I jumped at Noc’s teasing voice coming to me and whirled with my nephew to face the door.
His voice had been teasing.
As he regarded me across the room by the fire holding my nephew, his face did not say playful.
It said something quite different and I blocked it before I could come to an understanding of just what it said.
“Can I assist you with something?” I queried.
“You comin’ home with me?” he returned my query with his own.
Dear goddess, I wish he’d cease referring to it like that.
Home.
With him.
“I’ve not decided yet.”
“Bull,” he decreed.
I looked down to Timofei, “It’s quite coarse and rude to speak this way, nephew. I know you’re young but it’s never too early to bear that in mind.”
He looked up at me and bounced himself on my hip. I took my cue and gave him a hearty spring and he giggled again.
I found that quite pleasant.
“Babe,” Noc called.
I turned to him and arched my brows.
“I’m also here to tell you they’re ready to take off for Esmerelda’s.”
“Ah,” I looked down to Timofei. “It’s time for chocolate.”
He knew few words but I learned he knew that one for he let out an excited shriek, bounded in my arms repeatedly, banged my chest with his fist, and once done shrieking, screeched, “Choc choc!”
“Come on, sweetheart, get your cloak. You’re riding in my sleigh with me,” Noc said.
I looked to him as I moved to him. “Will you be vexing me with your attempts to encourage me to go to your world in said sleigh?”
“Probably.”
“Then I shall ride with my brother,” I told him as my nephew and I arrived at him in the doorway, a position he didn’t move from when we did.
“His sleigh is full, baby.”
“Tosh, he can fit me.” I looked again to Timofei. “Can’t he, nephew?”
“Choc choc!” was his answer.
I turned again to Noc. “That means yes.”
“It so doesn’t,” Noc replied, his lips quirking.
“It absolutely does,” I returned.
Noc gave up the fight, grinned, shook his head and then plucked my nephew right out of my arms with a practiced ease I found both astounding and bizarrely pleasing. In the same manner he planted Timofei on his hip, reached to grab my hand, his fingers tight around mine, and thus he dragged me into the hall carrying my nephew and speaking.
“Dig you bein’ cute, babe, always. But everyone’s talking about this liquid chocolate so I wanna get some in me. To do that you need your cloak, I need my coat and this little one needs to get bundled up. So let’s get a move on, yeah?”
I had no choice of whether or not to agree to get a move on.
Noc moved me by keeping hold of my hand and pulling me with him.
Again with no choice, as Josette was at the grand entryway awaiting me with my cloak, I accepted it and my gloves and hat.
Noc shrugged on his other-world coat, a nice, dark-blue, double-breasted wool that Finnie shared later was a, “Navy pea coat…hot,” (her words exactly).
Timofei was bundled by his nanny.
And away we went.
With me in Noc’s sleigh.
He did not attempt to press me to go to his world during our trip. Nor during our time at Esmerelda’s. Nor much later, when he was my dinner partner at dinner (something Queen Aurora seemed intent on doing, only Kristian had taken his place but once in all the dinners I’d shared with them).
And yet he did.
And he did it simply by being Noc.
* * * * *
Valentine
Valentine studied Lavinia with unconcealed distaste.
After her friend swallowed a bite of her sidewalk-hot dog-vendor hot dog while standing on a street in New Orleans, Valentine shared, “I can introduce you to much more sumptuous delicacies, my friend.”
Lavinia took another bite of the chili, onion and mustard slathered hot dog and said through a full mouth that had Valentine’s lip curling, “But this is delicious.”
She was quite wrong.
Valentine didn’t share this.
She looked across the street.
It was nearly time.
“I’ve decided you’ll come to my world more often and the next time you come, I’ll take you to Arnaud’s.”
“Do they have these at Arnaud’s?” Lavinia asked and Valentine turned again to see her lifting the remaining quarter of her hot dog.
“No,” Valentine drawled disgustedly.
Lavinia grinned, took another bite, glanced away from Valentine and promptly choked on her hot dog.
Valentine’s attention went to where her friend’s eyes were aimed and she saw Dax Lahn walking out of the handsome building wearing his exceptionally well-tailored suit.
She would not have thought a man such as him would wear a suit well, but she was wrong.
“You brought the Dax here?” Lavinia asked incredulously.
“No, chérie, I did not,” Valentine answered.
There was a moment’s silence before Lavinia queried, “That’s…that’s…this world’s Dax?”
“It is, indeed.”
Through this, her friend didn’t tear her gaze from Dax Lahn as he walked to the waiting sleek, gleaming-black Mercedes parked at the curb.
“He’s an attorney, known as ‘the Savage,’” Valentine informed her fellow witch. “He’s quite feared in the courtroom, it’s said. Razor-sharp. Shrewd. Sly. A cunning strategist. And ruthless.”
The man under discussion got in the car while Valentine spoke, and both women watched as the vehicle smoothly moved away from the curb.