Page 48 of My Favorite Kidnapper

Brianna laughed. “Inside joke.”

“I am the one in prison,” I inserted. “Her prisoner of love.”

“Oh hush, you,” she laughed and slapped my chest playfully.

Officer Rossi laughed. “So funny. I am glad all is good.” He touched his hat. “Until we meet again.”

He strolled away, and Winters and I stared at each other. Brianna stayed beside me, and I looped an arm around her waist. “You did not do much shopping, my love,” I murmured to her, watching the way he looked at her.

“Later,” she responded.

“We were having a nice coffee together,” Winters spoke. “I saw the lovely lady alone and was persuaded to join her.”

I felt Brianna tense up. His words were carefully chosen to upset me. I knew Brianna would never ask a stranger to have coffee with her. A male one, anyway. I pressed a kiss to her temple. “Maybe you shouldn’t be listening to the voices in your own head, Winters. They’re often misleading.”

His glare intensified, and Brianna tugged me to the table, sitting down across from him and patting the chair next to her.

He scowled at me. “How’s the gallery?”

“Business is excellent, thank you.”

Brianna looked between us. “Dante is going to show me around this afternoon. Such a lovely little town.”

Her words defused the situation, and he leaned back. “Have you been here long?”

“No, only a few days.”

“You are from America?”

“Canada, actually. We met while Dante was there, and he brought me back with him.”

“How lovely for you,” Winters said, his tone and gaze saying it was anything but lovely.

“Oh, it is,” Brianna replied, not responding to his tone. “Such a wonderful surprise. I couldn’t bear for him to leave me behind.” She grasped my hand clenched on my knee, lifting it to her mouth and kissing my knuckles in such a sweet fashion it caught me off guard. Her lips lingered, and I had to smile at her.

“Ah, my little bee, I couldn’t have left you if I tried.”

“Why did Officer Rossi call you a prisoner?”

Brianna spoke before I could. “Oh.” She laughed lightly. “That was my doing. Dante said no to me, and I was shocked. He never says no. The officer was standing there, and I demanded he arrest Dante for such cheek. Told him to take him to jail.” She shrugged. “As I said, it was an inside joke.”

“I thought he referred to you as the prisoner.”

She waved off his words. “I think some things got lost in translation. Now tell me, Mr. Winters, are you married? Any children?”

He couldn’t lie to her, not with me sitting there. “Yes. To both.”

“Ah.”

Her one word said it all. He shouldn’t have sat at her table.

“What do you do for a living? Are you an art dealer as well, like my Dante?”

My Dante.

She was brilliant. She spoke to him as if he were a colleague of mine and highlighted the relationship she wanted him to think we had. Someone she had no personal interest in but, instead, a polite one. He didn’t like it, and he stood. “Perhaps another day, we can chat again. I must leave you now.” He nodded and walked away.

Brianna sighed and sat back. She pulled off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “I did not invite him to sit at my table.”