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Chapter Thirty-Two

Author: Anne Kingston
last update Petsa ng paglalathala: 2026-10-12 15:29:58

Thursday arrived the way Thursdays do—too slowly and then all at once. I stood in front of my closet at 5:45, staring at the jeans I'd pulled out that morning. Dark wash, fitted, the pair I wore when I wanted to look like I'd made an effort without appearing to have made one. I'd paired them with a fitted black shirt, sleeves that could be pushed up, and a neckline that sat just low enough.

At 6:55, I heard the SUV before I saw it. The low rumble of an armored engine was becoming r
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  • After Hours Service   Chapter Forty-Three

    "Did you suspect?" I asked. "That I was hiding something?"He was quiet for a beat too long. "Yes."The word landed like a stone in water."My original background check showed gaps. Inconsistencies. Things that didn't add up." He met my eyes. "I recognized that there were things you didn't want discovered. And I chose not to investigate further."I stared at him. "You chose not to —""Your reaction to the background check wasn't ordinary privacy concern, Kate. It was fear. You were afraid of what I might find." His voice was even, factual. "I stopped because you deserved to decide whether to tell me."My hands had stopped shaking. They were perfectly still now, frozen in a different kind of stillness. The stillness of a woman realizing that the man beside her with the resources to uncover anything, to hire investigators, to dig into every record and every database and every sealed file, had simply chosen not to."You could have found out," I

  • After Hours Service   Chapter Forty-Two

    Afterdinner,wemovedtothelivingroom.ItwasacomfortablespacethatfeltentirelydifferentwithoutthehousefullofpeoplethathadbeenherethelasttimeIvisited.Isettledintooneendofthecouchwithmywine,andAntoniosatattheotherend,andRicoimmediatelywedgedhimselfbetweenus.TheGermanShepherdwaslargeenoughthathisinsertionbetweentwoadultsonacouchconstitutedaphysicalevent.Heturnedinacircle,steppedonAntonio'sthigh,steppedonmyknee,andfinallystretchedoutlengthwis

  • After Hours Service   Chapter Forty-One

    I took a very large sip of wine. Antonio refilled my glass without comment, and his free hand dropped beneath the table to scratch behind Rico's ears. The dog's tail thumped against the floor in a slow, contented rhythm. The candlelight caught the planes of Antonio's face, the strong line of his jaw, the ink visible above his collar, and I thought, with a clarity that startled me, that I had never seen him like this. Relaxed. Unperforming. Just a man in his own home, eating food he'd made, with a dog at his feet and a woman across from him.I liked this version. I liked it more than the expensive dinners and the charged glances and the careful courtship. I liked the flour on his clothes and the way he tore bread with his hands instead of using a knife. I liked the way he refilled my wine without asking, the way he listened when I talked about Lindsey's system for rating emergency patients on a scale of one to ten based on how much the owner was at fault for the animal's conditi

  • After Hours Service   Chapter Forty

    I should have been watching the pasta. I was not watching the pasta. I was watching his hands. The way his long fingers pressed into the dough, folding it, guiding it, the flour catching in the lines of his knuckles and the creases of his palms. The tendons in his forearms shifting beneath the ink — dark patterns I couldn't fully see from this angle, but which I knew from previous close inspection involved script and geometric shapes and at least one image that looked like a family crest.He had surgeon's hands. That was what I'd thought the first time I'd treated his gunshot wound, when I'd had to cut through his shirt and examine the entry wound in his left shoulder. Steady, precise, capable of both violence and gentleness depending on the instruction they received."You're staring," he said."I'm observing the pasta.""You're observing my hands.""The hands are part of the pasta process. They're instrumental. I'm being thorough."He set down th

  • After Hours Service   Chapter Thirty-Nine

    The GPS announced I had arrived at my destination, and I sat in my parked car for a full thirty seconds, staring at the iron gates and the stone house beyond them. Not a restaurant. Not a hotel rooftop with linen tablecloths and a sommelier. A house. Antonio's house. Unlike the day I came to check Rico's paw, we would be entirely alone tonight.The gates opened on their own, and I pulled my secondhand Civic up a gravel drive that curved between trimmed hedges. The house was old stone, sprawling, the kind of place that probably had a name etched above the door in Italian. But the lights glowing from the ground-floor windows were warm and yellow, and when I stepped out of the car, I could smell something that made my stomach clench with immediate, Pavlovian hunger.Garlic. Butter. Something herbal and rich, drifting from an open window.I'd dressed for an extravagant evening. Fitted black shirt, dark jeans, the one pair of boots I owned that didn't have animal sedative splashed across t

  • After Hours Service   Chapter Thirty-Eight

    I kissed him harder. My hands moved higher beneath his shirt, mapping the ridges of his ribs, the ink I couldn't see but could feel under my fingertips. His hand slid from my waist to my lower back, pressing me against him, and I felt the hard length of him against my thigh.Then the world tilted, and I was on my back, the couch cushions soft beneath my shoulders, Antonio above me. His weight settled between my hips, his forearms braced on either side of my head, and he kissed my neck with slow, open-mouthed kisses, his tongue tracing the line of my pulse. My fingers fisted in his shirt, pulling it up his back, and my hips arched against him without my permission.He groaned against my throat. The sound traveled through me like a current, pooling low in my belly, and I wrapped my leg around his calf, pulling him closer.Then he stopped.His mouth left my neck. His weight shifted. He braced himself above me, breathing hard, his amber eyes dark in the low light. I made an involuntary so

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