One second we’re staring into each other’s eyes – no, each other’ssouls– and the next I’m looking at the back of Scarlett's head as she talks to a man in front of her.
It takes me a few seconds to fully register the bearded man as the guy who was talking to Gerard. Except now, he’s got a pleasant smile on his face instead of the scowl he was giving us a few minutes ago.
I didn’t even notice that Scarlett wiggled out of my grip, and my arm moved around her shoulder, pulling her so close to me she might as well be in my lap as her hand rests on my thigh like it belongs there now.
“Scarlett,tesoro, what are you doing here?” the man asks, planting his arms across his chest. He has a playful smile on his lips. Scarlett barks out a laugh and it’s a little strangled as she squeezes my thigh again.
“Just hanging out with my boyfriend,” she says, glancing over to me with ‘don’t mess this up’ eyes. Oh,I’mthe boyfriend. Fantastic. “Right, boyfriend?”
I press my lips into a line, trying not to laugh at the absurdity. “Of course, girlfriend,” I say lovingly. “I’d do anything to make my little sugar-plum Scar-Scar happy.”
She nudges me in the ribs, murmuring, “Reign it in, loverboy.”
I look back at this dude who somehow knows Scarlett and he looks at me for a second. In fact, he looks atallof me. He looks from my blonde hair to the neckline of my shirt, right down to the Rolex on my wrist. He even takes a little step back, no doubt scouting for the kind of shoes I’m wearing.
“Well,” he starts, ignoring me and turning back to Scarlett. “I’ll let you guys get back to it. Ah, young love.”
Scarlett smiles at me, her eyes squinting before turning back to the guy. “Yep. So young and so in love,” she says sweetly.
The guy nods and the second he turns back around to stand next to our guy, she practically leaps away from me, grabbing her stuff she left on her side of the table, almost leaving me behind as she rushes out of the door.
I run after her, and I catch her panting behind the building. Her back is pressed against the wall, chest heaving as she clutches her black bag to her chest. I stand in front of her, my arms flapping at my sides, words failing me.
“Jesus. What the hell was all that about?” I ask breathlessly. When my breathing starts to return to normal, I ask, “Whowasthat?”
She gulps, looking down the alleyway we’ve ended up in and then back at me, her brown eyes wide with concern. “That was Gio. My uncle.”
“He knows we were going to check out the guy, right? Maybe he just wanted to make sure we were doing the right thing,” I suggest. I mean, why else would he be there? The guy he was talking to is clearly a suspect and her uncle must be looking out for her.
She shakes her head. “I never told him I was coming.”
Oh, fuck.
17
Scarlett
I’ve been trying to piece together what we saw at the restaurant for the last four days. Why the hell would Gio be there talking to him? When I asked him about the jewellery store, he seemed a little closed off about it and when I told him that the guy was pretty much unrecognisable other than his posture, he didn’t encourage me to go any further.
Gio has already lost so much in his life; his wife and his close friend. I can understand why he wouldn’t want to get directly involved in the investigation, but it’s his brother, hisfamily.
I know he’s always wanted to be a more prominent member of the business, but I thought the role he had now was good for him. It’s given him the creative freedom he wouldn’t get in other jobs. He seemed comfortable with it. It just doesn’t make sense to me that he would try and mess this up and lie to me. Especially with how consoling our family has been with everything that went down.
I’ve thought about calling him, but what could I say? He doesn’t know that I’m investigating and if he is working with Gerard, it’s better if I don’t know. That could put us all in a terrible position.
I tried rationalising it with Evan, but he was no help. He’s such a pessimist sometimes. Or he redirects the ideas I come up with and turns them into something completely different. Even now as we work on the project in the on-campus coffee shop that Kennedy works at, I can literally hear the gears turning in his brain.
Letting him in on this investigation seemed like a good idea. We’re both smart, intelligent and have experience as well as inside-access to pretty much anything. I just didn’t know how much touching would be involved.
First, the whole bust at the jewellery store where he was breathing down my neck, then the whole ‘I’m just going to brush past you while you’re semi-naked and touch your waist’ debacle, the ankle situation, and the screaming in the woods and then we had to pretend to date each other. That last one was only for a few minutes, but it was still torture.Exciting and weirdly arousing torture.
The thought of being in a relationship with Branson is repulsive, but there is no way I could ignore the way he slipped his hands into my hair so naturally.
Another thing that’s driving me insane? Evan taps his pencil on his laptop while bouncing his knee up and down. He does it while we study most of the time, but today it’s driving me up the wall.
“God, can you stop doing that?” I finally ask, frustrated.
“Doing what?” He doesn’t even look up from his computer, tap, tap, tapping his pencil. I just stare at him until he looks up. “Oh, that?”
