It was a chaste caress, the briefest contact. But for the few heartbeats my mouth covered hers, I seared my resolve into her very being.
Pulling back, I smiled down at her. “I’ll prove myself worthy to be yours. I am strong enough to protect you.”
“Oh, okay,” she panted, and I wasn’t convinced she’d heard me.
No matter. It was still true. “Now.” I smirked. “Would you like an ice cream?”
“Ivan!” she chided.
The deep blush on her cheeks told me it worked.
“Tatko and mama, sitting in a tree—”
“Brady!” Poppy yelped and struggled.
I set her down, adjusting my grip on the boy. “Come on, let’s go to the store, and I’ll buy however many pints it takes to make it up to you.”
The narrow cut of her gaze told me this wasn’t over. But all she said was, “I don’t think I’m in the mood for ice cream.”
I snatched her hand and began to walk back to my vehicles. “Bourbon and cookies it is.”
Brady chattered excitedly about the prospect of more sweets before bed. It worked like a charm, momentarily distracting the frazzled she-bear as we left.
Chapter 26 – Poppy
What the hell am I doing?I gazed at myself in the mirror.
The routine here had been easy. We’d fallen into it without meaning to. The new dishes begged to be cooked with the brand-new appliances. The renovations made this house fresh and new, especially the kitchen with the new backsplash, counters, and refurbished cabinets. The bathroom was scheduled for a remodel, a three-day process that would start tomorrow. Ivan thought of everything, turning his house into a home we could share. Those things, plus Brady’s enthusiasm, pushed the idea to escape to the back of my mind. Even the proposal didn’t drag it out again.
It took an attack at the ice cream parlor to wake me the hell up.
While Ivan was right, that bad people existed everywhere, I was on full alert. I spent last night concocting a plan to escape. We had to leave. In case my phone was being tracked, I didn’t search for places. I put it in airplane mode and manually scrolled around the map app. Arizona seemed far enough away. There were little towns in the desert where we could disappear. But the thought of living with cacti and rattlesnakes didn’t hold muchappeal. The Pacific Northwest was the next best option. It was said that people could simply disappear out there. I used to consider myself a bougie, crunchy homesteader. Maybe it was time to go full scale and live off the grid.
No more Amazon Prime.
No more Kindle Unlimited.
A shudder rippled through me. To give up my books, to stop posting about them with readers—that was an impossibly hard price to pay. But my boy’s safety required it.
I scooped my hair into a pony. It was going to take asking the don to help me leave. But bringing Alessandro into the conflict would put Penelope in the crosshairs. I had no doubt he could protect her, but it made me sick to think she would be at risk because of me.
There just didn’t seem to be another way.
If we were going to leave—and at this point, I was decided we were—it would take humbling myself and asking for help.
I set my shoulders. We would pretend to go grocery shopping. That would give Alessandro a few minutes to help us into a vehicle out the back door, and then it would be a drive straight from hell to leave Chicago.
It can work.It had to.
I emerged from the bathroom and my heart squeezed to see the two of them cuddled on the couch, Brady reading the pictures in a book to Ivan. It was funny, Ivan never seemed to engage in reading. He’d seen me do it often enough with his son, so it wasn’t like he didn’t think it was a good thing. But he never did it himself.
“That spider lives in the Southern States,” Ivan explained, pointing to the map at the bottom of the page. “They don’t come up here.”
“If they did, I’d squish them!” Brady clapped his hands together.
Ivan looked up, meeting my gaze.
“I’ll be back as soon as the appointment is over,” I said with a smile, trying to keep the turmoil out of my voice.
