Page 110 of Dark King Daddy

Ilya nodded and opened the car.

The Glasshouse occupied a corner lot in Red Hook, a converted warehouse with tall industrial windows and a hand-painted sign above the door. Inside, the front room was bright and crowded—wooden tables, hanging plants, the smell of coffee and baked fruit. We passed through to the rear room, where the noise dropped and the light softened. Four tables. Two occupied. A low brick wall with climbing ivy that had been trained across the back window.

We sat at the table farthest from the door. A server brought menus. Ksenia ordered apple cake and tea. I ordered coffee.

The cake arrived warm, dusted with cinnamon, a slice thick enough to require a fork. Ksenia ate slowly. The tension in her shoulders loosened with each bite. She held the tea in both hands and looked at the ivy on the back window and let the quiet settle around her.

I watched her.

“You’ve been doing that all morning,” she said.

She did not look up from her tea. Her voice carried the particular mildness she used when she was telling me something I should already know.

“Doing what?”

“Looking at me. When you think I’m not paying attention.”

I considered denying it.

“Yes,” I said. “I have.”

She looked at me. Her hazel-green eyes held mine across the small table. The rear room was warm and close and smelled of apple and cinnamon and the particular green scent of the ivy behind her.

“What have you been thinking about?”

“Lots of things. What we’ve been through. The fact we’re married. But more than that . . . I was thinking of our kiss. This morning.”

She set down the tea. Her mouth curved into a smile. Unguarded. An expression of pure delight.

“You’ve been distracted by an interrupted kiss.”

“I have.”

She moved her chair. The scrape of wood on the concrete floor was the only sound in the room. She shifted six inches closer, until her knee pressed against mine beneath the table. The contact was deliberate. She left her leg where it was.

I looked at the windows behind her. Tall, industrial, original to the building. The glass was slightly uneven, the panes hand-set, the putty cracked and repaired in places. Someone had painted the frames a soft grey that respected the original iron.

“The windows are original,” I said.

Ksenia looked. Her eyes changed—the professional assessment arriving instantly, the architect’s gaze sweeping the frames, the sash, the muntin pattern.

“Steel sash. Pre-war. Those are twelve-over-twelve lights — that’s unusual for this scale. Someone cared about the proportions.” She leaned to see better. “The putty is failing on the third pane from the left. And that’s a replacement muntin — the profile is wrong. Too thick. Whoever did it used stock rather than custom milling.”

“Is this your idea of flirting, husband?”

I laughed.

“You mean you don’t find my window chat sexy?”

“It’s a shame we only have an hour of this,” she said, still smiling. “I wonder what I could learn about—I don’t know—the building’s damp proof course?”

I laughed harder.

“Look, I’m a gangster, OK, I live a dangerous life! I’m exciting.”

She joined in with the laughter.

“You’re about as exciting as grout.”