Limitless - Kate Hawthorne Page 0,3

me about some of the food. I want all the bread and pastry.”

Leonidas set down his coffee and went to his dresser, finding a passably clean looking pair of pants and a simple black t-shirt. He dressed and shoved his feet into his shoes.

“I’ll do you one better,” he told his sister. “You can stay on the phone with me while I go down to the corner to get some croissants.”

“Leonidas!” she shouted. “How dare you! You wouldn’t!”

“You sound like Mama. So scandalized.”

“You’re not really doing that to me, are you?” Aeliana whined.

Leonidas pulled his front door closed behind him.

“We’re going downstairs right now.” He laughed and pushed the door to the outside open. “Now we’re outside. I think it’s going to rain later.”

“You’re horrible.”

“Tell me a story,” he interrupted her protestations as he walked past a handful of storefronts on his way toward the bakery on the corner.

“You’re not a child anymore.”

“Consider it practice.” Leonidas pulled open the front door to the bakery and cradled his phone against his ear to shield some of the noise.

“You’re such a baby,” she grumbled before taking a deep breath. “Once upon a time, there was a little lion named Leonidas.”

“Oh, I like this one.”

“Hush. Anyway, the little lion named Leonidas. His legs were too long and his feet were too big.”

“Hey!” he said over the sounds of his sister’s laughter.

“He had a mane of hair that was always tangled and always in his face.”

“This lion sounds like a fool,” he interrupted, one person away from the counter.

“He is,” she assured him. “Like I said, he was an awkward thing, but he had big dreams that didn’t involve owning a hotel.”

“That’s so true,” he sighed, thinking about the chain of hotels that had made his family all of their money. “Hold on, Aeliana, I’m about to order.”

“I’m gonna make this lion work at a hotel if you’re mean to me.”

“Bonjour. Quatre croissants, s'il vous plaît,” he spoke to the young girl behind the counter.

“Quatre, d’accord.” The girl smiled and dropped four croissants into a brown paper bag.

“Four?” his sister cried in his ear. “You can’t possibly eat four.”

“Not all at once,” he told her, passing a handful of euro to the girl and waiting for his change. She dropped it into his hand. “Merci. Alright, Aeliana, finish this story.”

He dug into the bag and bit the end off one of the croissants. It was still warm, deliciously light and fresh. The bakeries were one of his favorite things about Paris, one of the few things he would miss when he left for Spain.

“This is a good croissant, by the way,” he said.

“The lion worked at a hotel forever the end.”

“You’re horrible at this,” he teased.

“The lion had been bit by a bug when he was young,” Aeliana continued, hopefully not forcing the lion to work at a hotel forever like she’d threatened, “and the effects of the bite made it impossible for the lion to stay in one place for too long. This made the lion’s mama and sisters terribly sad.”

“Aeliana.”

“But they loved him more than anything and wanted him to be happy, so they tried to not complain too much,” she added.

“This is ‘not too much’?” he balked.

“Hold on, someone is at the door.”

He listened to his sister rustle around, and he ate the rest of his croissant by the time he’d gotten back to his flat. He climbed the stairs, and then another voice filled his ear.

“Leonidas. How are you?”

It was his father.

“Patera,” he greeted, dropping the uneaten croissants onto his counter. “Aeliana was just telling me a story.”

“You should call your mama and let her tell you a story.”

“I’ll call her later this week,” he promised.

“She misses you,” his father said. “We all do.”

“I miss everyone too.”

“I’ll let your sister finish her story.”

“Where was I?” Aeliana asked, taking back the phone.

“The lion was traveling,” he told her.

“Right. The little lion had been bit by a bug that made him travel and he roamed the whole world. The lion’s older sister felt like that kind of life had to be terribly lonely, and she was forced to come up with fairy tales to tell her future children as to why their uncle was never around. The end.”

“I will not be an absentee uncle.”

“You cannot be an uncle if you’re not here,” she reminded him.

“I can.” He sighed.

“I don’t know how.”

“Did I stop being your brother when I stepped out of Greece?” Leonidas dumped out his coffee and made a fresh mug.

“No,”