Anya’s head whipped his way. “Don’t give in to him.”
He looked down at his smiling niece then at her mother. “Too late.”
Anya rolled her eyes.
Nick moved to the kitchen and planted Kasha’s booty in a stool at the bar beyond which her father was cooking. “To have dinner with you, gotta make a call,” he told her.
“That’s allowed,” she decreed.
He was again chuckling when he glanced at Knight before he moved out of the space, down the front hall and into Knight’s office.
He pulled out his phone and called Olivia.
The call (and not a text) was a test. A test he suspected would go to voicemail because she’d said exactly five words to him since they’d met so it was not likely she’d answer the phone.
If he had to guess, his voicemail would eventually get him a text that said she wasn’t going to wait for him to have dinner with his family in order to meet up with him later. Alternately, she wouldn’t communicate at all and he’d eventually lie in bed at Hotel Teatro, pissing valuable time away waiting for her only for her not to show up.
What he didn’t expect was her to answer on the third ring.
“Sebring,” she said as greeting, her voice soft just as the five words she’d said to him were, except now she wasn’t whispering.
He liked the sound. Especially having it wrapped around his name.
Fuck.
“Olivia,” he replied. “Listen, I’m having dinner with my family. I’m not gonna get to the hotel until eight. Maybe later.”
“Are you checked in?” she asked.
“No,” he answered.
“My turn,” she stated.
He blinked at Knight’s desk.
Her turn?
“I’ll text you the room number,” she went on.
“Right,” he pushed out, trying to hide his surprise and not sure he’d succeeded.
“By your—” she started but abruptly stopped, said no more though she didn’t disconnect.
“By my…?” he trailed off on a prompt.
She didn’t take the prompt for several beats before her soft voice again came at him.
“By your family, I’m assuming you mean Knight and his girls.”
“Yeah.”
He heard an almost indistinct noise.
Relief.
That pissed him off.
Why, he had no clue.