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“Then why in the world did you still drug her? She’ll likely wake and accuse me of assaulting her in her sleep.”
“She needs to get some solid rest. A bit of food in her stomach and a good night’s sleep will make her more clearheaded in the morning.”
“Isn’t italreadymorning?”
Ester shakes her head at me for being ornery. “Don’t worry, Christian, I’ll bring you a fresh cup of tea after I get this cleaned up.” I stand there with Lara in my arms, her legs now dangling over my forearm and her head resting against my chest, as Ester takes the shattered remains of the teacup and walks back to the kitchen.
Ester has always been a sort of motherly figure to me, ever since I can remember. She worked for our family when I was a boy and after my mother died, she stepped in to fill the void as much as she could. I remember many nights after my mother’s funeral when she coaxed me into the kitchen to cook with her, which was a sacred activity that only my mother could get me to do. Most of my friends at that age would’ve made fun of me for cooking in the kitchen, so it was something only Loreto knew about me. He knew I would bust his chops if he teased me. Ester didn’t even need to say anything for me to know she would probably plan something like this. Leave it to the old sage to deliver Lara right into my arms, literally. I carry her into my bedroom. I don’t want a repeat of the room-locking incident earlier, so I might as well let her sleep in my bed so I can keep an eye on her, while I sleep on some blankets on the floor. Although I’m not sure yet if I want to engage in being her babysitter. I’ve never had a woman actually living in my place with me, unless you count Ester and a few other members of my staff.
When I lay Lara carefully down on my bed, her hair forms a halo around her against the pillow. She’s lovely, reallylovely. A slight knock on my door jars me from my gazing at the beautiful woman who now lays in my bed. When I go to the door, Ester has returned with a fresh cup of tea. “Really? Hibiscus?” I ask as I take the cup from her and inhale the steam rising from it.
“We’re all out of blackberry,” she says, almost apologetically for having wasted the last cup of it. “But you like hibiscus.”
“Sometimes I wonder who’s really the boss around here, Ester,” I tease.
She chuckles and her leathery skin folds into a smile before she heads back down the hall again. “Get some sleep,” she calls out quietly as she leaves. “I have a feeling you’re going to need it with this girl.”
I stand by the flickering fireplace in my bedroom and stare some more at Lara as I drink my tea. My best friend’s sister, unconscious and in my bed, looking like some sort of fallen, stubborn-headed angel. I wonder if this is what Loreto had in mind when he asked me for my help.
After I finish my tea, I pull out some extra blankets and a pillow from the linen closet, set them up on the floor next to the bed and think about how Loreto is going to owe me for years after this one. I feel like I am asleep for only an hour or two before waking up again, now suddenly realizing that Lara has made her way entirely off the bed and into my arms at some point in the night, where I am now warmly holding her. She wakes up in my arms and starts to freak out. She bolts upright, scrambling away from me like a cat moving backward on her hands and knees before bumping the back of her head against the edge of the bed. I hear her groan as she gets to her feet and tries to orient herself, clearing away the foggy confusion of having woken up startled and unsure of her surroundings.
“What am I doing here?” she asks with wide, panicked eyes. “All cuddled up with you?!”
“Calm down,” I say as I sit up and stretch out the arm that had fallen asleep beneath her shoulder as she laid against me. “You must’ve slipped out of the bed at some point in the night or something.”
“Like hell I’ll calm down! You druggedme!”
“That was Ester’s move, not mine,” I say, smiling at how sly my elderly housekeeper can be.
“You think all this is funny? That having some old woman drug my tea so that you can get me in your bed is some sort of joke? You’re terrible!”
“Seriously, calm the fuck down,” I say as I get out of my makeshift bed and go to reach for my shirt to pull over my head. "I wasn’t in your bed; you were inmyheap of blankets. If I wanted to take advantage of you, why would I move you down to a bunch of blankets on the floor, instead of just getting into bed with you?”
“But why would I possibly get out of bed in the middle of the night like that?” she yells.
“I don’t know!” I scream back.
“ARRRRGGGH!” she yells loudly, reaching for one of the books on my bookcase beside her. She picks up a thick volume and gets ready to pitch it at my head, but the problem is that it’s a first edition worth about ten thousand dollars. With one quick stride over to her, I grab her arm and pull her toward me. The sudden, unexpected motion causes her to drop the book, and she stands there with her chest pressed up against mine and her chin thrust upward in stubborn defiance of me. “Take your hands off me!” she demands.
“I can’t. You’ll throw another book at me.”
Lara glares up at me as she tries to wrestle her arm away, but I keep her pulled closely against me. “You are the most arrogant, obnoxious man I’ve ever met!” she spits at me. “I don’t know what Loreto sees in you that could possibly make you best friend material.”
“Well, this arrogant asshole just saved you from your abusive father,” I remind her, tightening my grip on her wrist as she wrestles further. A part of me really doesn’t want her to trash my bedroom, but the bigger part of me is unnervingly fond of keeping her here pressed up against my body.
“Let me go,” she growls. Her lips pout in the most delicious way that makes me want to trace my tongue around them. I stare into her dark brown eyes with the increasing desire to kiss her, and the increasing awareness that she would let me, but then there’s a harsh knock on the door that interrupts the delicately simmering moment. Knocks like that only mean one thing.
I let go of Lara’s wrist to go and open the door, and find my underboss Matteo standing there looking haggard. “Boss,” he says, eyeing Lara behind me in the room and pausing before continuing. “There’s been an incident.”
“What kind of incident?”
“The Hell’s Devils trashed one of your restaurants last night.”
I grimace at the news. That particular biker gang has a long-running history of conflict with the mafia, and I’ve had my share of run-ins with them before. They appointed a new president recently, after the last one died of a heart attack, and I had a nagging feeling the new leadership would pose a problem. I didn’t think they’d be quite so brazen as to mess with something of mine, though.
“They’re trying to send a message,” Matteo continues. “They want to expand their territory and you’re in their way.”
It’s true—I own many of the restaurants and much of the underground commerce in this part of the city. If the biker gang wants to grow, then they’d have to go through me in order to expand their own territory. Unfortunately for them, I’m not willing to let that happen.
