“Neither was mine. And my nonna was always working. If I wanted a hot dinner, I had to come here.”
You were lucky.But Luis didn’t say it. Paolo was rich in things Luis had never had, but that didn’t make his life easy. And, he still looked annoyed.
Luis nudged him with his knee. “Why are you pissed off?”
“What makes you think I’m pissed off?”
“Everything about you.”
“Very funny.” Paolo schooled his features.
Luis laughed, but he still wanted to know.
Paolo sighed. “I’m annoyed with myself that I never asked you the right questions when I gave you the job. I made assumptions instead of realising you’d find it hard to talk about stuff you’d done in prison.”
“How is any of that your fault?”
“Because it’s me that did it all. Or didn’t do it, depending on how you look at it.”
“You’re insane.”
“Thanks.”
“You are, though. How is it your fault I learnt my only life skills in the nick and would rather fucking die than tell you?”
“Because I’m an unapproachable, judgmental dickhead?”
“You’re a judgmental dickhead, but nothing you assumed about me was wrong.”
Paolo’s frown deepened, but as he started to speak, the cafe door opened, and Luis’s worst nightmare stepped over the threshold. He let loose a sigh of his own and cut Paolo off.
“Don’t bother. I get the feeling I’m about to prove you were right all along.”
* * *
Paolo took the breakfast plates to the kitchen and scraped the food they’d forgotten to eat into the bin. Luis had dragged his visitor around the back of the cafe. They were by the yard gate. Paolo tried not to stare, but morbid curiosity let him down. Who cared if a line was forming at the counter?
Not Paolo. Not while some fuckhead from Moss Farm was within breathing distance of the man he’d shared his bed with last night.
Not that a mutual blowjob exchange gave Paolo ownership of Luis, but he didn’t give a fuck. He’d expected this day, but the weeks of nothing had lulled him into hoping it wouldn’t happen. That Luis’s old life had forgotten about him, and Luis had a chance of doing something different.
Paolo didn’t know the face who’d showed up. It wasn’t Dante Pope. But he was dressed like a road man, and even without the ludicrous swagger, the blacked-out car idling on the pavement round the front gave him away.
Scowling, Paolo dumped the plates in the sink. His conscience told him to go back to work and mind his own damn business, but it was the same conscience that sent agitation sluicing through him and made him want to barge out of the back door and chin whoever it was that had aged Luis a decade in three and a half minutes.
Because that was how long it had been, and conscience or not, Paolo wasn’t going to make it to five without causing a scene.
At least, that’s what he told himself as he tore himself away from the window and went back to work.Five minutes, and I’m telling that scumbag to get the fuck off my property. But fifteen minutes passed, and he stayed where he was, serving customers at the till and making a mess of the grill Luis had kept spotless all day, until Luis eventually returned.
Paolo watched as he picked up his tongs and flipped six rashers of bacon as if he’d been doing it his whole life. And that he hadn’t been gone for half an hour.
Leave it—
“What was all that about?” Paolo asked.
Luis cast him a flat stare. “I’ve been summoned.”
“By who?”
