I want Rose back, and I want her now!“Tell me where Rose—the English woman is. I heard she was with you.”
The man shrugged. “She ain’t goin’ yet.”
Dread curdled in Ben’s gut. “Why not?”
“She’s helping Vinny wit’ his po-tree.”
“Po-tree?” Ben stammered.
Guiseppe nodded once. “She’s helpin’ ’im write po-tree for a dame.”
Ben’s jaw dropped. “Rose is helping Vinny write poetry?”
“Ain’t that what I said? You stupid or something, North?”
Perhaps he was, or maybe losing his mind, because there was no way Rose Waverly was helping a low-level thug write romantic poems—
“Hello, Ben!” He looked around the wall of Giuseppe’s bulk and saw her seated at a low table, waving broadly. Vincenzo Vacarro sat at her side, hunched over with his face twisted in concentration. “Have you already met Mr. Vacarro? Isn’t he delightful?”
Ben pressed his eyes shut and focused on pushing air in and out of his lungs. Was he still sleeping, dreaming that the impossible beauty had tamed these beasts?
“Rose,” he croaked, “you need to come with me.”
She lifted a hand and waved off his statement, returning her concentration to what he now saw was a paper in front of her. “What are her eyes like?” she asked Vinny.
Vinny looked up and squinted for a moment before his face lit up. “Like the East River.”
Rose brought her pen back to the paper. “And her hair?”
“Like the sunset,” Vinny said with finality. “It’s all… shiny.”
The corners of Rose’s lips curved into a smile just short of adoration. “That’s lovely, Vicenzo. And how would you like to end it?”
“Do she wanna come back to my place and—” Vinny cut himself off and eyed Rose before speaking again, extremely slowly, as though he were selecting each word after a painful decision-making process. “Um, give me a… good time?”
Ben tried to dart around Giuseppe at this, but the man growled and moved to the side, blocking him.
Rose scratched her chin for a moment. “What if we said, ‘If you are amenable, I would delight in taking you for a turn around the park.’”
Giuseppe called over his shoulder, not breaking eye contact with Ben. “Go wit’ what she said, Vinny.”
With a nod of approval from Vinny, Rose scrawled the remaining text on the page, folded it, and handed it to the man with a flourish. “Remember to be a gentleman. Praise how lovely she looks and how fortunate you are to be in her company. Ladies want to know that their presence is desirable.”
A bolt of discomfort shot through him. At least Vinny was attempting to be gentlemanly, whereas Ben had been rude and dismissive of Rose’s presence from the start. What would his mother think if she could see how he’d been acting towards her?
“Rose,” he repeated, “we need to leave immediately.”
She ascended to her feet like a queen, fixing him with a frigid glare. “I’m fine here on my own.”
He stepped closer, but Giuseppe stopped him with a meaty hand on the shoulder. “She don’t wanna go wit’ you, North.”
Good lord, the Vacarro brothers were protecting Rose fromhim?“It’s late, and do you know how to get back from here?” He saw the tips of her ears flushing even from a distance.
“We can take ‘er home,” Vinny suggested.
Rose nodded. “Yes, Ben. Vicenzo and Giuseppe can take me—”
“No,” Ben snarled as he made his way past Giuseppe to reach Rose. “We’re leaving, now.”
