Page 3 of Not Mine to Keep

I’d happily reassure her she was wrong if I opted to be an asshole and invited her to my hotel room later.

“I actually have a side gig.” I sipped more of the tequila. “You could call it volunteer work, I suppose.”Since I work cases for free.“And I sure as hell hope you make more in a month than my suit costs, because you’re being grossly underpaid if that’s not the case.”

“How much is the suit?” She finished her drink and set it on the table already cluttered with abandoned champagne flutes.

I rid myself of my glass as well, deciding I wanted my hands available in case I needed to ... what? Ask her to dance? Take her hand and lead her to the balcony I’d noticed earlier and tell her how I was a playboy prick (not my words, but you know, they’d been thrown my way a time orfifty) when it came to women?

“I don’t know.” I faked a light cough, suddenly feeling weird about being rich when it was normally one reason women flocked to me. “Maybe ten.”

“Thousand?” She gave me an honest-to-God hearty laugh, then topped it off with a hand to her abdomen. “Yeah, that’s three times what I clear in a month.”

“Well, that’s not funny at all. That’s fucking awful.”

“You’re right, that’s not funny. But the fact you thought I made over a hundred K a year is.” She licked her lips.

Why? Why’d you do that? Fucking A. Those lips would look spectacular wrapped around my cock.

“Anyway, I’m performing a song with the cover band tonight. For free, but hey,” she said while slapping a hand over my shoulder, “I’m accepting tips.”

We stared at each other for a moment before she turned to the stage full of instruments. And fuck if I didn’t want her hand back on me, but she rested her palm over her breastbone instead, and I couldn’t help but wonder what she’d be playing.

“Well, I should probably go. I needed some liquid courage to play in front of a crowd like this.”

I wasn’t prepared for her to leave, even if I could feel my phone blowing up in my pocket. I knew it wasn’t my burner, which meant it was one of my brothers or my sister calling, not the man who’d beckoned me to the event.

“I just realized ... I didn’t get your name.”

“That’s because I didn’t give it.” I frowned, not a fan of my own response. It felt like a dick thing I’d say back in New York. Correction: itwasa dick thing I’d said in New York. I muttered a pathetic apology. “I’m sorry—it’s Alessandro.”

She gave me an uncertain look, deciding whether she wanted to place my name in her memory bank or forget the entire conversation, given my first response to her moments before. “Why are you here?”

The curveball of a question threw me off, and I pocketed my hands, sending the next call to voicemail with a quick touch of a button. “I was dragged here by an old acquaintance.”

“Not a fan of charities where money is raised for our veterans?” Two quick, appalled steps back from me had me realizing my fatal error in speech yet again. Her gaze flicked to the sign that had a marine’s name on it: Michael Maddox. It was his and his wife’s event. They held fundraiser-type things all over the East Coast a few times a year. His way of paying it forward—a little different from mine.

“Not like that. In fact, I’m a veteran myself.” That was probably a curveball right back at her. “It was a long time ago. Army.” I felt the need to offer her a reason not to walk away from me. I never used my time in the military to try and bed a woman—it wouldn’t work in the circles I ran in—but something told me she’d have more respect for that than the size of my bank account.

“Well, thank you for your service. Even though you don’t want to be here, please consider writing a big check since you can clearly afford it. It’s for a good cause, after all.” She gave me a light, dismissive nod.

Shit.I’d failed to win her back over.

But then narrowed eyes greeted me as her arms folded over her chest, accentuating her breasts, and I did my best not to focus on the swell of her flesh. “Where are you from? Your accent ... It’s faint, but there.”

Why’d it now feel like I was on the stand in a murder trial, and I was Suspect Number One in her eyes? I lifted my hands from my pockets as someone from the stage called out her name, but she didn’t look his way as she waited for my answer.

“Sicily. Moved here when I was eight,” I answered, my tone dropping lower as I finished my words, catching a slight wince of disapproval from her.

“You’re Sicilian?” Her voice rose in surprise.

“I consider myself American after being here thirty-one years and serving in the military, but yes, technically speaking.” Why was she so put off by that? The color that’d been in her cheeks was gone.

Her gaze flicked away from me, and I followed her eyes to a man in a dark suit fifty feet away who looked like a security guard trying to blend in.

When she opted to look at me again, that disapproval had morphed into fear. “He sent you, didn’t he? You’re another one of his ... people, aren’t you?”

“Whosent me?” What in the hell was she talking about?

“My father,” was all she managed before a guitar player from the stage yelled at her, now on approach. He snatched her arm, and I sneered at his grasp, feeling the ridiculous urge to break every one of his fingers.

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