Page 111 of The Kingpin's Call Girl

Tears glisten in her eyes. “I appreciate that.”

“I don’t deserve you,” I admit.

She places her palm against my chest, over my heart. “You don’t get to decide that.”

Chapter Forty-Two

LUKA

I sip coffee and watch from the pillar that divides the kitchen area from the sunken living room area as Edie explores my place, running her fingertips over the marble surfaces, the couch, a chair. She touches the elaborate moldings around the windows and then gazes down at the Hudson and the Palisades.

I follow her gaze to where the rugged cliffs are tinged with the faint green of newly budding trees. The blue sky soars above, and fluffy white clouds cast fast-moving shadows on the water.

“This view in the daytime. Just wow.” She’s already said “wow” twice.

I iced her arm, followed by a heat wrap and a lot of balm, and now it’s bandaged to the best of my abilities, which is pretty fucking good if I do say so myself. We slept in, then ordered donuts that arrived just as the coffee was ready. She takes hers black, and her favorite donut is a French twist with white icing. I file it all away with the hats and the harmonica, which she’s going to have to play for me at some point. Harmonica. So old-timey.

She wanders to the oil painting above the fireplace. Three black blobs over a field of blue with one white dot in a random fucking place. The thing’s as big as a bicycle, loaded up with so much paintit’s practically sculptural. I never really thought of it, not since the day the real estate agent suggested I get my own art, and I told her to fuck off.

I see now that it’s a ridiculous painting, but Edie looks at it for a long time, giving it a chance, maybe.

It’s not her style, that much I know; I saw the way she decorated her dorm. She’d hate statement art designed to go with couches, and that’s what this is.

I never cared before today.

Only Orton and Storm have crossed into this space, and they would never look at the artwork. They would never touch the furnishings just to touch them. None of us ever thought to even care about what we surround ourselves with. We’re so used to moving through other people’s spaces, usually with bad intent.

Edie turns around, done with her perusal of the piece, and looks at me.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

A lie. She has thoughts. She always does. It’s the art.

She heads to the bookcase, pausing at the shelf of framed pictures. One is some bridge. One is a painted door, probably in Europe. One is a boy flying a kite.

She picks it up. “Is that you?”

“No.”

“Is it a relative?”

“It’s a boy flying a kite.”

“You don’t know who it is?”

“Nope.”

“You have a picture of a random boy flying a kite?”

“Yeah.”

She smiles uncertainly and puts it down.

“Are we almost done with the inspection?”

She gives me an indignant look. “Are you kidding?” She moveson to the books themselves. “You have some really interesting books.”