by Lisa Cardiff
I cleared my throat and waved my hand between us. “Why did you do that?”
He stood and buttoned the top button of his suit jacket, and I saw the gun tucked in a holster near his hip. A shiver ghosted down my spine.
“Because I wanted to,” he replied. “Are you ready to go?”
I frowned. “Where?”
“Home.” His gaze roamed down my bare legs and back up again, taking so much time to complete the action that goose bumps actually showered my skin. “I already settled your bill. We need to go. I can’t have my guys thinking I’m a pussy who doesn’t know how to handle his fiancée.”
I yanked on the hem of my shirt, feeling exposed. “I don’t want to waste your money. I’ll leave in the morning.”
“Sorry, sweetheart.” He snagged my purse from the top of the dresser and slung the heavy leather hobo bag over his shoulder. “That’s not happening. You can either come willingly, or I’ll throw you over my shoulder and carry you out.” He shrugged. “I pride myself on how reasonable I’ve been to date, but there’s only so much I can take. Consider this decision a red line you don’t want to cross.”
I jutted my hip to the side, our gazes locked in a silent battle. The only sounds were the faint ding of the elevator and the revving of cars on the busy Brooklyn street outside the window.
He flexed his hands, the lone tell in his otherwise calm demeanor. “Don’t test me, Evie. I’m not in the mood. I will ground your ass, and you can kiss your physical therapy and training goodbye. You won’t be able to leave my house for any reason until this is over.”
I plucked my jeans off the arm of an electric blue club chair and shoved my legs into them. “Fine. You don’t have to threaten me. I get it.” My voice was a vacant, unattractive rasp that mirrored how I felt inside.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Gian
“Fuck my life.” I disconnected the phone and tossed it on the desk in my home office.
In the last twenty-four hours, Evie and I had managed to establish a fragile truce of sorts. We stopped avoiding each other. We weren’t fighting. I convinced myself the kiss in the hotel room was an error in judgment, and I successfully ignored every last urge to push the relationship into something we’d both regret.
Now my mom and Carmela had come up with some half-assed plan to convert the family Sunday dinner into a fucking engagement party. I tried to talk my mom out of it. I told her I had to work. I told her Evie had a cold. I told her the timing wasn’t right, and Evie and I wanted to wait a couple of months prior to making any sort of formal announcement. I told her Evie would want to invite her out-of-town family. None of my excuses mattered the minute she pulled the trump card. She said she wanted to have the engagement party while my dad was still healthy enough to enjoy it.
I couldn’t blame her. If our engagement were real, I’d be insisting my mom threw an engagement party. Hell, I’d fast-track everything. The engagement party, the bridal shower, the wedding. It’d be a done deal in thirty days, maybe less. However, nothing about our relationship was real, except the chemistry between us that I couldn’t smother regardless of how hard I tried.
I opened the door to the office and spied Evie resting on the sofa with her legs curled into her chest. Aiming the remote at the television, she clicked through channel after channel, never stopping long enough to hear more than a word or two.
“Hey.” I crossed the room and leaned my hip into the arm of the sofa. “Are you busy? Can we talk?”
She raised her eyebrows, keeping her gaze glued to the flickering flat screen. “Go ahead.”
“My mom has a family dinner at her house every other Sunday.”
Her thumb paused mid-click. “Uh-huh.”
“Tomorrow is one of those Sundays.”
“That’s fine.” She shrugged, and her white shirt slid down, revealing the top of her creamy shoulder. “I’m okay hanging out here by myself. I won’t run off anywhere if that’s what you’re worried about.”
I stretched out my legs and crossed my ankles. She wasn’t going to like this. “Actually, my mom invited you. She decided to make Sunday dinner an engagement party for us.”
Her head whipped toward me, and she muted the volume of the T.V., blanketing us in silence. “What?” she finally said, her voice hardly a whisper. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah.” I nodded, avoiding making eye contact like a damn pussy. I hadn’t felt this pathetic this since I was a kid and my mom yanked me into the house by ear for peeling the bark off the neighbor’s tree. “It won’t be that big of a deal. Carmela will be there, and she invited a few other family members.”
My mom claimed she had only invited a few people, but a few people to my mom might mean anywhere from ten to thirty. This was bad on so many levels. I didn’t know where to start. Pulling Evie further into my life made it harder to extract her when the time came. She’d hear things she shouldn’t, see things that couldn’t be unseen. From there, she could infer a whole lot of stuff better left in the shadows. When the idea flashed through my mind and I claimed we were engaged, I never considered how quickly the fiction would snowball into more.
“I don’t think this is a good idea. Once you introduce me to your parents, there are going to be expectations, and it’ll only drag this out longer.” She picked at the hem of her white shirt. “I want my life back, and I don’t see how perpetuating this lie is going to do that.”
“You’re probably right, but I already agreed. I can’t back out now. She’s probably started prepping the food and calling our relatives. I can’t let her down.”
“And you think celebrating a fake engagement is somehow the lesser of two evils? That she’ll somehow be proud you created this illusion only to tear it down in a month or two?”
I focused on the silent sitcom playing on the television screen. The actors patted each other’s backs and tossed their heads back in laughter. They lifted their drinks and toasted some unknown occasion, accomplishment, or anniversary.
“Gian,” Evie barked. “Are you listening to me?”
She slammed the remote onto the black coffee table Carmela had selected along with most of the other furniture. I didn’t care enough to make the effort. For the last few years, I split my time between here and the apartment over the club, but neither of the places felt like home. They were places to sleep. The last time I had a real home was when I lived with my parents.
I jumped up and headed to the kitchen. I needed a drink.
“Did Carmela tell you what’s going on with my dad?” I asked without turning around.
“No.” She followed me down the hall, the soft shuffle of her bare feet unnaturally loud in the confined space. “She changes the subject every time I ask her about anyone in her family.” A regret-laden chuckle escaped her mouth. “If she said more, I might’ve recognized you that night at the bar, and this whole mess would’ve been avoided.”
“Maybe,” I answered noncommittally. I grabbed a beer out of the refrigerator and held it up. “Do you want one?”
“No. Alcohol was one of the things I gave up this week. I need to get back in shape if want to land a role anytime in the near future.”
“Right.” I cracked open the top, and a hissing sound filled the air. “How’s physical therapy and training?”
“It’s fine so far.” She folded her arms across her waist. “Tell me about your dad.”
I took a large pull of my beer. “He was diagnosed with cancer two years ago. The treatment was working until six months ago, when things took a turn for the worse. He doesn’t have much longer.”
She dipped her head, her coppery hair catching the light, making it look like flames dancing around her flawless face. God, she was fucking beautiful. Even the tiny bump on the bridge of her nose somehow added rather than detracted from her looks. Maybe it gave her character or personality. I couldn’t put my finger on it.
“You don’t know that.”
I tapped the can of beer against my leg. “He r
efused to do any more treatment. The chemo and radiation were making him too sick to do anything other than lay in bed. He said he would rather have three or four quality months than a year of hell.”
She bowed her head and licked her lips, sadness etched into the planes her face. “I’m sorry to hear that, Gian. That sucks.” She paused, and for a second, I didn’t think she’d say anything else. “Carmela never breathed a word.”
“Yeah, she doesn’t confide in many people. She holds in her emotions and pretends everything is fine.”
She stared sightlessly at the wall over my head. “Huh. I guess that makes me a shitty friend. I complained to her nonstop about my pathetic excuse for a fiancé. She always listened without complaint when she had real problems.” She rolled her head like she was attempting to unscramble her thoughts. “I suck. No wonder she doesn’t want to talk to me anymore. I’m the worst kind of friend: a self-absorbed asshole.”
I set my beer on top of the counter. “Hey. That’s not true.”
“No. I really am.”
“Come here.” I threaded my fingers through hers and pulled her closer to me until our shoulders made contact. “She told me you helped her after her fiancé, Rocco, died. She said she would’ve never gotten through it without you. That’s what a real friend does. She won’t forget that simply because she’s pissed about us. She’ll get over it.”
“Maybe.” She tipped up her head, her brown eyes glossy. “She really said that?”
“Yes.” I tapped the tip of her scrunched up nose. “So she repaid the favor by helping you with Kevin.”
Her attention drifted to the side, and she squared her shoulders. “What does your dad have to do with this engagement party?”
“Nothing. Everything. I don’t know.” I despised talking about my dad dying. I spent the first thirteen years of my life both hating and fearing him. That all changed when he opened his world to me. Hate and fear shifted into love and respect. Rather than wanting to run away from him the minute I turned eighteen, I wanted to stay and prove my worth to him. Make him proud of me. That was probably what made him a great capo. Nobody wanted to let him down. I was still trying to earn everyone’s respect, but I’d get there.
“Is it because he’s dying?” she whispered so low I nearly missed her words.
“Yeah, I guess so. I want to make him happy. I want to make my mom happy, and if having a stupid engagement party makes them happy if only for a couple hours, I’ll do it.”
Her too-knowing gaze collided with mine, and then her eyebrows raised. “All right. I’ll do it. But if you get a wild hair up your ass and decide to get married for the same reason, I’m not doing it. I narrowly escaped one disastrous marriage, and I will not consider jumping into another to grant your dad’s dying wish to see you married. With my track record, I’d pick cement boots and a swim in the Hudson over a white dress and stroll down the aisle without batting an eye.”
An involuntary chuckle burst between my lips. “Wow. Okay. Good to know. Death is better than marrying me. If I didn’t have a healthy ego, I’d be crushed right now.”
She rolled her eyes. “If the gossip about you is any indication, you’ll recover.” She flipped her messy braid over her shoulder. “In fact, if what I’ve heard about you is close to truth, I think you’d pick death over marriage.”
My lips kicked up at the corners a notch, and I pressed a kiss to her temple. “Don’t believe everything you hear.” I snagged my beer from the counter. “Be ready at four-thirty tomorrow.”
She dragged her perfect white teeth over her lower lip. “What should I wear?”
I took in her black yoga pants and loose white cropped top that had wreaked havoc on my senses since the minute I found her curled up on my sofa. It’d been damn hard to ignore the game of peak-a-boo her shirt played with her belly button while we were talking. “Anything you want.”
“That’s helpful.”
“It’s the truth. You look good in everything.” I paused, enjoying the way a pink blush spread up her pale cheeks. “I’d probably avoid sweats, swimwear, and ball gowns just to be safe.”
“Ugh. You’re such a jerk.”
She punched my shoulder, and I laughed. I fucking laughed, and not the hollow laughter elicited by a dumb joke. It was the kind you felt deep in the pit of your gut. What was this woman doing to me? Where had the hard-as-nails Gian gone? I’d been an immovable brick with singular focus since my dad introduced me to dark side of Trassato family at age thirteen. All that changed the moment I laid eyes on Evangeline. I’d caved and caved and then caved some more.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Evangeline
As the sun slipped below the horizon, Gian and I climbed the front steps of his childhood home. A two-story brick house with a black lacquered door loomed in front of us. The more I tried to convince myself meeting his family and representing we were engaged meant nothing, the more slippery the thought became.
I backpedaled a few steps, intuitively sensing if I breached the threshold of the Trassatos’ home, there was no going back.
Gian wrapped his arm around my shoulder. “You’ll be fine. Do your best to look excited, make small talk, and we’ll be free to leave in two or three hours.”
I rubbed my lips together, probably hopelessly smearing my peach-hued lipstick. “That’s a long time to act like we’re madly in love and engaged.”
He pressed the doorbell. “We’re not on a stage or anything. There will be plenty going on other than the two of us. Use those acting skills Carmela raved about, and it shouldn’t be a problem.”
Acting seemed like a cakewalk in comparison. Nobody got hurt. I wasn’t lying; I was working. Telling a story. Sharing my love of the theater with the world. Right now, I was about to strut into someone’s home and lie to everyone, including my best friend. The thought made my stomach flip. I didn’t like lying, and I didn’t like playing games. Yet somehow, I had managed to put myself in a situation that necessitated doing both.
“I thought you’d never show up,” said a dark-haired woman with eyes so similar to Gian’s I knew she had to be his mother. She wore an elegant light blue suit that did little to tame her abundant curves that wavered somewhere between sultry and matronly.
“Mom, you said to be here at five.” Gian glanced at his wristwatch. “And it’s five.”
“Hmm. I thought I said four-thirty. Everyone is already here. How’s my bambino?” She pulled him into a one-armed hug and kissed both of his cheeks, leaving smudges of red.
Gian mumbled something under his breath that I couldn’t understand.
“And you must be Evangeline. I’m Helena.” She took both of my hands, her eyes crinkling at the corners, a broad smile on her face. “Look at that hair, your dimples, and that skin…it’s so pale. No wonder Gianluca is so taken with you. You’re beautiful.”
“Thank you.” I grinned so hard I thought my cheeks would crack. For some stupid reason, I imagined the action would somehow magically tame the disquiet circling in my gut like a swarm of bees. “I can’t believe we haven’t met before.”
She nodded and clasped her hands in front of her chest. “I’ll have to show her how to cook your favorites. I’m sure she doesn’t know how to make to real Italian food. She’ll probably open a jar of canned sauce and pour it over plastic noodles.”
My mouth hinged open, and Gian slotted his fingers through mine. Granted, I didn’t cook much. Raw vegetables and canned soup were what I lived off when I moved to New York, which meant I only needed a refrigerator and a microwave to stay alive. My eating habits hadn’t changed when I moved in with Kevin either. He worked late most nights, and when he came home at a normal hour, we went out to eat or ordered delivery. Gian’s mom would probably freak if she knew how limited my skills really were.
“I don’t know, Mom.” He pulled me inside the house, his mouth tight. “Evangeline is really busy for the next month with her job. Maybe after things slow down.”
Helena nodded. “O
f course, of course. After the wedding, things will probably calm down. She’ll have plenty of time then. I’m sure you’ll both want to start having babies real soon.”
My stomach knotted. I didn’t know how to respond. I never thought about having kids. I’d spent most of my life singularly focused on my career. When I got hurt, I threw everything I had into planning a wedding I didn’t care about. At the time, I would never have admitted it, but I didn’t think I would’ve made it down the aisle with my ex even if I hadn’t barged in on him and his current protégé in flagrante delicto.
“Yeah, maybe. We’ll see. That’s a long way down the road,” Gian answered, his voice as deflated as I felt.
A two-story foyer with a sweeping staircase greeted us. Laughter, shouting, and the hum of steady conversation echoed off the white and black marbled floor. Shit. This was a full-blown party, not an intimate gathering of a few family members. My insides quivered like jelly, and I stopped walking.
Gian squeezed my hand. “You’ll be fine.”
“You lied,” I said, dropping my voice an octave.
He glanced at me, the ruthless determination in his eyes making them darker. Harder. “I know. I didn’t have a choice. You wouldn’t have agreed if I told you the truth, and when my mom says a few people, it could mean anywhere from two to fifty.”
I wrenched my hand out of his, my heart rate increasing with every passing second. “Gian, I’m really freaking our right now. I don’t think I can do this.”
He pushed my hair away from my face, and a shiver danced down my spine. “I won’t leave you alone. We’re a team.”
“Is it too late to feign sickness? I’m pretty sure I could enact a catastrophic fall or projectile vomit on demand or some combination thereof if I concentrated really hard.” I pointed at my four-inch putty-colored heels. “A fall would be convincing with these stupid shoes.”
“Is something wrong?” Helena whirled around, her gaze swinging between Gian and me.
“Go ahead, Mom,” Gian said. “Evangeline is nervous about meeting the whole family. You know how that goes. She’s worried about making a good impression. Give us a minute.”