Still…she can always feel his presence. Throughout both that first dinner and this one. Without looking, she’s sure that his eyes are piercing into her very existence every time she interacted with Jasmine.
Jasmine King. What a wonderful and gorgeous soul. How is it possible for a crime family as big as the Kings to raise such an amazing young soul? Jasmine can light up a room when she walks into it. The little girl’s glow can brush away the dark clouds hovering over anyone with a gentle smile.
Baby Rian. She can tell, he’s the apple of everyone’s eyes. There’s no jealousy from Jasmine with the amount of doting Rian gets as well. There’s only love.
How is all of this possible within a mob family?
Why would she need to ask? She knows it’s possible. She’d witnessed it growing up.
Don Pietro Romano might have treated everyone else callously but he’d loved his children. Isabella and Cristian got the best of everything. The best schools money could buy. He raised his children to be superior in every way.
“Ariana,” Jasmine’s sweet little voice calls out to her from across the table where the little girl sits next to her dad.
With everyone dressed down for dinner tonight and in this normal craftsman style house instead of their mansion, everyone seemed…normal. Normal people having a normal dinner.
“Yes,” she responds as naturally as possible.
“Where did you go off to?” Jasmine asks with the innocence of a child.
“I-Nowhere. I just didn’t have any input in the conversation,” she responds politely.
It’s true. Even though she’s not quite sure about the topic of the conversation, she most likely won’t have an input. Having dinner with other people hasn’t been her forte since she’d lost her mother so she’s quite out of practice when it comes to polite small talk over dinner.
“Bah,” Jasmine grumbles. “Everyone has equal input at our dinner table. It’s the one place where we can say what we want. It’s our safe place. Right, Dad?”
“Absolutely,” Adam replies shamelessly as he gushes over his bright daughter. “It will always be that way in our family, Jazzy.”
Jasmine beams at her father’s response.
“So?” Jasmine prods her.
She looks up at all the adults at the table. Chase seems uninterested and is texting on his phone. Though Rory is looking at her, she got the feeling that he really isn’t seeing her but is still being polite by making it seem like his attention is fixed at her.
“Jasmine will be turning eleven by the time her school’s Sadie Hawkins dance is held this year. She’s arguing that she isn’t too young to attend,” Adam says, helping her out.
“I think she should go!” Stella steps in. “I can take her shopping for the cutest thing to wear!”
“Not a chance,” Derrick says from the head of the table before forking another piece of roast into his mouth.
“I agree with your Uncle Derrick,” Adam says to his daughter who immediately sulks.
“I-I think with the right chaperone, she should go,” she chips in.
The table quiets and though Adam is scowling at her, she doesn’t seem the least bit frightened. It makes her smile when she should be quaking in her shoes.
“She has a point, Ad,” Chase chips in. “Ro and I are her favorite uncles. I’m sure I’ll be taking her on her first date anyway.”
“Really? You?” Rory scoffs at Chase. “Jazzy, your Uncle Chase would leave you hanging by the punch bowl while he flirts with all of your teachers.”
“He does that already,” Jasmine whines with an eye roll. “We’re always running late when he picks me up from school!”
The table erupts into laughter. She even cracks one loose because the child is just too cute.
“So, who would you ask?” she asks Jasmine once the table calms. “Is there a boy in class?”
Jasmine vehemently shakes her head and cracks a smile before looking at her dad. Adam, of course, practically melts at his daughter’s feet and gives the young girl a wink.
“Of course, I’ll go with you,” he says.
“I wasn’t going to ask you!” Jasmine exclaims.
“Well, if you give me enough notice, I can gladly go,” Derrick answers this time with a smile that reaches his eyes.
“Nope. Not you either!” Jasmine replies, shaking her head at Derrick.
Jasmine glances around the table at all the Kings who are grumbling and complaining.
“I want to ask Brooks!” she tells everyone. “He’s my best friend and he’s never been to a school dance before. I’d like to take him to one. Please, Dad?”
She’s heard Brooks’s name before but can’t put a face to the name. Whoever he is, he’s such a lucky man to be adored by such a child.
“In that case,” Chase says to the table. “Let her go! Brooks will make sure all the little boys there will know that they can’t even THINK about dating my niece. Until she’s thirty. Maybe forty.”
Everyone bursts into laughter again while Jasmine pretends her feelings have been hurt and pouts at everyone before she too succumbs to the joke. How can anyone not laugh? Frankly, there’s probably more than a touch of truth in there somewhere.
She may have yet to formally meet this Brooks person but he has to have some set of skills to be able to get her out of Eden unnoticed and earn the admiration of a child. Two children counting Rian.
Chapter Fourteen
It’s been exactly a week since everyone had dinner at the safehouse with Ariana. That was by Stella’s request. He hasn’t quite figured out why yet only that whatever the reason, Ariana seems to be just a little less tense about the situation. Marcus has reported that she seems to be genuinely opening to the process of recovery and not just going through the motions because she thinks someone expects it of her.
Good for her.
He sips the surprisingly bland coffee from the mug and continues watching Ariana through the window. She and Marcus are in the backyard again. Pilates or whatever the cool kids wanna call it these days. He makes a mental note of finding out though because fucking damn did she look phenomenal moving from pose to pose.
Cock, meet your new best friend.
Shit. Where the fuck did that come from? Has it been that long since he’d gotten laid?
He looks down into the steaming mug as if to make sure it’s really coffee he’s sipping. The thought of his last fuck makes him shove the mug across the table altogether. Isabella Romano.
He looks back out the window and finds Ariana watching him. She tilts her head and then gives him a wave. Call him giddy as his sour mood perks and he waves back like a kid in a schoolyard.
What the fuck is that shit?
He pockets his hand just as quick as he’d waved to her and turns his back away from the window. More for him than for her. He won’t be able to make progress with her if he’s standing there gawking at her every move and smiling like a kid in a candy shop each time she smiles at him.
Her smiles are never real though. There’s always sadness and guardedness behind them but she forges them anyway. Because she thinks it’s what’s expected of her. He’s never been the savior of damsels in distress but God help him, that’s exactly what he’s wanted to do since that moment he’d touched her in that club. He wanted nothing more than to see what this dying flower could bloom into.