“Why do I get the feeling that’s an understatement?” She looked like she was biting the inside of her cheek, and he relaxed back into the chair.
Some light, flirty banter with a woman? Even one he had no intention of bedding?Thiswas familiar territory. He could do this with his eyes closed.
“I don’t know.” He batted his lashes innocently. “I can’t imagine.”
She chuckled while she took another sip. Then she screwed up her lips. “Spiro. Hmm. I like it. Does anyone still call you that?”
“Sure.” He nodded after a quick drink, loving the harsh bite of the tequila on his tongue and longing for a hit of salt and a squirt of lime. “My mother.” He knew his face darkened when he added, “And my brother.”
She cocked her head, having picked up on the change in him. Talking about Alejandro always made a pit form in his stomach, so he was glad when, instead of asking about his brother, she said, “But no one else?”
He shook his head. “I joined the Navy when I was seventeen years old. I celebrated my thirty-fourth birthday this spring. So I’ve officially been Romeo as long as I was Spiro.”
She held her drink in her lap and regarded him for so long he was hard pressed not to shift beneath her searching gaze.
What does she see when she looks at me?
A delinquent from the bad side of L.A. who’d been forced to leave or else wind up like his older sibling? A foul-mouthed military man? A scruffy salvor with engine grease stuck under his nails?
He was all of those things. And he couldn’t imagine any of them were anything she’d be interested in.
“Do you mind if I call you Spiro?”
He wasn’t sure what he’d expected her to say, but it certainly wasn’tthat.
He’d left “Spiro” Delgado, that world-class fuckup, behind years ago—good riddance to bad rubbish—and he was only reminded of that snot-nosed punk when he called home to talk to his mother. Or phoned up his brother in Pelican Bay.
Yet…his given name on Mia’s tongue sounded sweet. Almost like a benediction.
“If you want to,” he agreed, and then felt as if someone punched him in the nuts when she smiled at him.
Mia wasn’t only careful with her words, choosing them wisely when she chose to use them at all. She was also careful with her expressions. In fact, he’d never met a woman more inscrutable.
He’d seen her lips twitch in amusement. He’d even witnessed a grin or two. But he’d never seen her smile. Not a full blown, ear-to-ear smile.
Now he was glad of that. Her smile was so blindingly radiant he was struck dumb. All he could do was sit and stare.
“So, Spiro,”—this time when she said his name, chills rippled up his spine—“what’s the plan for tomorrow?”
“Fuck,” he swore. “With all that’s happened, I forgot everyone on Wayfarer will be expecting us to fly in with a plane full of metal detectors.”
She ran a finger over the rim of her glass, her expression contemplative. “We can still make that happen. I mean, if the way Wolf is hovering over Chrissy is any indication, I suspect he’s going to be spending the foreseeable future glued to her side. But I can help you get what’s needed.”
More time alone with Mia. Exactly what Romeodidn’tneed.
Especially now that I’ve seen that smile.
That thing was going to haunt his dreams. And undoubtedly make more than a few appearances in his fantasies.
Okay, time to adios yourself.
“Sounds like a plan,” he told her. “I’ll knock on your door around oh-eight-thirty. That’ll give us time to grab breakfast before heading out to finish errands, eh?”
Her face fell when he pushed up from the desk chair, tossing his empty cup into the wastepaper basket. She wasn’t ready to be alone, but damned if he trusted himself to stay in this room with her for one more minute.
The urge to sit beside her, to run his finger down her cheek to see if it felt as satiny as it looked, had become overwhelming.
He was nearly to the door when the book on her nightstand caught his attention. “You read P.J. Warren’s Night Angels series?”
