Chapter 4 #2
She looks behind me, which told me more than the answer itself. “That depends how generously you define the word.”
Interesting.
“I didn’t think I would see you again.”
The fact that she had noticed I was gone pleased me more than was reasonable. “I’m sorry I disappeared without notice. I had to go home for an engagement.” I looked down at the phone in her hand. “Why don’t you give me your phone number so this doesn’t happen again.”
“Smooth.” She sat a little straighter.
“I’m trying. Did it work?”
Before she could reply, a man’s voice cut in behind me.
“Hey, sorry, the line was ridiculous?—”
I turned.
Tall, neat, forgettable. Academic sort. Harmless face. Bad timing.
I hated him on the spot.
He stopped when he saw me standing there and glanced between us with the wary expression of a man realizing he had walked into a conversation already carrying more charge than he liked.
Emily cleared her throat. “Daniel, this is Pietro. Pietro, Daniel.”
I inclined my head just enough to be polite.
Daniel held the two coffees in his hands, clearly trying to decide whether I was leaving.
I was not.
“I was just saying hello,” I said, because technically that was true.
Daniel looked at Emily. “Right.”
There was a brief, uncomfortable silence.
Then Emily, who looked faintly horrified by all of it, reached for one of the cups. “Thanks.”
Daniel handed her the coffee, though his eyes stayed on me in a way that suggested he had understood rather more than I would have preferred.
Then, to my irritation, he sat down.
“Well, Pietro,” he said with the strained politeness of a man trying very hard to pretend he was unbothered, “it was nice meeting you. We were just?—”
I tapped the tip of my cane lightly against the floor. “Excellent. I’ll join you for a drink.”
Before either of them could object, I turned, lifted an empty chair from the neighboring table without bothering to ask the students sitting there, and placed it beside Emily rather than across from her.
Close enough that my thigh brushed hers when I sat down.
Close enough that her soft floral perfume reached me, subtle and clean and far more distracting than it had any right to be.
“Pietro,” Emily said, and there was a warning in her voice now.
I ignored it.
Daniel gave her a helpless look, and to my astonishment she rested her hand lightly on my thigh.
I was almost certain she did it without thinking, some instinctive pacifying gesture meant to stop whatever she feared I was about to do. Even so, the touch burned straight through me, sending heat down my spine in a way that was both inconvenient and impossible to misunderstand.
I knew she felt it too, from the way her fingers tensed before she tried to pull her hand back. I covered it with mine before she could.
The movement was quiet enough that Daniel might have missed it if he had not already been watching closely. His gaze dropped briefly to where my hand rested over hers, then lifted again.
He took a slow drink of his coffee.
“Is there a problem?” I asked.
Emily answered before he could. “There is no problem. Daniel and I were discussing teaching material. He’s also a teaching assistant.”
“Ah.” I let my gaze drift back to him. “That explains it. A working session over coffee. In public. Very wholesome.”
Emily’s eyes widened a fraction at that, and Daniel let out a short laugh that held more resignation than humor.
“Well,” he said, glancing at Emily with something almost amused beneath the disappointment, “I suppose that explains why Mark never stood a chance.”
Emily stared at him. “Mark was never standing anywhere.”
I turned my head toward her. “Who is Mark?”
The question came out more evenly than I felt.
Daniel actually laughed.
Emily closed her eyes briefly, as if appealing to a God who had long since grown tired of her. “No one.”
No one, I repeated inwardly, filing the name away with immediate and profound dislike. I needed to know who Mark was. Not because I cared, obviously. Certainly not because some primitive part of my brain was already assessing whether he was huntable. That would have been insane.
I was not insane.
Probably.
Perhaps I should have called Matteo for advice.
The thought alone was enough to irritate me.
At Christmas, I stood in a room with my father, Luca Montanari, Matteo Genovese, and my uncle Hoka, four men who controlled enough of the American underworld to reshape it at will, and listened while they spoke with unnerving seriousness about falling in love at first sight.
They had called it the mafia curse, the one true chance at redemption, and I had mocked them as aging sentimental fools.
And yet.
I looked back at Emily, at her hand still trapped beneath mine, at the faint color in her cheeks and the sharp awareness in her eyes, and felt something in me with quiet, dangerous certainty.
Jesus Christ.
Was this what they had meant?
Daniel looked between us one last time, then let out a breath that sounded halfway between resignation and reluctant amusement.
“Right,” he said, pushing his chair back. “I think this is probably my cue to stop pretending I’m part of this conversation.”
“Daniel,” Emily said, her tone sharpening with mortification.
He offered her a small, apologetic smile. “It’s fine. Really. I’m not in the habit of competing with men who look like they have opinions on dueling.”
That, at least, almost made me like him.
He picked up his coffee and glanced at me. “Nice meeting you, Pietro.”
“It was educational,” I said.
His mouth twitched. “I’m sure.”
Then he nodded once to Emily and left, taking his jacket with him and whatever remained of this absurd little triangle along with it.
The silence he left behind was brief but loaded.
Emily looked down at our hands, then very deliberately at me. “You can let go now.”
I released her at once.
That seemed to catch her off guard, though she hid it quickly behind a cool look that sat oddly with the color still high in her cheeks.
“What,” she asked, “was that?”
I considered lying, decided against it, and said, “An error in judgment, apparently.”
Her brows lifted. “Apparently?”