Page 41
“Obvious to anyone with eyes.”Another voice chimed in—Paulo, who leaned back in his chair like he owned the place.“Even your enemies probably felt that kiss through the walls.”
Luca chuckled, lifting his glass.“I’ll drink to that.Reminds me of when Ava started looking at me like that.Game over.”
“You’restilldrooling after your wife,” Paulo shot back.“Don’t act like you’re above it.”
“Damn right I am,” Luca replied with zero shame.“Why stop when she still makes me stupid?”
Tony snorted, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.“Boss here’s already stupid.”
Sal’s glare swung to him.“Careful, Tony.”
“Just saying,” Tony said innocently, though his grin ruined it.
Paulo grunted.“Newlyweds make me itch.All this staring and kissing and sighing.Revolting.”
Luca punched him in the arm.“You’ll eat your words one day.Wait until you meet the woman who floors you.”
“Not happening,” Paulo muttered darkly.Then, with a smirk, “Besides, I’d rather itch than drool all over the rug like Romano here.”
Sal growled, but Luca chuckled again.“You’ve got it bad, Sal.Admit it.”
He ignored them all, but the truth was burning in his chest.Catarina wasn’t just under his skin—she was in his blood now.And that was a problem he had no intention of fixing.
Sal finally pulled his eyes away from the door to glare at Tony.“What the hell are you talking about?”
Tony smirked, hands shoved casually into his pockets like he hadn’t just poked the bear.“In the past, if I’d told you construction starts were up by forty-three percent, costs down by eight, and pre-sales climbing fourteen, you’d already be on me for settling.You’d be rattling off ten new ways to streamline the work, build faster, safer, smarter—hell, your new ideas would probably cut weeks off the schedule.”He paused deliberately, watching.Sal…glanced at the doorway again.
Tony’s grin widened.“Thought so.”
“Why don’t you go find out what she bought at the art store?”Tony suggested, his tone gruff as he gathered up the reports he’d been pretending to look at.“You didn’t hear a damn thing I just said.”
“Yeah, he’s cooked,” Luca added, utterly shameless.
Sal wasn’t sure if he wanted to punch Tony for his arrogance or promote him for giving him time to chase after Catarina.Then he mentally snorted.Promote him?He was already his second-in-command.Kiss him?Hell no.
Tony was halfway to the door when Sal called out, “Forty-three, eight, and fourteen, asshole!”
His underboss threw back his head and laughed, the deep sound echoing down the hallway as he sauntered out.
“Damn it,” Sal muttered, but the corner of his mouth twitched.
The smart thing to do would’ve been to catch up with Tony and hash out the construction side of the business.Sal owned half the damned supply chain—mortgage companies, factories, banks, even a research startup that was developing new building materials.He should’ve been thinking about distribution, inventory, and margins.
Instead, he turned left.
He knew exactly where Catarina would be at this time of day.The sunny solarium.How did he know?He didn’t want to think too hard about it.He just knew.Same way he knew she preferred to curl up on the left side of the couch, where the light hit her hair and turned it into a halo of dark silk.
Maybe it had nothing to do with knowing.Maybe it had to do with the fact that he’d made it her favorite spot.He might have snuck a soft new sofa into the room two weeks ago.Maybe a few more plants had just appeared to soften the space.And perhaps he’d placed a stack of hand-picked books on the table beside her favorite spot.
It wasn’t a crime to want to occupy his wife’s mind and make her more comfortable, damn it.
Walking into the solarium now, he noticed the three books he’d put there yesterday sitting on the side table, although one had a torn scrap of paper tucked into the middle.A makeshift bookmark.He frowned.That was unacceptable.His wife deserved something better than torn paper.He’d have his assistant track down a handful of leather-bound bookmarks by the end of the day.
But Catarina wasn’t reading.
She was perched on the sofa, legs tucked under her, her pretty pink tongue peeking out as she bent over a sketch pad.The new charcoal pencil flew across the page, her pinky finger smudging a line before darting back again.
And for one idiotic moment, Sal was jealous of the paper and pencil.
