Read Online Spectacular Rascal: A Sexy Flirty Dirty Standalone Romance by Lili Valente - Free Book Online Page A

piss him off. And…” She rolls her eyes as her lips twist unhappily. “Anyway, I’ll save that shit for my therapist, but the point is that he died before we could find our way to anything resembling a healthy relationship. Or achieve closure. Or any of that good stuff.”
    “Dads can be hard.” I cross my arms, thinking of my own father. We get along better than we used to, but I’ll always be a disappointment to dear old dad. I chose passion over hundreds of years of family tradition, and he’s never forgiven me for it, no matter how proud he is of me for building a successful business from the ground up.
    Red nods. “Yeah, they can be. And my dad was. Right until the end.”
    I wince. “No good good-bye?”
    “No good good-bye, which I thought I was okay with. But if that was true, I wouldn’t have gotten involved with Nico. I knew from the second I met him that he was trouble. Though, I never imagined he was involved with anything illegal.” She laughs breathily. “We met at a bar conference, for God’s sake. As far as I knew he was just another predictably cutthroat chief legal officer for the Fortune 500.”
    “So he’s a lawyer, too?” I think back on Nico’s eloquent condescension and showy suit, and nod. “I can see it.”
    “He is, but he’s not just a CEO’s evil legal lapdog.” She leans in lowering her voice. “He’s also a consigliere, legal advisor to one of New York’s last thriving mob families, and third in line to be the big, bad mob boss of the next generation. Which, considering the turnover in that line of work, makes his ascension to the ranks of Al Capone types fairly likely.”
    “Well, shit, Red.” Fuck. This is even worse than I thought. Nico’s not just a cog in a dangerous machine; he’s one of the people calling the shots.
    And scheduling the hits.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    My breath whistles through my teeth. “You don’t mess around when it comes to making enemies, do you?”
    Cat winces. “I know. But I honestly don’t think he wants to grow up to be a crime lord. Like I said, he has political aspirations, even White House fantasies. He’s been trying to distance himself from that world.”
    I snort. “It doesn’t matter. A guy with mob ties, even distant ones, is never going to be president.”
    Her lips twist. “I don’t know. When Trump cinched the GOP nomination all my preconceived notions about what the American people will put up with as far as crass, crazy, and weirdly orange are concerned went out the window.”
    I nod, conceding the point.
    “And Nico really does hide what he is very well. When I first met him, I had no clue he was part of organized crime,” she says, wadding her straw wrapper into a tiny little ball. “I only knew that he was an arrogant ass my father would have hated with the passion of a thousand white-hot waffle makers. That alone was enough to make me say yes to a first date.”
    I arch a brow. “And the second date?”
    “Well, he was charming in his way,” she says, tossing her straw-wrapper ball to the center of the table. “And the sex was pretty fucking phenomenal.”
    I watch the wrapper roll across the metal surface, ignoring the growly feelings inspired by imagining Nico and Cat in bed together and the voice in my head that insists she only thinks she’s had “phenomenal” because I haven’t had my chance with her yet. These are inappropriate thoughts and feelings to have for a client, and I should be concentrating on her story, not my own reaction to it.
    “But I don’t have a fucking clue why I let things go as far as I did.” She snatches her drink from the table and sucks vigorously at the straw, draining it several inches. “Maybe I have a brain tumor or something.” She pops her straw back in her mouth and takes down another giant mouthful of ice-cold shake.
    “Hopefully not, but you’re going to give yourself a brain freeze if you’re not careful.”
    “I don’t get brain freeze.” She sets the