Though, if Valentine was but a coin or two away from bringing me home, I had many of those and I could be back with him and his family faster and safer than I could return across the Green Sea.
No, it was Noc that was the concern.
Noc and just how much I liked spending time with him.
And just how wrong that was.
“More options,” he stated and my focus sharpened on him. “I go do my thing with Finnie and Frey and the rest, you go back with your brother. Few months, maybe after the baby’s born and you know it’s all good with that, Valentine takes us home. I get my gig here, you get your time with your family, then we take our adventure.”
My.
Now that might be workable.
Months away from Noc would mean I could get my head sorted about him, for surely it was his attention and kindness all bundled in the alluring package that was him and handed to me at a time when I was at my most vulnerable that was muddling it.
I missed Antoine. I’d lost him forever.
Perhaps as a coping mechanism, my mind was searching for an alternate, even if this was wrong and disloyal.
That had to be it.
“Yeah?” Noc prompted.
“Yes,” I replied. “I’ll think on that option too, Noc.”
A grin from him and a heartfelt, “Great, baby.”
Looking pleased with himself, he gave my hand a squeeze, let it go and turned to the fire, lifting his glass.
I did the same.
“Pizza. Phones. Bikes,” Noc’s voice came again. “TV. Movies. Computers. Football.” I turned my head to him just in time to see him do the same my way. “And you know I like you when I promise to take you to the shoe department at Nordstrom.”
“Do they have a nice selection of slippers?” I queried.
His grin this time was different. It made my breath catch and my nipples contract.
Worse, he did it leaning across the table toward me and his voice was lower, deeper, like he was sharing a delicious secret when he spoke next.
“Baby, just you wait and see.”
My.
I gave myself a hearty inward shake and pulled myself together.
“I do believe, Master Noc, that you’re taking unfair advantage by applying not-so-subtle pressure for me to fall in with your plans.”
He sat back, lifted his glass and warned, “You don’t come to me after you have breakfast with your brother tomorrow and tell me you’re in, get used to that over the next few days, Frannie.”
Wonderful.
I looked from him in a patented Franka Drakkar dismissive way and took another sip of my whiskey, only to do this hearing Noc’s chuckle.
Gods.
“You’re gonna look good in spike heels,” Noc remarked.
Spike heels?
Intriguing.
“Cease,” I demanded.
He ignored me.
“And a little black dress.”
“Cease,” I snapped.
“Wearin’ both at midnight sittin’ across from me at Café du Monde after we did the town, kicked back listening to live jazz, got drunk on Bourbon Street, eating a beignet caked with powdered sugar and drinking coffee with chicory.”
Jazz? What was that?
And a beignet? I had no clue what that was but anything caked with a substance called “powdered sugar” had to be delicious, didn’t it?
I turned my head to glower at him.
“Noc. Cease!” I insisted.
“Shrimp étoufée.”
I loved prawns.
“Quiet.”
“Avenues lined with five hundred-year-old oak trees and graceful antebellum mansions.”
I definitely loved mansions.
“Quiet!”
“Spicy-hot jambalaya.”
I’d had enough.
“Would you care to wear my whiskey?” I asked mock sweetly.
“No, baby,” he muttered amusedly.
“Then kindly cease speaking.”
“Like a cat, curious, aren’t you, Frannie?” he teased. “Gonna eat you up, you don’t come home with me.”
Come home with me.
Blast!
I turned again to face the fire, announcing, “I’m ignoring you now.”
“Give that five minutes, which is as long as you can keep that shit up,” he accepted, doing so to my frustration because I suspected he was right.
And he was right.
Though fortunately, when he pulled me back into conversation, he did so not tempting me with strange words that piqued my curiosity, but instead with thoughtful ones that coaxed me to talk about how I felt about my brother’s behavior at dinner and how we were both getting on otherwise since he’d arrived.
Thus we spent a pleasant hour drinking whiskey but not doing so becoming inebriated. Just enjoying pleasant company.
But this time, when it was over, I didn’t sweep from the room.
Noc walked me to the door to my bedchamber and kissed my temple before he opened it and scooted me in with a light hand on the small of my back.
And last, he gave me a soft smile that I could swear held a promise I didn’t quite understand before he closed the door behind me and I lost sight of him.
Chapter Nine
Strict Life Edict
Franka
The next morning, I walked into the breakfast room to see only Brikkita there, finishing up her crêpes.
She looked up at me, startled, as if she had no idea I would be arriving at breakfast when Kristian and I had made that plan the night before, something I would assume he’d share with his wife.
“Good morning, Brikkita,” I greeted, selecting a seat across from her at the oval table.
“Good morning, Franka,” she replied timidly, the manner in which she always spoke to me, a manner I’d always found irksome¸ but one I now understood was a manner I’d earned.