Page 55 of Ardently Yours

“Is one of your kids a boy named Dante?”

She stacks tiny, crustless sandwiches on a platter. “Uh-oh. What did he do?”

I smile. “Nothing. When Arden and I kissed in front of your husband yesterday, Dante’s habit of telling you two to get a room came up.”

A butter knife clatters to the quartz countertop. Brows furrowed, Phyllis stares at me with apparent confusion. “Youkissed him?”

“We kissed each other. I wasn’t exactly alone.”Shoot. We haven’t defined our relationship, but my immediate family and Rochelle know about Arden.

Phyllis is so comfortable in Arden’s home that I’d started to feel as if I was talking to his sister. But she’s Arden’s employee. “We aren’t making public announcements, but considering that he kissed me in front of your husband, I don’t think he’s keeping it a secret in his own house.”

She presses her lips together. “Sorry for the overreaction. We’re all a little protective here. We wouldn’t want to see—” She seems to think better of what she was going to say. “Are you hungry? Lunch won’t be served for forty minutes, but I can get you something to nibble before then.”

I shake my head. “No. Thank you. What did you mean when you called me a stray?” Because the name smarts, as does her apparent judgment about Arden’s and my relationship.

She blinks at my change of subject. “No offense intended. He doesn’t call us that. It’s what we call ourselves. My first husband, Peter, died in the Vinucci war. Arden personally paid off the mortgage on my house, gave me a job, and a place to live where we’d have security for me and the kids afterward. He looked out for all of us, one way or another.”

War?The papers described it as the family destroying themselves when Arden put key leadership behind bars.

Other than the assassination attempt against him, I hadn’t realized Arden or his men had any direct involvement beyond the courtroom. “I’m sorry for your loss. I’m glad Arden treated you well. I don’t need him for a job, though. Arden and I don’t have that kind of relationship. We’re”—I stumble over my words and land on—“close. I’m here to spend some time with him.”

Her eyebrows lift as she juliennes a carrot with perfect precision. “Right.”

She glances my way, and something in her eyes has hardened. “When Steve died, Mr. McRae extended his sympathy, and an offer of assistance, I’m sure. He’s a loyal person. But he is not”—her knife cleaves through a new carrot—“someone you can manipulate. If you’re looking for a sugar daddy, keep moving. I’ve known Arden McRae for a long time. He doesn’t pay for companionship. He doesn’t need to. And if you’ve been ripping out magazine pages with his picture on them or clipping articles from theNew York Timesand plastering them on your bedroom wall, imagining some Prince Charming fantasy, you need to stop before you embarrass yourself.”

My mouth opens. Then closes.

Her eyes soften with something that looks like pity. “Damn. That was it? It would have been better if you’d come looking for money.” She shakes her head and mutters under her breath, “Less humiliating.”

“I’m not obsessed with him or whatever it is you seem to think.”

She shrugs. “You wouldn’t be the first.”

I narrow my eyes. “You don’t know anything about my relationship with Arden.”

Her blade chops through the vegetables in a blur. “Don’t tell me. I can guess. You showed up unannounced and uninvited. He didn’t want to turn away Steve’s widow, but he wasn’t about to allow you in his home with his children. So he sent you out here. Now you’re cooling your heels until he finds time to fit you into his schedule. When he arrives for lunch, he’ll bring his mother or father or ask Reese to eat with the two of you, so that it’s a group affair, and you won’t get clingy.”

Heat scorches through me, but whether it’s embarrassment or anger, I don’t know.

“He’ll make polite conversation. Then he’ll ask if he can assist you with finding a job. After which, he’ll suggest you get on the road, so you can make it home before nightfall. You’ll pass through that gate. He’ll breathe a sigh of relief that he handled you without drama. And then he’ll forget you ever existed.”

“You skipped the part where I slept in his bed.”

She closes her eyes, as if she’s praying. “You naive girl,” she mutters so quietly I doubt I was meant to hear it.

Louder, she says, “If you showed up and threw yourself at him, of course he took you up on your offer. The only thing it means is that you’re pretty, and he wanted sex.”

“Does your husband know you’re in love with your boss?” I ask.

She sets the knife on the countertop, plants both of her hands flat on the surface, and leans toward me. “You understand nothing. We, all of us who lived through the Vinucci family, came out of that time with scars. Of the original fifty members of his team, twenty-seven survived. The McRae lost his wife two months before that nightmare started. He had babies at home to protect. I had a baby at home when Peter came to tell me the fucking mafia had set its sights on this family, and he was staying to fight for the McRae. We sacrificed our lives for him in ways someone like you could never understand. No one knows what it’s like to step in front of a loaded gun until they’ve done it.”

I have. Literally. But I don’t owe her or anyone else my story.

I watch her in silence. The stories in the news barely skimmed the surface. Arden kept all of it under wraps. The world doesn’t know his team died undercover, never receiving public recognition of what they were fighting for.

“Arden McRae isn’t the man he was. He’s not capable of being anyone’s Prince Charming. If he loved you? You would run screaming,” Phyllis says.

I watch her with steady eyes and tilt my head to the side. “They say fight or flight is an instinct. Turns out mine is to stand my ground. Go figure.”

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