Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Deuce
Several days have passed since the Shitter Shootout, the term I’ve adopted when referring to the morning Valentina tried to shoot me with my pants down.
The woman is pure evil. Knifing me after we slept together as teens wasn’t enough apparently.
She tried to take me out as an adult in the most uncivilized way possible.
“Would you quit grumbling about it? Jesus. You can’t let things go. You’re still pissed I knifed you, even though we talked it out and it was no one’s fault.” Valentina throws her hands in the air and I can’t see the damn car to my right at the four-way stop.
I glance in the mirror and see a gray sedan two cars behind me.
The guy driving has a purple Angels cap pulled low and hiding his face.
I accelerate through the four-way stop when it’s my turn and keep an eye on the rearview mirror.
Valentina, oblivious to everything but the weak point she’s trying to make, keeps running her mouth.
“No one’s fault?” I snort.
Valentina twists in her seat, looking prettier than any woman has a right to look.
Her hair is slicked back in a ponytail like usual, but she pulled out wispy pieces in the front that keep getting caught in her red lip gloss.
It’s distracting as fuck and I’ve been trying not to look at her all day.
Every time I do, I find my gaze locked on her mouth, visualizing all kinds of things I shouldn’t.
“It was a misunderstanding!” Valentina shouts, voice all raspy and sexy as hell.
I roll my eyes and make another turn. Yep, a few seconds later, the gray sedan makes the same turn. Huh. Time to take a tour of the outlying streets of Heaven. At the next intersection I turn left, away from my house. If Valentina notices that we’re not headed home, she doesn’t say anything.
“Misunderstandings are for simple things like, oh, I forgot to pick up dinner on the way home like you asked me to. Misunderstandings don’t end in one person lying on the ground in a pool of blood!”
She waves away my argument like I’m being ridiculous. “Clearly, you were fine. You’re making too big a deal of things.”
“I have things I’d like to say, but I’m currently trying to get rid of a possible tail, so if you could fucking focus, that’d be great,” I snap.
Valentina instantly sinks low in her seat and then swivels left and right, trying to get her eyes on the tail. “Gray sedan?”
“Yup.”
She reaches into the glovebox of my car and pulls out a gun.
“Jesus, V. Put that away! We don’t even know if he’s following us.”
She doesn’t answer, keeping the gun in her lap as she tracks the guy’s turn to a different street.
I keep going, watching to see if he reappears, but he doesn’t.
I keep weaving through streets for another ten minutes before heading for home.
Valentina puts the gun away when we pull into the driveway.
“Do you miss it?” I ask her as she closes the glovebox.
She looks at me, gray-blue eyes clear and intelligent. “Do I miss fearing for my safety at every moment of every day?”
I shrug. “You were good at it.”
She nods, that slip of hair getting caught in the corner of her mouth. She tugs it free like she hasn’t just launched a thousand butterflies in my gut. I’ve discovered that the attraction to Valentina is still there. Full force. I’m just older and wiser now and therefore refuse to act on it.
“Thanks,” she says dryly, like taking a compliment from me is foreign.
“I miss being able to bark orders and have people jump to carry them out. But I don’t miss the fear.
Or the times I had to enforce things with violence.
” She kicks the exploding binder at her feet.
“As much as this event is sucking the life out of me, I’m kind of enjoying it. ”
“Probably because you’re getting to bark orders at people, just like old times.”
She holds up a finger. “Just without the violence.”
“And without the cursing.”
She winces. “Most of the time.”
“Valentina,” I chastise.
“Deuce,” she lobs right back in the same tone.
We both get out of the car and head inside the house. The gray sedan is nowhere to be seen, so I’m probably being paranoid. She drops the binder on the kitchen table with a loud thud.
“Why don’t you take a long bath or something while I make dinner?”
It’s a peace offering, one I don’t feel like making, but having her out of my way would be nice.
That way I don’t have to look at her lips or her smooth skin or the way her ankles look in flat sandals.
Yes, I know how ridiculous that sounds. I’m lusting after Valentina’s ankles.
It’s just so weird to not see her in kick-ass heels.
I feel like I’m getting to see the more relaxed version of Valentina.
The one she might have become if Bettina hadn’t been the one to adopt her.
“I hope you get a paper cut on your tongue,” she says with a comical lack of heat.
Then she flounces out of the room and I hear her run up the stairs to the guest bathroom.
A minute later, the water’s running and my brain tries to conjure up a naked Valentina.
I wonder if she looks the same as when she was seventeen.
I highly doubt it. I don’t look the same, so it stands to reason she won’t either.
Fuck, what if she’s gotten prettier? A man might not survive that.
The chicken, onion, and bell peppers I’ve chopped are sizzling in the pan while I daydream. I probably added too much seasoning to it, but I like my fajitas spicy. I look out the window and realize the side gate is open. I never leave the side gate open.
A loud thump comes from the floor almost directly above my head.
Alarm runs through my veins in an instant.
I sprint for the gun I’ve stowed under the living room couch since Valentina moved in.
With that in hand, I run up the stairs, moving quickly but silently.
I stop at the top and listen, not hearing another noise.
All kinds of scenarios run through my brain, but the biggest one is that some asshole got the drop on Valentina while she was showering.
Without wasting another second, I lift my leg and kick open the bathroom door, expecting to have to shoot some clown sent by whomever has tried to take over the Barzettis.
The door hits the far wall with a bang and Valentina screams. I enter the bathroom, gun drawn and barking orders. At whom? I don’t fucking know.
No one’s here.
Well, except for Valentina.
She’s definitely still here, which is great news.
Except she’s on the floor. Completely naked and sprawled like she fell.
She blinks and gives her head a shake before yelling at me again.
“What the fuck, Deuce?”
Her long legs are wet, one is covered in green slime, and dear heavens, her breasts are magnificent.
Definitely not the same as when she was seventeen.
These breasts are full and heavy and tipped with tight tan nipples.
My gaze takes in the hair between her legs that’s perfectly manicured to a landing strip, right before she slams her hands over the area with a gasp.
I slap my own cheek just to bring myself back to the problem at hand. Is there an intruder? Why is Valentina on the floor?
I do one more sweep of the bathroom, reaching into the shower to turn the water off. There’s billows of steam everywhere and it’s making me irritable. I grab a towel off the rack on the wall and throw it at her. She covers herself, but there’s still miles of leg on display.
Valentina lifts one of them and kicks me right in the shin.
“Ow!” I reach down and grab my leg, placing the gun on the counter by the sink. “What the hell is that for?”
“Why are you busting into my shower, you freak?” she shouts right back.
“I heard a thump!”
“I fell!”
“Are you okay?!” I’m still yelling. I clear my throat and try again in a normal voice. “Are you okay?”
She sighs like she’s pissed, but I see her cheeks have taken on the hue of a ripe summer tomato. “Yes. I’m fine. I just dazed myself.”
I’m feeling a little fucking dazed myself. I let go of my shin and lean back against the counter. I have to cross my legs at the ankle and hope she can’t see the erection that’s absolutely inappropriate and yet is still very much there in the small room with us.
“What happened?”
She waves a hand at her green leg. “I was trying out the sugar scrub Lottie gave me and I lost my balance with my foot on the counter.”
Valentina was using sugar scrub? Huh. I didn’t realize mob bosses cared about soft skin.
“Can you do that with clothes on next time?” I whine, thinking about the fact that I now have rated-R visual evidence in my head that’s going to haunt me the rest of the time Valentina lives here with me.
She gets her feet under her and stands, managing to wrap the towel around her and not flash me. “No. The whole point is to scrub your whole body.”
I take her in, the disheveled hair dancing around her strong shoulders, the wet legs, the body barely hidden by the towel.
She’s a mess and yet has never looked more beautiful to me.
What would it be like to be able to touch her?
To unwrap that towel and take her into my arms?
Would she go willingly? Would her spine go soft as she melts into me?
Or would she dig her nails into my skin, making me work for every inch she gives?
“Did you?” I ask, voice low as I push off the counter. I need to get the hell out of here.
“What?” she rasps back, gaze on my chest.
“Scrub your whole body?” I have to know for some reason.
Valentina bites her bottom lip, and I don’t think it’s part of her usual act. “Yes. Well, all except this one leg.” She holds out her arm, her voice now a whisper. “See?”
My hand is in the air before my brain registers it’s moving.
My fingertips skim the top of her arm from wrist to above the elbow, silky-smooth skin the whole way.
Goose bumps rise up behind my fingers. My eyes rejoice in seeing them, like it’s a visual tell that she likes my touch.
That she’s as desperate for me as I am for her.
That this tension between us is not just one-sided.
Her body bends, softens, until she’s leaning into me, a waft of flowers and lime puffing up between us.
I’m all too aware of the thin towel between us.
How easy it would be to tug it and get it to fall to the floor.
She’s soft and warm and smells so fucking good.
Reminds me of how overwhelmed I felt when I was seventeen.
Everything about her then sent my head into the clouds and now is no different.
Her breasts press against me, a rapid rise and fall that tells me she’s breathing hard.
I dip my head ever so slightly, the scent of her shampoo luring me closer.
Her head cocks back, her gaze trailing up my chest, my neck, and then to my chin before locking on mine.
Her pupils are blown wide. I have a feeling she’s seeing the same in mine.
A loud wail interrupts…whatever this is.
We both jolt. Valentina darts away from me and grabs my gun before lunging out the door. It hits me at once. It’s the smoke alarm.
Fuck!
Dinner.
I run right past her, down the stairs, and into the kitchen where the pan that held our fajitas is charred and smoking like a chimney.
I grab a dish towel and throw the whole pan outside in the backyard where I turn on the hose and spray it down.
The water hits the overheated metal with a hiss.
Valentina leans in the doorway, gun out of sight, cocky smirk back in place.
“Way to burn the house down, ciuccio.”
I stare at a spot over her shoulder. I don’t dare look directly at her. She’s like a siren song, luring me in to my own destruction.
“I hope that sugar scrub turns your leg permanently green.”
She laughs and turns away while I continue to water the smoking pan. Instead of thinking about her naked body or the moment that just happened in the bathroom, I take out my phone and order a pizza delivery.
I should know better.
All paths that lead to Valentina also lead to death and possible dismemberment.
I’d do well to leave her the hell alone.
And from now on, I will.