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“You’re the Don of a mafia family—”
His eyebrows raised. “Am I now?”
She waves that off. “And you’re talking aboutmanners.”
“I’m a businessman. Business is at the heart of what I do, which means I can’t always walk around breaking things to get what I want. As much as I want to.”
She smiles at that. “Of course. If only smashing things were the answers to all life’s problems.”
“Instead, I have to play nice. Balance what I need with what others want. I have to sit in dark and smoky rooms and laugh at bad jokes and smoke shitty cigars and pretend like I’m having a good time, and hold back all the ugly truths and very nasty violence I’d much prefer to dole out. That’s what I call manners.”
She makes a face. “That’s a crass definition.”
“How would you define manners, then?”
“It’s the art of enjoying yourself without causing a fuss.”
I can’t help myself. I laugh at her, shaking my head. That pisses her off, but she’s much too well-mannered to say anything. Instead, her finger taps against her wine glass with a quick tinging staccato and her knees jostle.
“God, that’s depressing. Do you really go through life refusing tocause a fuss?”
“It’s how I was raised,” she says quietly.
“Really? By whom?”
“My father. My grandfather. And Grandmom, though she—” Her smile is brief, but it hides something. A little secret. Maybe the grandmother isn’t so proper then? “Anyway, I learned how to behave the way people expect my family to behave.”
“That must be hard. Living up to expectations. Believe it or not, I know something about that.”
“Hm, I bet you do.”
When the waitress comes back, she orders the salmon and I have the lamb.
“My turn to ask something,” she says when the waitress is gone. She avoids my gaze as she swirls her drink. Her lips press together, and I don’t know if she has any clue that she’s doing it, but that mouth is the most seductive thing I’ve seen in my life. She keeps licking her lips, ever so slightly, moistening them whenever she looks at me like she expects a kiss at any moment.
“Go ahead,” I say.
“The Atlas Organization. You helped found that, didn’t you?”
“One of the founders, yeah.”
“Are you still involved?”
I tilt my head from side to side. “Somewhat. Less and less as the years go by.”
“What about the others? Your lawyer, Gareth, was one of them, wasn’t he?”
“Gareth, Ford, Evander, Lanzo and I.” I smile distantly, thinking of my best friends, my brothers. “We built it together.”
“Are you still in touch with them?”
“All five of us get together twice a year, at the very least. Usually more often in smaller groups. And I see Gareth a few times per month.”
She touches a finger to her lower lip and I’d do anything to be that finger right now. “I have a theory. Want to hear it?”
“I’d love to.”
“Having friends is hard as you get older. The further away from a place you get, both time and distance, the more difficult it is to maintain the friendships you made there. Like high school and college.”
