Touch (The Pagano Family Book 2)

by Susan Fanetti

  Then Hugh had threatened to throw him out. And then, when the asshole still wouldn’t keep his hands to himself, Hugh had thrown him and his friends out.

  On his drunken way to the door, the guy had grabbed Rhiannon and shoved his hand right up her little denim skirt, shouting that he was gonna get his piece one way or the other.

  So Luca had given him a piece.

  Fuck, he hated assholes that hurt women. Fuck. He knew he himself wasn’t what anyone would probably call a gentleman (Rhiannon herself, for one, might dispute it, considering how they’d left things last night), but a guy who’d just paw at a woman like that uninvited, unwanted—made him fucking crazy.

  Which was why his shoulder was fucked today. And why grabby Prince Charming was going to need extensive dental work.

  oOo

  Luca pulled into Seagazer Inn and Spa just before one in the afternoon and went in the spa entrance. The place was a little femme for his taste, but he didn’t mind coming here to see Heather. The massage suites were really nice. They smelled good, and were dark and cool, and those tables adjusted to exactly the right height to reach all her deep tissues.

  The blonde receptionist looked up. Luca didn’t recognize her, but he recognized the look she got as she took him in. Hungry. He grinned. He knew he looked good—or, anyway, to certain kinds of women, he looked good. Six feet, a brawny fighter’s build, close-cropped brown hair and beard, green eyes.

  She did that thing with her hair chicks did when they were into a guy, running one manicured hand over it and tucking it behind her ear. Then she licked her lips with a little pink tongue and asked, “Can I help you?”

  He leaned on the counter and gave her the smile she was looking for. “You sure can. Got an appointment with Heather at one.”

  A little dark cloud interrupted her sunshine. “Oh! I’m sorry. Did you not get a call? Heather called in this morning. We have Emma filling in for her, if you don’t mind. Otherwise, we can reschedule you for Heather—and give you a shop voucher for your trouble.”

  Luca couldn’t think of a damn thing he’d want in the spa shop, which was all candles and aromatherapy whozits. But he knew he needed to get his shoulder worked out. He sighed. Oh well, he’d get the massage and have to do without the sex.

  “Emma any good?”

  “Oh yeah. She’s new, only been here a few weeks, but she already has regulars.”

  “Okay. Emma it is.”

  Blondie smiled and led him back to a massage suite.

  2

  As usual, Mr. Carbone had a boner. A Carboner. Manny tried not to giggle at her little funny, and she succeeded. Being appropriate was something she had to be constantly vigilant about. Her mouth had a tendency to slip its leash and run off to who the fuck knew where.

  It wasn’t unusual for male clients to become erect during a massage. She’d seen sheet tents of all shapes and sizes during the five years she’d been doing this gig. Some men got all awkward and apologetic; others made lame comments about how it was a compliment.

  Others tried to get her to ‘take care of it’ for them. Those assholes got blackballed. As well as blueballed. As she thought that, Manny barely caught that giggle back.

  Mr. Carbone, who always had himself a Carboner during his massages, just pretended it didn’t exist. She liked that best. It was a natural physical reaction, no big deal, and she much preferred to simply get on with the massage and ignore the stiffy in the room.

  The boner wasn’t the most distracting thing about working on Mr. Cabone. It was his nasty, old man feet. He got a full-body shiatsu every week, and Manny didn’t mind his little boner or his full carpet of inch-long grey body hair (okay, that wasn’t great; it made her hands feel all pins-and-needly), or the fact that he talked about his kids and grandkids the entire fucking hour, and his breath always smelled like something might have died in his throat. But when she got down to his feet, they were all cracked and gnarled, with long, yellowed toenails, and it took all of Manny’s will to stay calm and actually put her hands on those mummified things. Blech.

  But Mr. Carbone had been her first regular at the Seagazer. He’d seen her three times—four, counting today—and he’d tipped fifty percent each time. Call her a foot slut, but Manny could smile and rub his cracked, yellow arches for that.

  She covered up those nasties with the sheet and went to the side of the table and patted his arm. “Okay, Mr. Carbone. That’s it for today. I’ll get you a glass of water while you dress.”

  He caught her hand in his. “Thank you, Emma. You treat me good. You’re such a good girl.”

  Manny didn’t like to be touched, especially not when she didn’t know it was coming, and she extricated her hand from his as cordially as she could. “You’re welcome, Mr. Carbone. You’re a nice man. I’ll get you that water.”

  She escaped into the hallway and shook her hand out. She felt unexpected touches like that as pain and anxiety. She knew why; she’d had a whole line of mental health professionals explain it to her since she was seven years old. But no one had been able to make it not true. The best she’d been able to achieve is to stop freaking out. With lots of therapy and medication.

  Her family had thought it was beyond weird that a girl who could barely stand to be touched would choose a career as a massage therapist, but actually it was the perfect job for her. It kept her feeling human. She spent her days touching people who lay passively while she did so. They were alone in a quiet space, and she was in almost total control of the physical contact. It was a kind of human contact she was comfortable with, and it even gave her extra reserves to deal better with the kind of contact she couldn’t avoid. Massage was what was keeping her, she was pretty sure, from turning into some weird hermit who kept her urine in mason jars or something.

  As she went down to get Mr. Carbone his water, Manny ran her schedule through her head. Today was a fuller day than she usually booked. She was little, not quite five feet, and she had little hands. Those hands worked well for massage, getting into some good, deep places, but after five appointments in a day, she was tired. Today, though, she had eight, and one of them—her next, in fact—was a fucking ninety-minute deep tissue. Heather, a new maybe-friend since she’d started at the Seagazer, had called in sick, and Manny, whose afternoon had been on the light side, had taken over Heather’s afternoon appointments.

  She brought Mr. Carbone his water and accepted a little envelope from him—the spa left envelopes for tips—and then she led him to reception so he could pay and book his next appointment. He gave her a little kiss on her cheek. He always did that, so she’d steeled herself, her sphincter clenching a little, but she smiled.

  “Heather’s one o’clock is set up in Suite 4, Emma.” Sydney, the receptionist. gave her a strange look as she shared that information. Manny couldn’t quite read it. She wasn’t great at understanding meaningful looks.

  “Okay. Thanks, Syd. I need five. Has he been in there long?”

  “Nope. Maybe three minutes. But I guess I forgot to call him, so he didn’t know it wouldn’t be Heather until he got here. He’s okay with it, though.”

  Manny nodded, waved again to Mr. Carbone as he headed out, and went back to the staff lounge for a quick chug of Rock Star and a couple of minutes of her own therapeutic massage, rubbing and stretching her hands. Ninety minutes of deep tissue. Ouch. She checked her appointment record. Luca Pagano. Pagano. Huh. Manny sucked at names, but she knew the Paganos were the construction guys she saw around since she’d moved to this little burg. That, and it was hard not to know the Paganos were like real-life Sopranos or Corleones. She guessed they were all probably related. Okay, then. It felt like she should know them more, but nothing was coming to her. Either way, she’d be extra nice. She could manage that.

  oOo

  Though his name hadn’t rung a particular bell, she recognized the guy as soon as she opened the door. He was lying on his belly, the sheet over his bottom half, his face in the donut-shaped headrest. He had a
huge angel tat on his right upper arm, from his shoulder almost to his elbow, and a big, three dimensional barbed wire arm band around his left bicep.

  Ink, she never forgot.

  This was the asshole with the Hummer. From that wedding the band had done about a month or so ago. She should have remembered. She’d met Heather at that wedding, which was why she was living and working in Quiet Cove now.

  Great. She hated this guy. Driving a Viagra-mobile, acting all cocky and like God’s gift, standing there in the sand with all his muscles hanging out, waiting for her to be impressed. Douchebag.

  She’d told him he probably had a tiny dick.

  And now her mouth broke free of its tether again.

  “Oh, fuck me.”

  He lifted his head and looked at her. She could tell he didn’t recognize her right away. Made sense—she looked a lot different doing her day job than she did when she was working with Fierce Ferret. Which wasn’t a job so much as a hobby. Or charity work, more like. Not a lot of money happening there.

  When they’d met, she’d been wearing the clothes she felt most comfortable in. She couldn’t remember exactly how she’d gotten herself up, but she figured black mini, fishnets, Docs, whatever. Lots of black eye makeup and red lips. Leather, rubber, and silver jewelry. Her black hair loose and straight. That was pretty typical.

  For her day job, she wore a ponytail, no makeup or jewelry at all, and black yoga pants with a light-colored knit shirt. At the Seagazer, she wore a pastel blue tee with the spa logo across the chest.

  Moreover, for her day job, she was known as ‘Emma.’

  His forehead creased. She’d probably pissed him off. Not exactly kosher to walk in with a massage client and start dropping f-bombs.

  “There a problem, girl, or was that an invitation?”

  Oh, he really was an ass. “No. Just…maybe you want to reschedule with Heather. I know you were expecting her.”

  He shifted to lean on his elbows, and she saw him wince a little. “Yeah, I was surprised. But I’m having some trouble in my right shoulder, so it’s on the urgent side. I don’t mind if you don’t.”

  “You don’t recognize me.”

  He put on a sheepish grin then, and she knew he thought he’d banged her and had forgotten. She wasn’t great reading people, but that was coming through loud and clear, and she got pissed—for no good reason, actually, since he hadn’t pulled a fuck-n-chuck on her.

  “No, sugar, sorry—” He cut himself off and squinted at her. “Wait. You’re the little punk dwarf from Carlo and Sabina’s—but you had some dude’s name. Like Mikey or Frankie or…”

  “Manny. My name’s Manny.”

  “Which isn’t Emma.”

  “My name confuses clients who want a massage from someone of a particular gender. It’s just easier to give them a girl’s name.”

  “Why Emma?”

  “My full name is Emmanuelle.” The words were out of her mouth before she knew it. She never told anybody that if she could help it at all.

  “Pretty.” Then he got a stupid smirk on his face and chuckled, and she knew exactly what he was thinking. This guy she could read really well, for some reason. Probably because he didn’t seem to have any more filter than she did. “That was the first porno I ever saw.”

  Yep. She sighed. “Which is why I’m Manny. Do you want your fucking massage or not?”

  Jesus. She was going to get fired.

  She tried to work up an apology, but before she could, he laughed—and not just a chuckle, but a thorough laugh of heartfelt enjoyment. “You’re something else, girl. Yeah. Don’t see how those tiny little hands and that tiny little body’s gonna accomplish much, but I’m desperate, and they tell me you’re good. So come on up and get to it.”

  oOo

  If he wasn’t the most muscular man she’d ever worked on, he was way up there. She often needed to use a little stepstool to work on bigger clients, but she found herself practically lying on him a couple of times to get the right leverage into his cords of muscle. But her small hands were actually pretty useful, especially for deep tissue. She could get at pressure points quite effectively. And his shoulder was seriously fucked.

  They hadn’t talked much. She liked that. Small talk was not a thing she was good at, and it distracted her from her work when she had clients who needed to converse during a massage. She didn’t mind people like Mr. Carbone, who did a monologue the whole time and only needed the occasional encouraging grunt to keep going. But her favorite clients were the ones who just gave themselves over to the experience and were quiet. Luca Pagano surprised her by being such a client. She was doing more talking than him, asking about locations of pain and things like that. His answers were brief.

  On her third pass at his shoulder, which was finally starting to loosen up, she asked, “What did you do to this thing? I can’t believe you had any mobility at all this morning.”

  He laughed a little, his back shaking under her hands. “Had a little altercation last night. Might’ve gotten carried away defending a lady’s honor.”

  “Does that mean you beat somebody up?”

  He lifted his head a little. “That offend you?”

  Violence didn’t offend her even a little. She’d been in more than her fair share of scrapes. “Nope. Just trying to imagine you defending a lady’s honor.”

  Again, he gave her that creased-brow-plus-smirk look that seemed to say he was both confused and amused by her. “You don’t know me, girl. You’re pretty quick to jump to conclusions.”

  “You drive a Hummer. All I need to know.”

  “I do. Which is a vehicle, not a statement.”

  “Oh, bullshit. You are what you drive.” Shut up, mouth. Shut up, shut up, shut up. But for some reason, she could tell that she wasn’t going to shut up. She was kind of enjoying this conversation, even though it would very likely get her fired and probably blackballed.

  “Yeah? And what do you drive?”

  A brown 1978 Honda Civic with like a billion miles on it. Manny blinked and didn’t answer.

  “Let me take a stab. Some ancient, ugly-ass piece of shit that’s supposed to say that you don’t give a fuck about possessions or success or anything the ‘sheep’ care about. Probably got a couple dozen bumper stickers plastered all over the back end that say shit like ANARCHY NOW.” He came up on his elbows again; this time he didn’t wince. “M’I close?”

  Only eleven bumper stickers. A couple of them might or might not have had the anarchy symbol on them.

  She stepped off the stool and lifted the sheet, catching a full glimpse of his extremely good ass before she dropped the sheet to a more appropriate level. “Time to roll over.”

  He did, gracefully.

  He was rock hard. And she had been very, very, very wrong about the size of his dick. Holy tree trunk, Batman.

  She made an effort not to react, and she succeeded. But when she looked at his face, he was watching her in a way that suggested he’d been waiting for a reaction. Which was kind of douchey. But she was still enjoying herself more than was seemly. This session would never make it to an orientation video about how to comport oneself with a client, and maybe she was reading him way wrong, and he’d complain to everyone he could find about her rudeness. Her compass was not good for navigating that shit. But she was having a good time.

  So she grinned back at him. “I stand corrected. Don’t you think a Hummer is kinda overkill, considering?”

  “Manny…if that’s your real name…I’m not some millionaire executive in a five-thousand dollar suit driving a tank because it makes him feel like a conquering hero. I work construction and live on the Atlantic Ocean. I surf. I sail. I dive. I hike. I camp. I ride off-road. I do search and rescue. I need a truck that can handle all that. And, yeah. I like the way it looks. I ride a Ducati Monster, too, which is also a wicked badass piece of machinery. Permission requested to operate what the fuck I want and not have it define everything about me?”

  He
was smiling throughout that monologue. His eyes were a kind of green. Nice. And Manny was rendered kind of speechless by that list of macho shit he did. If she’d been on her toes, she would have made another snarky comment about overkill, but instead, she just let her smile widen the way it wanted and said, “Granted. Now lie back down.”

  His front was better and more muscular than his back, as if that were possible. He had a light-ish covering of brown hair over his chest and belly, but nothing ridiculous. It just added to the ironman thing he had going. Arcing over his belly, just under his ribs, was a text tattoo, two words in script, in what Manny assumed was Italian: Sempre Famiglia.