Veiled Menace by Deborah Blake

Author:Deborah Blake
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2017-04-03T11:12:38+00:00

Chapter Twenty-eight

Hades’ balls. If she’d known he could cook like this, she wouldn’t have hesitated.

The decimated remains of a gourmet dinner lay on the kitchen table between them. Chicken breasts rolled in rum-drenched bread crumbs. A salad made of artichoke hearts and baby spinach with slivers of crisp almonds and delicate bites of mandarin orange. And a bottle of some white wine from his father’s cellars that washed away the bitter memory of Anton’s sour Chablis with ease.

Maybe too much ease, considering they’d polished off an entire bottle between them and started on a second one. But hey, Raphael wouldn’t mind, what with the being dead and all, and it had been a long day. Week. Year. Whatever.

She inhaled the delicious scents that still perfumed the air and let out a happy sigh. It was going to be hard to go back to leftover Chinese food tomorrow.

“Do you want some desert?” Peter asked, smiling indulgently at her obviously blissed-out state. “I think there’s cheesecake in the fridge.” He got up from the table and started carting empty plates over to the sink. Elmyr snored softly from under Peter’s seat, belly distended from his own feast.

Donata shook her head regretfully. “I would have left room if I’d known, but as it is, I’m pretty sure I’d explode if I ate another bite. How did you get to be such a good cook?”

He chuckled. “When you have an appetite as relentless as mine, you have to learn to cook in self-defense.” A sober look replaced his merriment. “Of course, if I had known I was half-Dragon, that might have explained both the constant need for refueling and my love of fancy, elaborate meals.”

Donata nodded in sympathy. Peter’s mother had kept his background a secret, even from him. Peter had only met Raphael—and discovered his unusual heritage—when Donata had gotten him involved with the Pentimento; putting Peter’s mother into unintended danger had led to her waking Raphael from his long hibernation to come to their aid.

And now Raphael was dead, vanished out of Peter’s life as suddenly as he’d entered it. Leaving him with a few answers and a lot more questions . . . and no one to answer them. Poor guy. If he’d never met Donata, his life would have been a lot simpler, that was for sure.

She took another gulp of the dry, fruity wine, trying to wash away the harsh flavor of her thoughts.

“I’m sorry about your father,” she said into the silence.

“Yeah, me too.” Peter lifted one shoulder and let it drop. “I suppose I should be grateful I got to spend time with him at all.” He clanked dishes together in the sink, unusually clumsy for a man who was normally so graceful.

“So what are you going to do now?” she asked. “I know the Cabal trashed your apartment when they were chasing after us and the Pentimento. Are you going to get a new one that nobody knows about or stay here?”

Peter’s apartment had been wonderful; warm and eclectic.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.