“You think you’ll ever settle down?”
Before his head came through the neck of his shirt, he answered, “Doubt it. You know me, Rhee.”
“Yeah. I guess.”
He liked Rhiannon. She was a good girl, a good looker, and a good fuck. But he felt nothing more than a sort of generalized enjoyment of her company. He had no curiosity about her life, no interest in her interests, not even any real concern for her welfare. Other than the chivalry that had been instilled in him by his father and uncles, the kind of chivalry that made him drag a drunk son of a bitch to the alley and pulp him for taking liberties and shoving his hands places Rhee didn’t want those hands.
It dawned on him that that chivalry might be the reason Rhee was suddenly acting like she wanted more out of him.
Fucking Christ. Women and their hero fantasies. Fucking Christ.
He put his hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Really gotta go, girl. I’ll see you around, okay?” He grabbed his boots; he’d put them on outside. He was feeling a real need to get the fuck out of this apartment.
“Yeah,” she scoffed. “See you around.”
As he trotted down the steps along the outside of the building and sat down at the bottom to get his boots and socks on, Luca knew he and Rhee had fucked their last fuck. He mounted his Ducati Monster and headed home.
oOo
Luca opened his eyes and checked the time on the nightstand clock. Four-twenty. He needed to be up by four-thirty, but, though he set it every night, he had no need of an alarm. Every morning, whether he was working or not, no matter how hard he’d been partying the night before, he was awake by four-twenty. If he didn’t have to get up, he could roll over and get more sleep, but his body clock was finely tuned after nearly twenty years working construction, and he could rise early no matter what.
This morning, he had to get up, so he rolled to sit at the side of his bed. He groaned—damn, his shoulder and hand were really kicking up a stink this morning. And his knee was as stiff as usual. He was only thirty-four, but most mornings, he felt at least ten years older. This morning, make it fifteen or even twenty.
He’d done some professional fighting for eight years in his twenties, starting with boxing and moving into mixed martial arts, and that, he thought, had aged him fast. He’d loved it, but it was no way to stay healthy. He’d retired when an opponent had imploded his right knee. They’d been able to rebuild it, and he had full use of it again, despite chronic morning stiffness and a fucking epic set of scars. But he’d been smart enough to stay out of the cage after that.
That didn’t mean he didn’t throw a punch every now and then. He’d thrown quite a few of them last night. But he sure as shit felt it this morning. He dug his fingers into his right trapezius muscle and circled his right arm at the shoulder. Ow. Fuck. He legitimately needed to see Heather.
Heather was a massage therapist working as an independent contractor at some beach resorts along the coast. He’d met her at a nightclub a couple of years ago, and they’d had a great night with wild sex. She hadn’t been interested in anything more than he had been, so they’d started meeting up for great nights with wild sex. But then she started getting a lot more work. Especially in the summer, she was hard to get hold of.
So they’d struck on a solution. He’d book an appointment for a ninety-minute deep tissue, usually at the Seagazer Inn and Spa, where she spent three full days a week. She’d give him about sixty minutes of massage, and then they’d really get into each other’s deep tissues. The massage was usually just a pretense for the sex, and a way to ensure that Luca was paying her for a massage and not for sex. She absolutely insisted on that. But today, if he could get in with her, that massage would be more than pretense.
It was too early to call, though, so he contented himself with a steaming hot shower. Then he re-bandaged his hand and went out to the kitchen. He made himself some coffee and fixed himself a grapefruit and some wheat toast for breakfast. He wasn’t much for a big meal too early. He popped five ibuprofen and washed them down with his coffee. Feeling a bit more human and more his actual age, he cleaned up his few dishes, folded up the dish towel and hung it neatly on its rack, and headed to work.
oOo
He beat his father into the office. For nearly all the time they’d worked together at Pagano & Sons Construction, Carlo Sr. had always been there first, and he usually gave Luca a look that suggested his disappointment that his son couldn’t manage to get his butt moving any earlier. But for the last several weeks, Luca was arriving first almost half the time.