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The smell of coffee, cinnamon, and bacon makes my belly growl.
“Oh, God, that smell is amazing. I’m so starving.”
“Same.”
I point to a basket of folded laundry outside the bedroom door. “I had that dropped off last night. Go get something to wear, then come back here.”
She pads off without any back talk. Maybe she’s catching on.
“Are we going downstairs for breakfast?”
I think about it. I’m half-tempted to show her off to my family. To introduce her to my sisters and nieces and nephews, my mother and Nonna. But I think another day of speculation on their end and privacy on ours will yield far better results.
“I’ll order food sent up. No, I don’t want to go downstairs if I can help it. I’d like to do as much of our work upstairs as we can.” I smile at her. “We have a lot of catching up to do.”
“Do you… have a morning routine?” she asks.
“You mean other than roll out of bed, drink coffee, lift, shower?”
“That sounds like a morning routine.” She smiles at me.
I make a face. “It’s just shit I do when I wake up.” Why is she asking me this? “What about you?”
“Depends on the day of the week,” she says, as she chooses a pair of jeans and a top from the pile. She walks back into the room.
“Give those here, please.” I snap my fingers. Her brows shoot up, but she hands them over.
I look at the clothes. Pushing her. Showing her what it means to be under the rule of my family. I shake my head at the blue T-shirt she chose and hand it back to her. “Something red.”
I watch as she narrows her eyes, but she turns around and puts the blue one down anyway, then comes back with a soft red tunic. “This will pair better with leggings,” she murmurs.
“Get them, then finish what you were telling me.”
I slide on a pair of jeans and a tee, then put on a pair of boots. She comes back with the clothes I instructed her to get. “Good girl,” I say approvingly. “Very good.”
She dresses and tells me what she’d started to before. “I’m… a bit of a creature of habit,” she says slowly.
“You don’t say.”
I watch as her eyes narrow. “Excuse me?”
“You think I could’ve been around you this long and fucked you this many times and not know that about you yet? Everything about you’s perfect. Routinized. You probably have set days of the week to do your chores and probably can’t focus at work if the paper clips are facing the wrong direction.”
“Hey!”
I blow out a breath. “Just stating the facts. You work for the police department with a personal vendetta against ‘the mob.’” I toss air quotes to tease her. “You probably work twelve-hour days but still don’t ever miss a day at the gym, because that’s how you roll.”
She looks both miffed and impressed. “You’re more observant than I gave you credit for.”
I shrug. “It’s my job, just like it’s yours, isn’t it?”
She walks noiselessly, barefoot, to the bathroom and nods. “Yeah.”
“So let’s hear your morning routine.”
She finds a pink-handled brush and drags it through her damp hair, then does a little finger roll thing like she’s styling it. It falls in little damp waves around her face. “I don’t change my routine. I wake up at five, stretch in bed and do a little isometric work while I go over my day. I drink lemon water when I wake, meditate, then journal before I drink my coffee. I get a work-out in and make my to-do list for the day, then do a load of laundry if there’s enough for a full load, clean up the bathroom, and mop before I head into work. I have a rotating chore for each day of the week.”
“You do this every day.”
“Every day.”
“Even on holidays? Vacations? Sundays?”
“Every day.”
I nod. “Fair enough. Not too different than mine, then.”
She laughs out loud and stares at me silently for a minute.
I wriggle my finger in my ear because it’s wet, making a squelching sound which makes her snort. “I like you, Mario Rossi, notorious gangster that you are. I can’t help but like you.”
I smile at her. “And I like you, Miss Perfectionist Enemy Detective.” I wink at her. “And I’ll make an ally out of you yet. So go ahead and do your routine. I’m going to have breakfast sent up today.”
“Do you typically eat alone?”
“Never. We eat together downstairs when we’re here. Staff has a buffet set up for us. But today, you and I need alone time before anything else happens.”
She nods, sobering. “I see.”
She doesn’t, but she will.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Emma
If there was a book on how to seduce women, Mario Rossi’s read it.
No, scratch that. He probably wrote it.
And it doesn’t matter that I see right through him, that I know he’s trying to get in my good graces. It still just… feels damn good.
