Stolen from the Hitman: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance(166)

Then it hits me.

My car!

It’s still at Mickey’s Liquors! How the hell am I going to get back there? What if the police had it impounded? What if Mickey sought revenge and beat the hell out of it or slashed my tires or something? It’s a rental, and I definitely can’t afford to replace it if anything bad happened. My heart racing, I grab my bag and run up the basement stairs.

“Oh, good morning, dear! Come get some breakfast!” Wanda calls out to me from her perch on the couch. She’s watching the morning news, a tray of bacon, toast, and scrambled eggs steaming on the coffee table. She sips from her mug and waves me over.

“I — I’m sorry, I really need to go,” I tell her, shaking my head sadly. God, that food smells heavenly. Especially since I have a slight hangover from that bottle of bourbon I split with Leon last night. “I’ve got to catch a bus or something. My car — ”

“It’s parked outside,” Gerald says, coming around the corner with a newspaper in hand to sit next to his wife.

“Wh-what?” I stammer, furrowing my brow. I know he’s getting up there, but surely Gerry’s not old enough to be senile yet.

“Yes, yes. That’s right. Dear Leon was up before the sun to fetch it along with some of the other darlings from the Club,” Wanda says, nodding and beaming.

“Oh,” I reply, astonished and relieved. “I never got to tell him thank you.”

Gerry looks over at me with his blue eyes twinkling. “I doubt that’s the last you’ll be seeing of him.You’ll get your chance, I’m sure.”

I can’t help but blush. I hope to God they don’t know what went on last night in their basement. Too embarrassed for words, I simply stand there frozen, my mouth hanging open. Wanda swivels around in her spot, waving me over more emphatically.

“I know you’ve got places to go, but you can’t expect to get far on an empty stomach,” she scolds me gently. She’s adorable in her purple floral nightgown. There are still curlers in her hair and fuzzy slippers on her feet. Gerry has his arm around her, his eyes occasionally flicking over to her warmly. I find the whole scene utterly endearing, and it fills me with a sense of unnameable longing. I want that. I want someone to look at me the way Gerald Lawrence looks at his wife, even after all these decades together. It’s like they’re newlyweds, the way they dote on each other. I can only hope to find something so precious someday.

I obediently walk over and take a plate, loading it up with food before settling into a chair to watch the morning news with Wanda. There are the usual pieces about lost dogs and weather patterns, new businesses opening and old ones closing. Not a single mention of the liquor store incident. I smile to myself.

Samuels and Greene must have done a hell of a job covering it up.

When I’m finished, I thank the Lawrences profusely, and Wanda holds my hand in both of hers for a solid minute while she tells me how wonderful it was to meet me and how dearly she hopes I will come back to visit again. I assure her, with all honesty, that I certainly intend to.

Then I hoist my bag over my shoulder and head down the front steps to my car parked half a block down. I panic for a moment at the locked door, then realize that Leon must have slipped my keys back into my bag when I hear them jangling. He really thought of everything. My heart skips a beat when I think about the way he held me last night, so tenderly and passionately all at once. I have never been touched that way before.

I wonder if I will ever see him again. I don’t have his number or even his full name. All I know is that he’s the closest thing to a knight in shining armor I’ve ever met, and if fate brought us back together once… then just maybe I’ll be lucky enough to find him again.

I slide into the driver’s seat and pull my bag into my lap to take out a journal I found back at my dad’s house. I thrust it into my bag yesterday before I ran out to tail the motorcycle club to the liquor store, and I haven’t thought much of it until now. But I take it out of the bag and start poring through the weathered pages, blinking back tears at the sight of my father’s familiar handwriting, which is surprisingly neat and legible for a working man. There are pages of mundane observations about the weather, birds that landed in his yard, car troubles he worked out with his mechanic friend, and the frequent mentions of me.

When I turn another page, a folded-up, black-and-white print out of a fashion website I write for falls out into my lap. I pick it up and realize it’s an article I wrote about peplum dresses and statement necklaces for autumn. Then I look at the journal page: