Secret Beast - Amelia Wilde Page 0,15
calls.
“That’s me.” This is a horrible parody of a dinner reservation. They call my name. He’s ready for me. My heart beats fast and light, as if it’s not powerful enough to actually pump blood. One thought after another crowds into my mind. I could pretend to faint. I could pretend to die. Instead I’ll have to pretend to be brave.
“We’ll handle your car.” One of the men beckons me up the stairs, and they hem me in, one on either side. The guns stay out.
They escort me to a set of oversized double doors set into the front of the porch. I can’t tell if they’re painted black or if they look black. Either way, the effect is the same. No uninvited guests. I’m expected, at least. They were waiting for me. But now I have to convince Leo Morelli to make a deal with me. I have to convince him to let my dad out of that contract.
It doesn’t feel good to be going in with a clutch purse.
They open the door for me and we step inside, into a wide foyer. My heels click on hardwood that shines in the glow of sconces inset in walls with wallpaper—
I’m a Constantine. I still do a double take at Leo Morelli’s walls. Dark velvet damask, it looks like, and there’s a glint of gold in the patterns. Real gold? I can only imagine how he’d look at me if I asked him. Of course it’s real gold. I can hear him saying it. I’m not a fraud, like the Constantines.
“This way, Miss Constantine.”
And now his security has seen me gawking at the wallpaper. Good.
We take a right and leave the foyer through an archway as wide as the front doors. My heels pinch my feet, but the pain grounds me. I need my wits about me for this meeting. I can’t be flying outside my body, paralyzed by the enormity of the risk I’m taking. No. Don’t think about that. It makes me lightheaded.
The first man stops at the third door and knocks. His expression remains professionally blank. Maybe I’m imagining the new tension in his shoulders.
“Come in.”
I didn’t imagine it. His suited shoulders let down a fraction of an inch and he opens the door. “Mr. Morelli, Miss Constantine is here for you.”
Leo’s unmistakable laugh floats out into the hall and runs a sharp nail down the ridge of my spine. “Don’t keep me waiting.”
I take the first step toward the door but the other guard stops me with a hand on my elbow. “Your coat, Miss Constantine.”
My coat. Yes. My coat. I can’t keep it wrapped around me like armor. The point of putting the sexy dress on was to give myself leverage, not hide it beneath a peacoat going soft at the seams. The guard takes my purse while I get out of the coat, and then he holds his hand out for it.
It’s hard to let go. But every second that Leo Morelli waits pounds in my ears. No time to get hung up on a coat. No time to get hung up on going home, and how badly I wish I was there with Cash now. Friday nights are for popcorn and shitty TV, not making deals with the devil. “Thank you,” I tell the guard, a beat too late. He motions toward the door, and I go in.
To call this room an office would be funny. Almost flippant. It is an office, with thick carpet on the floor for my heels to sink into and a fireplace heating the air so even a naive woman with a thin, sexy dress on would be warm. This is a magazine office. The ideal office. One wall is taken up with built-in bookshelves. The other is dominated by the fireplace and the two low armchairs in front of it.
The middle is taken up by Leo Morelli’s desk.
And Leo Morelli.
The window behind him is rendered black by the firelight, but the man himself looks burnished. Like the fire is his friend. Embers reflect in his dark hair, and shadows play across his clothes. He’s not wearing a suit. I expected a suit. Something as expensive as the coat he wore when he hurt those vagrant men for me. But he sits behind his desk in a charcoal sweater, writing something on a sheet of paper in front of him. I didn’t know I could feel underdressed in the presence of a man in a sweater, but I