Ricardo
Chapter Eighteen
I am in my office at headquarters, staring at a contract I have already read three times and absorbed none of.
This is not typical.
I do not waste time. I do not indulge distraction. I do not sit behind my desk with a pen between my fingers, thinking about a woman down the hall when there is business in front of me.
Yet here I am.
Julia is just beyond the executive corridor, seated outside Mario’s office as if this is an ordinary morning. As if she did not spend most of yesterday and all of last night in my house. In my bed. In my arms.
No one here would know.
No one would know that I woke with her warm against me, that I fed her breakfast in my bed, that I made her come again with the tray still sitting on the mattress beside us and rain sliding down the windows.
No one would know that I carried her into my shower afterward and washed her hair while she leaned into me, quiet and soft and so thoroughly mine in that moment that I had to close my eyes and remember every reason a man like me should be careful.
No one would know that I dressed her in my sweats because her dress from yesterday was unsuitable.
The memory nearly undoes me.
Julia standing in my bedroom with damp hair and flushed cheeks, wearing a pair of my gray sweatpants rolled twice at the waist and still pooled around her feet.
My sweatshirt hanging off one shoulder, the sleeves swallowing her hands.
She looked young and sleepy and well-fucked, and I had to force myself to turn away before I put her back in my bed and kept her there.
Instead, I drove her to her apartment.
I waited downstairs while she changed.
Then I drove her here, to this building, to this life, to the office where she now sits within reach and beyond it at the same time.
A knock sounds at my door, and before I answer, Mario walks in.
I look up.
My brother closes the door behind him, a file in one hand and his phone in the other. He gives me a quick glance, the kind that sees too much without seeming to linger on anything.
“Busy?” he asks.
“Yes.”
He looks at the contract lying untouched beneath my hand. “With what?”
I set the pen down. “Avoiding interruptions.”
Mario’s mouth twitches. “You’re doing a poor job.”
“I noticed.”
He crosses the office and lowers himself into the chair across from my desk. He looks rested, which means Victoria likely slept, which means his world is temporarily in order. Good. A calm Mario is easier to tolerate.
He sets the file on my desk.
“Valecourt’s documents,” he says.
At that, my attention sharpens properly.
I reach for the file and open it. “Issues?”
“No.” Mario leans back in the chair. “Everything is signed where it should be. Initialed where it should be. Legal will still review before we move it into final processing, but the consent is clean.”
“Good.”
“Valecourt complained.”
Cold disdain for the man flashes through me. “Of course he did.”
“He felt rushed.”
“He was not rushed. He was forced to honor a schedule he agreed to.”
Mario’s eyes lift to mine. “He also mentioned you were less charming than usual.”
“I am devastated,” I say, monotone.
“I thought you might be.”
I turn another page, scanning the execution block. For all his arrogance yesterday, Alistair Valecourt knew better than to make the process difficult.
“He signed,” I say. “His feelings are immaterial.”
“That was my position as well.” Mario studies me for a beat. “Julia handled herself well?”
My fingers still only for a fraction of a second.
I keep my gaze on the page. “Very well.”
“Valecourt can be unpleasant.”
“He was.”
Mario’s expression cools. “How unpleasant?”
“Enough that I corrected him.”
That earns a faint nod. “And Julia?”
“She remained professional.” I close the file and set it back on the desk. “More professional than he deserved.”
Mario absorbs that, his face unreadable.
“She has good instincts,” he says.
“She does.”
“She notices details most people miss.”
“Yes.”
“And she does not get flustered easily.”
I think of Julia flushed beneath me, breathless, laughing into my mouth, glaring at me over a breakfast pastry while wearing nothing but my sheets.
“No,” I say evenly. “She does not.”
Mario’s gaze narrows slightly.
I meet it without expression.
There are many things my brother does well. Silence is one of them. He uses it the way other men use threats. He lets it sit in a room until the weaker man feels compelled to fill it.
I am not the weaker man. He knows this, so he doesn’t bother.
Mario’s gaze does not move from my face. “I noticed you drove Julia in this morning.”
There it is.
I lean back in my chair, the file still open between us. “She left her car here yesterday when we went to the club to get Valecourt’s documents signed. She never made it back into the office.”
Mario’s expression does not change. “So you were simply being courteous by picking her up this morning and bringing her in.”
“Yes,” I say. “I am a very courteous man.”
“Hm.”
The sound is mild.
I close the file.
Mario rests one ankle over the opposite knee, studying me with the same detached patience he brings to a negotiation when he already knows the other side is lying.
“Does your son know you are sleeping with her?” he asks.
I do not blink.
There is no point denying it. Mario is too astute for that, and I respect him too much to insult us both.
“No.”
He simply waits.
I keep my voice even. “We decided not to tell him quite yet.”
Mario absorbs that response.
“When will you tell him?”
“When we decide it is time to tell him,” I say. “And not a moment sooner.”
My brother’s gaze cools. “Careful.”
“I am merely issuing a reminder that certain things are not family business.”
“My brother is sleeping with my assistant, who is my nephew's good friend,” he says, tilting his head and watching me.
“And she happens to be the daughter of a very powerful and influential judge who does not like us and has made it very clear that he intends her to marry that politician back east. Pray tell, brother, how is this not family business?”
Put that way, of course, he is not wrong.
It irritates me.
“Her father does not own her,” I say tightly.
“No,” Mario agrees. “But he has influence. A bench. Political friends. A bruised ego. Men have done more damage with less. Then there's the politician.”
“He is no longer in the picture,” I say.
“Are you sure he's aware of this?” Mario questions.
My jaw clenches.
Mario notices, of course.
“Careful,” he says again, quieter this time. “That look is exactly why I bring this up.”
I say nothing.
Mario leans forward, forearms resting on his thighs now. “More than politics, I am concerned for family. Dante is not ignorant.”
“I am aware of my son’s intelligence.”
“Then do not become so blinded by this that you forget it.”
“I have not.”
“He knows you,” Mario continues. “He knows Julia. Perhaps better than you think. If something is changing between the two of you, he will feel it before either of you says a word.”
“I know that.”
“Good.”
I hold his stare. “We are not hiding this because we are ashamed.”
“I did not say you were.”
“We are taking care with it.”
“Then make sure that care does not become delay for your own convenience.”
The words strike closer than I care to admit.
I look toward the window, then back at him. “You think I would do that?”
“I think,” he says, leaning back in his chair, “that you have wanted very little for yourself for a very long time, Ricardo. Not since Dante’s mother. So perhaps you might find yourself blind to certain aspects.”
My eyes narrow.
There are few men alive who could speak to me this way and remain breathing.
Mario is one of them.
“This is nothing like that,” I say tightly. “I am not a boy in college, enamored over some girl.”
Mario does not retreat.
“No. You are a grown man with more power, more money, more enemies, and far more to lose.”
My mouth tightens.
“And Julia is not some girl,” he continues. “She is a woman with her own history, her own connections, and her own wounds. If you make a mess of this, it will not be a youthful mistake that money can fix.”
“I have no intention of making a mess of it.”
“No one ever has any intention of making a mess.” His gaze holds mine. “I am saying this because it needs to be said. If you want her, then want her with your eyes all the way open.”
The edge in Mario’s voice is still there, but beneath it, I hear something else: concern.
Not as don. As my brother.
I look down at the file on my desk, then close it with more care than necessary.
“She is afraid of hurting Dante,” I say.
Mario says nothing.
“She was thinking of him this morning. Before herself. Before me. Before whatever this is becoming.” I look up at him. “And I do not know if that makes me feel better or worse.”
Mario’s expression turns into one of consideration.
“She loves him,” he says.
“Yes. She does.”
“And you are concerned that love will make her retreat.”
The fact that he understands so quickly irritates me again, but less than before.
“I am concerned,” I say slowly, “that she will decide the easiest way to protect everyone is to deny herself.” My jaw tightens. “She has had a lot of practice doing that.”
Mario leans back, his gaze steady on mine.
“And you want to make the decision for her before she can.”
My eyes narrow. “No.”
“Are you sure?”
I do not answer quickly enough.
He nods, but there's no judgment in his expression, only recognition.
“I understand the impulse,” he says. “More than most. But if she is as practiced as you say at denying herself, then taking the choice from her will only teach her that you are another man who believes he knows better.”
The words hit me exactly where he intended them to.
I look away.
Mario’s voice lowers. “Julia may be gentler than the women we are used to,” he says, “but she is not weak. Do not make decisions for her as if she is fragile.”
My fingers still on the desk.
“I do not think she is weak.”
“No,” Mario says. “But you may want to protect her so badly that you forget to let her stand beside you.”
I do not answer at once.