Page 36 of Breathtaking

Or maybe a little girl with my mother’s eyes?

“Lennon?” Maddox’s voice pulls me from my momentary loss of focus.

I step carefully into the vault, my eyes darting between him and his father, but I don’t miss it. That moment of longing in his brilliant blues before his gaze hardens. Sharpens. Before anger fills his eyes. “What are you doing here?”

Those words bring me back to the last night.

To the snowy street.

To my throbbing head.

The brush of his fingers.

The safety in his touch.

Everything that came after.

Including the next morning.

His brothers. My cousin.

This raging storm I seem to be standing in the eye of.

And he’s no longer the only one angry.

“Hi, Maddox...”

* * *

Maddox

And there she is.

The one thing I can’t have.

My biggest fucking regret.

Looking like a wet fucking royal dream in another prim and proper little blue-and-white dress with a sexy slit up her thigh. Her heels are just as high today as they were last spring, and if it’s possible, she’s even prettier.

Shame she’s?—

“Are you going to introduce me, son?” My father interrupts my walk down memory lane, but it’s for show. I have no doubt he knows exactly who this woman is. He makes it his business to know everything. If it happens in his city or affects his family, he knows. And right now, this woman is doing both.

What I want to say issee yourself out, old man, so I can deal with this without an audience. But I respect him more than that. “Right. Sam Beneventi, meet Lennon... Windsor.”

I look over at her and wonder if this is the most informal introduction of her life.

Dad offers his hand. “Princess.”

There we go.

He knows exactly who she is.

Lennon sucks in a quiet breath, and I’d give anything to know what she’s thinking.

She’s the hardest person I’ve ever tried to read.

Most people broadcast their motives and their next moves long before they ever make them. But not Lennon. She keeps everything close to the vest. She keeps it locked down like no one I’ve ever met.

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