Now I loved her. She loved me and she needed to hear my apology for being an asshole.
She was still scared.
Felt guilty too.
How the hell could I take that shit from her for good?
“You’re beautiful,” I told her.
Maggie only bent her head, shifting it in my direction without looking at me.
I could live a million damn lives and find her just from the way she moved because she drew me to her. The slip of her fingers through her hair. The quirk of her eyebrow when she tried not to smile. The glorious fucking rock of her hips when she moved across a room.
She was the flame.
I was the suicidal moth aching to die for her.
“You’re strong,” I continued. “And smart.”
“Dimitri…” She shook her head, one gesture, one name that warned me, but I never was good at warnings.
“You got no reason to feel guilty,” I told her, moving to lean against the window. It felt like someone had shot me again when I caught the tears swimming in her eyes. “Baby…” I reached for her and she tried to fight me, but I’m a selfish, stubborn man and brought her close. “Don’t you get it?” I pulled her face up, kissing her once. “I’d take a thousand bullets for you and Mateo. Body shot, head shot, wherever. I’d give up everything I have if it meant you were safe.”
“Don’t say that…”
“Why the hell not?” She pulled away from me and I held her back, my arms on her waist, her back to my front. “It’s what you do for the people you love.”
“Let me go.”
“Bella,” I said, wrapping my hands in her hair, pulling on her to catch her chin and turn her mouth toward me. “That is never going to fucking happen.”
She took my kiss, hesitating for only a second before she caved, curling her body toward me, spinning in my arms to give me back the kiss I’d stolen from her.
Maggie fit against me like a puzzle.
We were two damn parts that shouldn’t fit, but we did.
Made for each other and no one else.
“There’s no one for me but you. There’s no one for you but me. You feel me on that?’
She opened her mouth, light glistening on her bottom lip had me wanting to take her lips again, but Maggie’s soft sweet voice distracted me. “I feel you and I love you.”
“I don’t apologize easy…” Her skin was soft, smooth when I moved my thumb over her cheek. “But I’ll never hurt you on purpose.” It took everything in me to man up and say the thing I needed to. “I can’t be sorry for what I did because it meant we’re here right now and you and my boy, all of us are safe and together.”
She blinked, giving me the agreement I was looking for.
“But I’m sorry you feel guilty about it and…I’m sorry I was an asshole joking about it.”
Maggie laughed, kissing me back. “You’re an asshole about a lot of things …”
“Not to you…not anymore,” I tried, liking how she smiled at me, wanting to do whatever I could to keep that smile on her face. I had ideas how to do it.
“No,” she said, that smile stretching. “Not so much anymore.”
Yeah, I had big damn ideas.
Something had happened to Dario since the night of my talk with him. I’d left him in the park, hoping my advice about remembering who he was had hit home. Then, we’d been distracted by what had gone down with the baby being taken.
But as I watched the man walk around the restaurant, watched how he carried himself, how others responded to him, I picked up on the fact that my kid brother had changed.
Scratch that.
Dario hadn’t changed.
Dario was back.
There was a swagger in his step that I hadn’t seen in five damn years.
There was a smug fucking grin on his face as the cute servers approached him, offering him drinks or food or, God help him if Ma saw, themselves, and the bastard waved them all away.
He settled into one of the leather wingback chairs near the fireplace, his right wrist on the arm rest, the left holding a tumbler of whiskey. He took in everything around us—the crowd, our family, me, Maggie, the baby, Dante and Antonia drinking together at the bar, my boys and, especially, the clang of the bell over the door and the long-legged redhead that walked through it.
“Ah, Ava,” Ma said, walking right toward the woman with her arms open.
Around us, the crowd turned, their laughter dying as the woman entered the restaurant. Smiles froze on faces, eyebrows got lifted and moved in surprise.
The woman had been in town for months, but she’d kept to herself and hadn’t made any attempts to be friendly with anyone but the staff she hired to help run her bakery.
Except, of course, my men, who would only compliment her baked goods.
“So, this is her?” Maggie asked me, bringing the sweet smell of lilacs with her as she leaned in to whisper in my ear.
My grip stiffened on her thigh. I had to remind myself that I couldn’t take her right here in front of the whole fucking town in my folks’ restaurant. “I suppose it is.”
“You said she was tall.”
I glanced at the redhead, quirking my eyebrows at how Ma doted on her, how the woman and my mother hugged each other like they were old friends.
How my father grinned at her, kissing her hand as he wrapped his arm around my mother.
“And,” my woman continued, “you said she got under Dario’s skin.”
“Yeah. So he said. Why?”
Maggie nodded across the room, to where Dario had spent the past half hour schooling his expression behind a tumbler of whiskey. But there was no hiding what he thought of the redhead being here or our folks welcoming her.
“Madonna…”
My kid brother’s eyes went dark, steely and when Ma brought this Ava woman farther into the restaurant, introducing her to family, then to some of her friends, Dario stood, downing what remained of his drink, looking ready to pounce.
“Dimitri, he’s going to cause a scene, look at him.” Maggie sat up straighter, her hand clenching my wrist. “It will embarrass your mama.”
I shot a look toward my mother, then back to Dario, whose attention was on Ava. He marched toward her, his expression bunched up, his mouth drawn down. The composure he’d kept for the past weeks, that slick calm he’d always been able to maintain seemed to split apart at the seams. The closer he got toward the redhead and as Maggie’s grip squeezed harder, I realized she was right.
That asshole was about to embarrass our whole family in front of the town.
“Do something,” Maggie said, her voice a whisper.
I slipped a glance to her, loving her even more as she widened her eyes, and that panicked, worried expression moved across her face. She wasn’t a Carelli, but she understood what Dario embarrassing us would mean to our family.
“Okay, bella,” I said, kissing her temple before I stood. “Everyone,” I called, lifting my voice, my hands up to get the crowd’s attention.
My mother stopped speaking, her eyes rounding when I nodded to her.
“Everyone, please, give Dimitri your attention. He has something to say!” Dario stood behind her but stopped his approach toward the redhead when Ma spoke up. She nodded him back to his seat and waved Ava toward the table next to Mrs. Phillips.