“Forget it,” Nick interrupted and thought about joining her on the sofa before taking a seat in one of the chairs, deliberately keeping some distance between them. This was the first time they’d been together without the safety net of a few other couples around. Well, except for the parking lot, and that sure as hell didn’t count.
Outside, with a cold ocean breeze keeping them both wrapped up in jackets, there wasn’t much chance that either of them would let down their guard. Here…a whole different story.
“I don’t know why she does that,” Gina said, thankfully disrupting his train of thought.
Good. They could talk about their mothers. A subject guaranteed to keep thoughts of sex at bay.
“I’m Italian, too,” Nick reminded her. “Trust me. Your mom and mine would get along great.”
Gina shook her head, then pushed her hair back from her face with a swipe of her hand. He didn’t want to know why that movement suddenly looked so…sensual.
“Is it an Italian thing?” she asked. “Or a mother thing?”
He shrugged and leaned back in the chair, stretching his legs out in front of him, pretending to be more relaxed than he felt. “Embarrassing your children is a mother thing universally, I think. Italian mothers just do it with a little more gusto.”
Gina laughed shortly, and Nick enjoyed the sound of it.
Which should have sent off more warning bells in his brain.
“Mama will never give up, I guess,” she said.
“If she’s like my mom,” he said, “she wants grandchildren.”
“She’s already got a grandson,” Gina complained. “My sister Angela’s son, Jeremy. Plus my other sister, Marie, just got married, so she’s bound to have one or two kids. Why doesn’t she work on them?”
“You’re a challenge,” Nick said with a commiserating smile. Heck, he knew just what she was putting up with. He heard it often enough himself when he went home on leave.
His mother wouldn’t rest easy until he was married again and had two or three kids. Which meant she’d never be resting easy, poor woman.
“That’s just it,” Gina said. “I’m not a challenge. I’ve already told Mama that I’m not going to get married.”
“Until…” he said, waiting for her to finish what had to be an uncompleted sentence.
She looked at him. “Until never.”
No way did he believe that. A woman who looked like Gina was not destined to live her life alone. Sooner or later she would snag some guy who’d spend the rest of his life trying to ease away her pouts.
Still, she’d surprised him. And that didn’t happen often. He wasn’t sure how their meeting about dancing practice had evolved into talking about life and whatnot, but he was too interested now to change direction.
He’d always thought of himself as a fairly good judge of character. Came from being in the Corps, he guessed. After a few years you got to the point where you could look at a new recruit and know whether he was going to make it or not. As for women…well, he’d learned his lessons the hard way, courtesy of his ex-wife.
Never again would he be fooled by a pretty face and a few sighs in the darkness. He knew now that women wanted one thing from him. Marriage and access to his family’s money. Nick Paretti alone wasn’t much of a prize. But the Paretti Computer Corporation? Now there was a worthy scalp to be taken.
“You don’t want to get married? Have kids?” he asked, his disbelief coloring his tone.
“Do you?” she countered.
All right, he’d give a little information to get a little. “Tried it once,” he said off-handedly. “Marriage, that is, not kids.”
“What happened?”
What didn’t? Nick shrugged and gave her the short answer. “Turns out she wasn’t interested in being a Marine wife after all.”
Gina just looked at him, confusion etched into her features. “She married a Marine and then complained about it?”
Actually, Nick thought, she’d married a Marine hoping he’d leave the Corps and go to work with his father. As soon as she’d found out differently, she’d lost interest. Kim hadn’t wanted to live on a Marine’s salary. She’d expected him to draw on the family money, and when he didn’t…
He pushed himself to his feet and wandered across the room to the wide, front window that overlooked the driveway and the street beyond. Nick still remembered the pain of realizing Kim had never really loved him. She’d looked at him and seen a bank balance. Nothing more.
Gina was still watching him; he felt her gaze on him as surely as he would have her touch. He knew she wanted to hear more. Knew curiosity was probably killing her. And for some weird reason he found himself wanting to tell her the rest of it.
Staring through the glass, he focused blindly on the soft glow of streetlamps, the moonlight drifting down from the cloud-scattered sky and the tree limbs dipping and swaying in the wind. “She thought she could change me,” he said. “Wanted me to resign from the Marines. Go to work for the family business.”
“Family business?” she asked.
“Paretti Computers.”
There was a long pause, then Gina said, “You’re that Paretti?”
“I’m not,” he said, as he had so many times before. “My father is.”
“Wow.”
He almost smiled. Typical. The minute someone found out about his family—and to be fair, it wasn’t only the women—they treated him differently. Everyone wanted something. Everyone looked at him and saw, not Nick, but opportunity.
Gina wouldn’t be any different.
“Stupid woman.”
Surprised again, he turned his head and looked at her. “What?”
“Your ex-wife.” Gina smiled and shook her head. “Well, come on. Anyone with half an eye can see you’re a Marine right down to your bones. The woman had to be an idiot to think you’d leave what you obviously love.”
Hmm.
Something stirred inside him, and he wondered if he’d been right in his first assessment of Gina. Maybe she and Kim weren’t so alike after all. And then again, maybe Gina just played the game better than Kim had. Say all the right things, keep the man off balance, then, when he’s teetering on the edge of sanity, give him that one last push and wham. Caught.
“My father had an auto garage,” Gina was saying, and he stopped thinking and started listening.
Her voice went soft, softer than he’d ever heard it before, and the expression on her face told him a lot about how she felt about her father. “Had?” he asked.
Her gaze caught his, and he noted the quick sheen of tears fill her eyes before she blinked them back.
“He died about two years ago.”
“I’m sorry,” Nick said, and meant it. No matter how crazy his own dad made him, bugging him to leave the Corps, wanting him to settle down and raise a family—Nick couldn’t really imagine the world without the old man in it.
She gave him a brief, sad smile. “Thanks. But, anyway, what I was going to say was, when he died, Mama and Angela and I wanted to sell the shop.” Gina stood up and walked around from behind the coffee table and crossed the room to the entertainment center. There, she punched the power button on the stereo and began to thumb through a small pile of CDs. “I’m not sure why, now. Yet at the time, it seemed like the right thing to do. But Marie fought us.”
“Why?” he asked, and noticed his voice was as soft as hers. As though they were both afraid to break this spell between them. For the first time since he’d known her, they were talking. Really talking.
She threw him a quick glance and smiled. “Because she’s like you.”
Intriguing statement. “How’s that?”
Gina shrugged. “She’s a mechanic, right down to her bones. Tools and cars are to her what the Corps is to you. Papa taught her everything she knows, and that shop was as important to her as it was to him.”
Strange, that a woman he’d spent the last few weeks arguing with knew him better than the woman who’d
professed to love him. He watched her and felt a stirring deep within him. She spoke again, and he tried to focus on what she was saying, not on what she was making him feel.
“We had as much chance of getting Marie out of that shop as your ex-wife had of getting you out of the Marines.” She selected a CD, opened the case and loaded up the stereo. “And about as much right to try.”
Surprises, he thought. Gina Santini was just chock-full of surprises. A part of him wanted to believe that she meant everything she was saying. But the more logical part—the part that had been protecting him from more pain ever since Kim left—warned him that she was probably only saying what she thought he wanted to hear.
And damned if he didn’t want to hear it.
A slow swell of music drifted up into the room. Horns and piano were joined by Tony Bennett’s smooth voice as he sang about black magic and spells and all of the things Nick was beginning to experience firsthand.
Dim lighting, romantic music, just the two of them…a warning signal sprang into life in his brain. Reacting to it, he cleared his throat, tried to shrug off the sudden intimacy between them and said, “Okay, you’ve heard my story. Now it’s your turn. Why are you so uninterested in marriage? Don’t tell me you, too, have an ex littering the past.”
“No,” she said, and walked toward him, her steps unconsciously moving to the sensual rhythm of the music filling the air. His body tightened, and his mouth went dry. Damn, if they could bottle Gina Santini’s explosive appeal, they’d have a far-more-powerful weapon than a plain, old A-bomb.
“No ex’s,” she said and shook her hair back from her face.
“Then why?” It wasn’t easy concentrating on the conversation at hand when all he wanted to do was grab her and kiss her senseless, but he gave it his all.
Gina looked up into his eyes as she came closer. “I thought about it,” she admitted. In fact, she’d thought of little else for a long time. She wasn’t so different from her sisters. She’d dreamed of finding one man to love for a lifetime. Of having lots of kids and a dog and, heck, maybe even the prerequisite station wagon. She’d wanted the whole cliché.
But things were different now. Now she had to think about someone other than herself.
“And?” he prompted.
“I don’t want to depend on someone else,” she said simply. “I want to take care of myself and—” She broke off and finished lamely, “I just think it’s better this way, that’s all.”
He shook his head. “You’ll change your mind.”
“Really,” she said. “And you won’t?”
“Nope.”
“And what makes you think I will?”
His gaze swept her up and down, and every inch of her skin tingled as if he was sliding his fingertips along her flesh. When he finally looked directly into her eyes, he said, “No offense, Gina, you just don’t seem like the go-it-alone type to me.”
“Why’s that?” she asked, drawing her head back and staring at him.
“Hell, look at you,” he said.
“What?” She glanced down at herself, then looked back at him.
“Every move you make is designed to drive a man nuts,” he said.
She frowned at him. “What are you talking about?”
He shoved one hand across the top of his head and gave her a half smile that lit up his eyes and did strange and wonderful things to her insides. “Hell, princess, just watching you walk across a room is enough to do most men in.”
Something inside her trembled slightly.
“Flirting is second nature to you,” he added.
Okay, she knew that. But flirting with a man and marrying him were two different things.
He shook his head slowly. “There is no way you’re going to convince me you want to lead a celibate life.”
Celibate? Gina laughed, then laughed harder at the expression on his face. He looked, she thought, what her mother would call “flabbergasted.” Honest to Pete. Because she had no plans to get married, that meant she’d have to sign up for the vestal virgin program?
“What’s so funny?”
“You,” she said, finally catching her breath again. Planting both hands on her hips, she continued, “I didn’t say I was going to join a convent. I said I didn’t want to get married.” Still chuckling, she added, “Geez, what century do you live in?”
He gave her a twisted, uncomfortable smile. “Fine. You’ll have a string of lovers, then. Oh, very safe way to live.”
The bubbles of laughter in her chest flattened out abruptly. So, Gina thought, she was either a nun, a wife, or a tramp. A flash of heat rose up within her and she gave in to it. Insulted, she said, “Nobody said anything about a ‘string’ of lovers, either.”
“Well what exactly do you mean?” His voice was tight with barely restrained anger.
What the heck did he have to be mad about?
“Why does it matter to you?” she asked hotly.
“It doesn’t,” he snapped, and moved in closer.
“Good,” she told him, and took a step toward him, too. “Because it doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
“I know that,” Nick grumbled. “It’s none of my business what you do.”
“Darn right,” she snapped, tilting her head back to look up into blue eyes that glittered and shone in the lamplight. Every nerve in her body felt alive and tingling. “I can live my life any way I want to.”
“Go ahead.”
“I will.”
He grabbed her shoulders, his fingers branding her flesh right through the fabric of her T-shirt. He pulled her closely to him, and her breasts flattened against his chest. Bending his head down to hers, he nearly growled, “There’s nothing between us.”
“Absolutely nothing,” she agreed, licking suddenly dry lips. The air in the room felt thinner; she struggled to draw breath.
He held her tighter to him, and a hard, throbbing ache settled low in her body, turning her knees to water and her mind to mush. How had this happened so quickly? she wondered. Then again, maybe it wasn’t quick.
She knew darned well they’d been building toward this moment since the first night they’d met. The moment she’d first stepped into his arms, there’d been electricity between them. Like the sense of anticipation that hovers in the air just before a thunderstorm and lightning hits the earth. It was there. The heat, the magic. All of it waiting for the right time to explode.
All of the arguments. All of the tension that had simmered between them the past several weeks. It was all foreplay. She’d known it the other night when he’d almost kissed her. When she’d wanted him to kiss her.
“This is stupid,” he muttered, moving his gaze across her face like a dying man searching for a glimpse of Heaven.
“More than stupid,” she whispered, reaching up to touch his face, smoothing her fingertips along his jawline. “Ridiculous.”
“And dangerous,” he added as he moved his hands to her back, letting his right hand slide down her spine to the curve of her behind. “Don’t forget dangerous.”
She gasped, closed her eyes and said, “Can’t forget the danger.” She silently congratulated herself on getting her voice to work, despite the huge knot in her throat. Breathe, Gina, she told herself. Don’t forget to breathe.
“If we do this, we’ll regret it,” he told her, locking his gaze with hers.
“Undoubtedly,” Gina said tightly, and knew that if they didn’t, she would regret that even more.
“But if we don’t, it’ll kill me,” Nick admitted.
“Me, too,” she said breathlessly. Opening her eyes again to look up at him, she felt herself being drawn into the blue depths of his eyes and knew she wanted nothing more at the moment than to let go and simply feel everything that was exploding inside her.
But she knew, too, the decision would be hers. From the tension in his body and the hard set of his jaw, Gina realized that he was letting her make the call. If she turned him away, he’d let it go, and this
magic would end here. Now. She’d never know what it was to unleash the lightning. And she’d spend the rest of her life wondering what might have been.
The thought of that dragged a groan from her throat, and his arms tightened around her. Her decision had been made during their first dance. She knew that now. That’s why she’d fought so hard against him. Complained so much about him. He’d touched her more than any other man she’d ever known. Made her feel, even when she didn’t want to. Made her want him when she knew it would be safer not to.
“Gina?” he asked, and his voice was hoarse with need and the tight restraint he was keeping on the desire obviously pulsing through him.
Reaching up, she laced her fingers behind his head and pulled him down to her. When his mouth was just a breath away from hers, she whispered, “No regrets, General. No matter what?”
“No matter what,” he agreed, and his breath brushed across her face.
“Then kiss me, Nick, before I go crazy.” He nodded, muttered, “Ooh-rah!” then claimed her lips in a kiss that flashed through both of them with the white-hot brilliance of summer lightning.
Six
Nick held her even tighter and knew it still wasn’t enough. He needed to feel all of her pressed to him. He needed to know what her skin felt like beneath his palms. He needed to bury himself deep inside her and feel her body cradling his.
Since the moment he’d first laid eyes on her, he’d wanted Gina Santini. A hard thing for a man who’d sworn off women to admit, but she got to him. Got to him on so many different levels he wasn’t even sure of all of them himself.
But just looking into her wide, brown eyes was enough to stoke the fires that were always smoldering inside him, and for right now, that was all he needed to know. His mouth moved on hers again, his tongue tracing the line of her lips until he’d teased her into opening for him. And then he slipped into her warmth, his tongue sweeping across the inside of her mouth, tasting her, swallowing her sighs, taking her breath as his own.
She groaned softly, and as their tongues met Nick tightened his grip around her middle, crushing her to him. Her arms came around his neck, her fingers pressing into his shoulders, his back. He felt the imprint of each of her fingers even through the damned windbreaker he’d never taken off.
The Last Santini Virgin Page 5