Page 18 of Waste of Worth

Karen smiled, shaking her head and going back to her work on the laptop. “Never mind, Dino.”

He was lost.

“I mean,” she continued, never looking up from the laptop again, “we can keep doing this, if it’s what you like. You coming here, me pretending like I don’t know what you’re up to.”

“Again—what?”

“Just ask, Dino,” Karen said, shooting him with a look that pinned him to the chair.

Dino laughed. “Why don’t you tell me what you want me to ask, and then we’ll go from there?”

Karen’s fingers stopping moving on the keyboard. “So you’re telling me there’s no particular reason why you show up here to check up on the place, yet you only ever really seem to stick around me, with a coffee for me, and there’s no reason for you doing that?”

Well …

Dino felt his smile growing, and he couldn’t have stopped it if he tried. Karen wasn’t a stupid woman—he’d learned that quickly, which was why instead of serving people food and drinks, she was sitting behind a desk in her very own office, with a brand new laptop to do her work on. He certainly didn’t think his interest in her was going unnoticed, but he had hoped she wouldn’t look too deep into it.

Truth was, Dino didn’t know what to do about how he felt.

Having interest and attraction was one thing.

Acting on it was something else entirely.

Dino hadn’t had a thing with a woman in years, and the last one he had ended in a way that still kept him up at night. He hadn’t loved the woman, but he felt responsible for the hell that had come down upon her simply because she had been with him.

And that, in a nutshell, had been more than enough to keep him wary of any other relationship. He couldn’t give a woman normal things—not a home, a family, and a stable life. He wasn’t of the right mindset to do those sorts of things.

“Dino?” Karen asked, bringing him from his thoughts.

He looked to her again, taking in her soft smile that always got a little bigger when she graced him with it. “Yeah?”

“Just ask.”

Dino just stared at Karen, unsure if he should act on his strange attraction, or leave it be. She didn’t know a lot about him, or his life. She didn’t have a clue about the things he was involved in, or the family he came from.

She never asked.

He never offered.

Then, Dino had to consider other things, too. Or rather, people.

Like Ben DeLuca.

A man so determined to control the people who shared his last name that he would go as far as hurting those same people just to gain what he wanted from them.

Dino was not an exception to that rule—Ben practically broke the rule in on Dino’s fucking back.

Ben would never approve of someone like Karen. A non-Italian, an outsider to their family and the lifestyle they lived, someone from a lower economic status with nothing to bring to the Outfit.

When Ben didn’t approve … horrible things happened.

That was enough to cement Dino’s next decision.

“There’s nothing to ask,” Dino said, getting up from his chair and tossing the paperwork to the desk. “Have a great evening, and let me know if you need anything or something needs looked over again.”

Karen’s smile faded slightly.

It hurt him to see her dejected expression.