I stared at the phone in Fabiana’s hand, convinced I was hallucinating. “What was that?”
“She needed to borrow my phone. Hers died, and she needed to call her babysitter.” She slid the phone into her purse.
“You’ve been sitting here for at least ten minutes already,” I ground out. “You let a stranger have your phone for that long?”
She frowned at me. “So what?”
“Are you serious?”
“I told her to give it back to me when she was done. It’s not like we’re in a rush. What’s she going to do, walk away with it?”
My mouth opened and closed. She was appalling. “Yes, that’sexactlywhat she could’ve done.”
“Well, she didn’t.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Sometimes it pays to have a little faith in people instead of thinking they’re all bad.”
I sat perfectly still. The noise of the restaurant receded into a low hum beneath the blood pounding in my ears.
This girl. This fucking girl.
There was no deal with my mother. No con.
She was just as naive and innocent and fucking good as she appeared to be.
My God, my mother would strip her for parts without breaking a sweat. But that wasn’t even the worst of it.
The worst of it was me.
What the fuck had I just been thinking? I’d almost been overwhelmed with an urge to kill the man who’d made her look sad. To protect her. To avenge her.
It was irrational. It wasn’t smart. And I could say with absolute confidence that in all my twenty-eight years of life, I had never felt anything like that because of a woman.
I really didn’t want to start now. Not with her.
I had to give it to Mother. Whether or not she’d meant to do it, she had somehow picked the exact right woman to force into my life. Someone who made me a little fucking crazy. Someone who pried at my grip on myself just enough to make me want to let go.
The thought of abandoning myself in her was tempting.
So goddamn tempting that I had to clench my teeth and shove it down as far as it would go.
A man like me didn’t get to lose himself in a woman like her and stay sharp.
If I let her get any closer, I was going to become a dull knife.
Useless to everyone.
Dangerous to no one but myself. And her.
“I don’t.” My voice came out rougher and angrier than I intended.
Her eyes ricocheted to mine. “What?”
“I don’t have faith in you.” The words tasted like poison as I forced them past my lips, which only reinforced that I needed to get through this. “That woman was a test. You failed.”
A crease formed between her brows. “A test?”
“She works for me. She was supposed to steal your phone, and you just handed it to her.”
The crease deepened. “Why would you do that?”
