Page 16 of A Very Rossi Christmas
I almost never drank when I was doing business, and especially when I was doing business with someone I didn't know whether I could trust. Drinking made you sloppy. It made you slow.
I had friends who had ended up dead because they'd had one too many drinks with someone they should never have trusted, and it had slowed their instincts when all the chips were down and it really counted.
Still. I'd had to keep Patrelli busy while Sloane was out there doing whatever she was doing, and if that meant drinking an extra pint just to be on the safe side, that was life. I wasn't going to second-guess myself now.
Not when I'd secured an additional shipment of jewels for the Rossi clan at half the price of the first set. According to Patrelli, they weren't as easy to get rid of—or move on your own—as one would have hoped, and the Patrelli family was glad to have a contact who would take them off their hands. That part made me a little bit nervous, but the side effect to me having had too much to drink was that Patrelli had had too much as well.
And he was one of those guys who talked when he got drunk. Gave up secrets.
I grinned as I entered the hallway, thinking back on everything I'd learned, and started committing it to memories that would last past sleep tonight.
I was just turning the corner to get to the men's bathroom when something hit me from behind. A cannonball, by the feel of it, and I found myself shoved against the wall by its momentum.
I immediately started mentally taking stock of my back, trying to figure out whether there was a wound from said cannonball, and was about to yank myself around and confront whoever had sent it when a familiar voice started hissing in my ear.
"What in the ever-loving fuck are you doing here, Joseph Rossi, and what are you doing drinking so much when you're in a meeting with a Patrelli? I thought your dad taught you better than that."
I found myself spun around without any conscious effort on my part, and then slammed back against the wall again, my head thudding against it with a softthwumpthat did nothing for the already-spinning world.
I didn't let that get to me, though. Instead, I glared down at the tiny girl who had managed to not only hit me with the speed of a bullet but then jerk me around like she weighed about 100 pounds more than she actually did.
"What the hell areyoudoing, Sloane Brennan?" I hissed back, fighting the urge to either shove her off of me or turn us again so she was the one up against the wall and at my mercy, and I was the one shielding her with my body. "Don't you know better than to come barreling into someone else's meeting when you're not invited?"
She glared at me, her eyes sparking in the dim lighting of the hallway and her lips pushed out in anger. “This is my fucking town, Joseph. I'm allowed to go anywhere I want, and I don't appreciate you suddenly showing up and thinking you can boss me around. Now, I'll ask again. What the hell are you doing here? And why are you following me?"
I blinked. God, I'd forgotten how quickly she could jump from one subject to another. She'd gone from being angry at me for being sloppy in a meeting with a guy she evidently knew of and thought to be dangerous ... to something between furious and worried at the idea that I was following her.
I saw her eyes flicker, giving away more than a little bit of fear, and then turn hard again.
She jabbed a finger right into my chest, poking me so hard that I was sure she was going to leave a bruise. "What. Are. You. Doing. Here?"
Every word came with another poke.
And that was enough of that.
I grabbed her shoulders and spun, putting her up against the wall and caging her in with my arms, and then I leaned down toward her, every nerve ending in my body screaming with how close she was. I'd forgotten how tiny she was. Forgotten how her hair blazed and her eyes spat sparks when she was mad. I'd forgotten how fair her skin was and how she fit right under my chin.
She always had. Even when we were seven and I’d been small for my size, she'd been a tiny little thing. Someone that I wanted to protect with every ounce of my being.
That had never changed, that fierce, overriding need to protect her, and over the years, it had grown into something a whole lot more...
Well, my rapidly hardening dick was the best description I could come up with for that one. At some point, the feeling that I needed to protect her had turned into something that was a whole lot more like jealousy. A need topossessher.
An overpowering need to make her mine.
I breathed in the smell of her, and it came rushing back. Sitting in a café the night we graduated, reaching out to take her hand and getting ready to tell her everything. Getting ready to tell her that I wanted something different than just friendship. That I had for a long time... and that I didn't care what our families thought about it.
A sharp jab in my stomach brought me quickly back to the present, and I jerked myself out of my daydreams, told my nether regions to keep themselves to my pants, and met her eyes.
"Are you just going to stand there smelling my hair or are you going to answer my questions?" she snapped. "I don't know what the hell you've been doing for the past five years, Joseph Rossi, but your manners have really slipped. Now if you don't mind—"
Someone came around the corner, nearly running into us, and I realized in a split second how this probably looked. Me standing here towering over this little girl, her voice getting louder and louder. A dark, deserted hallway.
The entire thing screamed trouble.
And I didn't need trouble. I already had enough of that.
Which was why I didn't let her finish her sentence. The moment the other person appeared in the hallway, I ducked the four more inches it took and sealed my mouth over hers, claiming the girl I'd wanted for half of my life and never dared to take.
