Page 23 of Waste of Worth

He didn’t get involved with people at all.

“It’s just a date,” she said softly.

“That’s not so bad,” Dino replied, “but I’m not sure I can give you much beyond that, Karen.”

“Did I ask for more?”

“No.”

“Then don’t put words in my mouth,” Karen said, smirking just a bit. “You’re a little strange, Dino DeLuca.”

He didn’t miss how she said his last name like she had no fucking clue how dangerous that surname was—as if she didn’t possibly know the ties his name had to organized crime and a hellish past that was still very much alive and well in Chicago.

She didn’t have a clue.

That, or she didn’t care.

“Ask me,” Karen said.

Dino chuckled. “My last date was years ago.”

Ten years, to be exact.

He’d watched his date be buried a week later.

Ben hadn’t approved.

Terrance never knew what really happened to his daughter.

Didn’t Dino have a good reason to be wary?

“Ask me,” she repeated.

Dino shouldn’t—he knew better.

He still did it.

It had been a long time since he’d done something that he wanted to do.

“Drinks or coffee?” he asked.

Karen smiled, warm and wide. “Let’s get drinks, and if goes well …”

“What?”

“We might end up with coffee, too.”

Damn.

Dino had learned things about Karen over the two months since she had started working at his restaurant—she was only a year younger than him, and she’d moved from California to Chicago for school, decided she’d liked it, and then stayed after graduation. But those were safe things; the surface of a tale, and not the whole story.

It was only after her third beer in a quiet bar did he start to learn the good stuff.

“My mother and father separated when I was thirteen,” Karen said, working on peeling the label off the beer bottle. “I didn’t spend much time with my dad, but he thought he had enough say to tell me Chicago was a terrible choice and I would be stupid to leave home.”

“Yet here you are,” Dino said.

Karen giggled, tipping up her bottle for another drink. “Here I am.”