Page 59 of The Lies We Tell

He reached up to hook a piece behind her ear, dropping a quick kiss to the tip of her nose. If not for everything waiting for him back home, he’d extend their stay by at least a day or two. But now that he had Laurent’s promise not to stand in the way of the takeover, he had work to do.

“Let’s get something to eat. Then maybe we’ll see about the watch.”

“If I had money, I’d buy it for you,” she said, looping her arm through his and huddling into his side against the breeze.

“I gave you money.”

“That doesn’t count.” She gave him a teasing bump with her hip. “That’s your money. I don’t have any of my own. I never have.”

Her voice was sad, and he gave her waist a squeeze. “What would you do to earn your own money?”

They stopped outside a café to read a chalkboard sign with the daily lunch specials, and Tessa was silent for a long moment.

“I don’t know. No one’s ever asked me that before.”

They kept walking, bags rustling between them in the silence. The specials at the next restaurant looked better than the first, and they ducked in out of the cold, claiming a table by the front window.

“It should feel weird, shouldn’t it?”

“What’s that?” he wondered.

“Ultimately this whole trip is just another piece in a puzzle that ends with my father dead.” She toyed with the edge of the menu, bending it back and forth with her fingernail. “What does it say about me that I don’t feel bad about that?”

“Nothing.”

She gave him a dubious look as the waiter approached the table and took their order.

“Do you want it to mean something?” he asked once they were alone again.

“No.” She sighed. “I guess it doesn’t have to. My father has never treated me as anything other than a nuisance to be dealt with. And my mother was a better buffer for his distaste of me than I realized. Once she was gone, there was no barrier there to save me anymore.”

Matteo reached for her hand across the table, squeezing her fingers when she laid them in his. “I haven’t had any updates from Maeve about it.”

Her smile was sad, and it arrowed straight to his heart. “I haven’t heard any from Sienna either.” Tears gathered in her eyes, and she blinked them away rapidly. “She’s probably dead,” Tessa whispered.

“You don’t know that,” Matteo replied.

Though the longer it took Maeve to find someone, the greater the chance they weren’t alive to be found. He had even less hope with Sienna digging into it too. Still, he didn’t want to take that hope away from her if it was what she needed right now.

“We won’t know until we know. Simple as that. And we’ll keep looking until we find out. One way or another.”

There was that sad smile again, the tears. “Thank you. You are better than I deserve.”

Taken aback, Matteo blinked in surprise. But he didn’t have an opportunity to ask her what she meant, interrupted by the sharp ring of his cell phone. Pulling it out of his pocket, he saw Luca’s name flash across the screen. He almost silenced it and slid it back into his pocket, but Tessa waved a hand for him to answer it, so he accepted and pressed the phone to his ear.

“What can I do for you, brother?”

“There’s a file I need in your office,” Luca said. “What’s the code for the door?”

Matteo frowned, leaning back in his seat as their waiter deposited their drinks and left again. “What file?”

“Numbers I crunched for the remodel on clubs three and four. Sienna’s uncle on her mother’s side is a contractor and thinks we’re being gouged. Just let me in the damn office.”

“Maeve can get you the file.”

“Fuck’s sake, Matteo,” Luca snarled, a noise that sounded like something being thrown punctuating his words. “Maeve went home sick. Why do you trust some woman you met in Ireland three years ago and not your own fucking brother?”

“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” Matteo said, trying to temper the irritation in his tone. “But I have a lot of sensitive paperwork in there.”

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