Angelo came outside to meet him. “What are you doinghere?”
“I livehere.”
Angelo’s rare smile made a brief appearance. “No, mate. That’sme.”
“You don’t live at thedeli.”
“No? Sure feels like it thisweek.”
“Businessbooming?”
“Something like that. My sister has gone back to uni, and having my mum here is more hassle than it’sworth.”
“You should sellit.”
Dylan instantly regretted his bluntness, but Angelo merely nodded. “Tell that to my entire family, I dare you. ’Cause I’ve been trying for years and all it’s got me is a seat at the kiddie table atChristmas.”
“Do they know how much debt it’sin?”
Angelo shrugged. “Probably not, because then my mum would have to admit that my father gambled our piss-poor profits down the swanny when he couldn’t keep up with the Starbucks down theroad.”
Ah.So that was it. Dylan had been ruminating over what had happened to what little profit Giordano’s had turned in the last few years, because it hadn’t gone on staff salaries. Angelo took home next to nothing, and his father before him had paid himself even less. It was on the tip of Dylan’s tongue to ask if Angelo’s own missing money had gone to his father, but then he remembered that discussing Angelo’s debts outside of the office was a massive breach of confidence. Fuck’s sake. What was it about this bloke that obliterated Dylan’s commonsense?
“Anyway...” Dylan started to turn away. “I’ll let you geton.”
“Okay.”
Angelo didn’t move, and the sensation of his eyes boring into the back of Dylan’s head made Dylan’s every step feel ridiculous, like he was walking away from a friend he hadn’t seen inyears.
And he couldn’t do it. He was three feet away when he stopped and turned. “Um, are you going to the club tonight?” An infinitesimal twitch in Angelo’s eyebrow was his only reaction. Dylan shifted his weight from one foot to the other and fidgeted with his shopping bag. “I mean, because I might, and I’m not your advisor anymore,so?—?”
“So what? You want me to fuck youagain?”
“Would that bebad?”
Angelo glanced over his shoulder. In the few minutes Dylan had been wasting his time, a queue had formed at the panini counter. He started to back up, and for a mortifying moment, Dylan feared he wouldn’t answer, but then he fixed Dylan with the arresting stare he’d imagined all along, way back before he’d known that the strong hands holding him down belonged toAngelo.
“I might be there,” Angelo said. “If I am, you’ll bewaiting.”
He was gone before Dylan could denyit.
* * *
The club had never felt smaller.Dylan saw Angelo in every corner and crevice, even though he’d been inside for more than an hour, surreptitiously watching the door, and Angelo had yet toarrive.
Ifhe was evencoming.
Dylan took a deep swallow of his ill-advised Jägerbomb. The booze was having little effect on his nerves, and the Red Bull had made him jumpy enough that he didn’t notice the beast of a man dropping onto the bar stool besidehim.
“Hey, man. You wannaplay?”
Dylan cast a glance at the man. Big and brawny and covered in a fuzz of body hair, he couldn’t have been further from Dylan’s fantasies if he’d tried, but his smile was lovely, and Dylan knew just the man to send him to. “Not tonight. Have you met Ron over there, though? He was a little lonely a whileago.”
A small white lie. Ron was never lonely, but there was always room for one more in his all-man scrum. Dylan watched the man take his place in the fold and then turned away. Ron’s orgies were legendary, but Dylan was holding out for something far more intimate, and as the clock struck ten, he forced himself to take achance.
Downstairs, Seamus greeted him with a knowing smile?—or at least as close to a smile as he ever got. “Back sosoon?”
“It’s been twoweeks.”
