Page 76 of Beautiful Dangerous

I know we can’t have this conversation out here, it’s too public. And there are security cameras, ones that Javier can easily get his hands on, should he feel a need to do so, and that’s my paranoia setting in, right there. So we need to stop this. We need to move.

“I have to get something from the office.”

I head toward the office at the back of the restaurant, and I wait, because he’ll follow me. He’s just giving it a moment.

“Close the door.”

He frowns, his hand still clutching the door handle.

“Close the door, Lucca.”

He gently pushes it to, but stays where he is. He’s cautious, as we both should be. For so many reasons we should not be in the same room together, alone.

“I’m scared, Luc.”

“So am I.”

And that’s one hell of an admission from him. Lucca Pérez isn’t scared of anything. Of anyone. Except Javier.

“What do we do?” I whisper, my voice cracking, because I’m tired and confused and I really have no clue where my life is going now.

“I don’t know.” He shakes his head and takes a tentative couple of steps toward me, his hands back in his pockets, as a way of stopping him from touching me?

“I lean back against the desk, my fingers gripping the edges. “You told me we could…”

“Move away? Start again?” He drops his head and I watch as his shoulders sag with the weight of a deep, heavy sigh. “This is a mess, Liv, and we need to find a way to get out of it.”

“You told me you loved me, Lucca. Did you mean it?”

I’m asking him, because I need to know. I need to know what’s happening here, what’s really happening.

“Olivia…”

“When you told me you loved me, did you mean it?”

He steps back, reaches behind him, and pushes the door shut, flicking the lock, before he comes over to me.

“I have loved you for a long time, Olivia. I have loved you for so fucking long, you have no idea.”

I pull myself up onto the desk, and he places his hands on my knees and gently pushes them apart, stepping between my legs. He cups my face, our eyes lock, and the beating of my heart is drowning out any other noise now, it’s all I can hear.

“So yes, when I told you I loved you I meant it. I love you, Olivia Delgado. I love you.”

I look up into his eyes, and I smile, and when he kisses me I let the world drift away for a second, but we both know this is nothing more than a moment in time.

“I love you too,” I whisper, and that’s it. We’ve sealed our fate, right there, we’ve stepped even further over a line we should never have crossed in the first place, and what happens next is all on us. The consequences, whatever they turn out to be, they’ll be our fault. “So tell me what we do now.”

He lets go of me, and he steps back. “We think about it, about what we’re doing here, Liv, because if Javier finds out…”

He doesn’t need to finish that sentence. We both know how it ends.

“Could we really leave all this behind and start again? Somewhere where nobody knows who we are?”

I’m asking a question neither of us can really answer.

“I don’t know.”

“Do youwantto leave? Just you and me, with something resembling a future ahead of us? Do you want that, Lucca?”

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