a fairly decent secretary. She did that for a while at some accounting office. It was enough to put us into a little apartment and give us health insurance. One of the accountants started to get a little handsy, so she moved on to a therapist’s office. But pretty soon, the clientele started talking more to my mother about their problems than they were to the therapist.”

“Because of all the witchy stuff?”

Aurora smiled. “Because my mother sees a lot of things other people don’t. And it makes her pretty easy to talk to.”

“Let me guess, the therapist fired her out of jealousy?”

“The opposite, in fact. The therapist was very impressed with her. Fired her as a secretary and renovated this big old coat closet to be her office.”

“Her office for what?”

“Fortune telling, advice, aura readings. It all sounds so mystical, and a lot of clients thought it was hooey. But there’s plenty of people in New Orleans who need occult help with their lives. And not only is my mother the real deal when it comes to that kind of thing, but she also wasn’t trying to squeeze every dollar out of every client’s pocket. She really wanted to use her gifts to help people.”

He leaned forward, loving how open she was being. Wanting even more from her. “Do you have any of those gifts?”

“Not nearly as potent. But probably more than you do.”

He nodded slowly, leaning back. “Can you predict the future?”

Aurora snorted. “Of course not.”

“Can you, like, see my aura?”

Aurora raised one eyebrow. “Dante, I can see your aura from fifty paces.”

“You’re kidding.”

She shrugged.

“You’re not kidding?”

She shrugged again.

“Come on. Tell me! What color is my aura?”

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