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“Are you and Darcy going to get ice cream tomorrow while I’m at work?”
He nods again, a smile on his face. I can feel Lorenzo watching us, eating slowly as he takes in the scene in front of him.
When dinner is over, I get up and start to clear the table. Lorenzo gets up at the same moment, taking my plate as I reach for Niki’s, and I see that Lorenzo ate every bite of his food.
“You didn’t have to eat it all just to make me feel good,” I murmur, trying to get the dishes from his grasp. Seeing him helping clean up both feels impossibly strange, and tugs at my heart all at the same time.
“I enjoyed it. Is that so hard to believe?” He shrugs, speaking quietly, and I raise an eyebrow
“Yes.”
“It shouldn’t be.” He takes the dishes and sets them in the sink. “Do you need to do anything with Niki?”
“Get him ready for bed.” I pause. “You don’t have to do this.” I’d expected him to leave, and I’m unsure why he hasn’t. There must be some conversation he wants to have when it’s just the two of us, after Niki is asleep, and that makes my stomach twist with nerves. I’m worried it has something to do with the cop, and the end of my work for him.
“I’m fine.” He nods towards the table. “Take care of your brother.”
I take a breath, biting back the argument that springs automatically to my lips, and go to get Niki.
It doesn’t take long to get him in his pajamas and in bed, after all the excitement. I tuck him in, leaving his nightlight, and go back down the hall to find Lorenzo at the sink with his shirtsleeves rolled up, in the process of washing the dishes.
“Lorenzo.” I walk to the sink, reaching for a dishtowel. “You don’t need to do this.”
“No, I don’t,” he says mildly, but he doesn’t stop. “You made me dinner, I think it’s the polite thing to do.”
“I can’t believe you ate it. Lorenzo Campano, in my kitchen, eating freezer-section garlic bread and spaghetti with jar sauce, and drinking grocery-store wine.” I shake my head. “What is going on?”
He looks at me, his expression unreadable. “What’s going on with Niki’s teacher?”
The moment he asks the question, he seems to realize it was out of line. He blinks, as if catching himself, and shakes his head. “I’m sorry, that’s none of my business.”
It isn’t. It isn’t his business at all. But I look up at him, handsome and slightly disheveled, as he washes dishes, both looking entirely out of place here and somehow as if he belongs in my kitchen all at once, and I want to tell him. The only person I can talk to is Darcy, and I don’t even tell her everything, because I don’t want to worry her more than she already does. She’s taken me and Niki on like a responsibility that isn’t hers, and I’m always wary of adding more to it.
“His English teacher has complained a handful of times over the last year about the fact that Niki doesn’t speak. She wants him put in a class with the kids who have learning disabilities. But he doesn’t. Have a learning disability, I mean. Nothing has changed about his grades or his speed at learning, or anything else other than not talking. I don’t want him held back because of it.”
“And she’s still causing problems?” Lorenzo’s expression is blank, and I can’t tell what he’s thinking. It’s endlessly frustrating.
I shake my head, wiping off a plate. “Lately, she’s eased up. Therapy has been helping Niki learn other ways to communicate while he still doesn’t speak. That’s why—” I break off, but Lorenzo already knows what I was going to say next.
“Why you needed Altiere. Why you need the money.”
I nod. “Why I need to keep working for you.”
He goes silent for several long moments, as he rinses off the dishes and hands them to me. Almost without thinking, he reaches for my hip to move me aside as he reaches to drop forks into the other side of the sink, and as his hand touches me, I feel myself suck in a sharp breath.
It feels as if everything goes still for a moment. The heat of his hand sinks through my leggings, and he goes still next to me, but he doesn’t take his hand away. I feel his fingers curl against my hip, a slight pressure, and I turn towards him before I can stop myself.
Lorenzo’s expression is still unreadable as he looks down at me, but his hand is still resting on my hip, his fingertips against the sharp line of bone there. I’m acutely aware of the strength of his hands, of the fragility of my own body, of how easily he could move me, lift me, break me.
I reach up, slowly, before I can stop myself. My hand brushes against the front of his shirt, fingers curling into the opening there, above the button. I feel my fingertips brush against the light dusting of hair there, against warm skin, and the sound that Lorenzo makes is very nearly a growl.
He turns me sharply, making me gasp, his sudden movement telling me how much he must have wanted this, how long he must have been thinking about it. My fingertips are still pressed to his chest, the lightest of touches, but it’s as if it ignited something feral in him, something desperate.
His fingers tug at the band holding my hair up in the loose knot atop my head, pulling it free. Long blonde hair cascades over my shoulders, falling around my face, and I have just long enough to feel his fingers curling into the weight of it before he pulls my head back, and his mouth is on mine.
I gasp, the sound turning into a soft, keening moan as his tongue slides into my mouth, his hard body trapping me against the counter. His hand on my hip pulls my tank top up, sliding under the fabric, his fingers curling around the bare skin of my waist as he kisses me hungrily. I can feel him pressed against my thigh, thick and rigid and eager for me, and the groan that I feel vibrate against my lips tells me exactly how much he wants me.
“Mila.” He breathes my name against my ear as he breaks the kiss, his mouth dragging down the column of my throat, licking and kissing as I try to catch my breath. His hand rises to my breast, cupping it through the thin fabric of my tank top, the bralette that I have on underneath it hardly a barrier. I’m aching for him, wet and wanting, and as he kisses me again, it’s all I can do not to beg for more.
