Free Dangerous Beauty: Part One: Destiny by Michelle Hardin Page A

because Mickey…”
    “What happened in the car was not what you think. I’m fine,” Nathan assured him.
    Lucca looked at him with concern. “Nathan if you weren’t you would tell me, right? I know you’re still struggling with this.”
    Nathan’s jaw ticked. He was not that broken, he could still function. He hated when his family looked at him like he was a pitiful fragile child.
    “Yes, Lucca, but I’m fine, I’m not as fragile as I used to be. If I was I wouldn’t be who I am. Men wouldn’t fear me the way they do, I wouldn’t have the power that I have, and I wouldn’t be an underboss!” he argued.
    “Then what the hell, Nathan? Mickey’s description of how you were acting on the way over sounded oddly familiar to the way you used to space out all those years after Aunt Anya passed. If you’re shutting down again we need to know.”
    Nathan groaned.
Lucca and his damn interrogations
, he thought.
    “One, she didn’t pass, she was murdered. Two, I didn’t
‘space’
and I’m not
‘shutting down’
. What happened to me a few years after the murder is never going to happen again. I’m different now. Now I have my work” Nathan said becoming frustrated with the conversation.
    Lucca looked at Nathan and raised his brow. “Nathan, it wasn’t that long ago,” he said dryly, “and since then you have been disappearing every year around this time so I don’t really know how you’ve been handling anything. You don’t talk to me. I don’t know if you’ve truly healed. Don’t get upset with me for being concerned about you,
cugino.
You disappear, Nathan, you just leave!”
    Nathan turned to look at his cousin. His concern was real and Nathan felt guilty. He didn’t know his running away every year had affected anyone, he didn’t think anyone would care. But it looked like he was wrong. Nathan stood staring into eyes identical to his own, and tried to figure out a way to ease his cousin’s worry.
    He ran his fingers through his hair and walked over to the king sized bed in the middle of the room. Plopping down on it he let out an exasperated sigh. “It was a girl,” he muttered hoping Lucca would let it go now.
    Lucca gave him an inquisitive look. “What?” he asked walking over to the side where Nathan laid.
    Nathan put his arm over his eyes. Shit. “A girl, she was at the garden, and I…I don’t know I was, you know, I just didn’t see the light change, or hear Mickey bitch and moan.” Nathan shrugged his shoulders, hoping this would change the direction their conversation was going.
    Lucca smiled and looked at him curiously. “You’re saying, you held up traffic, zoned out to the point where you couldn’t hear Mickey… staring at a girl?”
    Nathan smirked at his cousin. “Yep.”
    Lucca frowned, he wasn’t buying it. “Really?” he asked dryly.
    Nathan nodded and chuckled. “Yes, really.”
    Lucca nodded his head up and down. “Mmm hmm, must have been some girl.”
    Nathan sat up in the bed slowly and frowned in thought. “Actually, yes. She was one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen in my life. It was so weird man. It was like, I couldn’t stop looking at her, and now…I sort of can’t stop thinking about her” Nathan said honestly. He couldn’t get that girl off his mind even if he tried. There were no words to describe how badly he wanted to see her again. Was it crazy that he was thinking this way about a woman he didn’t even know?
    “I bet,” Lucca said, still not buying Nathan’s excuse. “You’re trying to change the direction of the conversation, and I’ll let you, this time, but we will talk about this again,” Lucca said using his big brother tone. He was only one year older than Nathan, but he always felt more like Nathan’s big brother growing up.
    Nathan chuckled. He understood why Lucca didn’t believe him about the woman. Nathan didn’t even believe it himself. “Yeah, I know.” He was just glad they didn’t have to talk about