Page 8

CHAPTER EIGHT

Santo

I hadn’t been counting down the days or anything.

That would have been pathetic.

Almost as pathetic as the way I took extra care to put myself together that morning, fussing over my damn hair, putting on my best watch, making sure I had cologne on because I’d noticed her taking little sniffs of my jacket when I’d put it on her.

I did manage to make myself wait until nearly lunchtime before I made my way over to the repair shop. And I absolutely didn’t do that with the hopes of maybe talking Dasha into go grabbing a bite somewhere.

Maybe my place.

In bed.

After spending an hour or two trying to break my headboard.

“Jesus,” I sighed, shaking my head at myself as I pulled into the parking lot.

“You again,” one of the mechanics said as I stepped into the waiting room.

“Me again,” I agreed. “Is Dasha here?”

I knew she was there. I saw her car parked to the side of the building.

“She’s in her office,” he said, nodding his head toward the door to the garage as he leaned over a clipboard to fill in some paperwork.

I wasn’t exactly happy about him letting a stranger walk into a woman’s office seemingly uninvited, but I liked being able to surprise her since I didn’t give her a day when I would be showing up.

Her door was cracked when I approached, so when I went to knock, it flew open.

There was a loud gasp, then a crash as Dasha shot up from her chair, sending it slamming back into the wall. The movement also sent a pile of paperwork and multiple colored pens fluttering to the floor and scattering around.

“Santo,” she gasped, her hand pressed to her chest.

That was… a strange reaction.

Especially when she worked in a busy environment where, I assumed, people milled around a lot, maybe even visited her office.

Sure, maybe she hadn’t slept well and was too caffeinated.

But the way the hair on the back of my neck stood up said it was something more than that.

“Sorry, sweetheart. I didn’t mean to startle you,” I said, staying in the doorway so she didn’t feel intimidated.

“No, no. It’s okay. I guess I was really… in the zone,” she said, starting to squat down to gather her papers and pens.

“Allow me,” I said, moving inside.

My heel hit the door as I went down, clicking it closed as I grabbed a few pens.

I reached up toward her, standing there in her all-white sundress that made her skin look more sun-kissed than usual.

I didn’t realize how close to her I was.

But as I glanced up, I was achingly aware of how easily I could just reach up, slip under her skirt, pull her panties to the side, and get a taste of her.

“Thank you,” she said, voice breathless, leaving me to wonder if maybe she was thinking the exact same thing.

I was seconds away from reaching out when there was a loud bang in the garage that had her whole body jolting and her eyes turning into saucers.

Again… odd.

The place was always full of noise. You’d think she would have gotten used to it by now.

I turned my attention back to the papers, finding my gaze caught by several pages with big red question marks.

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Dasha said, snatching the papers out of my hands, and shoving them haphazardly in the middle drawer of her desk, then slamming the drawer shut.

Hmm.

Something was going on here, but I couldn’t quite figure out what.

“You okay, baby?” I asked, getting back to my feet, thoughts of going down on her forgotten. For the moment.

“What? Yeah. Yes, of course,” she said, plastering a tight smile on her pretty face.

“You sure?”

“I just…”

“Need someone to talk to?” I asked.

To that, she exhaled hard.

“How about over lunch?” I offered. “No pressure. We can just talk about the weather and the condition of the roads if you want. For example, I nearly fucked up my wheel alignment on that pothole out front. Which makes me wonder if Phil had some kind of deal with the road works crew around here. Keeping the customers rolling in.”

That got her smile to go from plastic to pleasant. There was a softness around her eyes at the idea of her uncle.

“Okay. Yes. Lunch sounds great. I’ve been here since five,” she admitted.

“Is there that much work to do?”

“There’s a lot of cleaning up and sprucing up to do,” she said. “And it’s easier to get that kind of stuff done either before everyone gets here or after everyone leaves for the day. But, oddly, I find it less creepy here early in the morning than late at night.”

She grabbed her bag off of the cabinet along one of the walls. “Oh, wait!” she said, turning back when I went to open the door for her. “This is what you’re here for,” she said, going back to the desk, opening the top drawer, and pulling out a fat envelope.

I was surprised how much I fucking hated taking that envelope. I didn’t want to be reminded that what was going on between us was a business arrangement, first and foremost.

“Thanks,” I said, my voice a little tense as I slipped the envelope into my pocket. “Shall we?” I asked, opening the door and allowing her to move through first. “Do you want to take my car, or would you feel more comfortable taking yours too?”

“I’m pretty sure if you wanted to kidnap me, you’d have done it when you saved me from the side of the road,” she said as we stepped through one of the open garage doors and into the warm early afternoon light.

Dasha paused, sucking in a greedy breath.

“Fresh air,” she said, giving me a small smile. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m starting to kind of like the smells of the garage. But after a while, it can give me a bit of a headache. Though, admittedly, because I am starting to correlate the scent of grease and oil with the thick, slimy, grimy smudges all over every single surface in the office, waiting room, and bathroom. I have been waging a war against those things for days,” she added.

“I can’t imagine. Though, the waiting room did look neater than it did last time. The floors—“

“Were actually white underneath all that black? Yep,” she said. “I broke a mop trying to clean that floor until I finally gave up and had to do it on my hands and knees.”

Yeah, that was not a mental image I needed. Dasha on all fours, her breasts all but spilling out of her dress as I moved around her, hiked up her skirt, and…

“You’re locked,” Dasha said, snatching me out of the fantasy before it got too out of hand.

I bleeped the locks and opened her door, waiting for her to slide in, and then took a second to breathe deeply through my growing desire before climbing in and turning the car over.

“So, what are you in the mood for?”

“What’s the most portable food?” she asked.

“You want to take it back to the office?” I asked, hearing the disappointment slipping into my voice.

“No. God, no. I was thinking maybe we could get some food and check out the river. I still haven’t gotten around to that,” she admitted.

“In that case, I know a pretty great sandwich and wrap place. Can’t get more portable than that. And it’s actually just a quick walk from the park by the river.”

“Perfect,” she said. Then, with each mile we drove away from the garage, she relaxed, melting into the seat, humming along with the radio, rolling down her window so the wind whipped her hair around, making that honeysuckle scent of hers overwhelm me.

“Okay. This town is the cutest,” Dasha declared after I parked in the main lot and we made our way down the streets lined with little boutique shops with brand-spanking-new facades. “In a very ‘coastal elite’ way.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “When I was younger, it was just the main road that was all lavish. The side roads used to be kind of sketchy as hell. Especially late at night. Guess the local beautification committee wanted to fancy up the whole area. Looks nicer. But kind of killed the vibe.”

“I mean…” she said, waving a hand toward the new age store as we passed. “Aren’t witchy stores supposed to be all cramped and mysterious? Full of decades’ worth of incense and dusty old tarot card boxes? This kind of looks soulless.”

“It used to have a lot of soul. My sister made me take her there once when she heard they were doing aura photography.”

“What color was it?” Dasha asked.

“Valley? She was all orange and yellow.”

“Is that your only sibling?” she asked, giving me a sweet smile as my hand went to her lower back to steer her around a corner toward the sandwich shop.

“Oh, no. There are six of us,” I told her.

“Six?” she asked, eyes going round as she stopped on the sidewalk to gawk at me.

“Big litters are common in my family. Sometimes I forget that not everyone is like us. There’s Nino, Massimo, Dante, me, Valley, and August.”

“Valley and August,” she mused.

“Valentina and Augustine,” I clarified.

“Ah, that makes more sense. What was it like to have so many siblings? Lots of people to play with? Or did you all fight all the time?”

“Both. Sometimes at the same time. You’re an only child?”

“Yeah. My parents actually didn’t want kids,” she admitted. “You wouldn’t have known that with how good my mom was while I had her. But it was very clear that my father had no time or patience for a kid. Especially a girl,” she told me as we walked into the shop, her head tipped up to read the menu as we got in line.

“That sucks, sweetheart.”

To that, she shrugged. “I was a pretty extroverted kid. I made friends easily. Spent time with their—happier—families. I had a good childhood, all things considered. I mean, the stepmoms were… an experience.”

“Evil stepmother sorts?” I asked.

“It was more that some of them were in their twenties. My father is a doctor,” she said as if that explained everything. “They’re… notorious horndogs,” she told me. “Two of those wives were nurses he worked with. The third was a pharmaceutical rep. So it was really more like having awkward big sisters than it was having any kind of mom figures.”

“Is his current wife that young?”

“No. This one is actually an appropriate age. Actually, she might be the exact same age as him. She was a paramedic and wanted nothing to do with him for years. She said she had his number and she wasn’t going to fall for good bedside manner rebranded as workplace flirtation.”

She liked the current stepmom. It was there in the way her smile made her eyes crinkle, in the warmth in her voice.

“How’d he win her over?”

“He had a heart attack,” Dasha said. “She was the one who kept him alive on the way to the hospital. She said it was the first time she saw him as a man, not a doctor. They’ve been together ever since.”

“But they live abroad?” I asked.

“Sasha has a lot of family in Spain. After a bunch of holidays there, they finally decided to move.”

“Leaving you here by yourself?”

“I was twenty-one at the time,” she said, shrugging it off. “I was more about friends and fun than I was about family. And Sasha always reminds me that they have room for me. That probably sounds crazy to you,” she said as we moved up in line. “It sounds like your family is very close.”

“They are. Some might say too close.”

“How can you be too close with someone?”

“Mandatory family dinners.”

“Sounds really lovely.”

“Sometimes, the aunts will sneak into your house and stuff your freezer with meals.”

“Sounds incredibly convenient. And I bet they’re all amazing cooks.”

“The best around. Put the food at Lucky’s place to shame.”

“That is hard to imagine.”

Suddenly, I was picturing climbing out of the car at my mom’s house, of walking hand in hand inside, of introducing her around, of sitting next to her at the table as she soaked up the atmosphere, as she tasted the food.

Now, I’d always known I would settle down eventually, that I’d have a girlfriend or wife with me at family functions. But I’d never pictured who that woman might be.

But here I was, imagining that woman as Dasha. When I hadn’t even kissed her yet.

“Hi!” she greeted the woman in the black baseball cap behind the counter. “We’re great, how are you?”

She wasn’t faking that friendliness either. There was something really charming about how sweet and open she seemed to be with everyone.

Then, unwanted, the memory of her anxiety at her shop popped up in my mind. Then, immediately following that, the one about her employee raising his voice to her.

Unexpectedly, anger boiled in my gut, making me want to charge back to the repair shop, round up those mechanics, and demand to know who’d been making her so anxious and unhappy at her own damn business.

“Santo?” Dasha asked, pulling me out of the thoughts that had my hands balling up into fists.

“Hm?”

“Food?” she asked, giving me a bemused smile. “I got a BLT,” she added.

“Right. Sorry. How about the steak sandwich?”

We waited for our food, stashing our drinks in Dasha’s purse as she gushed about the decor. “I know that the garage can’t look this bright and girly, but it would be nice if it looked like it was part of, you know, this century at least.”

“It’s already looking better,” I told her, taking our bag of food. “Within another month or two, it will be like a new place. You don’t agree?” I asked when a dark look crossed her face.

“Hopefully,” she agreed.

“What’s going on?”

“What do you mean?”

“You seem a lot less enthusiastic than you were the last time I saw you.”

“I guess I’ve just been giving this whole move and career change some second thoughts.”

“Because the guys at the garage are assholes?”

“Well, that’s, you know, part of it,” she admitted, and I liked that she didn’t feel the need to keep that secret.

“What’s going on, Dasha?” I asked, sensing she needed a little push as we crossed the road toward the marina park.

To that, she exhaled hard.

“I was kind of attacked recently, and—“

“Whoa. Back up. What the hell do you mean you were attacked?”

She exhaled hard, looking down the slope the sidewalk was about to take, then over at the hospital to the right, at the little park to the left where they played live music sometimes. Anywhere but at me.

“My uncle had a storage unit. I decided to use it to store a bunch of junk until I can get rid of it. Have you ever been to a storage unit? With the lights that only go on when you walk under them? Super creepy.”

“Yeah, not the best in terms of safety. Something happened there?”

“I was going back and forth to my car, so I left my unit open.”

“Of course.”

“When I came back one time, one of the lids on the containers was askew. I didn’t notice it right away, though. Not until I came back to find the same container missing.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. And when I got spooked, someone came out of nowhere, plowed into me, and made me fall. Then I ran for my life.”

“Jesus. Did you go to the office? The police?”

“I tried. The office was closed. When I went back, they checked the footage. You could see my unit getting burgled and me getting knocked on my ass. But you couldn’t see the guy’s face.”

“I don’t get it. Don’t storage units have gates and codes and shit like that?”

“They do. But, get this, he didn’t get in through the gate.”

“What?”

“Yeah, apparently, he scaled the fence back in the corner where there were no cameras to get in.”

“How’d he get out? With your box?”

“That, they had no answers for. Since there was nothing to go on, I just… didn’t bother with the police. The bruise has faded. Mostly. The fear of going back to the unit, though, that’s still fresh,” she told me as she started walking again.

No wonder she was having second thoughts about being here. The guys at work were being dicks; she was not doing great financially; she’d been attacked. On top of all of that, she was being fucking extorted by my Family.

She was dealing with all of that with no support system. I’d want to run back to Washington too.

“And now I’m paying for a unit I’m too afraid to go back to. While junk piles up in my car.”

“If you want, we can go back to your unit together after this,” I suggested. “Promise no one is gonna put a hand on you when I’m around.”

Was that a little spark of heat in her eyes? Or was that wishful thinking on my part?

“Okay. It would be nice to be able to use my backseat again. And trunk. And passenger seat.”

We sat down on one of the benches, eating our sandwiches before they got too soggy. We talked about tamer things then. The area, what I liked about it, if I’d ever considered moving, where my house was.

We walked out onto the pier after, the wind kicking her skirt and making it dance.

I barely resisted the urge to move up behind her, to press my body into hers, to feel her melt into me.

A family with a bunch of kids ran up then, making us break apart to smile down at them.

“You want kids?” I asked, finding I needed her to say yes to that question more than made any logical sense.

“Oh, absolutely. Being an only child made me want to have a big family myself one day. I’m assuming you want them too?”

“Definitely. Most of my siblings and cousins are heavy into growing their families now.”

“Are all your siblings married?”

“I’m single. So is Dante. And Valley is… maybe single? She doesn’t really talk about her relationships to her brothers.”

“Who can blame her? I mean, not only are you brothers, but…” she said, waving down at me.

But I was in the mob, was what she was saying.

“This was really lovely,” she said when we eventually made our way back to the car. Admittedly, after a lot of walking around, neither of us was ready to head back yet.

“Yeah, it was,” I agreed. “Do you want to go to your unit?”

“I guess it’s probably best to get over my fear before it grows any more.”

With that, we set off back to the shop, scooping up her car, then making our way to the storage facility.

Dasha was a bundle of nerves as we each grabbed stuff from her car and made our way inside.

Objectively, the place was creepy as fuck. Even in the middle of the day. Long, empty, dark hallways. Someone who wanted to do something shady could just come in and hide out to let the lights go off, which would make them invisible.

“What’s wrong?” I asked when we got to her unit.

“That’s… that’s not my lock,” she said, looking down at the padlock.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Positive. My lock had a little red band around it. This one is blue. Look,” she said, producing the massive keychain and trying to shove a key into the lock.

It didn’t budge.

“Someone put a different lock on my unit. I… need to report this. And ask the office if they have, like, bolt cutters or something.”

“I can cut it off,” I assured her. “Just let me go to my trunk.”

Dasha waited in the doorway as I went to my car, wondering to myself what the hell Phil was into, what was stored in those boxes, and why the hell they were worth stealing.

I had no fucking idea.

But I had a feeling I was going to need to try to figure it out.