Page 34 of John + Siena: The Complete Duet

Ouch.

She ignored that jibe.

“I did only want to check up on him,” she said. “I didn’t mean any harm.”

Andino cleared his throat, and took a step back. It was enough to let the office feel like the large space it was when his imposing presence wasn’t taking up a lot of her fucking air. Christ, the man was something else.

And for Siena?

That was not a good thing.

“How about I help you out?” Andino asked.

“How?”

The man grinned. “John works out of a club every other weekend. For specific people, it’s just easier to find him there than to make him run for them. Not a lot of people know that he’s been using that spot to do his business occasionally. His next weekend working at the club should be in a couple of weeks, if you’re curious.”

“And what does that mean for me?”

“You show up—only you, girl—and maybe you’ll get more than five minutes with him.”

“Just me.”

“I don’t trust your family. No Marcello does.”

Siena pursed her lips in an effort to hide her frown. “Not even me?”

“Not while you still have that last name, anyway.”

It was not as easy to let that insult roll off her shoulders, but she tried.

“Which club?” she asked.

Andino smiled, and this time, it was warm.

Siena was fifty pages into her new novel about a mercenary hero and heroine thrown together by circumstance when a knock on her apartment door interrupted her. She had all she could do not to glare at the door from across the living room.

The few minutes she was allowed to sit down and relax, and someone had to come over. It wasn’t like she had a lot of friends or anything, and her brothers barely wanted anything to do with her unless it related to work somehow.

“The door is unlocked,” she called out.

Siena went back to her book.

However, she eyed her father as he slipped in her apartment. Matteo practically swallowed the space with his large stature. His dark gaze looked over the place, and then skipped to where his daughter sat with a book in her hands.

“Don’t you lock your door?” he asked.

“Why would I?”

“Because it’s safer, Siena.”

“Safer for whom?” She smiled sweetly. “Pretty sure if someone wanted me out of here for whatever reason, they would just break it down, Dad.”

Matteo clicked his tongue at her. One of his many signs of annoyance or disappointment. “This is what you do with your free time—read?”

“Reading is good for the brain.”

She didn’t bother to add how reading also helped to shut off her brain when she spent eight or more hours a day looking at numbers, and falsifying them. Being a bookkeeper and accountant was only made harder by the fact that every book she opened, she had to scrub it clean, and cook it up.