He paced back and forth, sat down in a booth, got back up and paced some more.
The guy was as tall and muscular and breathtaking as he’d been a decade before when he used to saunter through the unremarkable halls of Wilmington Bay High School, oblivious to anyone and anything beyond the football field and his bevy of admirers. If it were possible, he seemed even more youthful and in command now than he did at age eighteen.
And she felt about as queasy as she’d felt the last time they’d been face to face.
Finally, his pacing stopped. “Where is my uncle?” he asked in a husky whisper, directing the query at a tray of chocolate-dipped sugar cookies. “Uncle?” he called out. “Uncle Pauly?”
She wanted to tell him, but the words were lodged in her esophagus and, anyway, he wasn’t talking to her.
He strode into the backroom again, as if convinced the elderly Italian man could be found hiding behind a jar of candied cherries or a vat of butterscotch syrup. The long black eyelashes blinked in confusion when he emerged into the main shop once again, his gaze and those nutmeg-brown eyes directed at her.
“Don’t tell me he left already.” This was more a threat than a question. He shook his head at her as though that gesture alone would discourage an affirmative reply.
She held her breath and nodded.
“Where is he?”
She pursed her lips, just as she’d learned in her special speech tutorials so long ago, formed the first letter and tried to push it out of her mouth. But she stuttered anyway.
“L-Lufthansa. F-Fl-Flight four-oh-three.”
He cocked his gorgeous head to one side and stared at her in the way she’d grown so accustomed to during her miserable school years: Poor Old Lizzy, the look said. What a geeky dweeb.
“What time is it scheduled to depart?” he asked her with an affected gentleness that made her want to rip out his vocal cords.
She tapped her watch and gathered her courage for whatever might happen next. “T-Twenty m-m-minutes a-ago.”
“Oh, bloody hellfire!” Rob shouted, adding several inventive phrases to his curse before pausing to take a breath.
Elizabeth had managed to squeeze out a few additional syllables of explanation, but Rob was quick to catch on to the full meaning, she noticed, even when words were left unspoken.
“Uncle Pauly said he’d be gone only a couple of weeks.” He rubbed his palms against his eyes. “Not a freaking month. And he never mentioned Europe.” He pounded his fist on the ice-cream-window part of the counter three times in rapid succession. “He said everything would be explained when I got up here.” He turned toward her. “Guess you were elected to supply the details.”
If she’d been capable of it, she would’ve laughed. Oh, yeah. Now that was a first. One for the record books. Elizabeth Daniels: Verbal Disseminator of Information. Hee-hee. Ha-ha.
“S-Sorry,” she said.
He paused. “I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just…” But words must have defied him, too, because he left the sentence uncompleted.
A jangling of bells broke the silence.
“Howdy, folks,” the chatty old florist from down the block said. “Hey, Pauly, Siegfried,” he called. “Need to get me a double scoop of Cherry-Almond S—” He stopped mid-speech and surveyed Rob from the top of his dark Italian head right down to his pricey black-and-white Nikes. “Holy Hydrangea. Is that really Roberto Gabinarri standing in front of me?”
Rob grinned but a look of something other than gratification (wariness, perhaps?) slid over his face like a well-formed mask. “Good to see you again, sir. You’re looking fit as ever.”
The gentleman shook his head as if disbelieving the sight. “Been blazing a hot trail through Chicago, I hear. But, we’ve all missed you in Wilmington Bay, son. Does your uncle know you’re back?” He didn’t wait for Rob to answer. “Pauly! Siegfried!” He raised his palms. “Where are they?”
She watched Rob inhale several slow breaths. She could almost see him selecting his words with precision, the way a pastry chef might chose just the right filling for a pie.
“They’re taking a much-deserved vacation,” he said, nodding sagely at the older gentleman and motioning him closer as if letting him in on a deep family secret. “And we couldn’t let them close the shop now, could we? During June?”
The florist’s eyes grew large. “Oh, no.”
“Of course not. Especially since their best customers were counting on them.” Rob winked at the man and grabbed an ice cream scoop. “This cone’s on the house,” he said, digging into the tub of Cherry-Almond Swirl and piling the sweet concoction in massive, if inexpert, blobs atop a sugar cone. “Uncle Pauly’s orders.”
So Rob was going to start bribing and spin-doctoring, was he? Fine. She’d play along. In fact, she had to hand it to him. Considering the look of bliss on the talkative florist’s face, the gossip he’d inevitably spread about them could only be in their favor. She clamped her mouth shut and did her part by passing the man a paper napkin and shooting him a closed-lipped smile.
“Why, thank you, dearie,” the florist said to her. “Gotta get back to talking to my geraniums and begonias before they start complaining.” He licked his cone and twinkled his delight at her with his eyes.
She waved him off without uttering a sound, a trick she’d perfected through years of social avoidance, then she grabbed her notebook and ripped out the page she’d been working on. She handed it to Rob.
“What’s this?” he said, slumping against the counter.
With her pen, she pointed to the heading she’d written in block letters.
“A schedule? For what? The shop?” He stared at her as if this were the most foreign of concepts.
She nodded.
“For us? To divide up the opening and closing times?”
Good. He could read. She nodded again.
“But who’s going to work the shifts in between? Last time I talked with Uncle Pauly, he said he and Siegfried were doing most of the serving themselves. Said they didn’t trust many people and they’d only hire out part-time helpers during really busy times or when one of them was sick.”
She knew this, which was why she’d have to rely more heavily on Jacques, and why she’d called both Gretchen and Nick and told them they absolutely had to come over tomorrow to help her with this. She was desperate.
“M-M-My fr-friends will be w-working here,” she said.
“Well, great,” he said, looking relieved. “Hey, I mean, if you think you can handle all of the organizing, get trustworthy people to take the over shifts and all, you can count on me to chip in with other things. Funding their salaries for the month. Doing all the stock ordering. Sending out publicity notices. Anything you need, just so I can be back in Chicago soon.”
She winced. She’d been especially dreading relaying this part of Pauly’s parting message. Although she didn’t know the precise reason, she sensed Rob wouldn’t like the news. “Y-You can’t l-leave.”
“Why not?” he said, but the uneasiness in his tone convinced her he wasn’t surprised there might be a complication.
“P-Pauly called your m-m-mother. T-Told her to expect you for Sunday d-d-dinner tonight. And every n-night.”
“Oh, hell.”
She pushed her long, unruly hair out of her eyes and blinked at him. Funny, she’d never before seen the Golden Boy’s rugged olive complexion look quite so peaked.
“Lizzy,” he said, setting her carefully constructed schedule back on the counter. “You’re looking at a dead man.”
And with that, he collapsed into a six-foot heap of hunky male onto the floor.
CHAPTER TWO
Rob lay on the ground after his pratfall, eyes closed and enjoying the coolness of the parlor’s tiles against his neck and his arms. Everywhere, actually, that the thick fabric of his shirt couldn’t protect.
He might as well stay here.
With his uncle and his mother conspiring together, he’d have a better c
hance of surviving a month in Wisconsin if he were eyelevel with the native fauna. Badgers might have a vicious streak, but they were good burrowers. They knew how to hide when necessary.
He heard the sound of rapid footsteps crossing the room and a worried “R-Rob?” coming from somewhere above him.
He bit his lower lip. Frizzy Lizzy. Imagine seeing her again after all this time. She looked different, not like the quiet teen he remembered, but the aura she projected was the same. Too damn competent. Women like that scared the bejesus out of him. They always did.
Of course, her impressions of him couldn’t be much to brag about. He opened his eyes to see her peering down at him with a look of pure horror from above the countertop. She must think he’d turned into a nutcase.
“I’m fine,” he told her. “Just resting. Trying to gather my strength.” Which was the truth. He loved his mother, but he knew he’d need more than familial affection to get him through the next four weeks of The Matriarch Dinner Inquisition. He’d need something he didn’t have and didn’t want: A serious girlfriend.
“Oh, okay,” she said, her big green eyes squinty with confusion. This was the first time she hadn’t stuttered since he’d gotten there. Must be a sign that she wasn’t scared of him anymore…just annoyed.
He pushed himself to his feet and faced her, the barrier of the counter the only object between them. She was fiddling with her schedule. He slid the paper aside and lightly rested his hands atop hers, deciding that making amends was always done best when done right away.
“Hey, I apologize,” he said. “I didn’t mean to freak you out a minute ago or let my frustrations loose on you when I got here. But this whole thing came as kind of a shock, and I’m still trying to get readjusted. The schedule you did looks good and—” He stopped. Her green eyes had grown so enormous they became the only feature on her face he could see. “You okay, Lizzy?”
She didn’t answer. She just pulled her hands out from under his and buried them in that long, frizzling hair of hers. Lovely reddish-brown strands, come to think of it.
“Um, Lizzy?”
“E-E-Eliz-zab-b-beth.”
“Oh, right. Sorry. Elizabeth, are you okay?”
She shook her head. “I n-n—” She squeezed her eyes shut, her face flushing a deep pink. “I n-need to g-g-go.” She thrust the schedule and some keys at him. Then, waving a lightning-fast farewell, she sprinted out the door before he could even say, So long, now.
Women. Wasn’t that just the way they operated?
Well, an enforced vacation in Wilmington Bay hardly lived up to his dream of a relaxing beachside resort—the Virgin Islands was more his speed—but a Gabinarri had to do what a Gabinarri had to do.
With a sigh, he grabbed his cell phone and punched in The Playbook’s landline.
“Miguel? Yep, I’m here and, nope, I didn’t bring up nearly enough clothing. I could use some Old Navy. Some Levi’s. Some Gap. Any chance you could go to my condo and FedEx up a few of my favorites tomorrow?”
Miguel, good man that he was, said he could, and that he’d throw in a few cheery surprises as well. “Where do you want it sent, Boss Man?”
Rob pinched his chin and rubbed the pad of his finger over the day-old stubble. He recited his brother Tony’s address. He’d square this with Tony and Maria-Louisa soon, but he had to at least have the appearance of a man who knew what he was doing and where he was going before sitting down to dinner with Mama tonight. Twenty-eight years of experience told him no one got away with being wishy-washy around Mama.
“Thanks, Miguel. Keep an eye on my restaurant for me, will you? I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Will do. Oh!” Rob heard the unmistakable sound of diabolical laughter on the line.
“What?”
Miguel kept laughing even as he spoke. “The new menus. Guess you’ll have to trust me on the design of those now, huh?”
Rob groaned. It wasn’t that he was worried at the final look. Miguel excelled at anything having to do with artistic photography, décor and style. It was just that Rob wasn’t fond of losing his place at the center of the action. He’d once been a quarterback, after all. Old habits died hard.
“Have fun in the Land of Cheese, Boss Man,” Miguel said before clicking off.
No doubt about it. A month back in Wilmington Bay and his brain would look like hunks of Swiss, his body like clumps of curd and his patience like shreds of mozzarella.
He shook his head and punched in his brother’s phone number.
***
Elizabeth speed-dialed Gretchen on her cell only five seconds after she closed her car door. No chance her hands would stop shaking, though, for five thousand seconds, at least.
“M-Meet me at my place in half an hour,” Elizabeth told her.
“You sound crazed,” Gretchen said. “What’s going on?”
She swallowed. “He’s back.”
“Who?”
“Rob,” Elizabeth whispered.
Gretchen gasped. “Roberto Gabinarri? The ‘Hot Calzone’ of Wilmington Bay High?”
“The very one.”
“Hold onto your oregano, honey, I’ll be right over.”
By the time Elizabeth’s heartbeat had slowed to a mere Fred-n-Ginger tap-dance pace, Gretchen arrived, her presence announced by a healthy pounding at the door.
She strode in—tall, strong, big-boned but without flab, shoulder-length blond hair, bright blue eyes, peachy-cream skin with natural rouge spots on her cheeks—bearing a box of her famous truffles and a tin of cocoa. All she’d need to complete the Original Swiss Miss look was a white ruffled apron and a backdrop of the Alps behind her.
Gretchen thrust the chocolate offerings at Elizabeth. “So, tell me about this dude. You two graduated together, right?”
“R-Right.”
“What’s so bad about him?”
Gretchen was a few years older and had gone to high school in a neighboring town. She’d heard of Rob, of course, like everyone, but she’d never been under his spell.
“Everything. Seeing him again—it’s worse than I thought. Even worse than it was in the beginning.”
“Let’s start there then. The beginning. You met him, when?”
“The s-summer I turned five.”
Gretchen’s eyebrows popped up to the middle of her forehead. “You’ve known him that long?”
“Uh-huh.” The years spun like a pinwheel through Elizabeth’s mind with images of Rob flashing in full color on every panel. “My Uncle Siegfried and his Uncle Pauly were celebrating their seventeenth anniversary of being in business together. Rob and his family lived in Wilmington Bay already but my family had just moved here so I could start school in the fall. We were all invited to a Tutti-Frutti party.”
“And it was love at first sight, right?” Gretchen said.
“Not even close. I was terrified of him. He seemed like a creature from the Klingon Empire…and he never stopped talking. And m-me—” She looked into Gretchen’s face and saw the caring, loyalty and sympathy an intensely private person like herself came to count on in a friend. The feeling of safety warmed her soul, even while her head still twirled in panic. “You know how hard words can be for me around people I don’t trust. People I’m not comfortable with.”
“I know, honey. I know.” Gretchen put a gentle arm around her shoulders. “So, did he ever stop talking so much?”
She shook her head. “It’s remarkable, really. The guy doesn’t shut up. He wasn’t in a homeroom class with me until third grade but, even before then, I could always recognize his voice in the hall. Hear his laughter.”
“Did he bug you in third grade?”
“No. He was nice. Nice to everyone,” she said, remembering the smiling dark-haired kid Rob was back then. “There was this one day when he’d lost his pencil. It was a Friday afternoon. He was sitting next to me at the Number Four table and Mrs. Klausen had asked us twice already to get our writing utensils out. Teddy from across the table said
, ‘Hey, Rob, you can have one of my dinosaur ones,’ and he rolled it over to him. But I held my best pencil out to him. It didn’t have any fancy designs on it or anything, but it was sharpened just perfectly. And he took mine instead. He said thanks to both of us, though, before rolling Teddy’s pencil back. He laughed and talked to me through the whole project, and he told me a story about his little sister and some peas. I forget how that relates. And then, when the bell rang, he returned my pencil to me. He said, ‘Thanks for giving me the best one,’ and he left.”
“So he noticed,” Gretchen said.
Elizabeth felt the usual sliver of pride when she thought about that day. “Yeah. He noticed.”
“Was he extra nice the next day?”
“The next school day was a Monday and Mrs. Klausen changed the seating chart. She put me at the Number Three table and Rob at the Number One table. Until that day, she’d been my favorite teacher.”
Gretchen laughed. “So that was when you fell in love with him, wasn’t it?”
She nodded. “That was the first time.”
“When was the second time?”
“Senior year of high school. English class.”
Gretchen pulled open the truffle box and waved it and its tantalizing aroma under Elizabeth’s nose. “Eat one,” she commanded. “And talk. What did he borrow this time? A thesaurus?”
Elizabeth shook her head then selected a morsel of gorgeous hand-dipped chocolate. “Mmm,” she said as the rich cocoa butter and hazelnut flavors mingled delectably on her tongue. So heavenly. So unbelievably high in fat grams and calories. And so…oh, so what? “I love these.” She reached for another one.
Her friend snatched away the box. “Not until you tell me about twelfth-grade English. What’d he do then?”
She groaned. “Don’t be cruel, Gretchen.”
Gretchen gave Elizabeth her best Elvis sneer.
“Oh, okay,” Elizabeth said, laughing. “But only because you’re an amazing chocolatier.” Gretchen edged the box toward her a few centimeters, but it was still out of reach.
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