Page 38 of The Woman on the Jury

The whole place even smelled better.

Without much else to do, I took my time that fourth day just arranging and rearranging the displays in the windows, getting some input from Miko who, apparently, had a lot of opinions about such things. Which only endeared me to him more.

Cosimo hadn’t made another appearance.

And I went ahead and tried to convince myself that the sinking feeling inside each time I thought of that had everything to do with the fact that it likely meant that I’d been right about the brothers stalking me, and not because of the way the desire was still pinging off every last nerve ending each time I thought about him. Which, I hated to admit, was really, really freaking often.

Why? I don’t know.

He was an ass.

But, I guess, there was no real reasoning with desire.

It was a chemical reaction.

Just that primal part of me recognizing that he would make a good mate. You know, in the whole ‘could beat off predators’ kind of way.

“Ugh,” I grumbled, tossing some more ancient paperwork from a drawer into the shredding pile. I’d burned out a shredder already, trying to tackle too much paperwork in a row, so I had to do it little by little since I couldn’t afford a new one.

Over my coffee this morning, I’d actually caught myself staring at an article about Cosimo’s trial on phone for an embarrassingly long time, remembering the way his gaze had moved over my naked body, his eyes heated, then the way his voice shivered over me when he’d said my body was even better than he’d imagined.

Which meant he’d previously spent some time wondering about me.

When?

At the trial?

I looked at him a lot. I was reasonably sure I’d never caught him looking at me. Clearly, though, he must have. There was no reason that made a little gooey sensation move through me. But it did.

“Hey,” a voice said, making me jerk, realizing I’d been zoning out long enough for my guard to move in front of me.

“Oh, hey. What’s up?” I asked.

“Nothing. Usually go to see your grandfather about now,” he said.

“Oh, right. Yeah. Okay,” I said, gathering my things, walking through the shop to turn lights off, then following him out.

After the hospital, I hit a few stores to get some more food and essentials in my house, grab some more books from the library, before I finally went home for the night.

“I’m sorry if you’re missing out on Friday night stuff,” I said, taking the bags from him as we stood out front of my building.

“Won’t be here all night,” he said, shrugging it off.

“Right. Of course. Well, thanks for being here,” I said, giving him a smile.

“I’ll knock when it’s shift change,” he said. “No need to answer, though,” he added.

With that, I was shut up in my apartment for the night, listening to the neighbors have some sort of party, their music thumping, their laughter still somehow rising above it.

It was the first time in a long time that I felt incredibly… alone.

Normally, if I was feeling lonely, I would drop in with my grandfather. Or, if she didn’t have something else going on, go hang out at Lauren’s for the night.

My grandfather had enough of me during my visit, his eyes getting droopy by the time I was saying goodbye. And I didn’t want to reach out to Lauren. Because hanging out with her would mean having to lie to her. I just didn’t want to get caught up in that ugly cycle.

So I just made my tea and flipped through my books. Tried to get lost in a show.

Sometime later, the knock came. And I could hear his feet shuffling away before I could even think to get up to check.

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