Maggie
I couldn’t help my tone.
The words were harsh.
They bit, I knew that, and I sounded ungrateful.
Mateo didn’t offer much protection from Smoke. He couldn’t hide my face from the man when he stood in front of me.
There was a frown hardening his features, making him look like the scary gangster knocking his gun against my car window last night.
I tried not to let that look intimidate me, but it was damn hard.
“Mind explaining the problem?” Smoke sounded pissed, but under that irritation was a little offense, something I expected.
Something I understood.
He was only trying to help.
I turned my face, rubbing my wet cheeks against the back of my hand before I spoke. “This…all of this is too much. I couldn’t possibly…” The words got twisted in my throat, stuck there behind all the ways I wanted to say thank you to him for how good he’d treated me. Despite thelocoarguing and the ridiculous amounts of food they expected me to eat, they were funny and kind.
And Smoke… Jesus…he was a good man.
He was too good for me.
“When the snow clears,” I told him, my face dry before I looked up at him, “I’m going to take Mateo, and we’ll never see you or your family again.”
Smoke flinched, like he hadn’t expected me to be honest or brutal, but I’d always believed it was better to rip off the Band-Aid quickly rather than to tear it off inch by inch. The pain eased faster that way.
“You are good people. You are kind, but you are not for me…for us. The gifts are too much. Too grand. Too big for our small place, for my small, busted car. Too…” I sighed, unable to finish my explanation. Like Smoke, everything was thoughtful, decadent, and beyond my means. “We will walk away with…grateful hearts for how generous you all have been…”
Smoke lifted one eyebrow, his gaze shooting to my chest, then lower, as though he thought I should remember that his generosity went well beyond dinner with his family. How could I forget? He was the best sex of my damn life.
“But… Smoke, wewillstill walk away.”
There was a flash of something I couldn’t place in his expression—anger? Irritation? Defiance? Whatever it was, Smoke kept it to himself. He didn’t argue with me. He didn’t debate. Instead, he squinted, his jaw clenching like it took effort not to speak before he exhaled, walking into the kitchen to take out the fixings for hot chocolate—the milk and cocoa, the whipped cream and marshmallows, glancing long enough to nod to his sofa, offering me a spot as he made quick work of his task.
Jesus, this man was bossy. But my breasts began to ache and Mateo rubbed his face over my chest, so I sat, letting him nurse while the beautiful, dangerous man made cocoa.
The Christmas tree was massive, likely ten feet, but still didn’t come close to reaching the fifteen-foot ceilings of Smoke’s apartment. Everything in this place was industrial but modern, with masculine touches and old-world hints placed sparsely along the walls in the brightly colored artwork and rich, lush pillows and rugs.
The Christmas décor was detailed and complemented the style of the place along with the hues of red, gold, and green in the tree. There was garland draped around the windows and along the freestanding kitchen island and over the wall-length bookcase against the entry wall.
Under the tree were dozens of presents. I spotted Mateo’s name on most, but a few smaller ones and some gift bags had my name written in boxy square letters on the tags.
I felt the same unworthy sensation welling inside me. The inclination to bolt returned, but then I reminded myself that my clothes were downstairs in the restaurant, likely guarded by Mrs. Carelli, who made me promise to eat a family lunch with them before I left for the city.
“So,” Smoke said, placing a large mug of cocoa in front of me. The top was covered in whipped cream and sprinkled with chocolate powder. “Explain this nonsense to me.”
“It’s not nonsense,” I tried, nodding a thanks for my cocoa. “It’s just the way things are.”
Smoke held his mug in one hand but didn’t drink from it. There was no whipped cream on his, and from the smell wafting over the rim, I suspected there was a healthy shot of bourbon inside it.
“My parents spent the first ten years of their marriage in a one-bedroom, fifth-floor walk-up because Pop refused to work any job for his brother.” He leaned back, resting his leg on his knee. “You know about my uncle and cousin?”
I nodded but didn’t dare ask any of the hundreds of questions I had about the Carelli family. It wasn’t important right now.
Smoke grinned, tightening his eyes after he took a sip of his cocoa. “Then you know it took balls for my pop to turn his brother down.” Smoke took another sip, but this one didn’t make him wince. “Everything my parents have, they earned, and while not all of their businesses were always one hundred percent legal, they were always fair. No one went hungry because of them, and they always gave back. The point is, what we have now is a blessing. It isn’t the way things have always been. So, you’ll have to do better than ‘all of this is too much,’ because that shit doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.”
