Page 137 of Ricardo

Ricardo

I am in my office at headquarters, staring at a contract I have already read three times and absorbed none of.

This is not typical.

I do not waste time. I do not indulge distraction. I do not sit behind my desk with a pen between my fingers, thinking about a woman down the hall when there is business in front of me.

Yet here I am.

Julia is just beyond the executive corridor, seated outside Mario’s office as if this is an ordinary morning. As if she did not spend most of yesterday and all of last night in my house. In my bed. In my arms.

No one here would know.

No one would know that I woke with her warm against me, that I fed her breakfast in my bed, that I made her come again with the tray still sitting on the mattress beside us and rain sliding down the windows. No one would know that I carried her into my shower afterward and washed her hair while she leaned into me, quiet and soft and so thoroughly mine in that moment that I had to close my eyes and remember every reason a man like me should be careful.

No one would know that I dressed her in my sweats because her dress from yesterday was unsuitable.

The memory nearly undoes me.

Julia standing in my bedroom with damp hair and flushed cheeks, wearing a pair of my gray sweatpants rolled twice at the waist and still pooled around her feet. My sweatshirt hanging off one shoulder, the sleeves swallowing her hands. She looked young and sleepy and well-fucked, and I had to force myself to turn away before I put her back in my bed and kept her there.

Instead, I drove her to her apartment.

I waited downstairs while she changed.

Then I drove her here, to this building, to this life, to the office where she now sits within reach and beyond it at the same time.

A knock sounds at my door, and before I answer, Mario walks in.

I look up.

My brother closes the door behind him, a file in one hand and his phone in the other. He gives me a quick glance, the kind that sees too much without seeming to linger on anything.

“Busy?” he asks.

“Yes.”

He looks at the contract lying untouched beneath my hand. “With what?”

I set the pen down. “Avoiding interruptions.”

Mario’s mouth twitches. “You’re doing a poor job.”

“I noticed.”

He crosses the office and lowers himself into the chair across from my desk. He looks rested, which means Victoria likely slept, which means his world is temporarily in order. Good. A calm Mario is easier to tolerate.

He sets the file on my desk.

“Valecourt’s documents,” he says.

At that, my attention sharpens properly.

I reach for the file and open it. “Issues?”

“No.” Mario leans back in the chair. “Everything is signed where it should be. Initialed where it should be. Legal will still review before we move it into final processing, but the consent is clean.”

“Good.”