Page 65 of Married to the Mafia

Brandi made a pained sound as she settled into her seat in the SUV and Mikey looked over at her, seeing her face scrunched up.

“Please try not to move your neck too much, ma’am,” one of the men helping them said. He carefully reached around her to click her seatbelt into place, made sure it wasn’t too snug for her, and straightened.

“Yeah, that’s a good idea,” Brandi said on a heavy exhale.

Mikey pushed out a breath and allowed his own seatbelt to be buckled. He reached over and pulled her hand into his again, threading his fingers through hers. She was going to be okay. She was in pain, but it would be temporary.

When they were both healed up, he would find a way to tell her. The back of Dante’s SUV, with three unnecessary witnesses and when both of them were sporting numerous injuries, was definitely the wrong time. But he needed to tell her. It would complicate their original agreement if he was the only one … but he didn’t think he was.

The rest of the week passed in a dragging haze of pain and frustration, the former fading not slowly enough into the latter, as Brandi and Mikey recovered. They both developed unpleasant bruises in addition to assorted injuries. She had been warned that her whiplash would likely haunt her to some degree for many years, but she was grateful that the pain at the back of her neck wasn’t anything more serious. Mikey’s injuries were a bit worse, overall, but he could walk with an ankle boot and the one bullet that had hit him had torn through the outer flesh of his arm. It would scar, but not terribly. No permanent damage had been done.

Discounting the complete loss of his favorite car, of course.

Brandi’s biggest problem, after yet another nearly full week of being stuck at home recuperating, was that she finally felt well enough to really think about the things she’d been avoiding. Thing, singular, if she were honest with herself. She was stupidly frustrated about their forced abstinence for the past several days. It would pass. Hopefully soon. Her raging, distracting lust was only the surface of the problem, though.

She tapped on the door to Mikey’s home office and poked her head into the room. “Knock, knock.”

Mikey let out a heavy sigh. “I swear I’m not dead.”

“That’s good, but I don’t know that I love the enthusiasm in your voice,” she said, slipping into the room and walking up to the desk. The tell-tale sound of keyboard clacking confirmed he was still working on something.

It was Sunday, and neither of them had been back inside the office since the accident, but none of that meant they hadn’t been working. They had both spent the majority of the previous two days digging for any potentially useful crumbs to be gleaned from Gustavo’s car’s computer. Hours of screen time, muscle cramps, a frustrated Daria, and all for the glorious dead-end of one recently demolished lot in Connecticut. They never found anything else connected to Coughlan’s number, or any known Coughlan associate’s name in the paperwork for the lot. Brandi didn’t have the lifetime of bad blood with the mysterious asshole who’d labeled her an ‘acquisition,’ but she sympathized with Mikey’s frustration at the lack of results.

“No matter how hard we try, there’s always an idiot,” Mikey muttered, drawing her focus back to the moment.

Brandi smiled and leaned into the side of his chair, her eyes bouncing between his active monitors. Several still photos and a couple of running videos, one with a time stamp that confirmed it was from the previous day. “You know I probably could help.”

“This isn’t what you signed on for.”

Feeling impulsive, and perhaps a touch needy, Brandi let her fingers sift into Mikey’s hair. “Well, about that,” she said. She winced even as she spoke. It had been her idea to start this conversation, why had she not figured out a sensible way to say the words?

Mikey’s fingers paused on the keyboard. “About … what?”

Brandi licked her lips. “No, sorry, that was a terrible segue.” He’s busy. “When you have a few minutes, there’s something I’d like to talk to you about, that’s all.” She was a coward. This marked the third time since the accident she’d opened her mouth with one intention, and abruptly changed course instead.

Mikey closed out of an open file, dropped the video into another, and tapped a key that seemed to put the entire system to sleep. Just like that. He spun the chair around, dislodging her hand, and caught her wrist before she could retreat. “I just finished. I’m all yours for the rest of the day.”

Her lips twitched. “What if there’s another idiot?”

“I’ll feed him to the Dragon.”

Brandi laughed and obligingly eased back as Mikey stood.

“Come on, let’s talk somewhere more comfortable,” he said, keeping hold of her hand.

She walked with him easily and they made their way to what she had deduced was his favorite non-work area of the manor. The den. There were two other perfectly decent downstairs sitting spaces, one notably larger than the rest, but this was the one he tended to gravitate toward. He really was a creature of habit.

Brandi let him pull her onto the sofa at his side and her gaze dropped to the gauze peaking out beneath his T-shirt sleeve. “How’s your arm?”

He looked down briefly. “Doesn’t hurt anymore. Getting the stitches out will be a relief.”

She reached up, her fingers trailing lightly over the bandage before sweeping down the curve of his arm. “I don’t … I don’t ever want to be the reason you get hurt, or killed, you know?”

“Brandi.”

She folded his hand between both of hers. “You going out there like you did was stupid. I know you were mad, and you were trying to protect me, but all he had to do was put a bullet in your head and—”

Mikey curved into her and pressed his lips to hers, silencing her unintended, rambling lecture. He kept hold of her hands and brought his other up to cup her face, holding her close as he plunged his tongue into her mouth. The kiss was rough, almost bruising, and didn’t last nearly long enough before he eased back again. “Yes, it was stupid. Yes, I could have died. And yes, I would do it again.”

---