Corinne and I had grown accustomed to having him around, so much that we didn’t bother censoring our conversations. It was possible he was reporting every word we said back to Dominic, but I had a feeling he wasn’t doing that. Leo just didn’t strike me as a gossip.

It was comical today, the way he looked in the diner’s small seats, like a grown adult sitting on children’s furniture. He should have been uncomfortable, but with his long legs stretched out, he looked right at home.

“I know I’ve been acting weird,” I said to Corinne, poking at my cheeseburger.

“Are you going to talk to me about it? Or maybe you’d like to hear every juicy detail from my date last night?” She waggled her perfectly shaped eyebrow at me, knowing perfectly well I did not want the details.

“I could stand listening to a detail or two,” Leo piped in with “the grin”—that’s just what we’d resorted to calling it.

I rolled my eyes and ignored him. “I don’t know if I’m ready to talk about it, Corinne.” I wanted to, but it felt like the moment I spoke the words aloud, there’d be no taking them back, no pretending I’d heard Dominic wrong on that phone call.

“Okay, well, I think you should probably give it a go because, in truth, the only hot date I had last night was dinner with Mr. Napoleon.”

Leo tried to stifle a chuckle, but he failed miserably. He’d been hanging around us long enough to know that Mr. Napoleon was Corinne’s ten-year-old cat.

I opened my mouth to try to force the words out, but they wouldn’t come.

“Boy troubles?” Corinne teased. “I need to find myself a convoluted love life like yours.” She sighed, but I didn’t miss the “come hither” look she flashed at Leo.

“Let’s switch, then,” I teased, chuckling. “Bleach your hair, and I’ll dye mine red. Then, you can have him.”

I let out a sigh. Corinne was trying to crack jokes to make me feel better. I tried, I really did, but I just couldn’t forget about it.

The rest of our lunch passed in silence. I was eager to get back to work. It had served as a much-needed distraction lately.

My phone rang. It wasn’t a number I recognized.

“Hello?” I said.

“Miss Moore?” a man replied.

Well, it’s Luca now,I thought. “That’s correct.”

My heart sped up as I hung up the phone. My mouth was dry. It took a monumental effort to force words out.

“We have to go,” I said then shot to my feet.

“Wait a minute,” Leo said, standing up and blocking my path.

“Leo. I need to be at the clinic. Now.”

He stared at me for a moment. I wanted to plow right through him, but there was no way I could make him budge an inch even if I put all my effort into it.

But just when I was ready to scream in frustration, he nodded. He threw some money down on the table then strode toward the door without a word.

Corinne and I followed him, and I had to hand it to him. The guy could drive. He drove at double the speed limit, taking corners like they were nothing.

“What did the man say?” he asked when we were still two blocks away.

I repeated the man’s words verbatim, and Leo nodded.

“You let me handle this, Fallon. Understand?” he said as we turned onto my clinic’s street.

My heart sank.

Flames and smoke. A half dozen emergency vehicles.

As we approached, I could see one of my techs covered in soot, sitting on the sidewalk.