Page 5

CHAPTER FIVE

Dasha

“Hey, where’s the paperwork for that crossover?” I asked, walking out of my office when I saw it no longer in one of the bays.

“Ren?” David asked when no one answered me.

“Here,” Ren snarled, shoving the papers toward me, but not before wrinkling it all up first.

I ignored his attitude as I glanced at the papers.

“Five hundred?” I asked, brows pinching. “For an oil change?”

There was a slight pause, long enough to make me glance up at him. “Topped fluids and checked everything over too,” he explained.

“Why isn’t that in the notes then?” I asked.

“Just fucking write it in there then, fuck,” he grumbled.

“Excuse me?” I asked, ignoring the way my belly clenched at needing to confront him.

“The fuck you always on my ass for? You—“

“Yo,” another voice called, making my spine straighten. Even just that one syllable, and I recognized him.

Santo.

No one else in the world had a voice like his.

“Who the fuck talks to their boss like that?” he asked, moving closer.

“Who the fuck are you, ass—“ Ren started.

“Ren,” Tom, one of the older mechanics, barked. “Don’t,” he added, his voice holding a lot of warning that I didn’t understand.

Ren’s face was twisted with rage, but he listened to Tom.

“What-the-fuck-ever,” he said under his breath as he stalked away.

“Santo,” I said, offering him a smile. “I totally forgot we were meeting,” I said, lying through my teeth. I’d been counting down the days, actually. I’d put on my favorite blue and white sundress. I’d spent a little extra time on my makeup.

Sure, our last interaction had been nothing but casual. There were no signs that the tingle I felt teasing across my nerve endings was reciprocated. And, I mean, why would they be? The man was a god carved from gorgeous, golden stone.

But that didn’t mean I didn’t want to look my best when I saw him.

“Did I catch you at a bad time?” he asked.

“No, not at all. Just… some questions about billing,” I said, shrugging it off. “Want to come into the office? It’s not quite the mess it was the last time you were here.”

In fact, I’d been staying late each night to make sure I got the place cleaned out and scrubbed. I’d even brought in one of the many chairs from Uncle Phil’s basement, so Santo had a place to sit.

I turned and closed the door, hearing the music and clanking sounds muffle immediately.

“You got a computer,” he said, waving toward my laptop.

“It finally showed up from Washington,” I said. “I’d been afraid it was lost in the mail. But I got a couple boxes yesterday.” They were mostly sentimental items that I’d collected over the years. I’d sold off or donated everything I couldn’t fit in my luggage for the plane. The money from the sales had been just enough to buy my lemon of a hatchback that was already almost costing me as much in repairs as it cost to buy.

“You learning to spreadsheet?” he asked, undoing his top button as he sat down.

“Trying,” I said, sitting down too, putting the paper into the top drawer of the desk. Beneath it was paperwork for other cars, ones that were either criminally under charged for their work or way overcharged.

I was still trying to figure all that out without having to ask the guys who’d given me the paperwork.

None of them, I’d noted, belonged to David.

As far as I could tell, all of his work and charges were appropriate.

“Okay. So. You have my full attention. What do we need to discuss?” I asked, placing my arms on the desk. I didn’t know if I was intentionally trying to contrast Santo’s suddenly tight, tense body language, but I offered him an encouraging smile.

Santo’s chest expanded, stretching his white shirt tight for a second. “Your uncle and I had a… business arrangement.”

“A business arrangement,” I repeated. “Are you an investor?”

“No, definitely not. All that,” he said, gesturing out toward the garage, “was all Phil.”

“You’re being deliberately vague,” I said, my head tipping to the side.

“Yeah, I guess I am,” he agreed, leaning forward. “Been trying to rack my brain for a delicate way to bring this up…”

“Oh, God. He owed you money, didn’t he? Are you, like, a bookie or something? What was it? Sports? Cards?”

“No, I’m not a bookie. But the fact that you’re not freaking out about that makes this a little easier,” he said, giving me a smile that totally didn’t melt my panties or anything. “Your uncle gave me and my family money monthly. For protection.”

“For protection from what? Like… personal security?” I mean, this was a garage full of reasonably fit men. What did they have to be so afraid of?

“Not exactly. Yes, we do work as a sort of personal security, if or when that’s necessary. But it’s also that when people know the shop is under our protection, they know not to fuck with it in the first place.”

“Wait… that’s… that sounds like something I heard of in a doc—“

A documentary.

About the mob.

And their protection rackets.

“There it is,” Santo said, exhaling so slowly and deeply that his lungs must have burned.

“So, Grassi. That’s…”

“My last name.”

“But also your… Family name?”

“Yes.”

“You’re in the mafia?” The words were out of me before I could think them through. I mean, were you even supposed to acknowledge to a member of the mob that they were a mafioso? Was that, like, dangerous?

Was I in danger?

From the man who’d been starring in my sexual fantasies for a week?

Even just sitting there talking, with his coffee and cocoa scent wafting over to me, had my sex aching for him to just… clear the desk and take me on top of it.

No matter how much I knew that was never going to happen.

My fears fell away, though, as Santo’s lips twitched before he gave up on the fight and let the smile spread.

“Yeah, sweetheart. That’s exactly it.”

Wow.

Okay then.

That was just… so like me, wasn’t it?

To be jonesing after the walking red flag.

I had quite the track record when it came to relationships and crushes.

There was, of course, Johnny, who screwed everything that walked, including me. He also took money from all of us after said screwing. I’d been paying for sex without realizing it—for a year. And, God, it wasn’t even money well spent.

There’d been my work crush—a guy who worked at the gym across from my store—who my coworkers and I watched get hauled away by the cops for nearly beating his best friend to death with a hand weight.

Then there was Robby, who I’d dated on and off for about two years. Only to realize that the reason we were so on-and-off was because his wife —that I obviously didn’t know existed—had a baby, and he felt guilty for a few months every now and then, and broke things off with me to go back to them.

I’d seen them all out together as a family on my birthday night—the same birthday he told me he couldn’t spend with me because he was on business in California.

“Did I lose you?” Santo asked, snapping me back to the present.

“You did,” I admitted, shaking my head.

“To where?”

“Oh, just all the times when I completely misjudged a man,” I admitted. Why bother lying? “So, okay. You had a deal with my uncle. Does that deal… roll over to me?”

I really hoped it didn’t. But I didn’t think I was in the position to try to make any demands or anything. I mean, this guy was in the mob . You know… cement shoes and sleeping with the fishes mob.

“Yes,” Santo confirmed, but there was regret in his voice, like he felt bad about that fact.

“Okay,” I said, exhaling hard. And I could have sworn, just for a second, his gaze slipped down to my chest at the motion. Though that was surely just wishful thinking. “Well, I guess protection isn’t a bad thing, right?”

“Right,” he agreed. “If anyone starts hassling you, if you get robbed, anything like that, you call me, and I handle it.”

“Like… handle it?” I asked, picking up my pen and making a stabbing motion in the air with it.

I was being dead serious.

But Santo threw his head back and laughed.

“Oh, sweetheart, you’re making this a hell of a lot easier than I thought it would be. The chances of me stabbing someone over stealing shit are low, though. No worries.”

“Okay then,” I said, sitting back, pretending not to notice the way my heart fluttered each time he called me ‘sweetheart.’

It was just a pet name.

He probably used it on all women.

I needed to get a grip.

“Well, I guess all I have to ask is how often I have to pay you.”

I mean, things weren’t exactly loosey-goosey around there, money-wise. But there was a little extra money.

Did I have some of that money earmarked for repairs and upgrades around the garage? Sure. But I could, I don’t know, go online and learn how to do the repairs myself, find stuff second-hand. It could still look a million times better on a much smaller budget.

“Not what you have to pay me?” Santo asked, head tipped to the side.

“Fifteen hundred,” I said, keeping eye contact, not wanting him to try to change the agreement just because he thought he could.

“How’d you know that?”

“I saw your last name on an old piece of paper with that amount. Now that I know the details, I figure that’s what the arrangement is. Is that weekly?”

Please say no.

“Christ, no. No, babe, that’s monthly.”

“Oh, thank God,” I said, sighing as I slumped back against my chair.

“Things that tight around here?” he asked, brow quirked up.

“I’m still… working out how tight things are or aren’t. But there won’t be a problem paying that monthly.” Even if it would have looked better invested in some new flooring in the waiting room. Maybe a nice little coffee and cold drink station. A new TV.

I’d just have to get even better at shopping for deals and thrifting and… doing the elbow greasing all by myself.

It would be fine.

“Lost you again,” Santo said.

“Sorry. I’m a little… all over the place at the moment,” I admitted, waving at my head. “This has all been a lot.”

“Sorry to pile on.”

“No. Actually, oddly, you’re kind of the least of my worries. Which sounds insane. I mean how is being in bed with the mob the least of my concerns, right? I mean… not in bed ,” I rushed to say, feeling my eyes bugging. “I just meant… involved with. You know, in the protection racket way.”

Good lord.

I needed to shut the hell up.

“I’ll get out of your hair then,” Santo said, smiling as he stood, redoing that button in a way that had no right to be as sexy as it was. “For the record, though, sweetheart,” he said, turning back. His voice was like a velvet caress as he pitched it just slightly lower, “I would be a lucky fucking man to be in bed with you.”

With that, and nothing else, he was gone.

“That just happened, right?” I asked my empty office as my heartbeat hammered against my ribcage. And that wasn’t to mention the fluttering sensation in a much less appropriate place.

I was suddenly heartbreakingly upset that my uncle was a luddite because I would have killed to have that interaction on video.

To watch over and over again.

Maybe with a glass of wine in the tub with a hand slipped under the water, imagining his hand in its place.

“Dasha—”

“Jesus!” I yelped, nearly falling out of my chair at the sound of David’s voice.

“The door’s open,” he said, gesturing toward it.

“Right. Yeah. Okay. Ah… what?”

“Why are you so red?”

“What? I’m not red.” I was totally red. I could feel the heat on my cheeks and chest. I didn’t have the complexion that allowed me to get a sweet little blush just on the apples of my cheeks. Nope, I went red all over my upper half when I was upset or hot or, well, turned on.

“You sick or something?”

“No. I’m fine,” I insisted, trying to put some steel in my voice. “What did you need?”

“Got a call,” he said.

“For what?”

“Someone said they’re on the way to your place with a delivery.”

“A delivery?” I asked. I mean, yeah, I’d ordered some things online to try to spruce the house up. But nothing that I thought would require them announcing delivery.

“Said you gotta be there or they can’t deliver it.”

“Crap,” I said, jumping out of my chair, grabbing my purse and keys, and saying a silent prayer that my car would start. “Thanks, David. I’ll be back in a few,” I said, remembering to lock the office before I walked out of one of the open garage doors.

I racked my brain the whole drive home, trying to figure out what I’d ordered, but came up blank.

Until I got to my place to find two men with a giant delivery truck unpacking the item in my driveway.

The pink velvet couch.

The freaking pink velvet couch .

“Hi!” I said, rushing out of my car and up the driveway, glad I’d stopped at the bank on the way to work so I had some tip money for them. “Sorry. I didn’t realize I had a delivery today. Do you guys have, uh, the receipt by chance?”

One of them went to grab it while the other finished unwrapping the plastic from the couch.

“Thank you,” I said, scanning the full page. Until I got to the bottom where it was signed.

By Santo Grassi.

The guy who I was indebted to for protection, who just so happened to be a mob guy, and who said he would be lucky to be in bed with me… sent me a couch.

Well.

I certainly owed him a thank you, didn’t I?

And so what if my mind went right to thanking him?

With my mouth.

Wordlessly .