Page 5 of Dark Romeo

“What do you say, Jules?”

Jules. He had nicknamed me. I loved it.

No, how dare he presume to nickname me. I should be offended.

“Fine,” I said, so he would let me leave. I wouldn’t go. Going to a club alone, in a sea of faces, to meet him? He’d probably forget about me the second I walked out of his sight. His casual threat was empty anyway. He had no idea where I lived. Because of my job, my address was unlisted.

“‘Fine’ what?” he asked, still not letting go of me.

This man was sharp. I doubted anyone ever pulled the wool over his eyes.

“Fine, I’ll come.”

He grinned, revealing a set of perfect white teeth. I realized too late that what I’d said had been taken the wrong way. “Oh,” he said with a chuckle, “I have no doubt you will.”

A hot flush went through me. Liquid heat pooled between my legs, making me tense. This wasn’t a heart attack. This was early menopause. Can a woman get menopause in her twenties?

He bent over, his eyes still drilling into mine, to brush his full lips across each one of my knuckles. That single touch was enough to elicit a soft moan from me. I promptly cut it off by snapping my mouth together. Jesus Christ. A heart attack and menopause.

I snatched my hand holding my phone from his. “Well. Bye, then.” I spun and walked off as fast as I could without toppling over in my heels. Well, that was…odd. Glad that was over. I felt his gaze burning into my back.

ROMAN

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“Roman Giovanni Tyrell, is that you?” a familiar female voice called out. Low and soothing with the tremor of age, it was like the wrap of a blanket on a cold night.

“Hey, Nonna,” I called back as I opened the back door of her low brick two-bedroom cottage out in the eastern suburbs of Verona. Nonna had lived here for as long as I could remember and my best friend, Mercutio, had practically grown up here.

I was older than Merc, just. By only six months. He always seemed to act the older brother to me. He and I had often been mistaken for brothers; we had the same thick dark hair and olive skin. That’s where the similarities ended. Merc was almost as tall as me, over six feet, but his frame was lean muscles like a basketball player where I had grown thick like a rugby player. Despite my somewhat crazy lifestyle in Europe, I’d found a constant in boxing and lifting weights.

Nonna Sheree was Mercutio’s grandmother, a pint-sized woman with a soft smile and fierce temper when we boys had disobeyed her, stealing bites of cherry pie while it was cooling on the window sill or using up too much water spraying each other (and the house through open windows) with water from the hose in the sticky depths of summer.

She appeared at the kitchen entrance, wiping her hands on a dish towel tucked into her apron. She’d aged in the last eight years, her hair almost completely white, wrinkles softening her paper skin. But her eyes, a dark earthy color, just like Mercutio’s, were alive and sparkling with youth. “You boys never use the front door. You know it’s a bigger doorway.”

“The front door is for guests,” called Merc from behind me. “We’re family.”

I eased my head and shoulders through the low doorway. I was still dressed in the suit I had worn to the funeral sans jacket and tie. My top two buttons were open. “This isn’t a doorway,” I muttered. “It’s a cat flap.”

Nonna made a tsking noise and shook her head, a soft smile on her wizened face. “I swear, one of these days you’re going to get stuck in the frame.”

I stepped right into her kitchen, a warm glow coming from the oven, the smell of roasting chicken and garlic already permeating the rooms of the house. “Damn that smells good.” I leaned down and gave her a hug, my arms wrapping all the way around her tiny frame. “You’ve shrunk, Nonna,” I teased gently.

“It’s you that has gotten taller and wider,” she said with a soft swat to my arm with her dishcloth. “Holy Mother of Mary, look at you.”

“Yeah,” added Merc. “Now he’s an even bigger pain in the ass.”

“Language, Mercutio,” said Nonna.

“Sorry.”

Nonna gave me another proud look-over. “You were a boy when you left. You’ve grown into such a handsome man now.” She reached up and pinched both my cheeks.

“Nonna,” I complained, feeling my cheeks flush. Only she could get away with pinching me like I was still eight.

She patted my cheek. “It’s good to see you again.” My frosty heart felt like it warmed for the first time in eight years. She turned back to the oven. “Dinner’s almost ready, so go on into the dining room and sit down. Mercutio, can you help bring this roast out?”

“On it,” he said, slipping his hands into a pair of pastel floral mitts.

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