Page 97 of Not Mine to Keep

“Only as much as you do me,” I admitted. “We’re both masochists, apparently.” Resisting the impulse to join the Mile High Club—because now was not the time or place to test our control—I reached for his hand and moved it back to a safer place. “Thank you for tonight. For everything. And for your restraint with Braden.” I closed my eyes. “And most of all, thank you for this.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Alessandro

One Week Later

“The story will never see the light of day,” Javier said over the line. “You have my word.”

“Thanks for following up.” I sat back in the desk chair at my security firm, uneasy with the next question I needed to ask. “And did you confirm the other thing?”

“Yeah, Britt set up Braden for the money. He didn’t know about the camera or her plan.”

Didn’t mean I’d now like the guy, but I supposed I didn’t need to unleash Armani’s helldogs on him anytime soon. “Maybe we need to vet her friends from now on.” How’d she ever trusted a woman like Britt in the first place? My stomach launched deep into some bottomless pit at the memory that Calliope wouldn’t be my wife for much longer. Who’d protect her then? Fend off the Britts, Bradens, and other assholes of the world? “Scratch that thought,” I said before Javier responded, already on my feet in need of a stiff drink.

“I’m heading back to the house now. Will you be in late again?”

“Same time as always, yeah.”Sometime after midnight.

“Anything else, sir?”

“Just for you to stop calling me that.” Balancing the phone to my ear with my shoulder, I filled my glass with a twenty-five-year-old Macallan.

“Roger that.”

Ending the call, I returned to my desk, set aside my phone, and smoothed my palm over the Italian wood, remembering when I’d had my wife sprawled out before me eight days ago.

My plan after Nashville had been to bury myself in work and barely see or talk to her until the birthday party.

I’d successfully bailed every morning before Calliope woke up, but it didn’t take long after my Houdini routine to find myself at her mercy every day. Always at lunchtime. She’d park that cute ass of hers at the kitchen island in something sexy, right in front of the security camera where she knew I could see her. So I had lunch delivered wherever I was at, security app opened, and we’d eat “together.”

And every night when I went home, I’d wind up crawling into bed with her. Wrapping her up in my arms. And with our limbs entangled, I’d pass out and sleep like a baby.

If that wasn’t enough to blow my plan to hell to keep my distance, it was the texts that started up on Monday that did me in.

The messages began as check-in texts. Simplehow are yous?that somehow morphed into more. I’d found myself sending her paragraphs in response to her essays.

I now knew about the farm her aunt had raised her on, as well as the story that had made my old man laugh, along with a dozen others. I had pretty much committed to memory the names she’d given to every farm animal, whether I wanted to or not.

I also knew about the only ex she’d ever lived with, the one who’d slept with Britt, and I’d had to go to the range and unload my anger after that because I wanted to kill the man for breaking her heart. Not to mention the fact he’d shared a bed with her.

Pretty sure I had more insight into this woman than anyone else in the last two decades, and it’d mostly been because of texts. Not that I’d revealed too much to her about my past—like why I’d become so fucked in the head when I lost my heart in the first place—but I still managed to share with her more than I had with anyone outside my family (or therapist).

About to open the security app to check in on her—according to her last text, she was going to try writing music again—I looked up to see Hudson tapping with the back of his hand at the open door.

“You have news?” I asked him, assuming that was why I wasn’t alone at the office at night.

“You feel like hunting later?” Hudson walked in. “The mood I’m in ...”

I took a guess and asked, “Izzy bothering you?”

“Always, but no.” He shook his head, as if freeing a thought he didn’t want to have. I knew the feeling. Had around fifty an hour about my wife. “I spoke with Sebastian earlier. He thinks the Barones are still hanging tight at the compound in Romania because of a job, based on the people they’ve clocked coming and going.”

“Definejob. And what kind of people?” Did I really want to know this? Probably not, which was why Hudson had held back on telling me until now.

“The conflict-starting kind.” He grimaced. “The League’s guess is the Barones are planning to stir up trouble in Afghanistan to draw the US and other nations back into the region.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” I applied pressure to my temples, pain cutting through at the possibility of what he was suggesting.

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