Page 6 of Taking Savannah
Someone knocks.
I count to three before I walk to the door. I don't open it.
"Who is it?"
"Room service." That damnvoice.
I unlock the door and open it six inches. Emilio stands in the corridor holding two cups of coffee and a plate of toast balanced on his forearm with the ease of someone who's carried trays before. He's wearing jeans and a black t-shirt that's fighting a losing battle with his shoulders and his hair is wet from a recent shower.
"Black, one sugar," he says, holding out a cup. "Spoon's in there. Didn't have intel on the toast so I went butter, no jam. Tell me if I fucked it up."
I stare at him. He looks like he slept about as well as I did, which is to say not at all, but he's covering it with the energy of someone with ADHD.
I take the coffee and open the door wider. He walks in without waiting for an invitation, sets the toast on the desk, and drops into the chair with the confidence of a man who thinks every room belongs to him.
"How'd you know how I take my coffee?"
"You told me at the diner. Black, one sugar. You told the waitress three times because she kept bringing cream."
I don't remember telling him. But he's right. I said it to the waitress, said it to him when he offered, said it again when the second cup came out wrong.
He was listening. Through the eggs and the pancakes and the conversation about Delaware and the marina, he was paying attention to details that had nothing to do with intelligence or operations or whatever his boss needed from me.
He was paying attention to how I take my coffee.
I sit on the bed and drink. The coffee is right. Hot, bitter, the sugar hitting at the bottom of the sip where it's sweetest.
"Thank you," I say. Second time in twelve hours. Getting easier every time, which is annoying as fuck.
"Don't thank me, thank the kitchen. I just carried it." He bites into a piece of toast. Crumbs on his shirt. He doesn't notice ordoesn't give a shit. "Leone wants to talk to you whenever you're ready. No rush."
"Leone. That's the boss."
"Leone's the right hand. Was. Aurelio's the Don, but he's..." He pauses long enough to chew and swallow. "He's not well. Leone runs everything. Has for a while."
"And you?"
"I'm the muscle. The charm. The one they send when they need someone to smile at a problem until it goes away."
"And if it doesn't go away?"
"Then I stop smiling." He says it the way you'd say you're going to the store. But his weight shifts in the chair, and for half a second the man in front of me isn't the pancake-buying, coffee-carrying, grinning rescue mission from last night. He's something dark and dangerous.
And incredibly fucking sexy, holy fuck.
I feel it and sip my coffee and don't comment.
"Your brother," I say. "Claudio. He lives here too?"
"Three doors down with Charlotte. She's his person." The grin comes back. "You'll meet her. She's terrifying and brilliant andshe'll know your shoe size before you've finished introducing yourself."
"Sounds like a bartender."
"Sounds like my future sister-in-law, if my brother ever pulls his head out of his ass long enough to ask." He stands and brushes the crumbs off his shirt, fails, gives up. "Whenever you're ready for Leone. He'll be in the war room all morning."
"Emilio, question. Or statement, maybe."
He stops at the door.
