Page 14 of Reckless Sinner

In the end, feeling a bit sick inside, I took a picture of the final page ofSense & Sensibilityand sent it to him with the accompanying text,look how late you made me stay up.

I put my phone on ‘Do Not Disturb’ before I could waste time trying to see if he was up and had read it, then got ready for bed. Right as I finished brushing my teeth I heard my dad’s footsteps on the stairs—finally home.

I poked my head out of the bathroom. “Did you have a productive night?”

“Don’t you think I should be asking you that?” Dad replied. “How’d the date go? I see you aren’t spending the night with him.”

“He clearly doesn’t want to rush things,” I said, speaking in half-truths. “We had a good talk about literature and history, and he offered to walk me back here. We kept talking even after I got home, though, over the phone.”

“Good, good, an excellent start.” Dad nodded. “I’m glad to see you really getting on this, Delaney. It’ll do good things for our city. I promise.”

He ruffled my hair as he walked past me and I swallowed the lump of guilt in my throat. I sure hope that it helped people—that my deception was worth it. Because right now, I just felt sick.

CHAPTER7

Dante

In spite of the various temptations she presented, I managed to avoid seeing Delaney in person for another two weeks.

Part of that was pure timing. Vincent’s wedding happened and that took up all of my damn energy. Thankfully Marco pulled a… well, a Marco, and had some stunt that took everyone’s attention during the reception. It meant that people had precious little time for sneering at me and my rejection of ‘the life’, and dear old Dad certainly didn’t have any energy to spare to find and argue with me.

Then something happened with Marco’s girlfriend, something actually serious—and frankly I didn’t want to know the details so I kept out of it—but that distracted everyone even past the date of the wedding, which could only be good news for me. Maybe he’d finally knocked someone up?

The other part of it, though—that was definitely me avoiding Delaney. I could tell that she wanted to see me again. And hey, I was flattered. I couldn’t deny that. Women hadn’t exactly been falling all over themselves to date the son of Antonio Russo—and the women thathadweren’t the type I wanted to hang around with. They’d been desperate for any kind of notoriety at best and outright dangerous at worst.

Delaney, wanting to date me? That was—great. On the surface. But I couldn’t stop thinking of the way she’d looked at me. As if I was a truly a good man, a knight in shining armor, almost. How could I possibly show her that the armor was tarnished? And how could I let this sincere woman into my life when I would have to do as my father said when the time came?

I didn’t know whose heart I was protecting more, hers or mine.

Not seeing her in person, though, didn’t seem to stop me over the next two weeks from texting her constantly. When I woke up to find her picture and text aboutSense & Sensibility,I’d felt a rush of giddiness I hadn’t experienced since I was a damn freshman in college, newly aware that I was handsome and good enough at flirting for women to actually want me.

You shouldn’t respond,the voice in the back of my head cautioned me. But that was the mafia man in me, and I had felt reckless enough to ignore that warning. Surely a bit of texting couldn’t hurt?

So here I was, two weeks later, in the middle of an ongoing conversation with the woman I’d literally told myself to stay away from—and then she was at the same damn party as I was.

I should’ve expected it. While Alan wasn’t strictly involved in this get-together, he was the sort of man who found himself at just about every lawyer mixer in the city. A combination of connections, reputation, and his own damn hustle, I was sure. When you reached the high levels where lawyers like us resided, your job wasn’t just in the courtroom, it was also over cocktails.

We had taken over the bar of a trendy restaurant—that was usually how it went at these things. Nobody wanted to give up their office space or invite a bunch of sharks into their homes to peruse and judge their personal space. Instead someone footed the bill for the venue and you got either a certain number of drinks free, or an open bar, depending on who was hosting and how much they wanted to impress.

I schmoozed, as I had to, for the sake of the company. It was my job to be good at showing off how well the firm was doing and since I was now a partner I had to be even more on my toes than usual. I made sure to talk up Alan every chance I got, without being too ingratiating about it—dropping a casual comment here or there about how appreciative I was, or how it was thanks to his mentorship, things like that.

Everything had a price, and that included my promotion. Luckily this was a price I was glad to pay.

I had only one drink, since I made it a policy to stay sober at these things. My reputation was shaky enough, I didn’t need it to be actively thrown out the window just because I’d gotten a bit too tipsy and said or done the wrong thing. Others could get away with a faux pas here and there, especially the older men who owned entire businesses and couldn’t hold their liquor like they used to. But not me. Not with my last name.

I finished my drink and looked around for a server to give it to. Finding none, I just went to the bar. After handing it off to the bartender I turned—and saw her.

Fuck, she looked good. Delicious, just like she had the night of our date. I’d firmly pushed all thoughts of Delaney’s looks out of my mind as we’d texted and had never let anything stray into the flirtatious, sticking just to the discussion of intellectual or emotional things like history, or book characters we related to, or what movie I’d just seen.

Now here she was, in a classy little black dress. She was dressed a bit more conservatively than a lot of the women milling around the party, and I wasn’t sure if that was because she was here as her father’s date and felt an innate awkwardness in dressing too sexy—understandable—or if it had something to do with the odd lack of confidence I’d felt from her on our date.

From here at the bar, I could see her smiling and nodding along with something others were saying. She listened politely and intently—she was a very good listener. I had no doubt that she was genuinely taking in all that was said.

As I watched, her head cocked here and there, from side to side like she was a kitten catching onto an interesting noise. She was listening, I realized, to the people around her, not just the people in conversation with her.

Alan Weston had certainly trained a good information trawler. Watching Delaney, I could see how she smiled and nodded along with quiet, submissive politeness while also glancing about, catching snatches of the other conversations so that she knew what everyone else was talking about. I had a feeling that most other people didn’t notice. Why would they? She was a polite, sweet girl, and they had their own business to attend to. They had better things to do than stare at Delaney Weston like she was a bug under a microscope.

Which actually made me realize what a creep I probably looked like and I quickly turned away. I caught sight of a waiter with a glass of wine, and followed the movement until I saw him hand the wine to Delaney. She took it with an instinctive glance of thanks.

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