Page 32 of Santa Daddy
Every eye swung our way. The idea of me finding love between organic kale and overpriced granola short-circuited half their brains.
Think fast.
I slid an arm around her and pulled her closer, letting my hand rest high on her bare thigh.
“She was squeezing peaches,” I said, voice pitched just loud enough to carry. “I had to have her.”
The table held its breath for a second.
Then Baranov barked a laugh. Kaminsky’s mouth twisted. The others followed, nodding in that way men did when they recognized a story they liked: saw, wanted, took.
Good.
Let them understand it on those terms.
Lust. Possession. Not love.
Dani’s embarrassment rolled off her in waves, but she kept her chin up. That stubborn streak I’d seen from the beginning showed in the set of her jaw, the line of her mouth.
As the dishes arrived, conversation shifted. It never stopped being assessment, though. It never did in my world.
They watched how she interacted with me. With them. With the space. They listened to what she said and how quickly she caught on.
Some of them already labeled her liability.
“She’s a complication,” someone murmured in English down the table, thinking the general clatter would cover it. “Liability.”
There it was.
I didn’t have to look to know who it was. The tone was familiar. Always a step away from suggesting someone else “deal with” a problem.
Idiots.
They thought she made me weak when the truth was the opposite. I’d always been at my most dangerous with something worth defending.
Dani heard it too.
I felt her go very still beside me. Like a deer in headlights. Then she pulled herself together, shoulders dropping into that careful blankness she’d already learned from watching me.
She was learning fast.
I found her hand under the table and laced our fingers together. Squeezed once.
Reassurance and warning in one.
When she looked up at me, I saw the fear she fought to hide, the dawning understanding.
Someone at this table would be happier if she disappeared.
They’d have to go through me first.
I turned my attention back to my men with a pleasant expression that didn’t reach my eyes.
We were in the middle of discussing shipment routes when I saw it.
Kaminsky’s hand, stretching across the table, “casually” brushing Dani’s bare shoulder as he laughed at something Baranov said.
He wanted to see how far he could push. How much I’d tolerate. Whether this new variable was fragile, stupid, or both.
