Page 85 of Grim's Delight
The wound itself was long healed, but not even magic could completely erase nerve damage. It was a small price to pay, he told her, for meeting the love of his life.
The family joke was that Alastair didn’t know how to acquire loved ones without a little bloodshed.
“Have you decided on a name yet?” Alastair asked.
She peered at him. “For The Lush or for the baby?”
He huffed — the Alastair version of a laugh. “Both. Either.”
“We’re still working on a name for the bar,” Felix answered, guiding her around a table covered in buckets of fragrant rose bouquets. “But I think we’ve settled on a name for the baby.”
She wasn’t sure what it said about them as a couple that it was harder to agree on what to rename the bar they’d purchased than their first born child. Cecilia just shook her head when she found out they’d snatched up The Lush.
“I always knew you’d end up running this place,”she’d laughed.
Dahlia was ecstatic that her friend had escaped the trenches serving drinks in a bar, but she would be lying if she said she didn’t wish Cecilia could manage the bar for her. Too bad the damn woman was out enjoying her life and career, terrifying mate lurking in her shadow like the menace he was.
They were set to visit the couple after their trip to the market, but whether Cecilia’s mate would show his face or not was always a toss-up. The man was more akin to a stray cat than anything else. If he wandered in through a window halfway through Cecilia’s dinner, she wouldn’t have been surprised. They were two perfectly matched weirdos.
“We’re thinking something nautical, Papa,” she blithely informed him. “You know, in honor of our shared love of boats. We’ve decided on Atlas.”
Alastair choked. Colin, who’d been helping her brainstorm since her first missed period, let loose a bellow of laughter loud enough to draw the eye of several curious vendors. His mirth was so great, his glasses nearly sailed off his nose.
Whirling on Felix, Alastair hissed, “You arenotnaming my grandson after the yacht you sank!”
Felix slung his arm around her shoulders. Pressing his cheek against her hair, he smugly replied, “And here I thought you’d be honored, old man.”
Snickering, Dahlia basked in the glow of their levity. Nothing mattered more to her than this. Them. The only thing that might’ve made it a perfect moment was if Cecilia was there. But she’d already taken a month off to stay in United Washington for the birth, so Dahlia couldn’t fault her for needing time to wrap up her work at the school before then.
“I think Atlas Alastair Amauri has a lovely ring to it,” she sing-songed.
Felix nodded sagely. “It really does. Very alliterative without being cheesy.”
“And so regal. You’d never even know he was named after his grandpa’s stupid boat.”
“His cousins will make sure everyone knows,” Felix assured her. “They’re good at keeping each other humble.”
Alastair stopped walking. After a few steps, the group came to a slow halt and turned to look at him.
The old man didn’t show much emotion on a normal day. He hadn’t even seemed worried when they were pinned together with a piece of jagged metal. He wore an aloof mask as much as possible, so it was rare to see more than a twinkle of humor in his eyes or a frown deepening the lines grooved into his face.
But in that moment, surrounded by a sea of vendors and flowers, Alastair looked truly stricken.
“You’re naming him Atlas Alastair?”
Humor bleeding into tenderness, Dahlia broke away from Felix to reach for her father’s hand. Giving it a squeeze, she said, “I wouldn’t have any of this if we hadn’t met that night. So yeah,that’s what we’ve decided.” A smile tugged at her lips. “And don’t worry. Dad has already called dibs on the next one.”
Alastair swallowed hard. He looked away quickly, but not before she spied the sheen of tears in his eyes. Clearly trying to regain his composure, he rasped, “I see. Well. That’s fine, I suppose.”
“Oh, look.” Felix came up beside her and pointed to a stall just a few feet away.
Arrayed in baskets on the counter and around it were hundreds of dahlias. They burst from their containers in small floral explosions of reds, pinks, and creams. Each one was its own stunning creation, with every silken petal perfectly layered on top of its neighbor to create spirals of rich color.
Trailing his hand down her back to rest on her hip, Felix drew her into his side. “You know, I think I just thought of a great name for the bar.”
Dahlia looked up at him. Whatever physical discomfort she felt was momentarily forgotten when she found him gazing down at her like that — as if she was the only thing in the universe that mattered.
“What is it?” she asked, a little breathless.
Mouth curved in that devastating fanged smile, he answered, “The Crimson Dahlia.”
THE END
