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AS NADIA SANG TO HERSELF in the shower, getting herself clean after the two of us had gone out of our way to make sure that we stayed a little dirty in there, I checked my phone. I knew that Mauro would have been in touch with us by now, and I was certain that he was going to be bugging me to get back to the city as soon as I possibly could.
I was going to try, obviously. But right now, I just wanted to stay in Miami with Nadia, forget about any responsibility that I had back home. Yes, there was shit to deal with, but for the time being, Nadia was determined to get it off my mind, and there was no way that I was going to argue with that.
She had seemed a little stressed when I had arrived back in the room after hitting the gym, and I had tried to get out of her what was bothering her so much, but she didn’t want to answer. Whatever was bothering her, she clearly had no intention of making it my problem, and honestly, she had already given me more than enough – if there was stuff she wanted to keep to herself, so be it. I wouldn’t push any harder than I already had.
Mauro had left me a message – one that told me to call him, urgently. I doubted he would be very impressed if he heard about what I had been up to when he had been waiting for a response, but that wasn’t my problem until now. I called at once, and he picked up in two rings.
“What’s up?” I asked him, skipping straight through the niceties. I didn’t want to spend longer on the phone than I had to – the last thing I needed was for Nadia to come out of the shower and be hit with the reminder of everything that I was involved with. She deserved better than that. A little peace, after everything I had put here through.
“The Serbs are working on something,” he explained to me. “Something big. Don’t know what it is yet, but I’m not willing to risk it...”
“What are you saying?” I asked, impatient. I didn’t have time for this.
“I’m saying, you need to get back to New York tonight,” he warned me. “Because you being so far away is only making them feel like they don’t have to respect our rule here.”
“I’ll be back as soon as I can—”
“Sooner than that,” he shot back. “By nine this evening, our time. You understand?”
I grimaced. I didn’t like it when he spoke to me like that, like he was the one in charge, but he probably had more claim to that than anyone else did. He had worked so closely with my father, and he had pretty much helped raise me into this business – I couldn’t tell him anything he didn’t already know, though the same couldn’t be said for him.
“I understand,” I replied. “I’ll book the ticket and get back. Okay?”
“Good.”
And with that, he hung up. He was rarely so short with me, and I got the feeling that he was in some serious state right now. What the hell was I supposed to do to fix it? If he couldn’t even tell me what was going on, what the Serbs had planned...
I booked the ticket just before Nadia got out of the shower. She had a smile on her face, though I could see something underneath that – something darker, something she was doing her best to push down. I wondered what it was. But I knew there was no point in pushing for an answer – she would share it with me if she saw fit, but I doubted that she was going to be coming clean anytime soon.
Instead of pushing, I just wrapped my arms around her and pulled her in close.
“I have to go back to New York tonight,” I murmured. “Do you want to come with me?”
“Not tonight,” she replied, shaking her head. “I have stuff I want to take care of here. Stuff I need to do.”
“Like?”
“Help my father with packing up the apartment,” she explained. “I don’t want to leave him to do it alone. Besides, if what you said is true, and there’s been people following me... they might just move on to him. And I don’t like the thought of that. Not one bit.”
“I get it,” I agreed. “I’ll book you one for tomorrow instead, how about that?”
She nodded, smiled.
“That sounds good,” she agreed. “For both of us, right? Me and my father?”
“Of course, of course.”
“Thank you,” she murmured, and she looked up at me. I could see how grateful she was, even if she wouldn’t say much more than she had. She wasn’t going to overstate anything. She wasn’t that kind of girl. And I knew she was still getting the feel of me, trying to work out what kind of person I was, if I was truly keeping her safe or if I was just a better option than the Serbs for now.
“What do you want to do today?” I asked her. “I have the rest of the day before I need to leave. We could do something fun.”
“Oh, really?” she replied, perking up at once. I grinned and nodded.
“If you’re up for it.”
“I think I could see my way to that.”
“Sure it’s not going to get in the way of your plans with your dad?”
“Trust me, we don’t have a lot to pack up,” she assured me. “It won’t take me more than a couple of hours. Besides, I need to relax, I feel like I haven’t done that in so long...”
“How about we take a walk on the beach?”
She smiled.
“I have this path that I take down there, it’s super pretty,” she replied. “You want me to show you?”
“I’d love that.”
We both got dressed and headed out. She held my hand as we went around the city, and I found myself proud, puffed-up at the thought of a girl like her being seen with me. I knew that everyone who made eye contact with us was going to be jealous as all hell when they saw the kind of girl that I got to call my own. I couldn’t wait until she was back in New York, where I could have her staying at my place again.
On the beach, we saw an ice-cream stand, and I spotted her eyeing it hungrily.
“You want to grab one?”
“Hmm, I can never pick one flavor...”
“Then let’s try a few, huh?” I suggested. She laughed
“I’m not going to eat that much ice cream.”
“Why not?” I asked, with a shrug. “Don’t see any reason we should bother to pretend you don’t like it.”
She grinned, bit her lip. I could tell that I was tempting her, and I wanted nothing more than to be certain that she got just what she desired.
“I guess so...”
We headed over to the stand, and she went to grab herself a cone – I insisted on getting a couple each, so we could try a few different flavors. We held a cone in each hand and took a seat in the warm sand, watching as a few people splashed around in the water in front of us. She seemed so at peace as she took a lick of the orange-sherbet flavor that she had picked for herself. I could have watched her forever when she was like this, and I was obsessed with how peaceful she seemed. I wanted to make sure she never lost that, not as long as I was with her.
“What do you think?” I asked, once she had tried all the different flavors. She tapped her finger on her bottom lip before she responded, as though deep in thought.
“I think the blue raspberry is the best one.”
“You know that’s not even a real flavor, right?” I teased her. “They just scrape everything left on the factory floor into a pot and call it that.”
“Well, it tastes good to me,” she shot back, laughing. She leaned her head on my shoulder, and I smiled. I liked how affectionate she was with me, how easily it seemed to come to her. That’s how I wanted her with me – treating me like this was where she belonged, like she knew she could trust me and she wanted nothing more than to stay close to me.
But, as the sun began to fade from the sky, I knew we were going to have to break it off sooner rather than later. Much as I wished I could stay here with her, not move another muscle, my flight was leaving soon, and I was certain that Mauro would flip his shit if I kept him waiting any longer than I already had.
“I need to get going,” I told Nadia gently. “You sure you don’t want to come with me?”
“I’m sure,” she promised me, though I could sense some doubt in her words – like she wished she could take that back and admit that she really did want my help, after all. But hey, we were only going to be apart for a day or so, and then she would be back in New York together and we could actually just relax.
Well. A little more than we were now, at least.
“You stay safe here, okay?” I told her, as I rose to my feet, dusting off my jeans of the sand that had stuck to them. I needed to find a car to take me down to the airport, and grab my stuff from the hotel – I knew that I was cutting it fine, but it was just far too damn nice to spend time with her to think about bringing it to an early end.
“I will,” she promised. I saw that flash of a shadow of doubt pass over her face, and I wondered if I should press for more – press for something else in the way of an answer, but I could tell she wouldn’t have given it to me, even if I had tried. We had already come so far, with her just agreeing to come back to New York. No need to push my luck further.
I took her face in my hands, and looked deep into her eyes. I wished that I could express to her how deeply I felt for her, how glad I was she had agreed to come back with me, but I knew that she would have just told me to keep it until we could see each other again.
Without a word, I leaned down to plant a kiss against her lips, brushing my mouth against hers. I clasped her shoulders and she smiled up at me.
“You’re not going to keep me waiting long, are you?” I asked her. She shook her head.
“I promise I won’t.”
“You better not...”
I trailed off before I said anything else. I could tell that she didn’t want to be lectured by me, not after we’d had such a perfect day together. She was going to come back home, that was all that mattered. When I saw her there, we could talk about everything. And hell, there was so damn much to talk about that I wasn’t even sure where we were going to start.
And so, with the Miami sun dipping behind me, I headed to my plane and started on my way back to New York.
