The sound resonated in her ears.
“Is he dea…? Is he…?” Pain poured down Angie’s cheeks and ripped through her heart, rendering her unable to speak. The horror coursing through her made her bones feel sticky and motionless.
Roman stood and moved toward the stairs.
Too terrified to be more than a foot away from him, Angie clawed at his sweater and pounded down the stairs after him.
They both froze at the bottom of the staircase, wide eyes riveted to the heap on the floor, neither wanting to move any closer.
The body had landed facedown. They inched toward it, bit by bit, and when they were a few feet away, Roman fell to his knees.
Angie bent down behind him, chunks of his sweater still trapped in her fists.
Taking a deep breath, Roman took hold of the man’s shoulder and turned his body with a quick, trembling flick of his hand, as if he was on fire.
The body rolled, and Roman and Angie both stumbled backward, now clutching each other. The head bobbed toward them and came to a rest, unblinking gray eyes burning a hole through both of them.
Emotion stained Roman’s face, replacing the stoic shock that had been there before, when he realized he was looking into the bloodshot eyes of his biological father, Knox Jefferson.
11
Leo took Jessica’s hand as they followed the hostess to their table at Pariah. Red candles sat on each table and lined the walls, providing the only illumination in the dim restaurant. The hostess stopped at a round booth in the corner.
Leo looked back at Jessica. As always, she was so busy taking in her surroundings that she didn’t even notice his gaze until he squeezed her hand.
She looked at him and smiled.
He knew a forced smile when he saw it, and the sight made him even hungrier to get her into bed, where he knew he had the tools to put a genuine smile on her face, not that fake shit she’d been giving him since the moment they’d met.
He let Jessica climb into the booth first, eyes falling to her breasts the moment she turned her head, and then down her long frame, not stopping their voyage until they landed on her red toes, peeking out from her patent-leather heels. His pants tightened, and his gaze reset, reversed, and moved back up her body until his eyes were on hers again.
She was looking right back at him, an eyebrow raised from where she’d already scooted to the middle of the booth.
He cursed under his breath. It was the millionth time this woman had caught him ogling her body. He had a feeling she hated that about him and, for whatever reason, was biting that sweet tongue.
He held her eyes and slid into the booth, moving in close. She let him. Confusion seized him. He couldn’t tell if she loved him, or hated him. It seemed like she was sitting on an undecided pendulum, constantly swinging back and forth, and it was keeping him on his toes like Holyfield.
“Are you comfortable?” he asked.
“I’m great. Excited.”
She wasn’t great, or excited.
He knew it. He could see it. She was a good actress, but he knew an excited woman when one was sitting next to him. He could smell it, but he couldn’t smell it on her.
Her indifference was like a fist to the nose. How was this girl throwing invisible punches? Why were they landing? Why didn’t she like him?
A busser dropped two glasses of water. The server was there soon after to take their drink orders, and then they were alone once more.
“Finally have you to myself.” He crossed his leg at the ankle and turned his body so he could face her.
She turned, too, crossing her legs toward him.
His eyes fell, riveted when the hem of her dress rose above her knee. He reached out and ran his knuckle along her knee and up to the rapidly rising hem of her dress, his heart pounding the whole time. He waited for that fist to the nose, cheering inwardly when she didn’t just allow him to touch her, but scooted in closer. His stomach went warm.
The waitress came by and dropped their drinks. A Manhattan for Leo and a pink martini he’d ordered for her. They both lifted their drinks and took a sip, eyes widening at the same time.
“Do you like it?” he asked, setting his drink down.
“It’s delicious,” she said. “I’m glad I let you order for me.”
He licked his lips, watching her manicured nails run the stem of her martini glass, wishing to God it was his dick. “Not too sweet, not too bitter. Right in between. Just like you.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“If you could see inside my head…”
She perked up, already in the middle of her third sip. “So…” she said, setting the glass down. “I’ve never asked you what you do at Novsky. I know Val is the CEO, Gary is Marketing VP, and Roman is…”
“CFO. The wind under Novsky’s wings.”
“You guys must’ve been hurting without him.”
Leo met her eyes, frowning. “How did you even know he left?” He watched her eyes drop, the way they often did when she was thinking up an answer. She did that a lot, especially when he pushed her on why she knew so much about him and his family. Some part of him hoped she was some secret fan, some Romanovsky family stalker who was only pretending to be nonchalant. It would make it much easier to get between her legs.
“Someone must have told me,” she said. “Why did he go missing?”
He looked to his drink. “He’s been saddled with some heavy stuff. Stuff he didn’t ask for, and doesn’t deserve.” If she were any other employee, now would be when Leo started choosing his words more carefully, but he couldn’t do that with her. “When Rome is distressed, he goes rogue. He doesn’t want to talk about it. He just wants to disappear until whatever is bothering him goes away. Even when we were kids, if he was pissed at our parents, he could disappear for weeks at a time.”
“Where would he go?”
“All kinds of places. He’s always been loved. If he lost everything tomorrow, all his money, all his properties, every member of his family, he would still have plenty of soft places to land.”
“And if you lost everything tomorrow? Money, properties, family? Would you have a soft place to land?”
Leo smiled, thinking of the women who constantly roamed his apartment, slithered all over him, and worshiped the ground he walked on. He thought about how quickly those women would disappear if everything went away tomorrow—the money, the parties, and the drugs.
His eyes met hers. “Maybe you can be my soft place.”
“We’re ten minutes into our first date, and you’ve already deemed me your potential soft place?”
He pushed his knuckle under the hem of her dress. “Maybe you already are.”
She nodded around her martini glass as she took another sip.
“I would always have my family,” he said. “If I lost everything. They’ve seen the ugliest parts of me, from every angle, and they’re still around. That’s all I need.”
She pretended to choke on her martini, looking to him with wide eyes as she set it down. “I’m sorry, the ugliest parts of you? Do you even have one ugly part? Where? Where is it?”
He laughed when she began searching the booth. She lifted his arm as if he had an “ugly part” hidden under there. She even went so far as to peek under the hem of his shirt, getting just enough of a glimpse of his abs to send a blush rushing to her cheeks. He watched her pull away. His stomach had left an impression, one so strong it made her stop her playful exploration. He beamed with pride, thanking God for his decision to do an extra round of crunches at the gym that morning.
She took another sip of her drink, sneaking a look at him from the corner of her eye.
“I have lots of ugly parts,” he said.
She leaned one shoulder into the booth as she faced him. “We all do. Don’t beat yourself up. I have ugly parts coming out of my ugly parts.”
Against every inch of his will, his eyes travelled her. She definitely did not have an ugly part.
“A more untrue
statement has never been spoken, Miss Ashley Williams.”
This time, when he moved his knuckle along the hem of her dress, her eyes fell to watch.
When her gaze rose back to his, he held it, waiting for her to call him out.
She didn’t. “And what’s your role at Novsky?”
Leo swirled his drink on the table with his free hand, keeping his knuckle on her, itching to take that thick thigh under his hand completely, squeeze it and move higher, until it was slipping along the lips of her heat.
He didn’t know why, but he knew she was wet.
“Chief Risk Officer,” he answered.
“What does that entail?”
“A lot of criminally boring things that make me want to kill myself daily.”
“Elaborate?”
His eyes fell to her lips, along each ear, down her cheeks, anywhere they could get.
Her eyes did the same to him.
“I refuse to put you to sleep talking about my boring job.”
She poked her bottom lip out. “Please?”
He pictured that protruding lip dragging along the underside of his dick, and he was powerless. “As CRO, my job is to make sure Novsky wins.”
“You call that boring? That’s the most interesting thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Thank you so much.”
She laughed.
His face grew serious. That one had been real. That laugh. It was gorgeous on her. Rare.
“So.” Her smile slowly fell. “Your job is to make sure Novsky wins. What does that mean?”
“It means I hate to lose.”
“I already know that about you. You’re nothing if not persistent.”
“Only if I’m after something worth my persistence. Novsky is my family’s company, and I would die to protect it.”
“What are you protecting it from?”
“Shareholders. Competitors. Itself.”
“Who’s Novsky’s biggest competitor?”
“I’m sure you’ve read the paper.”
“On his way out of your office the other day, I ran into Reggie King,” she said, confirming that she definitely had been reading the paper. “He said that soon, Novsky will be his.”
“Val would die first.”
“Seems like you would, too.”
“I would. Yeah.” Leo shook his head at the thought of Reggie. “Son of a bitch,” he grumbled. “We always had his back, and this is how he treats us.”
She straightened. “Had his back?”
Leo wondered if he should continue, then realized he had no idea how to hold back from her. “He used to spend every weekend at our house, some weekdays too. He used to cry, hysterically cry, when he had to go home.”
Her lips fell open. “Your family was friends with the Kings?”
“Gary and Reggie were thick as thieves. Dumb and dumber,” Leo laughed. “You couldn’t tear them apart for nothing. And whenever Reggie walked through our door with a busted lip, a swollen eye, or a broken jaw, Ma was always right there kissing his wounds and patching him up.”
“Broken jaw?”
“His father is not a very patient man.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “How is it possible that child services never came for him? The police?”
“Victor King is the police.”
“Wow. Poor Reggie.”
“No, not poor Reggie,” Leo said. “Fuck Reggie. He doesn’t know the true meaning of loyalty.”
“I think it’s human for Reggie to be loyal to his father, to want his love, even if it seems insane to everyone else.”
“After everything we did for him though? Nothing. Nothing in return.”
“Do you only give kindness in hope of a return?”
“We shouldn’t have to ask for a return. It should just be. That’s what loyalty is. But instead of returning, Reggie sets out to destroy us. To take from us. And when he takes from us, he takes from our mother, our father, our family, people who would’ve never dreamed of hurting him the same way. Fuck him. I mean it...”
“I don’t think you do. Your heart is too pure.”
Her words made it so, because his heart went to mush. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Don’t get too excited.”
“Never. I stay on my toes with you.”
“I guess I understand you feeling protective over a company you built with your own hands.”
“I didn’t build Novsky,” Leo said. “Val did. He just snatched all of us up on his way to the top. My only job is to stop it from crashing into a brick wall it doesn’t know is there.”
“Why try to stop it? Don’t you have to risk crashing if you’re ever going to succeed?”
“I take risks all the time.”
“Like what?” she asked.
He shifted. “You really go all the way in, don’t you? Usually, on a first date, the questions are more along the lines of… dogs or cats? Friends or Frasier? Bacon or sausage? You’re digging deep.”
“Dogs, Friends, and sausage, obviously.”
“Girl. Cats, Frasier, bacon.”
“Cats?” She beamed. “Bacon? This will never work.”
He laughed.
“Who cares about that crap,” she said. “I want the dirt. I want the guts. So tell me what kind of risks you take, Leo, because I’m not convinced you actually do.”
“I’m taking a risk sitting here with you right now.”
She shifted again.
“I took the risk of asking you out, didn’t I?” he asked. The truth was, Ashley Williams was the biggest risk he’d taken in a long time, because he didn’t know how to read her. Even at that moment, sitting so close to her he could count her eyelashes, with his hand on her thigh, he still felt off-balance. Like he was one wrong word away from losing her forever.
“I’d hardly call myself a risk,” she said.
“Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I’m a complete wreck around you.” His voice lowered. “I don’t think you have any idea how terrifying you are.”
“You’re the one that ran me down in your Porsche, but I’m terrifying?”
“When I first climbed out of that car and laid eyes on you, I stopped breathing for a minute.”
“When you first climbed out of that car, you leapt for your precious grille. By the time you were done kissing it better I was already back on my feet shaking the asphalt out of my hair.”
“Lies. I went straight to your aid.”
“Once you saw my tits spilling out of my top, yeah. I had your undivided attention then.”
“God, I knew it.” He moved in closer, daring to cover her thigh with his entire hand. When she let him, he squeezed, not unaware of his dick tightening with need. “You hate me.”
“I don’t hate you. And, to be honest, the collision wasn’t all your fault. I should have heard that Flat-6 coming from a mile away.”
“What do you know about a Flat-6?”
“I like cars.”
“I like women who like cars.”
“You just like women.”
“Guilty, but I’ve never met one that knows a Flat-6 engine by ear.”
“My dad worked on cars all his life. He owns a garage and he used to let me help him. Now that I look back, he wasn’t so much letting me help him as he was exploiting me for the free labor.”
His smile grew.
“He built his shop in a nice area, took the financial loss for years, but still managed to keep us fed and clothed. Pretty soon, the Lambos and Porsches started coming through the door and—”
“Profit becomes inevitable.”
“Correct, Mr. CRO.” She nudged him. “It almost became too much for him to keep up with. He doesn’t even have time to enjoy the money. He works 24-7. My uncle tries to pick up some of the slack, but Dad doesn’t know how to relax. He gets antsy quickly when he doesn’t have anything to do with his hands.”
“Your uncle? Your mother’s brother?”
“No, my
father’s brother.”
Leo shifted with a frown. “Didn’t you say your father’s family was assassinated in Africa?”
Her eyes widened.
Leo would pay good money to get in her head.
Her gaze fell to her lap. “My father and uncle were the only two who made it out alive.”
He nodded, frowning at her broken eye contact. “Where’s the garage?”
“South Cove.”
Leo whistled. “A mile off Wall Street. He’s cleaning up.”
“Not nearly as much as you and your brothers, but he does okay.”
“Good for him. He sounds like a smart man.”
“He is.”
“Maybe I’ll meet him sometime.” His voice lowered. “Where’d you grow up?”
“Jersey City.”
“No shit?”
“Westside.”
“Girrrrrl,” he teased, a smile lighting up his face when she laughed. It was a breathtaking sight when her smiles were real. If he had to do a gay accent to get it out of her, he would do it with bells on. “That’s the damn hood.”
“It was tough.”
“I was on fifteenth and JFK,” Leo said.
Her wide eyes flew to him. “That was two blocks from me. Damn, small world.”
“Looks like we both made it out alive.”
“The few, the proud.”
“What high school did you go to?”
Her eyes fell away from his. “Um… Private school. Boston. Once my father started making money, he wanted to make sure I got the best education.”
“That must have been tough. Being away from him.” Leo said, frowning.
“He was just trying to do right by me.”
When the waitress came to take their food orders, they gaped at their menus, shocked that they’d forgotten to even open them.
“Damn,” Leo said. “We haven’t even had a chance to look.”
“You come here all the time, right?” she asked. “You know what’s good. Why don’t you choose? I trust you.” She winked.
He sat taller before ordering for both of them. They waited for the waitress to go before they both sank back into the booth, facing each other once more.
Loving Leo (The Romanovsky Brothers Book 3) Page 13
