I smiled properly at that.
“Tomorrow’s fine.”
“Great.” He sat back a little, looking relieved. “There’s a place on Harper that does decent coffee and stale croissants.”
“An irresistible sales pitch.”
“I like to keep expectations low.”
“That much is clear.”
He grinned, and for a moment it was easy. Easy enough that I could almost pretend I hadn’t spent the last week rearranging my study schedule because of a man whose last name I still didn’t know.
Almost.
Daniel stood, gathering his things. “I’ll let you get back to work.”
“Probably wise.”
He lingered a second. “I’m glad I asked.”
Something akin to guilt made my chest heavier.
I didn’t regret saying yes. Not exactly.
“Me too,” I said, and hated the lie the moment it left my mouth.
He left with the satisfied look of a man who had done something brave and been rewarded for it.
I watched him disappear between the shelves, then looked down at the open page in front of me without reading a single word.
Tomorrow.
A nice man. Coffee. A normal decision.
Exactly the sort of thing I should have wanted.
So why did it feel like I just agreed to the wrong thing?
CHAPTER 3
PIETRO
Don Lou really picked an inconvenient time to die.
God rest his soul and all that, but I had intended to see Emily again. Speak to her properly this time. Use the normal channels available to a man who was not in the habit of loitering around university libraries in the hope of running into the same woman twice.
That alone should have concerned me.
In twenty-three years, I had never felt anything remotely like the spark I felt across that table. Not once. To the point that, on more than one occasion, I had wondered whether I was built wrong in some fundamental way. Whether I was perhaps a little too much like Matteo Genovese for comfort.
A dangerous thought.
Matteo’s devotion to his wife was legendary in the family. Also mildly terrifying.
And yet it had been two days since I met her, and Emily was still in my head.
I kept replaying the time we had spent together. The way she had looked at me without awkwardness. The dry little edge in her voice when she bartered that book from me. The brief blush I managed to pull from her afterward.
