Page 28 of Loyalty

A pretty pink colored her cheeks when she returned his smile. “Any reason you’re hanging around this part of Brooklyn again?”

“Business.”

Siena raised a brow. “That so?”

John stuffed his hands in his pockets. “That’s my story.”

“Well, I’m heading to my brother’s club for work. I’m late, so I have to go.”

No, he couldn’t just let her go this time. He was pretty sure the last time they had run in to each other like this, she had meant to ask him out. A phone call hadn’t let her finish the sentence. John had to go right after, and he figured it was what it was.

Fate had different plans, it seemed.

“Can I walk you?” he asked.

“I don’t know, can you?”

Just like that, his job to talk with Renzo was forgotten.

Someone far more beautiful and interesting had all of his attention now.

John chuckled. “May I walk you?”

Siena’s smile softened. “You know what, yeah. Sure, John.”

He moved into step with her as she headed down the road. Before she could shove the book she had been reading in her bag, he grabbed it out of her hand.

All over again, her cheeks lit up with that pretty pink.

John kind of liked it.

Another bare-chested man looked up at him from the cover, although this time, the guy did have a dress shirt opened, and he was working on tying a tie.

John cocked a brow. “Who knots their tie while their shirt is still open, anyway?”

“Oh, my God. Give me that back.” Siena snatched the book out of his hand, and gave him a little glare. “Don’t make fun of my books.”

“I definitely wasn’t. I was just saying that makes no sense.”

“Mmhmm. Sure.”

“The first full-length paperback I ever read was one of my mother’s romances, actually. She was a huge fan.”

Siena grinned. “Really?”

“Yeah, I mean, I was grounded, and couldn’t do anything. She left it sitting around, so I picked it up and started reading. Took me a week or so to get through it—I was nine or something.”

“She never noticed?”

John shrugged. “Yeah, I think she did, but it kept me quiet and out of her hair. You know?”

Siena’s laughter sounded like wind chimes. John couldn’t help but stare at her while she did it. Her delicate features lit up and natural pouty lips curved with happiness. She was quite a sight like that, he thought. Carefree and beautiful.

The heat that shot through his gut was such a foreign feeling that he didn’t recognize it at first. It had been so long since he actually felt attraction and lust together. The past three years had been spent dealing with far too many other things that had very little to do with women, dating, or sex.

It took him by surprise.

“I know you’re heading to your brother’s place for work,” John said, “but do you want to grab coffee or something later?”