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Magdalena huffed. "No, I wouldn’t."
"How about that I was in love with her? That I couldn’t be with her, not without bringing the poison from this fucking world to her front door, so I had to look over her from afar?"
"You’d still be talking to the wrong person," was his mother’s waspish retort even if it made my heart flop around in my chest in a way that told me I needed to go visit a cardiologist—stat. "Since when was I a romantic?"
"At least you identify that it was romantic," Camille said softly, reaching over to pat her mother-in-law’s shoulder. I wasn’t sure why Magdalena looked at her, when she was the newest member of the family, but Aidan’s mother did. Their glances collided and Camille sent her a gentle smile as she said, "And we all do crazy things when we’re in love, don’t we?"
Aidan rolled his eyes, but he reached up to rub his ear as he asked, "You stopped taking your meds or something, Ma? You’re more snippety than usual."
"Shut up. You’ll make this worse," I grumbled at him.
"There’s no making it worse with Ma," he countered, his gaze fixed firmly on hers. "She knows we’re not cattle at the market. She knows what an arranged marriage feels like. And she knows what it means when someone dark comes into your light and stains everything in sight."
His mother glowered at him, but she merely asked, "If you’re such a stain, Aidan, then why did you darken her door at all?"
"Because she’s helping us. She almost died yesterday—"
"Oh, my God, bitch! What the hell? Why didn’t you tell me?"
I cast a glance at Jen. "Sorry," I mouthed, well aware that I deserved her glare. But there wasn’t really an optimal moment to tell someone that you’d almost been killed.
Or, if there was, I’d never received the memo on that particular social nicety.
"What happened?" Magdalena demanded. "And don’t you dare say it’s business because if you do, Aidan, so help me God I’ll let your father do worse things to that ear than I just did." She folded her arms against her chest. "Let’s face it, you need me to smooth things over because if you’re bringing girly over here for Christmas dinner it’s more serious than you’re letting on."
Aidan’s lips curved up. "Ain’t seen you this riled up for about ten years, Ma."
She squinted at him. "Don’t smile at me and think you can worm your way out of things." His smile shot up a few megawatts, and Magdalena groused, "Why do you have to look like your father?"
"Well, he had to have something that’d make you weak at the knees, Ma. Sure as hell wasn’t his sparkling personality, was it?"
Her lips curved. "He can be amusing in his own way."
"His own psychopathic way," someone muttered behind me.
Deciding to grab my balls back, I stopped pleating my fingers together and murmured, "Can we start again?" I held out my hand. "I’m Savannah."
"I’m Magdalena—"
"Lena," Camille chided, and her mother-in-law huffed.
"You can call me Lena though."
Unsure why Lena was listening to Camille, I shot the younger woman a smile first, then, the matriarch of the family. "Thank you so much."
Receiving a grunt for my pains, I watched as she wandered over to the stove.
"Do you want cake?"
Cake was the last thing I wanted, but Aidan nudged me with his elbow and nodded.
Quickly, I replied, "Please!"
Lena grumbled as she cut out a slice of cake, and that was how I found myself sitting at the kitchen table in a three-thousand dollar Valentino suit eating cranberry crumb cake while everyone—even though I already knew their names and most of their life stories—introduced themselves to me.
Because I was me, I was so tempted to turn my voice recorder on so I could listen to this again, but deciding that would be weird, instead I hyperfocused on everything that was said, and came to see another side of Aidan.
For all that he was at a table full of women, he was well at ease with each of them, and they with him. Aoife and Jen more than the others, but that fit seeing as they’d known each other a long time.
