“Dante, doll,” Amber cooed. I prayed that this morning would not consist of me breaking up a fight between the pair. Dante’s child-like wonder and charm were wasted on Amber and her incessant need for attention pulled out the worst in him. “I hope you’re not about to tell Luc that you’ve got work to do.”
“There’s a few things that require his attention,” Dante said with a shrug, directing his response at me.
I gave a small nod as Dante grabbed a plate of food from Lydia before she disappeared, muttering to herself and I caught the word “standards”. Extracting myself from Amber, I joined Dante at the table.
“What’s happened?” I asked him.
He kept his voice low as he replied, “Your mother.”
I paled at the mention of my mother. What had happened now?
Amber made her way over to us, coffee still clutched in her hands, before she dropped herself into my lap, but my mind was too focused on what Dante had said. Shifting, I pulled my phone from my pocket to see it was still on silent and that I had a string of missed calls.
“I need to make a few calls,” I said, shifting Amber from my lap and stepping out the back doors to get some privacy.
Chapter Eight
Mia
“Mia!”
I walked into the kitchen to see Dante grinning at me. He stood by the coffee machine and was adding spoon after spoon of sugar. By this point, I would have wagered there was more sugar than coffee in his mug. Dante’s cheery disposition was a welcomed change of pace in the house, and I hoped his presence would make it less awkward this morning.
I pulled my hair into a high ponytail, dressed for my morning run, as I said, “D, what did I say about the sugar?”
“That you think I’m sweet enough?”
Rolling my eyes, I grabbed a mug from the cupboard. It had been a restless night and coffee was a necessity rather than a luxury. Part of me wondered if Lucas would come back to my room to finish what he had started, but there had been no sign of him. I had no idea how we stepped over the boundary or what he had been thinking. Something in me buckled the moment he pulled me into him, and I wished I could have shown more resistance. For a few hazy moments, I had been ready to give in to the less logical side of my thought process.
I wasn’t sure whether it was something we should discuss, or whether to just let it be swept under the carpet as a spur of the moment mistake. I was hoping seeing him would help to guide the discussion.
“Dante, aren’t you going to introduce us?”
When I turned around my eyes landed on a woman who was sitting at Lucas’s spot at the head of the table. His shirt from last night draped over her body. The way she sat displayed her long, lean limbs and her blue eyes drank me in. The sight of her caused something in me to dislodge as if a cold bucket of water had been thrown over me, and I had some clarity on the situation.
“Hi, doll,” the woman continued. “You work here now?”
“Something like that,” I said. I abandoned the mug and braced myself against the counter in what I hoped was a casual gesture. I didn’t need someone to draw me a diagram.
“Mia, this is Amber. She’s…” Dante swept in.
“So, Amber,” I said, finding my voice. What was I meant to say to this woman? I just didn’t want an awkward silence.
“Yes, doll?”
“You and Lucas?” I asked because apparently, my brain struggled for any form of small talk and quite obviously it wouldn’t be Dom.
“You know what it’s like,” she said with a smile. Everything about this woman reminded me of a feline, a predator. She and Lucas were perfectly matched. “He’s busy with work but when we’re together we can’t keep our hands off each other.”
My body tensed at the statement. Last night Lucas would have had me in bed in minutes if we hadn’t been interrupted, and now I saw what had kept his attention. He had spent the night with Amber instead. I had been a placeholder until she had turned up. That thought felt like a punch to the gut and I swallowed the humiliation as it lodged in my throat.
Dante put an arm around me and rubbed my arm so that I looked up at him as he spoke. “I’m sure Mia has trouble fighting off male attention.”
I was grateful that he’d found a way to make me look like less of an idiot than I felt.
"You want to tell us something, Dante?" Amber teased, tone slightly off playful and more akin to spiteful. "Do you have a little crush?"
"Sorry about that. What did I miss?" Lucas stepped back in from the grounds and I caught his eye for a split second before looking away.
