shone blacker than a raven’s wing. He’d dressed in a casual black button-down that had the sleeves rolled to expose his forearms, a pair of well-worn jeans, and black boots like the kind Caleb wore.
He stopped next to the sofa, leaving a good stretch between them, and feeling her attraction to him spike, she pulled the lapels of her robe tighter. His quirking lip told her he noticed. She should have gotten dressed, but she’d been too worried about waking him because, much to her deteriorating mental health, he’d slept next to her last night. She’d learned that when she’d woken in the wee hours…in his arms.
She blushed now, remembering how content she’d felt as she’d cuddled in and fallen back to sleep like the big, stupid dummy she was. When what she should have done was come out here and take the sofa while reminding herself what had happened to women who had romantic relationships with mobsters.
She’d do that tonight, she thought, eyeing the sofa.
“So many thoughts floating around in there, hmm?”
Mmm. His voice was all rough and rumble.
“Did you sleep well?” The heat in his gaze grew with every second that ticked by.
She didn’t want to give him credit, but she did by nodding. Then her stomach growled loudly. “Sorry.” She covered the noise with her hand as her cheeks heated. “Hungry.”
“Yeah. I know the feeling,” he threw dryly over his shoulder as he walked to the door.
Did he? Why, because he was also hungry for breakfast?
While his back was turned, she skipped quickly into the bedroom and dug through one of her two suitcases that she’d spotted next to the closet when she’d woken. She tossed the robe onto the foot of the bed and quickly slipped on underwear and a bra before sliding her legs into a pair of navy leggings. She pulled a loose white tank over her head and left her hair down but slipped her usual hair tie around her wrist before she headed back out.
Or had he meant he was hungry for her?
Could he be, after the way she’d fallen to pieces last night? She doubted it. But then, he was a man, and men liked sex.
So did she.
With him.
She groaned and went back out to find him standing in the doorway to the dining room. His level stare unsettled her more and more with every step she took.
“Stop looking at me like that.”
He just smiled a little and pulled out a chair for her at the table.
She sat, tucking one leg under her, and inhaled the tantalizing aroma of coffee, bacon, and eggs. Her mouth watered as he sat on her right, at the head of the table. While he lifted the covers off their breakfast plates, she poured two steaming cups of coffee before adding cream to hers.
“Let’s talk about your father,” Gabriel said as they began to eat.
Like it had been doing all morning, Eva’s heart shifted again, softening for a man she’d always assumed was self-serving and irresponsible, nothing but a rich playboy. When, instead, he might be someone who’d sacrificed his own happiness, his family, in order to keep them safe from the indisputably dangerous world he lived in.
What kind of person would do such a noble, painful thing?
Your sperm donor.
As regret for her awful judgment rose, she thought about how, in the end, it had all been for nothing. Because her mother’s life had indeed been taken by the very people Vasily Tarasov had tried to protect them from. Members of a rival Russian organized crime family.
She was the daughter of a Russian mob boss.
She pushed away the rising hysteria she should probably give herself permission to feel. After all, in the last week, she’d moved home, met Gabriel, lost her virginity, started a new job, found out her boss was the man she’d lost her virginity to, been attacked in her home, was being held hostage against her will—sort of—and found out her father was a Russian crime boss.
Shaking her head at the impossibility of it all, she did something extremely normal and took a drink of her coffee. Maybe it would do her good to talk about it. God knew she wasn’t getting far with it on her own.
“I don’t know if you’ll understand,” she admitted, forking up some eggs. She chewed and swallowed.
Looking surprised—that she wasn’t being a pain in the ass, stubborn hard-head?—Gabriel put a half-eaten piece of toast down on the side of his plate. “Try me.”