Page 88 of Shades of Grey & Gold

A few seconds pass. Then:

Cal: you’re going to be insufferable.

Me: I was already insufferable.

Cal: not an untrue statement. dinner tonight. I have some things to finish but I’ll pick you up at seven.

I stare at the message.

We’ve been in the city for a few months now. We’ve had meals in the penthouse, lunches at the 5th Street café with Gio at a table behind us, Sunday dinners at Carmela’s house where the entire family constitutes its own security perimeter.

Cal has been careful—more careful than I realized at first, more deliberate about where we go and when, because the situation with the Volkovs is still unresolved and that fact lives underneath everything even on the good days.

But he’s asking me to dinner. Out. In public. At a restaurant.

Me: is this allowed?

Cal: I make the rules. so… seven.

He’s waiting when I come around the corner at six fifty-five. No suit jacket, just a green knit sweater and jeans, leaning against the kitchen counter with his phone in his hand. He is frowning, and looks all dark and stormy.

He glances up when I come in and his expression rights itself—in an automatic way, one he hasn’t fully learned to cover—and I love every second.

His eyes crinkle at the corners as a completely involuntary smile spreads from one side of his face to the other. And he lights up from the inside out. Thestormyis replaced with sunny happiness.

I’m wearing something Sophia sent over with Gio when I asked her what to wear to dinner in this town.

A dark green wrap dress, black coat, the heels I’ve been avoiding because my feet prefer flats, but tonight I felt like being someone who wore heels. My hair is down and curled, and I’m sliding a second small, gold hoop into my ear. When I looked in the mirror before I left the bedroom, I thought I looked like myself. The best version of myself that I’ve seen in a really long time.

“You look…” Cal shakes his head and walks towards me, sliding one arm around me while placing a kiss to the top of my head.

He says everything without saying it, just like he usually does. A man of few words, except for with me it seems.

Which is why I’m not surprised when he continues, “You’re the most stunning, magnificent thing I’ve ever seen. And I see you every day. And it’s still—” He exhales, his hand flexing on my waist. “God. Every time.”

I smile up at him. His green eyes are bright against the green of his shirt.

“And we match!” I giggle and slide my hand across his shoulder.

“Sophia might have told me what to wear.”

“Ah, she got to you, too!”

Gio drives us. The restaurant is on a narrow street in Federal Hill, tucked into a corner that smells like bread and garlic as soon as we step out of the car.

When we walk in, the host, a short, older man, spots Cal immediately and comes forward. They shake hands, exchange a few words in Italian, and he leads us to a table around a short wall near the back that seems like it’s probably not on the menu of tables available to the general public. It’s quiet, private, the right combination of intimate and unobtrusive.

Cal pulls out my chair, tucking me into the table before sitting down himself. I watch him ignore the menu the host tries to hand him.

He doesn’t take it. He looks at me instead.

“What do you want?” he asks.

“I haven’t looked at the—”

“What are you in the mood for?”

I pause. “Something with pasta. And whatever smells so good.”