Page 3 of The Mobster’s Maid

I let myself out of the car before the driver can come around. Wave him off. Walk to the front door instead of the garage, which is my usual entrance, because this morning I want to go in silent. This morning I want to see what she does when she thinks she’s alone in a house that isn’t hers.

I turn the key.

The scent hits me the second the door swings open.

Cinnamon. Warm butter. Something baking, still in the oven from the smell of it. And underneath that, the candle. Orange peel and something soft and green like herbs.

The house is warmer than I ever built it to be.

Sunlight is coming through curtains I don’t remember owning. Fresh flowers on the entryway console — white, small, cheerful. The throw is folded neat on the arm of the couch. Books stacked on the low table by the window that I did not put there.

I close the door quietly behind me. Move the way I move before a job.

The scent leads me through the living room, past the dining table I’ve never once eaten at. Down the corridor that opens into the kitchen.

I stop in the doorway.

She’s at the island with her back half to me. Curly black hair loose down her shoulders, cinnamon-brown skin that looks warm in the morning light coming through the window over the sink. A knitted cream sweater that stretches over generous breasts slouching off one shoulder, black leggings, bare feet on the pale tile. Humming. Something soft, an easy sound I don’t recognize.

She’s rolling out dough. Hands working it with the practiced ease of a woman who has done this ten thousand times in her life. There’s a smear of flour on her forearm and a streak of it high on her cheekbone she clearly hasn’t noticed.

I have been feared by grown men for twenty years. And this small, humming, flour-dusted woman in my kitchen has me rooted in a doorway like a coward.

My cock stiffens painfully.

I lean one shoulder against the doorframe. Cross my arms. Watch the way her hips shift with every pass of the rolling pin. The slouch of that sweater slipping a fraction lower off her shoulder each time she leans forward. The way her breasts press against the wool when she straightens up. A crescent of soft cinnamon skin at the small of her back when she reaches across the island for the sugar.

“Rosalie Palmer.”

She startles so hard the rolling pin clatters against the marble. She spins, hand flying to her chest. Flour puffs up between us in a small cinnamon-scented cloud. Big, dark brown eyes go wide.

Then wider still, when she takes in the full size and shape of me.

Three beats of silence. I watch heat crawl up her throat and into her cheeks.

“You’re home.” Her voice comes out rougher than I think she means it to.

“I live here.” My own voice sounds like a stranger’s, low and rasped and a little too interested in the way she said the word home.

“That’s — yes. Yes, you do.”

I don’t smile. I never smile. My lips lift a fraction. Not enough to call a smile. Enough for her to catch. Her chin lifts the smallest fraction back. She’s not going to apologize for the flour. She’s not going to apologize for anything.

I step into the kitchen, glad my coat is hiding my painful erection.

She doesn’t move back.

Doesn’t lower her eyes. Doesn’t tremble the way men twice her size do when I walk into a room. Just stands there in a slouched cream sweater with flour on her cheekbone and the oven ticking behind her, and holds my gaze like she has a right to.

Dio.

My last thought, before I get any closer, sits down heavy and clear inside my chest.

Big trouble in a small package. Even so, she is mine.

2

Rosalie