Joey: Chapter 2

“You staying for dinner?” she asks, her eyes wide and shining. I spend a lot of time looking into Joey Moretti’s deep-brown eyes. The way they sparkle with flecks of amber when she’s happy or mad fascinates me.

Her eyes are a safe zone. Because if I were to let my gaze drift lower, I might let it linger on those insanely perky tits of hers, or the way the perspiration on her back runs down the channel of her spine, slipping beneath the band of her yoga pants and down to her juicy ass.

And then I would have to stand here with a raging boner. I swear, these workouts test my willpower like nothing in my life ever has before. I could say I have no idea why I agreed to them, because they’re pure fucking torture—but I’ve always been a sucker for punishment. Spending time with her is the most exquisite kind of torture there is. She’s the one woman I can’t have and the one woman I want more than any other.

“Max?” she says with a frown.

“Huh?”

She places one hand on her hip and rolls her eyes like a spoiled little brat. What I wouldn’t give to discipline that sass out of her. “Dinner?”

No, I can’t stay for dinner. I need to get home and take a shower. During which I will jerk off to the image of your ass in those pants.

“You can shower here,” she offers, and for a horrifying minute, I wonder if I said that out loud. “You know, ’cause you’re kind of sweaty.” She wrinkles her nose, a mischievous smile playing on her lips.

A grin tugs at the corners of my mouth. “Well, working you out is a tough job, Joey.”

Her eyes darken with heat. This would all be so much easier if she didn’t look at me that way. Because I know for certain she likes me too. She’s had a crush on me for years, and her brothers tolerate it because they trust me to never act on it. But that gets harder and harder to do with each passing day. I spend so much time thinking about slipping my hand into her panties and finding out how wet I make her that it’s become a huge distraction. I know that I get to her. I just don’t know how much.

“I can’t. I have somewhere I need to be,” I tell her, and the hurt on her face makes me wish that I hadn’t. She masks it well though, and if I didn’t pay such close attention to her, I probably wouldn’t have noticed it. But I pay far too much attention to her. I practically stalk the girl, and I do it under the guise of looking out for her on behalf of her brothers.

“A date?”

“No.”

She grabs her towel off the floor and turns on her heel, swaying the finest ass I’ve ever seen as she sashays toward the door. “Well, whatever it is, have a great time.”

I watch her leave, drinking in every detail of her before she disappears from view. Maybe I should go on a date and get her out of my head. Except it never works. I’ve fucked countless women this past year, and there wasn’t a single time I didn’t imagine it was Joey I was fucking instead.

I check my watch. Shit! I really do have somewhere to be.

Thoughts of Joey and her perfect ass continue to invade my thoughts when I pull into the parking garage at my apartment building an hour later. I take my private elevator to the penthouse apartment, and when the doors open, she stands there waiting for me, chewing on her fingernails and bouncing on her tiptoes. Anxiety radiates from her like heat from an open fire. She hates being left alone, and while I don’t keep guards at my home because I prefer absolute privacy, this place is still safer than Fort Knox.

“You said you’d be back at five,” she says, accusing eyes searching my face.

I check my watch and sigh. “It’s like ten past.”

“You know how much I worry, Max,” she whines. “You’re all we have.” She rubs both hands over her rounded stomach, and a wave of guilt washes over me. She’s right.

I take two steps forward and wrap my arms around her. “I’m sorry, okay? I would have called to say I’d be a little late, but I was on the bike.”

“Those things are dangerous, you know.” She sniffles, pressing her head against my chest.

That makes me laugh. “Pretty sure everything I do is dangerous, Kristin,” I remind her. That makes her laugh too, a soft chuckle that vibrates through her entire body.

I drop my arms to my sides and she looks up at me, her eyes wet with unshed tears. She’s far too young and innocent to be here with me. “If anything ever happened to you …” she whispers.

“It won’t.”

“I’m making dinner,” she says, changing the subject before things get too tense.

I arch an eyebrow at her. “But you can’t cook.”

“I’m learning.” She swats my chest. “I’m following a recipe. It’s called chicken parm for dummies. It will be amazing. I swear.”

“Hmm,” I murmur, unconvinced. “Didn’t you follow a recipe the night before last and almost burn down the kitchen?”

Her cheeks turn bright red, and she looks down at the floor. “I didn’t realize you had to take the plastic thing off the chicken. I’ve learned my lesson. This time it’s all fresh stuff. No plastic packaging involved.”

“Well, in that case, I’m looking forward to it. Let me grab a shower and then I can help out.”

“That would be great.” The huge smile on her face makes her look so desperate for my affection and makes me feel guilty for leaving her alone all day. I’m about to apologize for that a second time when she grabs my hand. “The baby’s kicking!” she squeals, placing my hand on the side of her stomach and pressing gently. “You feel it?”

There’s a soft tap against my palm. Then another. Wow! “Yeah, I feel it.”

“How cool is that? He’s gonna be so strong, you know? Just like you are.” She blinks up at me, fluttering her long dark eyelashes.

“Naw, just like his mom,” I tell her with a wink. She throws her arms around my waist and buries her face against my chest again. I drop a soft kiss on the top of her head.

“Thank you, Max,” she whispers.

I chew on another mouthful of the worst chicken parm I’ve ever eaten in my life, then wash it down with a gulp of soda.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?” Kristin eyes me from across the table.

The truth would hurt her feelings, so I lie. “It’s fine.” I rarely eat at my place as a rule, preferring to spend my time at the Moretti mansion. But since Kristin walked into my life, that’s not always an option. “Besides, you don’t have to cook. We can get takeout.”

“I’m trying to be healthy though. For this little guy.” She rubs a hand over her stomach and smiles.

“You still haven’t heard from your father?”

Her smile fades in an instant. “Nothing.” She looks down at her half-eaten plate of food.

I drop my silverware and scrub a hand over my beard. “And there’s nothing else you can think of? Something he might have said? A clue as to where he might have gone?”

She shakes her head. “I wish there was, but I’ve gone over our last conversation so many times in my head. All he told me was that he had to take care of something because if he didn’t, we would never be safe. He said if he wasn’t back in two days—” She swipes her cheek, whisking away her tears, and takes a deep breath. “He told me the only person I could trust in the whole world was you, and he told me to give you that message. That was it.”

I’ve never had any cause not to trust Dante or Lorenzo Moretti, and while their father was a cruel man who never once let me forget how much he did for me by taking me in when I was fourteen, his sons are nothing like him. They are like brothers to me. Still, my brow furrows. My dad says you can’t trust the Morettis. They turned you against your real family. That’s the message she’s referring to. The one her father asked her to pass along if she ever had cause to come to me and ask for help. Six nights ago, she turned up on my doorstep and did exactly that.