correctly, you’re just as, let’s say, hungry as me.”
“Hungry?” I giggle. “I think the word you were looking for is ‘fucking horny.’ Oh, I’m sorry … that’s two words.”
Carlo laughs as the butler, Sebastian, pours the champagne. A moment later he brings out the starter: mushroom risotto. Then, with a bow, he retreats back into the mansion. Carlo and I share a look like: oh shit, did the butler just hear that whole thing? But really it doesn’t matter. Carlo’s staff is discreet.
“You don’t like it when I swear,” I say, washing down glorious risotto with glorious champagne.
Carlo narrows his eyes at me. “I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to!” I say playfully. “You’re a sexist pig and every time I swear you love me a little less. You—” I flounder. Love me a little less. It just slipped out, sure, but that’s a hell of a thing to just let go. I hide it with a laugh and swig more champagne. “This risotto really is delicious.”
“It is,” Carlo agrees, silently agreeing to skim over my mistake. “I know I’ve already said it, but—”
“If you thank me for helping Emily with that cannoli one more time, I’m going to scream. What else was I going to do? Sit there and let her choke? Right place, right time. Well, wrong place, wrong time. But you get what I mean.”
He raises his glass to me. “To Hazel Conway, knight in shining armor.”
We clink glasses and sip, eyes locked as we finish off the risotto. As we’re waiting for the entrees to be brought out, Carlo asks, “How are you finding your new office?”
I can’t help myself. “Well, it’s not mine, is it? Not really. Because if I left here, it would stay behind.”
I’m baiting him, venting my anger at his hot-and-cold mood swings. But he doesn’t take it. He smiles. His blue-green eyes brim with respect, like he can’t imagine having a quiet, chastened girlfriend. Girlfriend? Prisoner! I need to remember how I got here. I think, seriously, that this champagne might be going to my head.
“It’s always yours,” he says. “If you leave, I’ll have it cut out of the mansion and put in storage for whenever you’re ready for it.”
His smile is frustratingly infectious. We watch each other across the butler’s arms as he brings out the red wine beef saltimbocca. When he leaves, Carlo gives me a little kick under the table.
“Careful,” I warn him. “I have been known to use deadly force.”
He, a man who actually has been known to do just that, grins indulgently. If another man grinned at me like that, it’d really piss me off. But with Carlo, I find I sometimes like it, because, I guess, he knows I’m not really silly or ditzy. Sometimes it’s just fun to play a role.
“Oh, yeah?” he laughs.
“Yeah.” I gesture with my fork. “I could kill you with this a thousand different ways.”
He holds his hands up. “Then I am at your mercy, Hazel Conway. Please spare me.”
“Are we going to talk about that?” I nod at the bandage on his right hand. “Or the fact that the way you walk has changed.”
A flicker moves across his face. I want him to snap at me about it, to tell me to mind my own business. I’ve been spending these past few days of him so clearly avoiding me getting myself worked up for an argument. Now, with him being so darn nice, it’s difficult.
“A fight,” he sighs. “With the Irish. I grabbed a piece of broken glass and …” He shrugs. “Glass cuts, apparently.”
“And you stabbed a man to death with it,” I whisper. My tongue is dangerously dry. Is it sick that I want to hold him, want to tell him it’s okay? Want to kiss him? “Because he was trying to kill you.”
Carlo doesn’t say anything. He sips his champagne slowly.
“What, do you think I’m wearing a wire?” I laugh.
“I think this is not proper conversation for dinner.”
“You’re the one doing the talking.”
“You’re the one who asked.”
“You’re right.” Before I can stop myself, it all comes out in a rush: “I did. I just don’t want you to get hurt. I think about you out there, fighting those men, those criminals, and—I get it, maybe you’re a criminal, too. Maybe it’s all a big mess. But then I think about what it would do to Alda, to Emily, to …” To me. I leave that last part unsaid. “If you were hurt, y’know, and it