10. Bianca
BIANCA
Daphne unexpectedly shows up after I flip the sign to closed. I unlock the door to let her in.
“Where are the criminals?” she asks.
“Upstairs. In the fish tank.”
She marches herself up before I’ve locked the front door, and by the time I catch up, she’s crouched in front of the tank with her blazer still on, watching the three mice.
“I want them,” she says.
“You are not adopting the evidence of what Jasper did, Daph.”
“I am one hundred percent adopting evidence.” She straightens. “My apartment has been emotionally barren for three years, and you are giving me three handsome roommates who don’t talk back. Which brings me to my next point. We are pressing charges against Jasper Jenkins.”
“No, we aren’t.”
“Donovan.” That’s it. That’s her entire argument.
“Nobody got hurt. My business is still thriving. He’s done. His followers turned on him. I’m not spending the next eighteen months in depositions.” I take out the water bowl from the fish tank, fill it, and put it back. “The internet handled it. Let it stay handled.”
She glares at me. “Fine. You keep your peace, and I’ll keep the rodents. But I want it on the record that I’m disappointed in you for not letting me ruin a man in court.”
“Noted.”
She crouches back down to her new family.
And that is when my mouth, traitor that it is, opens and blurts out, “I almost kissed Theo.”
Daphne doesn’t turn around. “Say that again. Slower. So my brain can catch up.”
“I went to his office yesterday to tell him to stop harassing me. He backed me into a wall. Got about half an inch from my mouth.” I add some more fruit to the mouse’s cage, just to have something to do with my hands. “And then I remembered I can’t stand him, and I pushed him off, and I left.”
She rises. Slow. “So, you didn’t kiss him.”
“I didn’t kiss him.”
“You almost kissed him. The enemy. The man who is making your life miserable.”
“Yes, almost kissed him. There’s a difference, Daph.”
“Mm. Tell me about the difference.”
“He had me against the wall. His hand was up by my head. He was right there.” I lean against the counter. “And I pushed him off and told him no. So. Pinkie promise intact.”
She doesn’t say anything.
But I don’t stop there. She is the only person I trust with all of my crazy thoughts, so I don’t hold back.
“But here’s the part I can’t shake. I made one joke.
About his father. It wasn’t even mean. It just slipped out.
And before he told me to get out, his whole face came apart.
Just for a second.” I pause and blink. “I still think their actions are because of their father, Daph. I don’t think it’s really them.
It’s him. He’s making them do this, and underneath it, the three of them are hurt. ”
Daphne gives me the side-eye she saves for hostile witnesses.
“Donovan. Listen to me, because I’ve already said some version of this.
” She holds up a finger. “They are grown men.” A second finger.
“Thirty years old.” A third finger. “Every person who has ever lived has been through something awful. And somehow most of us manage not to release vermin into a woman’s place of business. ”
“I’m not excusing them.”
“You’re a little bit excusing them. That speech excused them multiple times, but I never heard the word ‘accountable.’”
I scrunch up my nose. I don’t have a response.
“That’s what I thought.” She picks up the fish tank. “Free legal and personal advice, all in one. Their sad backstory is theirs to carry. It is not your renovation project. You are not a halfway house for emotionally constipated billionaires.”
I laugh.
“And the next time one of them puts you against a wall, the answer is your knee to the groin. Not empathy.” She heads for the stairs. “Tomorrow. Wine. Dinner.”
“I love you, Daph.”
“You’re a disaster. And I love you, too.” She glances back over the top of the tank. “Almost counts, for the record. We’re discussing it. Don’t almost-kiss the other two either.”
I walk Daphne down to her car.
And this whole situation gets a little worse.
Ander is leaning against a black SUV at my curb with his hands in his pockets and his sleeves pushed up to his elbows.
Dark hair falls into his eyes the way it always does in the photos I’m not admitting to having looked at. He pushes off the SUV when he sees us, a grin sliding into place.
Daphne stops walking.
She looks at him. She looks at the fish tank in her arms. She looks at me, and I watch her switch into the courtroom version of herself.
“Donovan. Which one?”
“Ander,” I answer.
“Do I need to stay?” she asks.
“No,” I answer.
“Ander.” She rotates her body to put the fish tank between herself and him. “Hi, Ander. I’m Bianca’s attorney and her best friend, in that order tonight. If you make her cry, I will spend my entire life making you regret it.”
“On my best behavior, counselor,” Ander says, with a salute.
Daphne doesn’t dignify that. She opens the back door of her car one-handed.
Ander moves to help her, and she gives him a look that stops him.
He holds up his hands in mock surrender.
I help her settle the tank on the back seat and buckle it in.
She kisses my cheek and gives Ander one last look over the roof of the car.
“Tomorrow,” she whispers. “And no almost-kisses, and definitely no real kisses.”
She drives away with the mice I’m pretending I won’t miss.
Ander watches the taillights for a full second before he speaks. “Your friend is the scariest person I have ever met, and I once got punched by a prince.”
I can’t tell if he is kidding. I almost ask and then decide I don’t want to know.
Then I tilt my head, questioning why he’s here without actually saying the words.
He shoves his hands back in his pockets, rocks once on his heels. “I came over here with a whole speech prepared. I didn’t expect a confrontation from a lawyer holding a fish tank full of mice.” He shrugs. “I can’t remember what I was going to say. Can I come inside?”
I should say no. I should send him home. I should call Daphne back to rescue me.
“Yeah,” I tell him. “Come inside.”
The bakery is dark except for the case lights and the warm gold of the bulbs over the register.
I walk inside, and Ander stops inside the door, hands still in his pockets like he’s not sure he’s allowed past the welcome mat.
“Before I say anything else, I need this on the record. I had nothing to do with the mice. Gideon pitched it, and Theo agreed to it. I walked out of the room and told them I was done. Not just with the mice. With all of it. So, whatever happens in the next ten minutes, I need you to know that going in.”
I lean against the display case. “So you’re admitting they did it.”
“Oh shit.” He drags a hand down his face. “Fuck it, you already knew. It was us. Not me. But it was us.”
“Yeah, I already knew.”
He huffs out a laugh that isn’t quite a laugh. He leans against the case next to me and looks at the floor. “And you still let me in your bakery after hours.”
“I’m reconsidering.”
“Don’t.” He looks up at that, the grin trying and failing. “We talked this morning. They’re done. They’re not going to harass you anymore. They’re also not going to apologize, because Theo can’t say sorry without sustaining a small physical injury. And Gideon doesn’t apologize. But they’re done.”
“Really?” I want to believe him, but it would be stupid to give him my trust so easily. “Why?”
“Because you were never the problem.”
“Did Theo tell you he almost kissed me?”
I should have asked follow-up questions like a normal person whose business has been under siege for a month. I should not, under any circumstances, have said that.
Ander’s grin is gone. “He left that part out.”
I give him more details, even though he didn’t ask. “In his office. Right before he threw me out.”
His mouth pulls up at one corner, and it is not a friendly smile. “That motherfucker.”
He pushes off the case and paces the length of the bakery, hands in his hair, then out of his hair, then into his pockets, then out again. I watch and don’t say a word.
He needs the lap.
He stops in front of me on the way back.
“Here’s the thing about my brother. Theo is a complicated bastard.
He’s the most controlled person I have ever met.
He can’t control you. He’s supposed to hate you.
But he doesn’t know what to do with you.
And, you’re really fucking hot. There’s that, of course.
But he’s losing his mind. So, he wants to hate you, but he doesn’t.
And he wants to fuck you, but he shouldn’t. ”
“Romantic.” I don’t bring up that he called me really fucking hot.
“I’m the romantic one, for the record. He’s the polished one. Gideon is terrifying. But you’re smart. You probably already figured that out.”
A laugh slips out before I can stop it. The sound of it makes the tension release from his shoulders.
I take a breath. “Can I ask you something?”
“You can ask me anything, but I can’t promise I will answer.”
That’s fair. But I ask anyway. “What’s the deal with your father?”
He scrubs a hand down his face and lets it drop. “Do you have wine? Because I think this is a wine conversation.”
“Upstairs.”
“Take me upstairs, Bianca.”
My apartment is small. He stops just inside the door and turns a slow circle, taking in the wood floors, the plants on every windowsill, and the book on the arm of the couch.
He walks over and picks up the book.
I’m across the room in two steps. “Give me that.”
He holds it over his head, which is a height I cannot reach without a stepstool and the cooperation of a stranger. He reads the back cover. His grin starts slow and gets worse.
“Interesting book choice.” He smiles.
He has a dimple that I’ve never noticed. Of course it’s cute. But I can’t keep focusing on how cute his dimple is, because he just discovered I love shifter romances.
Oh my god, this is so embarrassing.
“You’re reading about a dragon.” He hasn’t stopped grinning.
“I’m going to need that back.”