by Cindy Gerard
“In addition to ice cream, one of the things I miss most when I’m out of the States is pizza,” he said, checking his rearview mirror and changing lanes. “Ever been to Bella Luna?”
She clutched her purse on her lap, felt her cheeks flame with another surge of humiliation over her misconception of his intentions. She was thirty-three years old, for heaven’s sake, not sixteen and starry-eyed over her first real crush. She forced herself to respond. “Bella Luna. Isn’t that over in Jamaica Plain?”
He nodded. “On Centre Street.”
“Heard of it,” she managed to say between concentrated breaths. “Never been.”
“Then you’re in for a treat.”
Of course she was. Everything about this day was turning into a treat.
She physically suppressed a groan. What had she been thinking? And what must he be thinking? How to let her down easy, if his lengthy silences offered any clues. She’d experienced enough of them in her life, both letdowns and lengthy silences, to know where this night was headed.
She stared out the window, blinked furiously to get her emotions back in check. Well, sorry. It was too late to be let down easy. Too late to deny what had been happening since the moment he’d charged in to save the day then kissed her until her bones had liquefied.
It was also too late to fool the fool into believing that she wasn’t already half in love with him. Maybe more than half, she conceded miserably and accepted that she would have to deal with that bit of late-breaking news later. When she was alone. In the dark. Between cool sheets. In her big empty bed. And her lacy panties and bra were tossed in the clothes hamper instead of strewn recklessly across her bedroom floor because he just couldn’t get her out of them fast enough.
Mercifully, they arrived at Bella Luna a few minutes later. The place was packed, and the crush and buzz of the crowd momentarily curtailed any desperate attempts at more strained small talk. The yellow-and-blue decor, the large open kitchen and the hand-painted plastic plates gave the place a homey feel. Phoebe might have even enjoyed it if she hadn’t been so miserable.
When they were seated at a small table complete with a red-checkered tablecloth and a lit candle in a bottle, Daniel nodded toward the eclectic paintings covering the pizzeria walls. “They rotate the art exhibits weekly. And on Sunday nights they bring in a psychic.”
“That would probably be to help you figure out what to order,” she said, digging for some composure as she scanned a menu that included about a billion pizza combinations and a slew of toppings that ranged from asparagus to zucchini.
“How about I order for us?”
She folded the menu, grateful to be relieved of that decision. “How about you do that.”
As the waiter appeared, she let her gaze drift around the room while Daniel ordered their pizza and a beer for himself.
“Just water,” she said, responding to his inquiring look.
“So, how are you?” he asked, commanding her attention when the waiter left. “No ill effects from last night?”
Ah. So that was what tonight was about. Lesson number two in Heroes 101: It’s considered good form for the rescuer to follow up with the rescuee to make sure his heroic efforts weren’t made in vain.
“I’m fine. Fine,” she repeated, folding her hands on top of the table, then lowering them to her lap, then raising them to the table again, all the time juggling her gaze between the artwork, the tabletop and the wall behind Daniel’s head.
“Get your car home okay?”
Chitchat. Wasn’t this special?
“Leslie picked me up for work this morning and drove me over to get it.” She didn’t bother to mention that the word BITCH had been deeply scratched in the driver’s-side door. Of course, she couldn’t prove who’d done it, but it went without saying that Jason had probably used her own keys to do the deed.
Daniel’s beer and her water arrived, snapping her away from the ugly picture and back to the moment. She played with the condensation on the glass while he scanned the room. It gave her small solace to realize that he, too, was a little uncomfortable. Well, why wouldn’t he be? He’d counted on a mercy dinner to follow up on his mercy kiss and she’d curled her hair and put in contacts, for Pete’s sake.
He may not be interested but he wasn’t stupid. One look at her and he’d known that she’d thought— Well, he’d known what she’d thought.
Lookin’ good, Phoebe. He could just as well have said: Combed your hair, Phoebe, or, Lost the turtle shell, Phoebe, or the increasingly obvious and ever popular, Don’t mistake this for something it’s not, Phoebe.
“My grandma Barone had a saying.”
The warmth of his voice brought her out of the little cocoon of misery she’d been spinning around herself. She chanced meeting his eyes. Blue. Lord, they were so blue.
“Quello che ci mette, ci trova.”
The lyrical words rolled off his tongue as if he’d been born speaking the language. The warmth in his smile could have melted the candle flickering between them. For sure, it melted any number of things inside her.
“Great ear that I have for linguistics, I recognize that as Italian, right?” she somehow managed to say. “What does it mean?”
“Loosely translated, the expression goes, ‘What one puts into a dish, one finds.’”
She leaned forward, then back, her eyebrows knit. “At the risk of repeating myself, what does it mean?”
“I don’t really know,” he said with staged confusion. “But she said it a lot and it’s one of two Italian phrases that I can repeat without stumbling over the words.”
Well, heck. What could she do but smile. It wasn’t his fault that she’d gotten the wrong idea. It wasn’t his fault that her heart had decided to do some stumbling of its own. It wasn’t his fault that he was so gorgeous and that she was so needy.
Letting go of the last little remnant of the dream, she dug deep and put on her game face. “And the other phrase would be?”
He lifted his beer, held it aloft. Slowly, she raised her water until glass met glass over the table with a soft, celebratory clink. “Questa festa è solamente per te.”
Just when she’d thought she was in control, the look on his face stole her breath. “Meaning?” she asked on a whisper.
“Meaning, ‘This party is just for you.’”
She stared into that beautiful, smiling face and avoided sliding bonelessly to the floor at his feet only by dredging up a mandatory reality check. What she thought she saw—interest, intensity, heat—was just Daniel being Daniel. Charming, kind, unconsciously sensual.
It meant nothing.
She sighed. Just her luck he was so gorgeous. Just her luck that he was such a nice man. He was so many things. The key thing that he wasn’t was interested.
Deal with it, Phoebe. Just suck it up and deal with it.
She dragged out a smile and the will to make the best of the night. The only way to do that was to cut her losses and once and for all accept that there was no romance on the horizon with Daniel Barone.
She lifted her glass again then forced a perky smile when he followed suit. “To that I say, Obbe, doobe, wah.”
One corner of his mouth kicked up in another one of his dangerously seductive grins. “Which is…?”
“Gibberish for ‘Then let’s party on, dude.’”
His eyes danced with mirth. “And she’s bilingual, too.”
“She’s also bipolar under certain conditions,” she said in a confidential whisper, “but we won’t talk about that now, okay? It might ruin our dinner.”
He sat back and chuckled, then shaking his head murmured something to the tune of, “What am I going to do with you?”
She had several suggestions, but she kept them to herself. Just as she was going to keep her feelings to herself and her emotions on a tight leash. She was not going to write herself deeper into a fantasy that coupled her and this man as the hero and heroine of a romantic adventure.
What she was goi
ng to do was get through this night. And helping her was knowing that every set of estrogen-fueled eyes in the place were sizing him up and shooting envious glances her way.
These women didn’t have to know that this wasn’t a date.
They didn’t have to know that she was dying a little inside because this wonderful man would never be more than a friend.
And they didn’t have to know that she was “lookin’ good,” when what she’d wanted to look was loved.
They left Bella Luna around nine-thirty. Daniel was a little perplexed by his actions when he walked her to her door and had more or less given her no choice but to ask him in. She’d excused herself with a “Be right back” the moment they’d stepped inside. When she joined him again in the living room, she was wearing her glasses and carrying two tall iced teas.
“Dry eyes,” she’d said, explaining the glasses as she set his tea on the table beside the sofa where he’d sat. Then she settled herself in a wing chair across from him.
Daniel knew that if she’d had her way, this little scene wouldn’t be playing out. She hadn’t planned to ask him in. But, since he hadn’t wanted to leave just yet, he’d merely smiled, walked through her door and gotten comfy.
That had been ten or fifteen minutes ago. Now he was slumped back, drifting on a pleasant haze to the dreamy strains of a moody, bluesy sax that played softly on the CD system. The cool hum of her air conditioner and the vanilla scent of a burning candle soothed him. The sight of her curled up in the wing chair across from him, the cat purring on her lap, made him smile.
He’d done that a lot tonight, he realized, closing his eyes and sinking into a contentment he hadn’t felt in quite some time. Shy, timid little Phoebe Richards had a wicked sense of humor when she finally dropped her guard and let it come out to play. Somewhere during the course of the evening—right around her “party on, dude” line, he calculated, one corner of his mouth twitching into a crooked grin at the memory—something had definitely loosened up between them.
He hadn’t yet defined it, but something had altered in the way she regarded him. It almost felt as if she’d decided, The heck with it. What you see is what you get. Like it or lump it. It matters not to me.
He’d liked it. A lot. He liked that she gave back as good as he gave her. He liked that she laughed and asked him questions and had enjoyed the heck out of her pizza.
Yeah. He’d liked it. Well, except, maybe for the dawning realization that from that defining point on, she had also started looking at him differently.
Her cheeks had no longer pinkened with that pretty, delicate blush when their gazes had connected over the table. Her eyes had lost that tentative, almost dreamy spark of sexual awareness. It was almost as if she’d made a conscious decision to stay clear of those dicey sensual waters and take the low road.
Actually, there was no almost about it, he realized the further he thought about it. It was exactly what she’d decided to do. She was attracted to him—that had been apparent from the get-go—but she’d purposefully pulled away.
He let that thought snag then finally settle. This was good, right? This is what he wanted.
Right.
No spark, no sizzle. Just friendship. Just comfort. He hadn’t even had to outline the ground rules for her. With her subtle but concise temperature shift, she’d done it for him.
“Are you asleep?” he heard her whisper, as if she was afraid to wake him if he was.
“I hope you don’t take offense,” he said, never opening his eyes, his head lolling against the sofa cushions, “but I could easily get there.”
“So much for my sparkling and witty conversation.”
A lazy grin curved his mouth. “Your conversation is sparkling and witty. But the pizza, the music and a delayed case of jet lag seem to have the upper hand at the moment.
“Man…” He forced himself to sit up then shook his head to clear a few cobwebs. “Sorry. It doesn’t seem to matter how many times I cross time zones, jet lag is still a bitch.”
“Having never traveled any farther than upstate New York, I guess I’ll have to take your word for it.”
She was stingy with information about herself, Daniel had learned during the course of the night, but very skillful in extracting information about him. She’d had him singing like a canary. Her warm smiles and interested questions had prompted him to share stories of the places he’d been and the things he’d done.
In fact, he’d talked so much that he was a little hoarse. He hadn’t spilled this much information since— Well, he couldn’t remember ever sharing so much of himself with anyone.
“Why is it,” he wondered aloud, “that you have a detailed account of damn near every month of my last eight years and I still don’t know anything about you?”
She stroked her hand across Arthur’s back. “Possibly because you live a fascinating, amazing life and I don’t?” she suggested with a lift of her eyebrows.
He met her eyes then, not at all surprised when she shifted her gaze back to the cat. She didn’t want the attention focused on her. She felt uncomfortable when it was, and had capably transferred it back to him all evening.
Not this time. He’d had a question burning for about twenty-four hours now and he was determined to get an answer.
“Phoebe, tell me something. You and this Collins character. How did you…” He paused, searching for a delicate way to phrase it.
She did it for him. “How did a nice girl like me get involved with a loser like him?”
He reached for his tea. “Yeah. I guess that’s what I was going for.”
She let out a breath, ruffling the soft tumble of hair from her forehead. “A friend of a friend introduced us. He seemed nice. Thoughtful. Attentive.” She paused then shrugged, relaying how uncomfortable she was talking about the subject. “I don’t know. Something changed. Thoughtful turned to needy. Attentive changed to possessive. Possessive— Well, you saw what it changed to.”
“Yeah,” he said, swallowing back the knot of anger provoked by the memory of Jason Collins’s hands on her. “I saw.”
He sat forward, propped his elbows on his widespread knees and, wedging his glass between his palms, stared at the tea. His heart was suddenly beating hard and fast. He looked up from his glass.
“Did he hit you, Phoebe?”
She stiffened, swallowed, then visibly dealt with the tension. Her hand came up to tug on her hair. “Once.”
Daniel closed his eyes as a red-hot haze of fury burned behind them. “The bastard.”
“He’s ill,” she said, more by way of explanation than defense.
“And that makes it all right?”
“No, but it makes it easier for me to accept.”
He saw in her eyes how truly hurt she was by what Collins had done to her.
“Jason’s an alcoholic,” she continued. She shook her head, her look as thoughtful as it was regretful. “I should have seen it. I should have known. I should have gotten him help.”
“Seems to me that getting help is up to him not you.”
“In the end, yes,” she agreed. “It’s all up to him.”
He studied her lowered head, sensed that she wanted him to back off, but couldn’t make himself. “Was he important to you?”
Her hand paused then resumed her repetitive strokes along Arthur’s back. “I guess that’s irrelevant now, isn’t it?”
It didn’t feel irrelevant. Not to him. But she clearly wasn’t going to talk about it. And he wasn’t going to think about the tight knot of tension that grabbed his shoulder when he thought about her and Collins together.
“You know, I was serious about the locks.”
She nodded. “I know.”
“And the self-defense class. It’s just good sense that a woman knows how to protect herself.”
She fidgeted, finally lifted Arthur off her lap and, rising, settled the cat in the chair. She walked past Daniel to the CD player and busied herself changing tracks. “I tried a cl
ass once. I didn’t make it past the first hour.” She glanced at him over her shoulder then turned back to the CD player with a self-conscious shrug. “I’m not good at violence.”
“Self-defense is all about avoiding violence,” he said reasonably.
“Well, yes. I know. But you still have to use violence to defend yourself. I—I couldn’t do it. The thought of it makes me physically ill.”
She turned to face him, her arms crossed beneath her breasts, hugging herself as if she was warding off a chill. “We could sugarcoat it and say I’m nonconfrontational, but the honest truth is that I’m pretty much a coward.”
“An abhorrence to violence doesn’t make you a coward. It makes you human. The flip side, however, is that avoidance of reality makes you vulnerable. The way you were last night. I don’t like to think about what would have happened if I hadn’t been there.”
She gave him a tight smile that didn’t quite conceal the fear she tried to hide. “I don’t like thinking about it either.”
But they both knew that she had to think about it. She had to think about it a lot because Daniel had a very strong feeling that Jason Collins wasn’t going away anytime soon. Because of that feeling, Daniel had pretty much convinced himself that he had a viable reason for not going away anytime soon either.
He stared into his glass for a moment, realizing that what he was about to propose probably wasn’t wise.
After spending the evening with Phoebe, he understood that what he really wanted from her was something he couldn’t take. He wasn’t sure he entirely trusted himself, either, to do the right thing by her and keep their relationship platonic. Because he cared about her, though, he was going to give it his best shot, even though he knew he was pushing his luck.