Page 79 of Cara & Gian: The Guzzi Duet

It didn’t matter, she decided. Standing from the table, Cara picked up her bag and umbrella. She left her mostly-unfinished bagel and half-full coffee on the table. Gian didn’t stand to see her out like he usually would, instead staying firmly seated with his gaze stuck on the wall behind her.

Coldness radiated from him.

Cara knew that feeling well.

She was damn cold, too.

“I didn’t want this, not to be a target again, or hurt because I’m too close to you. I don’t want to be shot at when I’m leaving my place or to turn around and see some guy shadowing my every move to keep me safe. I didn’t want those things, Gian.”

“So what do you want?” he asked.

“I need some more time,” Cara replied. “Right now, I need time to—”

“Figure out how you got here with me.”

“Yeah.”

“Take as much time as you need, Cara.” With that said, Gian stood from the table in a smooth motion, never crowding Cara as he turned to leave. “But if you want to save some time trying to figure it out, then give me a shout. I know exactly what got us here, amore. Honestly, you know it, too. You’re one stubborn fucking woman when it comes right down to it.”

“The first non-rainy day in two weeks, and you want to spend it by playing in mud,” Cara muttered.

“Not mud, my flower beds,” her aunt replied with a sweet smile. “I need to get them ready for the seedlings that I’ll transplant outside, once I’m sure the frost is going to stay away.”

Cara huffed, blowing a stray curl that had fallen in front of her eye out of the way. She resisted the urge to wipe the hair away when it fell right back down again, but that was only because she was wrist-deep in Daniele’s flower beds. Or rather, one of several mucky piles of dark soil that was too damp for Cara’s liking.

She clearly wasn’t a green thumb kind of person.

“Thanks for joining me today,” Daniele said.

“No problem.” Cara overturned more soil, making sure to pull out any small rocks or dead weeds that had been left over from the year before. “I’ve been kind of busy lately. Sorry about that, Zia.”

Daniele shrugged. “Sometimes, that’s how life works.”

“I suppose.”

Cara wasn’t going to go into the details of what had been keeping her away and busy, but she figured her aunt probably knew enough to go on without being told. Daniele—considering her husband’s affiliations to the Guzzi family—had her own connections to the rumors making the rounds.

However, it wasn’t polite conversation to ask about someone almost being shot.

Or who they were fucking.

Daniele was always polite.

Always a proper mafia wife.

It was the one thing Cara knew to expect from her aunt.

“So, how have you been?” Daniele asked.

“Busy with school. I thought that since I basically took four months off after Lea died that I would probably be behind, and not graduate on time next year, but I’m on track again now. It took a bit to get there, though.”

“Oh?”

“And I got an early spot for a co-op of sorts at a woman’s shelter, starting this summer, too. I’ll be mentoring the mothers and teen girls, and helping with the outpatient rehab program. Since it’s exactly what I want to work in, in a roundabout way, it was a lucky grab.”

“That’s good,” her aunt said absently.

Cara shot a look across the flower bed, only to find Daniele wasn’t actually paying her any attention. Her aunt was more focused on dragging the tiny hoe through the soil, overturning it to get the bed ready for planting.