Page 5 of Velvet Vaughn

“Oh, he’s going to lose his mind.”

“Good. That’s the goal.” He handed the phone back with a kind wink that had nothing flirtatious in it. She floated back toward her cart as if she’d won a raffle door prize.

Marcus was watching him with frank curiosity, as if he had never seen a famous person up close in the wild, even though his dad had been a pro football player for over half his life.

“Does that happen a lot?” he asked.

“Less than it used to. Which is a blessing most days and a tiny bruise on the ego about once a month when nobody recognizes you at the airport.”

Des huffed a laugh. “That bother you?”

Leo considered it. “Only when someone wants me to take the picture instead of being in it. That one stings a little. Or when they ask if I’m famous. That’s usually a bad sign.”

A caddie from the group in front of them lifted a hand in greeting, and Leo returned the gesture without breaking stride. Ahead, the eighteenth tee box came into view, framed by a pair of oaks that had probably been there before the clubhouse.

They walked the last stretch in comfortable silence. Marcus wandered ahead to squint at the yardage marker, and Des slowed his pace half a step.

“I appreciate you walking with us today, Leo.”

“I appreciate the invitation.”

“The kid’s going to law school next fall. Says he wants to do what you do.”

“He’s got the right questions for it.”

Des was quiet for a moment. Then he reached over and clapped Leo on the shoulder with the weight only an offensive lineman could put into a friendly gesture without knocking a man sideways.

“I’ll call you next week.”

“I’ll be at my desk.”

In agent-speak, next week meant yes, and yes meant that Desmond Roule, a twelve-year veteran with three Pro Bowls, a playoff ring, and a name that still meant something in the National Football League, was going to let Leo De Luca pilot him through whatever came next. Leo didn’t let the satisfaction show on his face because Des would have clocked it and teased him about it for the next decade, but he felt it land warm and private in his chest. This was the part of the job that felt like a privilege.

Des ambled after his son, and Leo slowed to give them the tee box.

A golf cart hummed past on the path behind him, two members in pastel polos lifting hands in greeting that Leo returned without quite registering their faces. A sprinkler kicked on over by the practice green with a mechanical chuff and started laying down its slow, hissing arc across the bentgrass. Behind him, on the patio outside the clubhouse, a woman laughed with a loud, unselfconscious hoot that cost money to develop and even more to maintain.

Leo rubbed the back of his neck and tipped his face toward the sky.

The sun had moved enough now that the light coming through the oaks had taken on the warm copper color it only managed in April, and a single contrail split the blue overhead in a long, slow diagonal. He stood there with no thought in his head he could have named, yet an inexplicable urge to check on Chloe kept nudging at him.

Chloe Giordano was technically his cousin, his mother’s sister’s daughter. When Chloe’s mother passed away, her father was involved with a new wife and daughter and couldn’t—or wouldn’t—take her. Leo’s parents did. She’d become his sister.

He wasn’t worried. There was nothing to be concerned about. Chloe was two hundred miles away inside the safest perimeter Leo could imagine, at the COBRA Securities compound with a husband whose résumé read like an apology letter from the Department of Defense. She was, statistically speaking, the most protected woman east of the Mississippi. Leo knew this. He’d personally helped engineer it.

It didn’t stop him from wanting to check on her.

He pulled the phone out of his pocket, thumbed open their thread, and tapped out a message.

Hey, kid. How’s Indiana?

He hit send, slid the phone back into his pocket, and watched Des set up over his ball. He had an elaborate, pre-shot routine he’d carried over from his football days: a breath-and-settle ritual a guard ran before a snap. Marcus stood ten feet behind his father with the reverent attention of a kid who had figured out that he was watching the back end of something.

Leo’s phone buzzed against his thigh.

He pulled it back out, expecting nothing in particular. Chloe’s reply was at the top of the screen in the form of a selfie. Her face filled most of the frame, eyes crossed, tongue hanging out the side of her mouth, a mud-colored protein shake clutched in one hand. Behind her, slightly out of focus, Kayne Serruto stood at the kitchen counter, holding a wooden spoon and wearing the long-suffering expression that Leo interpreted to mean he’d stopped trying to understand the woman he had married and decided to simply enjoy her instead.

The test underneath read: Honeymoon’s over, big brother. He made me eat crawfish.