Page 13 of Pay the Piper

He’s quiet as we head for the parking lot, and once I’m safely ensconced in the driver’s seat, he strides to a far corner spot. Instead of getting into a giant truck or even a sports car, he straddles a sleek black motorcycle. After tightening the straps on his backpack and pulling a matte black helmet over his head, he peels out of the parking lot, finally ending what now ranks as one of the oddest days I’ve ever had.

As I’m sipping a smoothie later in the evening, Conor calls right on time to get updates on how my infiltration operation is going.

“Yep. It worked. He’s definitely close to Ellie.”

“I’ll look into him. But don’t get fucking distracted, Niamh. Ellie’s your key to a brother. Not whoever this guy is. If you can use him to get to the family, fine. I don’t care how. But don’t waste my fucking time on bullshit. You know the stakes.”

He hangs up, his threat looming as viscerally as if it were a physical cloud of black smoke billowing from the speaker of the phone. Yeah, asshole. I know the stakes. I might not know who I am or what I even want out of life anymore, but if my dear husband’s made sure of one thing, it’s that I know the fucking stakes.

Chapter 7

“You’re getting a lot better.” My fist is laughably small next to Misha’s as I offer a congratulatory bump, and my chest tightens thinking about how big all of him is. Probably. Just proportionally…fuck. Even if seducing a Santori brother is the end goal, Misha might know enough to be a worthwhile conquest on the way. There’s no way to be sure of his interest yet, but I swear he stares at me more and more often during practice. “I think we’ll be able to get on the ice during our next session.”

He hops up to loom over me, bending until we’re eye to eye. I’m saved the embarrassment of closing my eyes for a kiss that never comes when he snatches his water bottle from the shelf behind me and polishes it off. “You like ice cream, right?”

“I do.”

This time, the heat in his eyes is undeniable. Knowing that my attraction isn’t one-sided is heady, and for the first time in far too long, my cheeks heat with lust that isn’t drug-induced.

“Are you free right now?”

“No! I want to like pistachios, but something about them tastes off to me. Always has. I can’t really explain it. They don’t taste like dessert to me. They taste more like…cheese? Trust me, the pistachio is all you.”

Misha pulls back the offered dish of pistachio ice cream and shrugs. “More for me. What did you end up with?”

He’d left me at the counter after slyly leaving his card with the cashier to go snag the last empty booth. I’m not sure if this is a famous ice cream parlor in the area, but it’s a dream with all chrome accents and red leather upholstery. The black-and-white checkerboard tiles gleam, and soft big band music flows from a jukebox. It’s like being on a movie set in the ‘50s.

“Well, after much deliberation, as you saw, I decided on a trio of classic, second-chance, and hopeful.”

Misha pauses mid-bite, eyebrow quirking at my description before finishing off a mouthful of his own triple-scooped pistachio waffle cone. “Second-chance ice cream?”

“It’s something…” Shit, something my mom used to encourage. Trying a flavor more than once, just to see if it was your mood on a specific day that made you dislike it. “Something I’ve always done. You never know if your first opinion on something was negative because of your mood that day, or because the kid in front of you in line at the ice cream truck bought the last of what you really wanted, so you refused to enjoy what you ended up with.”

He snorts a laugh at that, and I finally manage to make my point. “My classic is chocolate fudge, my second-chance is toasted almond, and my hopeful is pineapple mint.”

At the mention of chocolate, his nose wrinkles, and the effect of the pout is too funny on his rugged face not to laugh. “No chocolate for you, huh?”

“It’s not what I would reach for if given the choice. I can tolerate it on a peanut butter cup or an ice cream sandwich—”

“Those are very specific exceptions.”

“But I prefer fruitier flavors most of the time.” He nods at the third scoop in my bowl, the pineapple mint that’s my immediate favorite of my trio. “Is it any good?”

“Better than sex, as they say.” As soon as I say it, I wish I could take it back. Where did that come from? Sex isn’t even good…

Misha just roguishly winks at me and opens his mouth, clearly expecting to be fed. A soft hum of pleasure rumbles from him as his lips close around the morsel I offer, and the next bite I take is intimate, knowing that my spoon was just in his mouth. Clearly, I’ve lost all grip on reality.

“It’s very good. I think the pistachio wins, though,” he says, gracefully defusing the tension I continue to cause. “But I disagree on better than sex. Personally, my threshold for that is much, much higher.”

My mouthful of ice cream immediately goes down the wrong pipe, and my coughing fit draws the attention of every patron in the diner before I’m able to breathe again. “Did you want to try the—”

“Are you ok—”

We both stop.

“Ladies first.”

Get your shit together, Abby. “I was just asking if you wanted to try the almond.” A buzz in my pocket reminds me that Conor was planning to call me earlier than usual today. Fuck. There’ll be hell to pay for ignoring him, but I’ll deal with that later.