Lucien seemed to stir and finally turned his eyes on me. They looked morose but I was unsure why.
“Is it your brother?”
The fork and knife he’d had in his hands seemed to waver, and then I watched him set them to the side.
I noted his steak was barely gone.
“No,” he spoke. “It’s not Gabriel.”
“Do you even want to talk about it?”
He shrugged his huge shoulders. Part of me was trying to figure out what could be wrong.
“Bratva business?”
“Simone, don’t take this the wrong way but …”
I held up my hands understandingly. “You don’t want to talk. I get it. Sorry.”
Ms. Porter came in moments later and cleared the table. She touched Lucien’s shoulder in a supportive way and whispered something to him. He simply nodded and then she was just a blur of a black and white disappearing around the corner.
Annoyance settled in because it seemed everyone was in on whatever was going wrong with this man, except me.
You’re no one to him,I thought.Why would he confide in you?
“I’m going to take Fedor some treats,” I glanced over my shoulder. “I’ll be back in a while.”
It was starting to feel suffocating in the dining room. Pulling on the coat, I eased open the door and bounded down the steps. There was still plenty of sun out as I skipped into the garden and gave a whistle for him.
He came bounding out of his hiding spot and threw his muddy paws up onto my shoulders. His pink tongue darted out and gave the side of my face a lick. He eased himself down and sat on his haunches.
“Fedor you got mud everywhere!”
I laughed as his tail began to wag. He was sniffing the air and I knew that he could smell the treats I had for him. Fedor was a lucky wolf because beef jerky was entirely too expensive for dehydrated meat.
Pulling a few large pieces from my pocket, I tossed them to him. He snatched them out of the air and devoured them before I could blink. A branch cracked behind me and I turned my head to see Lucien behind me. His head was bowed in thought and his hands stuffed into the pockets of a leather coat he wore.
“Thought I would join you,” he said.
His tone was still somber and I still wanted to know but I didn’t push it. We stood side by side in the quiet watching Fedor root around in the dirt. His fur was so white, I had no idea how he stayed that way because he loved the mud.
Finally, to break the silence, I turned to Lucien. “My shop is going to be in a magazine. I kind of forgot to mention it.”
“Little Angel, that sounds amazing.”
Lucien’s lips tilted into a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. Of course, smiling wasn’t his thing. He was a scowler.
“This is going to be great news for me. Just wish my mother were here to see all this happening for me.”
“Your mother was supportive of your dreams?”
Lucien’s interest seemed apparent now. I gave a nod of my head.
“She was…the day I got accepted into UNC for art…you would have thought that it was her getting in.”
“What happened to her…if you don’t mind me asking.”
He tugged his coat collar closer to him as a wind swept by. It’d been so long since I’d talked about my mother with anyone it felt as though I were telling someone a story about a stranger.
