by Bethany-Kris
Renzo pushed the doors open that led to the outside, and warm air brushed along Lucia’s bare legs. She didn’t miss the way he turned to speak, but hesitated in his words because he was too busy taking in the dress she wore. Maybe she liked it a little too much when his gaze lingered on her legs, and then higher until he finally stopped on her face.
“I took him to Brooklyn to spend a couple of days with our sister.”
“You have a sister?”
“Rose,” he said. “She’s seventeen. Smartest one of us all, I think. Got a scholarship to a private school for the arts, so she stays there all the time. I just run her up cash or whatever she needs.”
Huh.
As fascinating as Lucia found that information, she couldn’t help but be a little defensive, too. She didn’t know why Renzo was here, but none of their previous encounters had gone particularly well.
“You didn’t come here to be an asshole again, did you?” Lucia asked. “Because I was only trying to help with your mom, and the night I offered you a drive. I mean, I didn’t intend to overstep your boundaries or anything. I was just worried—that’s all.”
Renzo cleared his throat, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and glanced down the quiet alleyway that led to the main street in front of the shelter. Maybe it was the fact that she’d grown up around a lot of men who took great effort in hiding their emotions when shit was rough, but she recognized Renzo’s movements for what they were.
Nerves.
“I didn’t come to be an asshole,” he murmured, glancing back at her. It was his eyes, she thought. His face was beautiful. He looked like something out of a magazine, and he didn’t even have to try. But it was in his eyes where she found her heart skipped beats. It was disconcerting and strange that she couldn’t even look at him without those damn butterflies coming back. “And I’m sorry I was a dick before.”
Lucia folded her arms over her chest as Renzo leaned against the brick of the building. “Go on.”
He laughed, and the sound was spectacular. All deep, rumbling bass. He tossed his head back, and she didn’t think he’d ever looked so careless, and happy. She really wanted to see if she could make him laugh again, but he broke her daze by meeting her gaze again.
Her thoughts went silent just like that.
All with a stare.
Lucia felt like she was frozen in place as Renzo’s gaze traveled over her face, lingering on her mouth before he looked away altogether.
“Not really sure why I came here,” he admitted.
Lucia swallowed hard. “Apparently, to apologize.”
Renzo made a noise under his breath. “I just decided to do that when I saw you inside, if I’m being honest. I wasn’t even going to come talk to you, or anything. I just wanted to … well, I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. What did you want to do?”
He sighed hard, and let out a dry chuckle. “Check on you, I guess. Make sure you were okay. I owed you that, didn’t I?”
Lucia’s heart skipped beats again, and she smiled a little. “I’m okay, Ren.”
He passed her another look, the heat in his stare obvious. “Yeah, I guess so, huh?”
“Was there any other reason you came looking for me?”
Renzo took a second, then two. He opened his mouth to speak, but he was stopped from saying anything at all when the door to the kitchen was opened, and Laurie popped her head out with a wide smile. The woman at least had the decency to hide her brief surprise at seeing Lucia and Renzo talking together.
“Renzo,” Laurie greeted, “how have you been, and how is Diego?”
Renzo cleared his throat, and straightened his posture. “He’s good. Took him to the school last week to meet the teacher he will have next year. Made him less nervous to start kindergarten.”
Laurie’s face softened. “That’s great, really.”
“Yeah.”
The woman glanced Lucia’s way. “Lucia, you’re needed inside for something. But Renzo, you’re welcome to join us for this.”
“I probably should head—”
“Come in,” Lucia told him before he could refuse. “For a second, anyway.”
She was pretty sure he was going to tell her something else just now, but Laurie had interrupted him from doing just that. She really wanted to know what he was going to tell her.
Renzo’s tongue peeked out to wet his lips, and he nodded. “Yeah, sure. For a minute, anyway. Then, I gotta head back out. Work to do, you know.”
He didn’t offer a further explanation, and Lucia chose not to ask even after Laurie went back inside the shelter. Only because she was pretty sure Renzo didn’t want people knowing what he did on the streets to make money. Lucia only knew because she’d been a witness to him taking a cash payment from her brother.
Otherwise, she wouldn’t know.
“Thanks,” Lucia murmured, stopping next to Ren’s side as they came to the doors. The lift of his eyebrow made her shrug, and explain, “Just … for coming here.”
She pulled open the doors. Somehow, over the sounds of people shouting happy birthday, and Laurie coming forward with a cake, she was pretty sure she heard Renzo reply, “Still not sure why I’m here, honestly.”
But she couldn’t be sure, and she was already being pulled further into the dining room to check out her cake while everyone sang her happy birthday. She didn’t know where they’d hid the cake—it hadn’t been in the fridge earlier. Still, she was grateful.
“Thank you, you didn’t have to do this,” Lucia told Laurie.
The woman smiled. “Of course, we did. You’re part of the family, Lucia.”
They certainly made her feel like it, too.
Glancing up, Lucia searched for wherever Renzo had disappeared to for the moment. She didn’t find him in the crowd, or even leaning against the wall.
Instead, she just caught sight of the back of his leather jacket as he headed out the doors. He didn’t look back, either.
• • •
Lucia waved over her shoulder as a goodbye echoed out from behind her. Walking out of the shelter’s main doors into the darkness of the parking lot took her a second to adjust to the lack of light.
But when she did, she froze right where she stood. Leaning against her brand new, two-door black Lexus, Renzo shot her a grin, and lifted one hand in a silent hello. He was still wearing his leather and jeans ensemble from earlier, and still making her insides do the craziest things.
She should really get this under control.
She hadn’t known what to think when he slipped out earlier without a goodbye, but she really didn’t know what to think about him standing where he was right now.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
Renzo pushed off the side of her car, and flicked the cigarette he’d been smoking to the ground. “Waiting on you.”
Lucia wasn’t sure she needed the whiplash that came with this man like a second bag he carried around twenty-four-seven. One minute, he was making her heart do the strangest things, and then in the next, he left her feeling cold.
“I didn’t realize today was your birthday,” he said, coming closer.
Lucia stayed rooted right to the spot. “Eighteen, yep.”
“I felt like I … intruded earlier.”
“Why?”
Renzo shrugged as he came to a stop entirely too close to Lucia. There was still a few inches of space between them, but he was close enough that she could smell his cologne on the breeze, and she had to stare upwards to look at his face.
He was a complex waiting to happen. All wrapped in a pretty package to distract her from the heartache he was probably going to cause her. She didn’t know why she felt that way, but she just did.
Silently, Renzo reached over to tuck a stray strand of wavy hair that had fallen from Lucia’s high pony back behind her ear. There was something amazing about the feeling of his rough fingertips gliding along her skin.
Electric, even.
She shivered.
&nbs
p; “Figured maybe later would be better to talk,” Renzo said, “you know, when I wasn’t taking time away from you doing your job, or whatever.”
“They’re actually pretty easy-going here. It’s fun.”
“Yeah, Diego loves it.”
“You should bring him back. I don’t know if you stopped bringing him because of me, or—”
Renzo made a harsh noise, and glanced away. “We’ll see. Anyway, new car, I see.”
She didn’t miss his attempt at distracting her, but Lucia was fine with letting him think that for now, she would drop the Diego conversation. She peered over at her black Lexus, and smiled.
“Yeah, a birthday present. How did you know it was mine?”
Renzo laughed, but it didn’t sound bitter when he said, “Who else around here is going to drive a car like that, Lucia?”
Well, then …
“That’s fair,” she admitted.
Then, with no warning at all, Renzo turned back to her and said, “Do you wanna go out—have some fun for your birthday, I mean—with me tonight?”
Lucia blinked.
Renzo only stared, waiting.
Finally, her brain caught up with the rest of her.
“Like a date?”
Renzo grinned. “Yeah, let’s call it a date.”
She didn’t even have to think about it, but she was more than willing to make him work for it. “That depends, Renzo.”
“On what, exactly?”
“On what you had in mind.”
EIGHT
“On what you had in mind.”
Renzo found Lucia grinning in a way that said she was probably joking with him, but he couldn’t quite tell for sure. It was very possible that his idea of a good time was not going to be up to her standards, not that those thoughts had been enough to stop him from asking.
There was something about this chick that Renzo really needed to just get out of his system, or try to, anyway. Maybe then, he could stop being so up in arms every time she was around, and he could quit thinking about her when he had no business doing that at all.
And maybe—although, he wasn’t quite ready to admit it out loud just yet—Renzo wanted to know what it was about Lucia Marcello that made her who she was. Or see if he could find those pieces that made up who she was, anyhow.
What was it about her that made her coworkers want to bake her a cake and sing her happy birthday, along with all the people who’d stopped into the soup kitchen to eat, when she’d only been working at the place for a short time. He’d been bringing Diego here for a while, and that didn’t happen often. Also, why did his little brother constantly ask after her when he’d only met her twice? Why was she so willing to help an obviously troubled woman—his mother—when it would have been far easier to leave her right where she lay on the ground?
Yeah, he had a lot of questions.
Lucia was the only one with the answers.
“Well?” she asked, drawing him out of his thoughts.
Renzo shifted in his combat boots, and stuffed his hands in his pockets. It was far from cold for August, but he still wore his leather jacket. It felt like an armor, of sorts. It gave him a certain appearance, and allowed his don’t-fuck-with-me attitude a bit more credence. On these streets, sometimes a guy needed all the help he could get to make sure no one screwed with him on the regular.
“I know where there’s going to be a party tonight,” Renzo said. “Thought you might want to have some fun.”
Lucia smiled in that sweet way of hers, and yet, it still managed to look coy. He wasn’t sure how she did that, but it kind of drove him crazy. He liked that look on her face. He liked it even more that he was the one who made her do it.
Was that going to be a problem?
Renzo had yet to decide, really.
“Your kind of fun?” she asked.
Renzo let out a laugh, and took a step closer to her. “I don’t really have time to go out and find fun, if we’re being honest. It’s usually me working, or doing work for someone else to get paid. But yeah, if I were going to go out and do something, I’d probably find myself a party where no one is going to bitch about your music, or how much your weed stinks. Seems like the better choice than an over-filled club with over-priced drinks.”
Lucia lifted a single eyebrow. “You’re not even old enough to get into a club.”
“Neither are you. How many have you been inside?”
That sweet, coy grin of hers was back in an instant. “I plead the fifth.”
Yeah, he bet her family was familiar with that line for more reasons than he wanted to get in to at that moment. Not that right then was the right time to get in to all of that. It most certainly was not, and he had other things to get started on.
Like figuring out what in the hell it was about this woman that had his head in such a mess. He needed to get a handle on that first, and then he would go from there.
“Where is this party, then?” Lucia asked.
“Here in my stomping grounds. A few blocks away.”
“The Bronx.”
She said it simply—just as though it were fact, and not that she had an opinion either way. Not like she was judging the area, or concerned about the trouble that might find her if she went down that way with him.
“It’ll be like nothing you’ve ever experienced,” Renzo said, “I can promise you that.”
Lucia nodded, and dug in the pocket of her white dress to produce a pair of keys with a familiar L emblem on the fob. Not saying a word, she tossed the keys to him, and Renzo caught them easily enough. He shot her an inquisitive look to which she only shrugged.
“You wanna drive?” she asked sweetly.
Renzo stared down at the keys in his hand. The most expensive car he had ever driven was a friend’s secondhand Jeep to help the guy move some shit from one apartment building to another. He never really needed to drive a lot in his work. The city was always congested as fuck with traffic, and another accident was usually right around the corner to make it worse than it already was. There wasn’t anywhere he couldn’t get to by using the city bus, or subway and it was typically a faster way to travel.
He did have his license, though.
He could drive.
Lucia laughed the longer Renzo hesitated to answer. “It’s insured. You wreck it, and it’ll be fixed. Try not to wreck it, though … because it won’t be the car that someone will be pissed about, you know. More like the woman in the passenger seat. They’ll be really pissed about that.”
Renzo met her gaze, and expected to find that same joking amusement he found earlier. Instead, she was stone-cold serious, and not even a hint of mirth reflected back in her eyes.
Well, then.
“All right,” he said.
Lucia nodded, and the smile of hers that he was enjoying so much came back like it had never left in the first place. “A date, then?”
Yeah, shit.
Renzo hit the unlock button on the fob, and the Lexus lit up on all corners. “A date, Lucia.”
• • •
“Oh, my God.”
Renzo nodded to the guy who’d just taken two twenty-dollar bills from his hand without as much as a word about who he was, his age, or where he came from. Then again, the guy was a regular at these things. He usually watched the door, and on more than one occasion, probably saw Renzo walk through wherever they popped up once or twice to make a sale or two.
“Not what you expected from the outside?” he asked Lucia.
She turned slightly to look at him, but her gaze was quickly drawn back to the light show happening just down the main hallway of the warehouse. “No, I can’t say it is.”
Renzo figured that.
Placing his hand at the small of her back, he pressed and pushed her forward. Walking in step with her, he chuckled as the music ramped up a bit louder, and he swore he felt the floor of the old building start vibrating as people shouted in response to the fast beat of the next song.
K
nowing she wouldn’t hear him otherwise, Renzo moved closer to Lucia to murmur in her ear, “Fair warning, there’s going to be a lot of people.”
And when he said a lot, he meant a fucking lot. That was always a guarantee with these things. Given the fact these pop-up parties—some people still liked to call them raves—were illegal, that was one of the major factors that drew people in. It also helped that no one was there to police anybody’s behavior or business. It was a free for all, in a way. As long as everybody was safe, stayed hydrated, and minded their own business, nobody had a problem.
“Some of them will be high as fuck,” Renzo continued on, and hand curving tightly around Lucia’s waist as they came closer to the large main section of the warehouse. “Some of them are going to be getting high. Some of them won’t be high at all. Some might be hooking up in a corner, or on the floor, or … wherever they can find a spot.”
She made a noise under her breath, but Renzo still heard it over the loud music nonetheless. It sounded like a mixture of curiosity and disbelief all rolled into one. Maybe a bit of embarrassment sprinkled on, too.
Funny, he thought.
He liked that sound, too.
What other kinds of noises might she make if he—
No, Renzo was not going there. Not yet, anyway.
“Really?” she asked.
Those hazel eyes of hers glittered under the neon green and electric purple lights that flashed, blinked, and moved in every which direction. The softness of her features and the gentle curve of her lips froze under the movement of the strobes. For a moment, she looked like an unmoving angel—perfect, and beautiful.
“What?”
Lucia shrugged, and a hint of pink tinged her cheeks. “People … fucking. Really?”
Innocence?
God.
That—probably more than anything else—made him want her. Because how amazing would she be, if he turned her into a sinner like him; if he made her dirty like him.
“Really,” he told her. “Happens more often than it doesn’t at these. Thing is, they like being watched, so don’t feel like you’re intruding if you do find yourself staring. That’s the whole reason why they do it—they want to be seen. Or, just avert your stare, and pretend like you didn’t see anything in the first place.”