Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 77579 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77579 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
Still, it was mine. And I was thankful for it. I didn’t have to share a bathroom, or label my food in the fridge. I could rip off my bra and not feel weird about anyone seeing me without it.
I followed my stomach to the fridge, realizing that my dinner would consist of Greek yogurt, some cheese, and some questionably overripe strawberries.
After I ate, I showered, and changed, before settling down with my antique books and my notebook full of colorful tabs and an index.
What can I say? You weren’t a perpetual student without getting really good at taking intricately detailed notes.
Sometime around midnight, my middle shift guard knocked at my door, and informed me that Venezio was downstairs, but he refused to come up because then ‘eyes wouldn’t be on the door.’
“You’ll know him when you see him,” the guard said. “He’s got one brown eye. The other eye is half brown and half green. He’s wearing a leather jacket and Timbs,” he added.
“Okay. Thank you,” I said, giving him a smile.
“Yep,” he said, then turned and walked away.
Like I said, nothing like Miko.
Or even Cosimo, for that matter.
I ended up not actually meeting Venezio, my night guard, for three full days of having round-the-clock security, though I saw him out front, sometimes pacing a bit, body likely restless from standing in one spot for so long.
Occasionally, I would see guys dropping by to bring him food or coffee. They never stayed to talk, though.
As the weather grew colder and colder, I couldn’t help but feel guilt tug at me as he stood out there, keeping his post, while I was upstairs in the heat.
It wasn’t until the fourth night that I finally got to meet my mysterious nighttime guard.
Unfortunately for both of us, it was in the middle of an attack.
And he was bleeding all over the place.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Halle
I felt awful even thinking it, but the shop was in so much better shape within a few days of my grandfather being away.
Suddenly, you could walk around without making tables wobble, or knocking things off of shelves.
Items that were too expensive to risk jostling, I had secured with museum putty. My grandfather had balked at that, wanting to know what a customer was supposed to do if they wanted to pick the item up.
I argued that no random person should be picking up an item worth thousands and thousands of dollars just because they wanted to. Only interested customers could be allowed to pick them up, and I’d done enough experimenting with the putty to know it could relatively easily be dislodged to pick up the item.
Everything had been thoroughly dusted, cleaned, and polished.
The whole place even smelled better.
Without much else to do, I took my time that fourth day just arranging and rearranging the displays in the windows, getting some input from Miko who, apparently, had a lot of opinions about such things. Which only endeared me to him more.
Cosimo hadn’t made another appearance.
And I went ahead and tried to convince myself that the sinking feeling inside each time I thought of that had everything to do with the fact that it likely meant that I’d been right about the brothers stalking me, and not because of the way the desire was still pinging off every last nerve ending each time I thought about him. Which, I hated to admit, was really, really freaking often.
Why? I don’t know.
He was an ass.
But, I guess, there was no real reasoning with desire.
It was a chemical reaction.
Just that primal part of me recognizing that he would make a good mate. You know, in the whole ‘could beat off predators’ kind of way.
“Ugh,” I grumbled, tossing some more ancient paperwork from a drawer into the shredding pile. I’d burned out a shredder already, trying to tackle too much paperwork in a row, so I had to do it little by little since I couldn’t afford a new one.
Over my coffee this morning, I’d actually caught myself staring at an article about Cosimo’s trial on phone for an embarrassingly long time, remembering the way his gaze had moved over my naked body, his eyes heated, then the way his voice shivered over me when he’d said my body was even better than he’d imagined.
Which meant he’d previously spent some time wondering about me.
When?
At the trial?
I looked at him a lot. I was reasonably sure I’d never caught him looking at me. Clearly, though, he must have. There was no reason that made a little gooey sensation move through me. But it did.
“Hey,” a voice said, making me jerk, realizing I’d been zoning out long enough for my guard to move in front of me.
“Oh, hey. What’s up?” I asked.
“Nothing. Usually go to see your grandfather about now,” he said.
“Oh, right. Yeah. Okay,” I said, gathering my things, walking through the shop to turn lights off, then following him out.