Page 41 of Privilege

“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.