Chapter Seven #2
“You’ve been on your feet all day.”
“You were the one falling asleep at the table.”
“Everyone else left almost two hours before. Bored shitless after forty-five minutes. I don’t sleep much anyway,” he added with a shrug.
“Really? I love sleep. And pre-sleep. And post-sleep. Basically, I really like being in my bed.”
“Yeah?” he asked, shooting me a look from the side that had my heart swooping and my sex tightening. And now we were both thinking about other things that might happen in my bed.
“Why—” I started, having to stop to clear my throat when it sounded a little husky, “Why don’t you sleep?”
“Never really have. Parents used to fight a lot. The building was always loud all night too. Just got used to not getting much sleep. Three hours is plenty; toss in a twenty-minute nap here or there, and I can fucking take on the world.”
“Consider me appropriately impressed. I’m pretty grumpy if I don’t get five or six hours at least. Though, I’ve been getting less pretty consistently since Thanksgiving. Between this and my real job, I’ve been sacrificing sleep.”
“What’s your real job?”
“A narrator.”
“A narrator,” he repeated, brows pinched.
“I narrate audiobooks.”
“Yeah? What kind of books?”
“Mostly steamy romance, though I won’t turn down a good thriller or cozy mystery every now and again.”
He shot me another of those smirks of his, this one dripping in sex appeal. “Steamy, huh?”
“Yep,” I said, popping the p, ready for the usual comments about romance being low-brow or steamy books being the same as porn. I had arguments prepared for both instances. I just really didn’t want to have to argue with Venezio.
“You do both parts?” he asked.
“That depends.”
“On?”
“The author’s preference. But mostly, the author’s budget. Two narrators cost more, so some only have me doing the whole book.”
He nodded at that, making me like him even more that he didn’t have something negative to say about the genre I mostly worked in.
“Never listened to an audiobook.”
“Honestly, me either. Until people started suggesting I get a job narrating them. Now I’m pretty obsessed, though. It’s so hard to find time to actually sit down and read. But I can pop on an audiobook when I’m shopping, cleaning, taking a walk, whatever.”
“Maybe I should give one a try. What’s the ‘steamiest’ one you’ve narrated?” he asked, pinning me with those cool eyes of his and making my mind go completely blank for a moment.
“Oh, um, there was one called Dancing with the Devil that was really steamy.”
“What’s it about?”
I mean, it was incredibly thin on the plot and heavy on the steam. “It’s about a sweet, innocent woman and the dirty-talking mob boss she ends up with.”
“Mob boss, huh?” he asked, shooting me a strange, bemused smile that I didn’t know him well enough to place. “Maybe I’ll check that one out,” he said, wiping his hands of pizza grease, then getting back to rolling coins.
The conversation came in small bursts after that with us mostly just being comfortable in each other’s company as we rolled coins and counted bills until we had a tally.
“That’s depressing as fuck,” he decided, echoing the thoughts that had been in my mind.
“A couple more toys!” I said, forcing more enthusiasm into my voice than I felt as I brought everything into the safe hidden in the back. It was too late to go to the bank now, and I really didn’t feel like carrying heavy coins all the way back to my apartment.
“How do you do that?” Venezio asked when I made my way back out.
“Do what?” I asked, taking the last swig of my beer.
“Stay positive when shit is looking bleak?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I guess it’s from my mom.
She somehow managed to do it even when we were living in shelters on and off for years.
I mean, I know it was for my sake. But I think it helped her cope with the whole situation too.
It seems healthier to focus on the good than wallow in the bad. ”
“Yeah, probably,” Venezio agreed, cleaning up our dinner mess. “You heading out?”
“I have to get some work done before bed.” And maybe get more serious about finding a good gown, now that I knew I had a date.
“I got forty minutes still. I’ll walk you to the subway.”
“You don’t need to do that.”
“Still gonna do it,” he said, stopping to grab his coat and still somehow beating me to the door so he could pull it open.
“Are you going to bully someone into letting me sit down again?”
“If I need to.”
I turned and locked the door, knowing he had his own key, then fell into step with him as we walked through the city, trying to avoid the patches of black ice hiding in the shadows of the streetlights.
We’d done spectacularly well until, as I’d been admiring an intricate Santa’s Workshop window display, my foot caught a slippery spot, and I was sliding.
I swear my belly flew out ahead of me as my arms and legs flailed for purchase.
There was one dizzying moment when I was sure I was going to crash down onto the filthy sidewalk.
Then strong arms slid around me, yanking me forward, pulling me up against a solid chest.
“You’re alright,” Venezio said, his voice making his chest vibrate, which in turn, rumbled into my own. I sucked in a steadying breath, only managing to catch that coffee scent that seemed to cling to him.
My hands had grabbed the sides of his leather jacket when I’d landed on him, and the warmth of him chased the chill out of my bones.
I was suddenly hyper-aware of Venezio’s arms wrapped tightly around me, holding me firmly against his chest. And, God, it felt even better than it had in my fantasies.
For a guy with a swimmer’s type build, he was surprisingly strong.
“You okay?”
His voice was a caress over my skin, melting in, making a shiver course through me.
My gaze lifted, our eyes locking.
One beat.
Two.
His eyes dipped to my lips, and when they returned to mine, they were heavy-lidded.
My heart stammered.
Warmth flooded my chest.
Interest pooled in my core.
My lips parted, a silent invitation.
Venezio’s head dipped slightly.
Then a cop car blazed past, sirens screaming, blue and red lights flashing.
We broke apart.
“Uh, well, thanks for saving me,” I said, waving back toward the subway steps, “and for walking me.”
“I’m walking you down.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“It is,” he said, tucking his hands in his pockets. I wanted so badly to think he did so to keep from reaching out for me, and not just because it was freezing out.
Either way, though, he stayed one step behind me as we made it down to the subway platform where a busker’s voice bled through the tunnel—the saddest version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” I’d ever heard, each note echoing like regret in an empty home.
I was thankful when the train screamed into the station with a frigid gust of air because I was pretty sure if I had to stand and listen to the singer for another moment, I would start crying.
“Thanks again,” I said to Venezio before rushing into the train and sitting down.
My gaze couldn’t help but track Venezio, though, as he moved closer to the busker, casually dropping cash into the open guitar case as he passed.
He was gone before the train shot away from the platform.
But he was still with me.
In the flickering pulse in my chest and throat.
In the deep ache in my core.
Maybe asking him to be my date hadn’t been such a good idea after all.
Oh well.
It was too late now.