Page 32 of Be With Me
It was eight a.m. The day was going to be a scorcher. Even now, it was already oppressively humid and hot.
A few streets over, cars blared their horns, and an ambulance wailed, threatening to cleave my skull in two. I was running on fumes. Last night, I’d barely slept.
I’d gotten in bed by one, determined to be sharp for today, but just as I’d started drifting off, the general manager at Black Silk called.
Four armed Albanians had tried to get into my club. On a fucking Monday night, when it was basically dead. My men got them and dragged them into my office, not knowing if they should let them go or not. By the time I arrived, they were still high on something, babbling excuses about how they’d gone to the wrong club. Maybe they were telling the truth. Maybe they weren’t. Didn’t matter.
They left with something to remember me by.
Flexing my bruised knuckles, I crossed the sidewalk and walked up to Mia’s studio.
She opened the door before I even knocked. Clearly, she’d been waiting for me.
My gaze trailed a path down her body. She was dressed for the weather—light-blue skirt stopping mid-thigh on smooth, toned legs. A white silk blouse fitted just right. It skimmed over her curves, making me want to see what it would look like untucked, unbuttoned.
The sight of her made this shitty heat suddenly seem a lot less shitty.
“Morning,” I drawled, masking the gut-punch of arousal. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d found a woman this attractive.
It pissed me off.
I wasn’t worried it would interfere with my plans, but it was a distraction. An annoying one.
She gave me a once-over, eyes lingering on my belt for a second too long. “No gun this time?”
I smirked. “I can get it, if that’s what gets you going.”
She huffed but didn’t take the bait. “Come in.”
The studio was as I remembered it. Small. Tidy. Feminine.
A clothing rack stood beside her desk with a few garments already prepped. Looked like they might be my size.
We sat across from each other at her desk. She laced her fingers neatly over a leather sketchbook, her back straight. She seemed nervous and trying so damn hard to hide it.
This was going to be fun.
“I sketched a proposal for your outfit,” she said, diving straight in. “The plan is for you to review the design and try on some of the pieces I picked out. We’ll have one more meeting for a fitting, and we’ll be done.”
Two meetings.
She was trying to get me in and out of her life as quickly as possible. Maybe she wasn’t as arrogant as I thought. Maybe she sensed it was dangerous to be around me for too long.
I smirked. “You never asked for my moon sign.”
She reached for a thick stack of papers and pushed it my way. “I got it from Nina,” she said. “Did you know she’s into astrology?”
I glanced down. The cover page said it was a birth chart reading, and it had my full name, along with my birth date, time of birth, and location.
The fuck?
I flipped the page and stared at some graph I had no idea how to read. The next page was a wall of text. It was in-depth. More detailed than any of the bullshit horoscopes I’d seen in magazines.
She was prepared.
“You’re Gemini sun, Venus square Saturn, and an Aries moon. Your moon sign is fire, ruled by Mars, which signifies action and energy.”
“Astrology’s not really my thing,” I said, brushing it off. Fucking Nina. She sold me out. Not that I put much weight into this stuff, but?—
