Page 16 of Heartbeats Amidst Chaos: Part 2

“My entire family is not a gang,” Elio clarified, frowning. “And no, ambushing the police is not my grandfather’s style.”

“Then who was it?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“And why were the police there?”

“I don’t know,” he said again, watching her face carefully. “Do you?”

“No!” Rissa’s face crinkled with confusion. Then realization dawned. “You think I called them.”

Elio shrugged. “I thought maybe you decided I was the bad guy after all.”

For just a moment, her eyes dodged away from his face, and his heart staggered. What did that mean?

“If you didn’t call them,” he said carefully, “They probably followed you. And then they saw you meet up with me. Which means…”

“I’m in trouble. Again.”

Elio started the car and merged into traffic, heading out of town.

Taking a deep breath, Rissa pulled out her cell phone. “I’m going to cancel my dinner with Reagan,” she said quietly.

“Then what?” Elio asked.

“What do you mean?”

“If you go back to your apartment, the police will be waiting for you.”

She shook her head, her brows low over her eyes. “I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.”

Several minutes later, Elio pulled in behind a tall, gray building and went around to open Rissa’s door for her. She stepped out, once again tugging on her skirt. She wasn’t used to wearing revealing clothes, he realized.

His heart started to speed up. What if she had dressed up just for him? If he could ignore the fact that they’d just been surrounded by police, attacked and rescued by an unknown assailant, and were now pulling up at an unoccupied office building instead of a fancy restaurant, he could almost imagine this was one of the dates he started to let himself dream about having with Rissa. Once this was all over. If it ever was.

He unlocked the glass door of the building and let Rissa in ahead of him.

“What is it with you and abandoned buildings?” Rissa asked, glancing at the closed doors encircling the tiled lobby. “Do all crime families just keep a string of them vacant for a potential tryst?”

She turned to face him, her eyes daring him to once again react to her statement about his family. She was trying to get a rise from him.

Elio shook his head. “You seem determined not to believe it,” he said, “but I truly have nothing to do with any of the Accardi crime operations. I run a private contracting business, andthese are buildings that we’re in the process of constructing or renovating.”

“Oh, a front business.”

Elio shrugged uncomfortably. She wasn’t entirely wrong. His grandfather was one of the contracting company’s biggest investors, and up until recently, the question of where all that money came from had been one of Elio’s concerns.

He pointed toward a door on the right, and Rissa opened it, stepping into the partially furnished office with its wide desk, single chair, and mahogany-colored leather couch.

Rissa plopped down on the couch and looked up at him with a challenging expression that intrigued him. Her knees and thighs were pressed together, but her ankles were akimbo, and with her hair tumbling around her face and over her shoulder, she looked both bold and innocent, a paradox.

“So,” she said lightly as if to brush aside everything that had just happened. “What did you want to meet about?”

Chapter ten

She watched as Elio sighed, running his hand through his hair and turning to pace. Her eyes caught on the row of sutures behind his ear.

Those should probably come out,she thought.It’s been a week.The ones across his abdomen could stay in for a few more days, but head wounds healed fast.

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