Page 25 of SINS & Riley
“Secret?”
His palm drifts, featherlight, to pat my stomach. Not rough. Not mocking. Just…knowing.
My throat goes tight. “How could you possibly…?” I mean, I don’t even know for sure.
Possibly.
Maybe.
Ricardo tilts his head, eyes scanning me. “Do you have any idea how many early-days-pregnant starlets I’ve dressed? The ankle swelling. The way your little nausea attacks come and go. And the way you fidget with a bra you’re busting out of. Like it fit just yesterday and now, not so much. Trust me, I know.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.” I force a laugh, but it scrapes thin. Then he lifts that damn all-knowing brow, and alarm bells blare in my skull. “You can’t tell anyone. At all.”
He mimes zipping his lips, then flicks his wrist to throw away the key. “Relax. It’s not like I hit up the Chicago underground for mani-pedi days. Even if”—his mouth twists—“Enzo did bankroll me to an early retirement.”
Enzo.
Not Mr. D’Angelo.
Ricardo’s on a first name basis with Satan. And set him up for life? Are they close?
“I haven’t stitched a single seam since then,” Ricardo laments, as though we’re mourning the fall of Rome. “I suppose the rose to this colossal thorn is that if I must return to the grind of hands-on designing, your body is the perfect excuse.”
I frown. “Huh?”
“Your curves could launch a thousand ships,” he hums as he pins the hem.
I have no idea what that means. “Thank you.”
He looks up, chuckling. “You really don’t remember me?”
“Of course I do.”
I definitely don’t.
But in my defense, Kennedy’s midnight wedding to the Lord of Hell himself was a blur.
Jet lag.
Seamstresses.
Her picture-perfect Insta-family.
Truffles the dog in a tartan bow tie.
A freaking Scottish bagpipe band…actually flown in from Scotland.
And then, the full Magic Mike revue of the smoldering D’Angelo brothers. In kilts.
Trust me, my eyes weren’t on any faces.
Except Dante’s.
And, oh yeah, I was attacked, nearly raped, and then rescued by the man who is now my warden.
If Ricardo was there, he didn’t even crack the top ten things to remember.
He ties off the last stitch, snips the thread with a flourish, and rolls down his sleeves like he’s taking a bow.
