was cold, I’ve got a big, strong man beside me, radiating heat from his chest into my back, with his arms wrapped tight around me.
“I’m gonna come visit you here every day,” Raylan says. “I’ll bring you lunch.”
“I’m not going to get any work done if you’re around. You’re incredibly distracting,” I tell him.
“Me?” he says, innocently.
“Yes. When you were supposed to be bodyguarding me, I can’t tell you how many times I had to sneak a look at you, all scruffy and handsome in that corner chair.”
He grins. “Oh, I know you did. I caught you every time.”
“The hell you did!”
“The hell I didn’t!”
He kisses me hard.
“I’m proud of you,” he says. “I already know you’re gonna be a huge success. The best lawyer in Knoxville, guaranteed. Probably all of Tennessee.”
“Not the whole country?” I tease him.
“Well . . . there’s that one guy that got OJ off . . . ”
“Johnny Cochrane? He’s not even alive anymore!”
“Alright,” Raylan grins. “You’re the best in the whole damn country, then.”
With Raylan’s arm around my waist, we walk over to World’s Fair Park. We take a little stroll around the lake, stopping at the Sunsphere. Its gold-plated glass glitters, even though it’s not a very sunny day.
On the opposite side of the tower, I see a girl with long black hair standing next to a slim young man in a battered leather jacket. They’re standing with their backs to me, but something about the couple looks oddly familiar. They look tense, as if they’ve been arguing. The girl starts to walk away, and the boy grabs her and pulls her back again. He seizes her face and kisses her ferociously. For a moment she tries to pull away, but then she kisses him back, just as hard.
It’s only when they break apart that I realize it’s Bo and Duke.
“Oh!” I gasp. “Let’s go, I don’t want them to see us.”
“Why not?” Raylan says.
“I don’t want your sister to feel embarrassed.”
He grins. “She should feel stupid. It’s about damn time.”
“Come on!” I say, pulling him away. I make him walk all the way back to the crepe shop with me.
“Those silly kids,” he says, shaking his head. “Why don’t they know they should fall in love, when it’s so damn obvious?”
I look up at him, at his wolfish smile and his bright blue eyes.
“It’s just obvious, huh?” I say.
“Yup,” he says. “Sometimes it’s clearly meant to be. I knew it from the moment I saw you.”
“All you knew was that you were driving me crazy.”
“Yup,” he grins. “And I wanted to do it a whole lot more.”
Are you ready for the series finale?
Enjoy a Sebastian sneak peek right now! →
Sebastian
I’m sitting in the corner booth of La Mer with my two brothers and my little sister Aida. It’s an hour past closing time, so the servers have already taken the linen and glassware off the tables, and the cooks are just finishing their deep-clean of the stove tops and fridges.
The bartender is still doing his nightly inventory check, probably lingering longer than usual in case any of us want one last drink. That’s the perks of owning the restaurant — nobody can kick you out.
La Mer is known for its high-end seafood. Halibut and salmon flown in from the east coast every morning, and king crab legs longer than your arm. We all feasted on butter-drenched lobster earlier in the evening. For the last several hours we’ve simply been sipping our drinks and talking. This might be our last night all together for a while.
Dante leaves for Paris tomorrow morning. He’s taking his wife, his son, and his brand-new baby girl across the Atlantic for what he’s calling an extended honeymoon. But I’ve got a feeling that he’s not coming back.
Dante never wanted to become the capocrimine. He’s been the de facto leader of our family for years only because he’s the eldest — not because it was his ambition.
Of course my father is still the real Don, but his health is getting worse every year. He’s been delegating more and more of the running of our family business. It used to be that he personally handled every meeting with the other mafia families — no matter how small the issue. Now he only puts on his suit and goes out for the most dire of situations.
He’s become a hermit in our old house on Meyer Ave. If our housekeeper Greta didn’t also live there full-time, eating lunch with him, and listening