Renzo + Lucia: The Complete Trilogy - Bethany-Kris Page 0,34

for now, she would drop the Diego conversation. She peered over at her black Lexus, and smiled.

“Yeah, a birthday present. How did you know it was mine?”

Renzo laughed, but it didn’t sound bitter when he said, “Who else around here is going to drive a car like that, Lucia?”

Well, then …

“That’s fair,” she admitted.

Then, with no warning at all, Renzo turned back to her and said, “Do you wanna go out—have some fun for your birthday, I mean—with me tonight?”

Lucia blinked.

Renzo only stared, waiting.

Finally, her brain caught up with the rest of her.

“Like a date?”

Renzo grinned. “Yeah, let’s call it a date.”

She didn’t even have to think about it, but she was more than willing to make him work for it. “That depends, Renzo.”

“On what, exactly?”

“On what you had in mind.”

EIGHT

“On what you had in mind.”

Renzo found Lucia grinning in a way that said she was probably joking with him, but he couldn’t quite tell for sure. It was very possible that his idea of a good time was not going to be up to her standards, not that those thoughts had been enough to stop him from asking.

There was something about this chick that Renzo really needed to just get out of his system, or try to, anyway. Maybe then, he could stop being so up in arms every time she was around, and he could quit thinking about her when he had no business doing that at all.

And maybe—although, he wasn’t quite ready to admit it out loud just yet—Renzo wanted to know what it was about Lucia Marcello that made her who she was. Or see if he could find those pieces that made up who she was, anyhow.

What was it about her that made her coworkers want to bake her a cake and sing her happy birthday, along with all the people who’d stopped into the soup kitchen to eat, when she’d only been working at the place for a short time. He’d been bringing Diego here for a while, and that didn’t happen often. Also, why did his little brother constantly ask after her when he’d only met her twice? Why was she so willing to help an obviously troubled woman—his mother—when it would have been far easier to leave her right where she lay on the ground?

Yeah, he had a lot of questions.

Lucia was the only one with the answers.

“Well?” she asked, drawing him out of his thoughts.

Renzo shifted in his combat boots, and stuffed his hands in his pockets. It was far from cold for August, but he still wore his leather jacket. It felt like an armor, of sorts. It gave him a certain appearance, and allowed his don’t-fuck-with-me attitude a bit more credence. On these streets, sometimes a guy needed all the help he could get to make sure no one screwed with him on the regular.

“I know where there’s going to be a party tonight,” Renzo said. “Thought you might want to have some fun.”

Lucia smiled in that sweet way of hers, and yet, it still managed to look coy. He wasn’t sure how she did that, but it kind of drove him crazy. He liked that look on her face. He liked it even more that he was the one who made her do it.

Was that going to be a problem?

Renzo had yet to decide, really.

“Your kind of fun?” she asked.

Renzo let out a laugh, and took a step closer to her. “I don’t really have time to go out and find fun, if we’re being honest. It’s usually me working, or doing work for someone else to get paid. But yeah, if I were going to go out and do something, I’d probably find myself a party where no one is going to bitch about your music, or how much your weed stinks. Seems like the better choice than an over-filled club with over-priced drinks.”

Lucia lifted a single eyebrow. “You’re not even old enough to get into a club.”

“Neither are you. How many have you been inside?”

That sweet, coy grin of hers was back in an instant. “I plead the fifth.”

Yeah, he bet her family was familiar with that line for more reasons than he wanted to get in to at that moment. Not that right then was the right time to get in to all of that. It most certainly was not, and he had other things to get started on.

Like figuring out what in the hell it was about this woman that had his head in