AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He nods. “I don’t think there are lot of beets in Creole cuisine. Or Brussels sprouts. You’re going to be fine, Mary. Please. Trust me.”
I widen my eyes a bit at his use of the word please.
Dominants don’t often use that word. It’s understood that the submissive wants to please their Dominant. They don’t have to ask.
Of course, we’re not in a scene right now.
We’re on a…date.
My God… How long has it been since I’ve been on a date? Not since Lucas…
“All right, Ronan. I’ll trust you. And I will try everything. But I reserve the right to not continue eating something if I don’t like it.”
“Of course. I wouldn’t expect you to eat anything that you don’t like. But I know you’re going to love everything my grandmother puts in front of you tonight.”
“I hope I do.” I lean back a little, relaxing. “Tell me more about your grandmother.”
“Her father was French, her mother African, but she was born here in New Orleans.”
“That’s so interesting.”
“Do you know your ancestry?” Ronan asks me.
“Not really. I did some research once on my last name, Sandusky. There are two contradictory opinions. It could be from a Native American tribe or it could be Polish.”
“Those are two totally different origins.”
“I know. My father was no help. Of course now he’s gone, but Sandusky, as you may know, is a city in Ohio, where the Wyandotte tribes lived. Some say it’s an Indigenous peoples’ name. Some say it’s an Americanized form of the Polish name Sandowski. I honestly have no idea.”
“What about your mom’s side?”
“Her maiden name was Nelson, so, English.”
“Or Scottish,” he says. “Probably comes from the given name Neal which comes from the Gaelic name Niall, which means champion.”
I raise an eyebrow. “You know Gaelic?”
“Just as a hobby. Once I moved back to Scotland after high school, I dabbled a little, mo leannan.” He winks.
I resist the urge to call him a nerd. “Sounds like you dabbled more than a little.”
“Not really. No one speaks Gaelic anymore, so it’s kind of like studying Latin. It’s a dead language but has its beauty.”
“For someone who’s half Creole you seem fully Scottish to me.”
His face lights up. “I do love Scotland, for sure. While I was there, it truly felt like home to me.”
“So you only came back because of the deal with Braden Black?”
He pauses a moment. Then, “It was a good time for me to return to the States. The business deal, of course, but there were other reasons.”
Curiouser and curiouser. “What other reasons?”
“Maybe I’ll tell you sometime, Mary.”
The cabbie comes to a stop.
“But not now,” he says, “because we’ve arrived.”
