I moved closer to her. “What, this can’t just be a fun thing for us?”
“I didn’t think you mafia guys did fun.”
“We don’t. Not normally.”
She arched an eyebrow at me. “What makes you different then?”
“Oh, maybe it’s my pretty wife.”
She laughed and shook her head. I grinned at her and realized I couldn’t take my eyes away. I should’ve been looking at the crowd and sizing it up. She was right, Hedeon had sent me with a mission, but I realized that I didn’t much care about it at all.
Maybe it was that dress, or maybe it was just her, but I couldn’t stop thinking about taking her back to our house and undressing her nice and slow.
I kept seeing her back as she bent forward to pull the dress on and the glimpse of her breast, the curve of her spine.
“Seriously, what are we doing here?”
“All business. You need to loosen up a bit.”
She ignored that. “I recognize some of the people here from that night you took me to dinner.”
I sipped my whiskey and accepted that she wasn’t going to drop this. “Hedeon wants us to talk to the police chief.”
She snorted and gave me a look. “Excuse me?”
“There are rumors about the shooting. They might want to prosecute.”
Her face drained of color. “Prosecute?”
“Don’t worry, they’re not coming for us. But allegedly they have a fall guy they want to blame it on, one of Hedeon’s men that was in the wrong place at the wrong time. They got a local to give them a positive ID on him, even if he wasn’t anywhere near the scene.”
“They’re going to send an innocent man to jail?”
I tilted my head. “He’s not exactly innocent.”
She waved that off. “Innocent of this.”
“True enough. Well, I don’t know what to tell you. This is Philadelphia, my darling. It’s not rich enough or big enough to get away from rampant corruption and politics.”
“Politics. Worse than corruption.” She made a face.
I laughed softly and slipped my hand onto her lower back. She looked at me with a fire in her eyes and I knew she wanted to tell me to keep my fucking hands to myself—but she wouldn’t though, not in public, not with so many people crowded nearby. I moved closer to her and leaned down to whisper into her ear.
“Don’t be so serious. We can have fun tonight, you know?”
“Yeah? What’s your idea of fun?”
I let my fingers curl inward, half an inch from her ass. “Plenty of things come to mind.”
She gave me a look and I knew I was pushing it, but I didn’t care. She looked too good in that dress, and I’d been ignoring her too much these last couple of weeks. Hunting down Jarvis was a full-time job, and I knew I had to find him before he found me again—that was the only way I could keep Cora safe. I kept telling myself that each day I went out on the hunt and left her back home to fend for herself. I wasted two weeks like that, trying to protect her by ignoring her, and I wasn’t going to make that mistake again.
“How about we stick to the task at hand.” She reached back and pulled my fingers from her lower back, but laced them through her own and squeezed.
I smiled at her and nodded at the crowd. “Be my guest. Do you know which guy is the police chief?”
She hesitated. “Black guy with the hat?”
“Close. Chief Richards is a black gentleman, that’s true, but he’s not wearing a hat.” I squinted and noticed the man she was looking at. “I’m pretty sure that’s a judge.”
“Maybe he can get us out of this crap,” she grumbled.
I laughed and squeezed her palm before tugging her along after me. She stumbled a bit in her high heels, but kept pace admirably as I weaved my way through the crowd.
There were tables set up on the dance floor with various items lined up along them. There was an oil painting, some movie props, some tickets to the theater, and a few other random objects, and each item had a sheet in front of it. It was a silent auction for a charity, and based on the numbers I saw written down, I guessed it was a charity everyone really cared about.
“Anything catch your eye?”
She gave me a look. “We’re not here for this.”
“Come on. Indulge me.”
She let out a breath and scanned the items before nodding. “How about that?”
I followed her gaze then laughed. I walked over and stood in front of a strand of Christmas lights—that were allegedly used during the filming of Home Alone. “Seriously?”
“I like that movie,” she said. “Besides, everything else is a little bit—”
“Tacky? Expensive?”
“Boring.”
I gave her a look then leaned down and wrote a number on the piece of paper. She squinted at it and sucked in a breath. “Reid. What the hell?”
“You want it, right?”
“Not that badly.”
“You’re worth it.”
“Reid.” She tried to get past me, maybe thinking she could erase the number or scratch it out, but I caught her wrist and steered her away. She struggled ever so slightly, but obviously was afraid to make a scene. I liked that about her—conscious of the room around her, even when she wanted to scream and hit and bite and hiss.
We did a lap in angry silence, or at least she was angry. I was elated and having a good time. The whiskey was good, the room was crowded enough that I felt like I could get lost in it, and I was going to win a nice prize for my wife. I still had a job to do, but I was in no hurry to get it done, and I took her on a couple laps, enjoying the attention she drew from the men around us. A few of the more enterprising ones came up and introduced themselves, along with several men I already knew, but we were mostly left alone.
After our third circuit, she pulled away and sat down in a chair. “I’m done walking,” she announced.
I laughed and sat next to her. A man standing at the front of the room announced that bidding would end in ten minutes, and that they’d read out the winners shortly.
“You know, these people throw events like this all the time.”
She made a face. “I can’t imagine.”
“It’s hard to picture for regular humans.”
“Do you get invited often?”
“Never, not before you.”
“Then how do you know these people?”
I took a breath and tilted my head. “Lots of ways. Some of them owe me money. Some of them buy my drugs. Most of them know Hedeon and know me through him.”
“Come on. State senators buy drugs from you?”
“More than one, actually. What you fail to comprehend is that these are still people—people with a lot of money, but still flawed and broken and fucked up.”
“Just hard to picture some senator coming to one of your corners.”
“We make house calls when the client is important enough.”
She rolled her eyes and stretched her legs. “Why are you telling me all this? Are you trying to impress me?”
I considered that for a moment. I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to tell her about my business. Maybe it was vanity, or maybe it was something else.