least dating each other. At the same time, I’m...excited? Yes. It’s excitement that makes my heart beat this way.
Last night rattled my brain. He saved me, and he let me in, and there’s nothing I want more.
Mrs. Page unzips the garment bag and pulls out a gown. It’s a gorgeous champagne gold. I would never have picked this out for myself. The color wouldn’t look good with my pale complexion, would it? I hold it up to the mirror. It looks…effervescent. Shimmering. I seem otherworldly in this color. “You’ve got four minutes left.” She’s brought underthings and shoes, too—the kind that go with a gown like this. Delicate and expensive in a matching gold color. “Step in, quick as you can. Mr. Morelli doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
I abandon all previous shyness and focus on dressing. “Do you know where he’s taking me?”
“Somewhere in the city, I would think. He didn’t give me any specifics.”
“Maybe next time,” I say wistfully, but secretly I like this, too.
With one minute to spare, I go down to meet Leo at the front doors. He watches me come down the stairs with a light in his eyes that I’m sure I imagine. Leo offers me his arm when I reach him, and I swallow a giggle.
I am not going to giggle in front of him. Jesus Christ.
Leo’s driver is waiting for us by the black SUV in the circle drive. He opens the door for us and jogs around to the front. We get in and go.
“Are you going to tell me where we’re going?” I ask when we’re closer to the city.
Leo gives me an indulgent smile. “It’s a surprise.”
I make a face. Having a creative inventor for a father has given me a dislike for surprises. There are only so many times you can wake up with freezing water flooding the second floor of your house before it stops being exciting. “Just tell me.”
He gives a low chuckle. His face isn’t visible in the shadows of the limo, but I can imagine his expression—subtly amused, darkly challenging. “You can guess.”
“A restaurant.”
“No.”
“A movie?”
The faint sound of a scoff. “You know me better than that, Haley.”
Do I? It’s an intriguing idea, that I might know Leo Morelli. He seems unknowable. A mystery. No one could have him figured out, but he seems to think I might. “A charity gala.”
“No, darling. That’s much too tame for what I have in mind tonight.”
I’m left to imagine the possibilities. We wouldn’t go dancing, would we? I’ve heard that Leo likes to visit clubs, but maybe he doesn’t—maybe he only uses them, the way he uses everything else. As a distraction and a shield. Maybe it is a restaurant and he’s just keeping me on my toes by saying no. I spend the last few minutes of the drive swinging between nerves and delight at the thought of eating with him in public. It would be a relief, honestly. Being a not-rich Constantine means that meals out are rare and come with a side of pressure to do the right thing, to not spend too much, to not eat too little.
Leo would order for me, probably. And there would never be any question about the cost.
But we don’t pull up in front of a restaurant.
The driver guides the SUV into an alley behind a sprawling building. I get goose bumps. The urge to run tenses all the muscles in my legs. But Leo wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t take me to some random alley just to fuck with me.
“I had a separate team come ahead of us,” Leo mentions, scrolling through a screen on his phone. He taps at something there. “They cleared out the four blocks surrounding this building. There’s no one in the alley.”
“I wasn’t worried about it.”
Bullshit, his expression says. But he only waits for the driver to open the door and helps me step out.
We’re directly in front of a short flight of stairs leading to a wide doorway. There’s a panel set into the wall next to the frame. Leo punches in a code, something clicks in the door, and I’m gripped with the fear that I’m about to witness something worse than the revenge killing of three men in an alley. For all I know, the rest of Leo’s family could be waiting behind this door.
I’m wrong again. The only person waiting on the other side is a uniformed guard who is not at all surprised to see us. “Mr. Morelli.”