Page 158 of Lorenzo

“Your agency.”

“He helped me set it up. Licensing, contracts, the business side of it.” Her fingers move slowly through the fur at Mocha’s neck. “We became friends somewhere along the way. I owe him more than I like to admit.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t see it the same way.”

“Sometimes,” she says with a small smile.

“And the Bureau?” I ask.

Her expression hardens again.

“They moved on. So did I.”

I do not believe the second part, but I let it pass.

Headlights sweep across the side of the house.

Donna glances toward the driveway. “That was fast.”

“Dinner,” I say, then hold out my hand for her. “Come inside before you freeze.”

Chapter Twenty

Donna

I wake to the sound of my shower running.

For several seconds, I lie still beneath the comforter and listen through the door to the sound of water hitting the tile.

Lorenzo is still here.

I had expected him to leave after dinner.

We ate pasta at my kitchen table, finished most of the wine, and argued over whether his ability to identify cedar in a glass made him sophisticated or insufferable. Then he kissed me while I was putting the plates in the sink, and somehow we ended up back upstairs.

After that, I assumed he would dress and go home.

He has sons. A family. A house that had apparently been overrun by celebrating cousins. He did not strike me as the kind of man who woke up in unfamiliar beds without planning to.

Yet his clothes are still scattered across my floor, and he is using my shower as though this is a perfectly ordinary morning.

I turn onto my back and stare at the ceiling.

Last night, before dinner arrived, I watched him stand barefoot in my backyard throwing a grimy ball for Mocha. His trousers were rumpled, and he was talking to my dog as though they were old friends.

Mocha adored him.

There was something strangely domestic about the sight. Lorenzo in my yard. Mocha racing back to him. Dinner on the way. Wine waiting inside.

It unsettled me more than the sex.

Sex is simple.

Bodies want things. People give in. Morning comes, and everyone resumes their lives.

This feels less simple.

This feels… domestic.