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"You are not a strange woman."
"It's not so nice from the other side is it?"
"What?" he asks with barely restrained patience.
Yep. Not so nice when he's the one getting chastised for not being cautious. "Being told you aren't careful enough about your own personal security."
"Lucia, it is my job to protect you, not the other way around."
I laugh. I can't help it. "This isn't the stone age and you aren't a caveman, no matter how much you might act like one in the bedroom. Watching out for each other goes both ways."
With an arrested expression, he puts the SUV into park and turns it off in front of the ginormous mansion he apparently lives in.
"How do you stand being in my tiny apartment when you have all this?" The house is easily twice the size of the home I left in Detroit and that place was ten thousand square feet of opulence.
"You're there."
"There you go, saying the perfect thing again."
"Come on, I'll show you around."
"That sounds good." At least it will get me out of meeting his family immediately.
Or that's what I think until we walk into the marble tiled foyer. Another man with the same dark hair and blue eyes as Atlas is standing there and his expression isn't friendly.
He's sizing me up.
I slide my hand into Atlas's bigger one. He squeezes and whistles "Don't Worry, Be Happy" under his breath.
It makes me smile and I'm able to greet his brother. "Hello, you must be either Zeus, or Orion," I extend my hand.
"That's Zeus," Atlas says, shifting his body between me and his brother, forcing me to abort my attempt at shaking hands. "He's the oldest."
"I remember."
"Were you whistling?" Zeus asks Atlas.
Atlas shrugs.
I roll my eyes. "He likes to whistle, as I'm sure you know." And he uses the songs as messages.
Or is that just with me? Maybe he doesn't pick his music to communicate with his brothers. Maybe he just whistles tunelessly around them? The thought makes me go warm and squishy inside.
This man is so dangerous to my heart.
"My brother hasn't whistled since he was ten years old," Zeus says accusingly.
But what is he accusing me of? Bringing out the musical side to Atlas?
I stand up straighter and give Zeus my best mafia princess look. "You wouldn't know that by me."
The older man's eyes widen fractionally. Is he not used to women standing up to him? Then we are in for a long and probably unpleasant evening. Because I am no pushover.
Not anymore. Not that I ever was one, but I let Tino and Antonio Sr. convince me to take on responsibilities I did not want. Not only that, but I strove to do them well so I wouldn't disappoint the two men.
I worried more about what Agustino Sr. thought of me than my own father.
Now, my father believes I'm dead and I refuse to twist myself into a pretzel to impress any other man. Even Atlas's older brother.
