I grew up in a world that treated preparation as strategy, as advantage, as the difference between surviving a thing and steering it. I recognized the instinct immediately. It was simply the last place I had expected to find it.
Then there was her coffee order.
Vanilla latte. Double shot. Double pump.
Strange, slightly offensive, and probably enough to have my father question whether she had been raised properly. Even so, I remembered it.
The plan, if it could be called that, was still taking shape. Perhaps I could pretend they had given me the wrong order andfate, in all its wisdom, had accidentally handed me her favorite drink.
No. That was pathetic.
I joined the queue and immediately revised the idea. Maybe I could simply order it for her, then act mildly surprised when I turned out to know exactly what she liked. That was somehow worse. Since when had I started thinking in terms of fate? Was I becoming a sixteen-year-old girl?
I let out a low groan and then glared when the man in front of me turned halfway around at the sound.
Turn back around, idiot. There is nothing to see here except a man behaving far beneath his usual standards.
The irony was not lost on me. I never once hesitated before a raid with my father. I was not nervous the first time I killed a man. My hand had been steady then. My pulse had barely sped up. And yet here I was, on the verge of giving myself an aneurysm over the prospect of speaking to a PhD student in a library.
How the mighty had fallen.
I exhaled, turned slightly to the side, and then stopped dead.
She was there.
Sitting at a table toward the back, half hidden behind a stack of books, pink headband in place, glasses low on her nose.
For one ridiculous second, I actually thought,fate.
Then I stepped out of the queue without a second thought and started toward her. I had only gone a few paces before I noticed the jacket draped over the back of the chair opposite hers.
A man’s jacket.
I slowed, my anticipation cooling into something sharper. Well. That was unfortunate for him.
Emily looked up before I reached the table, and whatever she saw on my face made her blink once, then push her glasses back up her nose in that small, distracted way I liked far too much.
“Pietro.”
There was surprise in her voice, but not displeasure. That alone improved my mood slightly.
“Emily.” My gaze dropped briefly to the empty chair across from her, then to the jacket. “Am I interrupting something tragic?”
Her fingers tightened slightly around her phone. “I’m just having coffee.”
I inclined my head. “Alone?”
Her eyes narrowed a fraction. “Was that subtle in your head?”
“Not especially.”
Despite herself, the corner of her mouth moved. “Then no. Not alone.”
“With a friend?”
She looks behind me, which told me more than the answer itself. “That depends how generously you define the word.”
Interesting.
