Chapter 25 Santos
SANTOS
The tiramisu takes three hours and Jennifer supervises every minute of it. I can’t believe that she has been on the island for six weeks. It feels longer.
She is sitting on the kitchen stool with her tea, occasionally offering observations that are not instructions but which we follow immediately and completely because they are correct, and also because watching her face when she talks about food is the best thing that has happened in this kitchen since she arrived on this island and I intend to create as many opportunities for it as possible.
"The mascarpone needs to be room temperature," she says, to her tea.
"It is room temperature," I say.
"It's slightly cold," she says. "You can tell by the way it's resisting the whisk."
I look at the mascarpone. I look at her. "How can you tell from over there?"
"I can always tell," she says simply, and takes a sip of her tea, and she is right, obviously she is right, and I adjust the mascarpone and say nothing about it and Tomas makes the sound from the corner where he is reading the biscuit tin label for the third time and Matteo's mouth does the thing.
The living room is warm in the late afternoon light, the September gold coming through the windows and laying itself across the sofa and the coffee table and the three of us arranging ourselves around Jennifer with the naturalness that has been developing for six weeks and has finally stopped requiring effort.
She is on the sofa with her feet tucked under her and the green shirt soft against her shoulders and her dark honey hair loose from the pin she put it up with this morning, and she is looking at the tiramisu on the coffee table with the expression of a professional about to assess something.
I sit beside her.
Matteo takes the armchair across. Tomas sits on the other side of her, close, his silver musk warm in the afternoon air.
I pick up the spoon.
"Allow me," I say.
She looks at me. "You're going to feed me tiramisu."
"My grandmother always said it tastes better when someone feeds it to you," I say. "She was a very wise woman."
Jennifer looks at the tiramisu. Then at me. The corner of her mouth moves. "If it's bad I'm going to tell you," she says.
"I know," I say. "That's why I made it properly."
I scoop a portion, careful with the layers, the savoiardi soaked exactly right, the mascarpone cream smooth and generous, the cocoa dusted on top the way my grandmother did it, never too much, just enough to sit on the tongue alongside the sweet.
I hold it out.
She opens her mouth and takes it and her eyes close for one full second.
I watch her face.
I love the way her expression goes completely honest when food is exactly right, all the armor down, just her responding to something real.
Her eyes open.
"Your grandmother," she says, "was a genius."
The saffron in my chest floods warm and open and I feel Matteo’s scent sharpens from across the room and Tomas's silver musk goes quietly certain beside her.
"She would have loved you," I say.
She looks at me.
"Genuinely," I say. "She would have loved you immediately and completely and she would have asked you for your tarragon recipe and then improved it without telling you and presented it as her own."
Jennifer laughs. My alpha responds to her happiness.
"I want to say something," Matteo says, from the armchair.
Jennifer looks at him.
He leans forward with his forearms on his knees, which is not Matteo's usual posture, which means he has decided something and is doing it without the armor, which from Matteo is the most significant thing in any room he is in.
"We owe you more than we've said," he says.
"All of us. What we did was wrong. Not the night.
The morning. The envelope. The way we left without a word and told ourselves it was the clean call.
" He holds her gaze with those pale blue eyes and does not look away from it.
"It was a coward's call. And you deserved better than that in every possible way. "
The room is very quiet.
Jennifer looks at him for a long moment.
"Thank you," she says. "I appreciate you saying it."
Tomas turns toward her on the sofa.
"I let it happen," he says. "I knew what Matteo was going to do and I let him do it because the alternative was admitting what that night had been, what you were, and I was not ready to admit it." He looks at her steadily. "That is also on me. All of it."
Jennifer presses her lips together.
"The tiramisu is excellent," she says.
"Yes," I say, and hold out another spoonful, and she takes it, and her eyes close again for one second and when they open they are warmer than they were and the rose in her trace is so soft it is barely there at all, just warmth underneath everything, the version of her that exists when she has decided a place is safe and has stopped pretending she hasn't decided.
I set the spoon down.
"Jennifer," I say.
She looks at me.
"I was an idiot," I say. "From the morning after until approximately now I have been a comprehensive and thoroughgoing idiot and I want you to know I am aware of the full scope of it." I hold her gaze.
She takes in all three of us, her green eyes moving between our faces, reading whatever she finds there.
Then she looks at me, and the strawberry in her trace opens fully in the warm afternoon air and my saffron responds to it immediately and entirely, and the rose goes from barely there to present and warm and soft, and I watch it happen on her face too, the slight flush of it, the way her hand comes up to her neck.
"Santos," she says. "There's something I need to tell you."
"Yes," I say, too quickly, because I am so relieved we have cleared this first hurdle that my brain has stopped operating at full capacity.
"It's warm in here," she says.
She said those same words in the dining room. Something is wrong. The same something as before.
Matteo straightens in the armchair.
I set the tiramisu down on the coffee table.
"Jennifer," I say, gently.
“Stop fussing,” she says, and the rose in her scent says otherwise in the specific way her rose says otherwise about things she is not ready to acknowledge, thorns entirely absent, just warmth and warmth and more warmth, flooding the room.
"Your scent," I say.
"I know what my scent is doing," she says. "It's doing it without my permission."
"As always," I say.
The corner of her mouth moves.
"This is not," she says, "how I expected this afternoon to go."
"No," I say.
She looks at me. Then at Tomas, who has his hand very close to hers on the sofa cushion, not touching, close. Then at Matteo, who has leaned forward in the armchair with his pale eyes steady on her face and his sandalwood sitting dark and warm in the air.
She closes her eyes for one moment.
I stand up.
I hold my hand out.
She looks at it. Then she puts her hand in mine and I close my fingers around hers and pull her to her feet and she comes up slowly, the warm weight of her, and she is close, strawberry and rose and the warmth of the afternoon and the tiramisu on the coffee table behind us that will absolutely keep.
"My room," I say. "It's the biggest."
Droplets of sweat have started at her temples. She is going into heat.
"Of course it is," she says.
"Get the doctor," I say to Matteo quietly. "I want to make sure the baby is okay."
He is already on his phone.
"Take me there," she says. "I want you to knot me while I'm in heat."
My room is the biggest and the view is the best and the mattress is excellent and none of that is why I brought her here.
I brought her here because this is mine and I want her here, in the specific place that belongs to me, and I want my saffron in the air around her and her strawberry in mine and the afternoon light doing what it does through these particular windows onto this particular bed where I have been lying awake for six weeks thinking about exactly this.
She stands at the window for a moment.
The island is gold and blue and September out there, the water catching the last of the afternoon, and she looks at it the way she always looks at beautiful things, directly and without pretense, letting it land.
I come to stand behind her.
Not close enough to push. Close enough that the warmth of me reaches her and the saffron in my scent settles around her strawberry in the warm air of the room.
"Pretty good," she says, to the window, to the view, to the island.
"Yes," I say.
She turns around.
I can see every detail of her face in the afternoon light, the green of her eyes, the warm olive of her skin, the dark honey hair loose on her shoulders, and she is looking at me with the expression she uses when she has decided something and is done pretending she hasn't.
I put my hands on her face.
Both palms. Her skin warm under my fingers. The heat making itself known in the air between us, and my saffron responds to every part of it before I have said a word.
"I have you," I say. "You understand me? Whatever happens. We have you."
She looks at me.
"All three of us," I say. "You and her. You are not doing any of this alone again. Not one day of it."
Her jaw moves. Just slightly. The specific movement of someone receiving something they have been wanting and being careful about how much of that wanting they let show.
"Santos," she says.
"I know," I say. "I know."
I kiss her.
Slow and deliberate and real, my mouth against hers, my thumbs moving once across her cheekbones, and I feel her exhale into the kiss, the long slow exhale of someone who has been holding something up by force and has finally, completely, decided to put it down.
Tomas puts his hand on her shoulder from behind.
Matteo’s sandalwood scent comes warm from her other side.
And the three of us settle around her, the five of us, in the warm September room with the island gold outside the window, and the tiramisu on the coffee table in the living room that will absolutely keep, and the bond humming in the air between all of us, and her strawberry and rose flooding the room completely open and entirely without apology.
She has been holding everything back since the moment she arrived on this island.
This afternoon, she holds nothing back.
Neither do we.
Ti amo, principessa. Ti amo ogni curva di te.