Chapter 11 Santos
SANTOS
Call me crazy, but there are a lot of omegas in the world, and none of them smell like her.
I know scents. Any alpha worth his pulse does. We read rooms with them. Stress, attraction, lies, nerves, heat, fear. Most of it is background noise once you learn how to sort it. Useful, forgettable, constant.
Hers never was.
Three months later, I could still pick Jennifer Sullivan out of memory alone. Strawberry first, then rose underneath it, warm and soft with something stubborn at the center. A scent that felt sweeter when she laughed and sharper when she was pretending she was fine.
Which means the last three months have been humiliating.
A shampoo in Milan. Perfume in an elevator in Tokyo. Some candle in a hotel lobby that nearly made me turn around like an idiot. Every time, my body reacted before my brain could remind it that memory is not the same thing as presence.
So I’ve learned discipline. Breathe in. Assess. Dismiss. Keep moving.
Usually it works.
Today it fails completely.
The island is turning gold with evening, light sliding through the trees and flashing off the water below. I came outside because Tomas said I was going to wear a trench into the study floor, and Matteo, irritatingly, agreed. It has been the same four days of the same absence.
The path from the main house cuts through the gardens, down toward the dock, with the staff quarters tucked into the hillside beyond. I’m halfway through the trees when it hits me.
Strawberry. Rose. Her.
I stop dead.
Just the first touch of it. The edge of it, carried on the sea breeze from somewhere to my left. Warm, ripe, lightly sugared, the exact note generic strawberry never gets right. Shampoo doesn’t. Candles certainly don’t. Candles lie about strawberry every time.
My composure fails instantly.
I go still in the middle of the shell path and drag in another breath before I can stop myself. Like a man hearing a song he thought was gone, trying to catch the next note before he trusts it.
The breeze shifts.
It goes somewhere else and takes the scent with it.
I stand there.
Bene, I tell myself. Bene, Santos. You have been on this island for four days smelling the same water and the same flowers and the same particular quality of warm stone and sea air and your brain has manufactured a smell out of longing, which is a thing your brain has apparently decided to do now, which is fine, it's fine, this is fine.
I look to my left.
Nothing. Trees. The edge of the staff quarter path going around the side of the hill. A bird in one of the trees that regards me with the blank professional neutrality of a bird who has seen every kind of human embarrass themselves and finds none of it surprising anymore.
I keep walking.
Then, I sit on the dock and put my feet over the edge and breathe actual sea air for a while and think about the Nakamura documentation and whether we've considered the third-party liability clause thoroughly enough and whether Tomas remembered to send the amended terms before the delegation arrives.
I think about these things for approximately four minutes before my nose finds it again.
It arrives from the direction of the staff kitchen.
It’s around the side of the hill from the main house, positioned for practical reasons related to ventilation and deliveries. I need to let this go because I am doing the thing I told myself not to do, I follow the scent like a dog.
The path goes around the base of the hill and the kitchen is set into the slope on the other side, a long low building with big windows designed for cross-ventilation, and as I get closer the smell changes from salt and flowers to salt and flowers and something cooking, something with garlic and olive oil and whatever herb is in the jar near the window, and underneath all of it, underneath the cooking, underneath the evening and the sea air, ripe and warm and completely unmistakable,
I stop at the corner of the building, knowing what I'm about to find and dreading it all the same.
Cazzo.
I exhale once and force my head to work.
It is entirely possible for two omegas to share scent notes. Strawberry and rose aren’t rare. Scents aren’t fingerprints. This could be anyone. A staff member. Someone I’ve never met. Someone who smells nothing like Jennifer Sullivan beyond the surface of it.
Except Jennifer’s rose always changed with her mood. Thorned when she braced for something. Soft when she felt safe.
The rose is soft now.
I press my back to the wall beside the kitchen window, because apparently this is who I am today, a man hiding outside his own kitchen and scenting the air like a criminal.
Inside, I hear movement. A pan on the stove. A drawer opening and closing. One voice, female, too low to make out.
Then, louder, to no one in particular.
“I know. It’s pretty good.”
The world stops.
For the second time in three months I lose my ability to construct sentences.
I know that voice.
There’s no two-ways about it, it’s Jennifer.
She’s in my kitchen.
I don't go in because I don't know what happened when she woke up alone. She doesn't know we're here.
Carmen handles the guest briefings and the owner profiles are kept private and she doesn't know.
And right now she is in the kitchen smelling like strawberry and soft rose and comfort, the particular warm scent of someone who has found a place that agrees with them, and if I walk in there it stops being that.
I push off the wall.
I walk back around the path and down to the dock again and I sit on the edge of it with my feet over the water and I look at the horizon, which is doing excellent things in the sunset but is not receiving my full attention.
She's here for the season. Three months, hired to replace Daniel after he walked over the money, living in the staff quarters on the other side of the hill while I've been in the main house for four days with forty meters and complete ignorance between us.
Forty meters.
Madonna.
I have to tell the rest of the pack.
Now!
Matteo is in the study. He is always in the study, it's where he goes when he is avoiding having feelings in any room that has chairs positioned for conversation.
He has his reading glasses on and papers in front of him and he looks up when I come in with the specific expression of a man who has been doing productive work and is assessing whether whatever I'm about to say is worth interrupting it for.
Tomas is on the sofa with a book. He marks his page when he sees my face.
I close the door behind me.
"She's here," I say.
Matteo takes his glasses off.
Tomas closes the book.
The room is very quiet.
"The new chef," I say. "The one Carmen hired. The one who replaced Daniel." I look at both of them. "It's Jennifer."
Nobody speaks for a moment.
Tomas sets the book down on the cushion beside him with the measured care of a man whose hands need something to do.
Matteo's jaw tightens once. His tell. The only one he has.
"You're certain," Tomas says.
"I would know her trace in a thunderstorm," I say, and I say it without any of my usual performance because this is not the moment for performance, this is the moment for the truth of it, the plain version. "It's her. She's in the kitchen and she doesn't know we're here."
Matteo stands.
He walks to the window.
He stands there with his back to us looking at the dark garden, and I watch the line of his shoulders and wait, because I know Matteo, I have known Matteo for fifteen years, and when he has something to say he says it when he's ready and not a second before.
"She came here to work," he says finally.
"Yes," I say.
"She doesn't know."
"No."
He turns around. His pale eyes are doing the thing they do when he has already reached a conclusion and is now managing its implications. "We don't tell her tonight."
"Agreed," Tomas says, which surprises me a little, but when I look at him his expression is thoughtful rather than relieved. "She needs one night that isn't this."
I think about her voice talking to herself in the kitchen. I know. It's pretty good. The soft rose in her trace, no thorns, just warmth. The particular scent of an omega who has found a place that agrees with her and doesn't know yet that the place is complicated.
"One night," I agree.
Matteo looks at me steadily. "Santos."
"I know," I say.
"She left Vegas believing she was abandoned—"
"I know, Matteo." My voice comes out rougher than I intend. "I was there when you decided what she'd believe. I remember."
He absorbs that without defending himself, which is the closest thing to an apology Matteo offers without being directly cornered.
Tomas stands up from the sofa. He's thinking, I can see it, the particular quality of focus he gets when something needs to be handled correctly and he's working out the architecture of it in his head before he speaks.
"She's going to be blindsided," he says.
“Whenever she sees one of us, it's going to be a shock and she's going to feel ambushed.
There's no version where that doesn't happen. "
"No," I say.
"So it needs to happen in a way that gives her the control." He looks at us both. "She needs to be the one who decides what comes next. We don't push. We don't use the fact that she's here. We let her land."
Matteo is quiet for a moment. Then he nods once, the slow kind, the kind that means the decision is made.
Domani, I tell myself.
I take the place Tomas vacated on the sofa. He pours three glasses of something expensive without being asked. Matteo returns to his chair.
Outside, the water moves softly against the dock. Inside, no one pretends anymore.
For the first time in three months, all three of us sit in the same room and admit we’re thinking about her.
It doesn’t fix anything.
But it is a start.