Her eyes narrowed at me, and just like that, my day got far more interesting.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” I grinned.
“We wouldn’t have to meet at all if you’d stop lurking around corners,” she fired back, smoothing down her shirt. Today she was wearing jeans and a simple blue t-shirt. Her clothes were as casual as they come, but somehow she still made me look twice.
“It’s my house,” I reminded her, trying to keep my sight above her neck and not at how low her shirt dipped. “I can lurk wherever I want.”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t you have somewhere to be? Some rival to threaten? Drugs to smuggle?”
“Not really. Got a pretty empty evening up ahead and I’d hate to get bored,” I shrugged, stepping closer just to enjoy the way she tensed. “So I was thinking… dinner tonight?”
“Sure,” she said sweetly, then immediately ruined it with, “if having my ears bleed ever starts sounding like fun.”
“Doubt it,” I replied, matching her tone. “But I was thinking Italian could be nice.”
“Let me be clear.” She stepped forward and jabbed a finger into my chest. “I’d rather be stranded on a desert island with nothing but sand to eat than have dinner with you.”
I really shouldn’t have, but she touched me first. On impulse, I grabbed her finger before she could pull it away.
Her eyes widened in shock just as my heart began to hammer. For what felt like a moment, neither of us moved.
“That’s a no, then?” I whispered after the silence stretched into borderline uncomfortable territory.
“That’s a never.” She yanked her hand back and stepped around me with red cheeks. “Not tonight, not tomorrow, not if you were the last man on earth with the last pizza in existence.”
I watched her walk away, her hips swaying as she stomped away, annoyed.
“So, I gather, “I bellowed after her, “you like pizza?”
She didn’t even bother turning back. She simply flipped me off, and this time, I didn’t bother holding back my smile.
That woman had an exceptional talent for telling me to go to hell in creative ways.
And I couldn’t get enough of it.
The truth was, I’d been asking her to dinner every day since our “marriage.” Each time, her rejections got moreobvious, more biting. I sometimes felt like she thought I was a dimwit who didn’t get the hint.
Oh, I got the hint, alright. Yet each time, I found myself looking forward to the next time she’d turn me down.
Yesterday, I banged into her in the library. She’d told me she’d rather have dinner with a pack of rabid wolves. The day before that, I’d found her in the kitchen, and she’d asked if it was that hard for me to go make some friends.
It was becoming a game of sorts, and I found myself growing strangely addicted to it.
At night, when I couldn’t sleep, I found myself replaying these invitations and rejections, and often wondered what it was about these little stolen moments that brought me such joy.
The only conclusion I could reach was that these were the only times her walls dropped enough for me to see flashes of the Alisa I remembered—the funny, quick-witted woman who could make a man want her and to tear his throat out in the same breath.
And sometimes in the morning, when I’d wake up in my empty bed, I’d think of that Alisa and how soft she used to feel in my arms on cozy Sunday mornings.
Luckily for me, before I burrowed any further into that painful hole of nostalgic memories, Federico called.
“Hello?” I threw one last look around the corner through which Alisa disappeared before heading down to the kitchen for a quick cup of coffee.
“Brother,” Federico sounded excited. ”Remember, you asked about the crew that ran the auction at last week’s charity event?”
Of course, I remembered. How could I not, when I’d made it my priority to get the fuckers who shoved Alisa up there on stage in a room full of mobsters and let them believe she was up for grabs?
The first thing I’d done, after Alisa and I got married, was to put Federico on the hunt to find them. When he asked why, I kept it vague. Told him a friend had been given a fake art piece.
