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Ruby.
“Want me to wait outside?” Max asked from the driver’s seat as he pulled next to the curb.
“Yes,” Roman said. “I won’t be long.”
Even as he said it, he knew it might be a lie. In the past, he’d stayed for more than an hour just to watch her.
“4pm with your father,” Max said.
“I’m aware,” Roman said.
He opened the door and stepped onto the pavement. He appreciated Max’s reminder not to lose track of time, but there was no need. It would be impossible for Roman to ever forget a meeting with his father, Igor Kalashnik.
Igor had made sure of that.
Roman crossed the strip of pavement in front of the coffee shop without bothering to make sure no one was coming. Whether because of his height — he was 6’4” — or the purpose with which he walked, the crowds parted for him like the Red Sea, just like always.
A couple seconds later, he was opening the door to ROASTED, a generic coffee shop in the Flatiron District. He stepped inside its fragrant warmth, the smell of freshly brewed coffee and warm blueberry muffins filling his nose.
He scanned the counter, caught a flash of burgundy hair, and got in line.
The first time he’d come here had been an accident. A meeting with a reluctant supplier — guy over on East 23rd who delivered custom Italian furniture to a high-end store on Park, and to Roman’s men, when Roman demanded it — had left him with bloody knuckles and the kind of coiled energy that made him distrust himself. He’d told Max to follow him in the car while he walked it off and had been drawn to ROASTED by the smell of coffee.
But it was the woman at the counter who had drawn him back again and again.
He inched forward in the line and caught the sound of her voice, the shower of her laughter like soft rain.
“Good call,” she said to someone up ahead. “They’re always better warm.”
He couldn’t see who she was talking to, but he wanted it to be him, wanted to be the recipient of her soothing voice and gentle laughter.
He wasn’t a patient man.
He wasn’t a lot of things.
Most of the time, he sent Max into coffee shops and takeout restaurants while he sat in the car and conducted business, but Roman was drawn to the coffee shop over and over again, standing in long lines, waiting with the other patrons for overpriced coffee and stale baked goods.
Waiting to talk to her.
A harried mom holding the hand of a small child ordered an oat milk-latte-something-or-other while the tow-headed child peered at Roman from behind her legs.
He held up his hands like claws and pretended to make a scary face, then stuck out his tongue.
The child smiled shyly at him and hid his face behind his mother’s legs, before peering out again.
Roman felt the tug of longing. He enjoyed children, but he would never be foolish enough to have them. His own upbringing — his own father — had made that impossible.
The woman paid and moved down the counter with the child to pick up her coffee.
Roman stepped in front of the register, and there she was: Ruby, according to her name tag.
She smiled. “Back again?”
Warmth spread through his chest. She remembered him.
“Can’t stay away,” he said gruffly. He hadn’t expected to do anything but order a coffee he would throw in the trash outsidethe shop, maybe a stale muffin he would give to Max when he got back to the car.
Her eyes — an alchemical mixture of blue and green — sparkled. “Is it the bad coffee or the processed baked goods?”
