by Linda Cajio
“It would be a whole lot easier,” Ellen muttered, turning away from the table and the continuing argument.
Her grandmother called after her. Ellen ignored her. Blindly, she walked into the library … and immediately walked back out. She swerved toward the stairs, intending to go up to her room. Then she went toward the dining room again. She realized what she was doing, and stopped in the middle of the hall.
It was over with Joe, she told herself. Done. Finished. She had been whatever help she had been, and that was that. So what if he hadn’t tried to kiss her when he brought her home? Why would she want him to? She didn’t, of course. She couldn’t. And she had told him so. She knew she wasn’t ready yet for a relationship, and she doubted if she ever would be—certainly not with someone as exciting and gentle and determined and sexy as Joe Carlini.
And if she was a little curious about what might be happening with the sauce, well, that was only human nature. Her peace and quiet had been … stirred up a little, that was all. Everything was now back to normal, just as she needed it, and she ought to be grateful to Joe for accepting that.
The telephone rang.
Ellen jumped for it without thinking. Before the first ring had even stopped, she yanked the receiver out of its cradle and brought it to her ear.
“Hello?” she said breathlessly, her heart beating frantically with anticipation.
“Lettice?”
Ellen swallowed back a huge wave of disappointment. “One moment please.”
She put her hand over the mouthpiece and turned to call her grandmother to the telephone. Lettice was already there, eyebrows raised. Clearly, she had seen her granddaughter’s mad leap for the instrument.
“For you,” Ellen said sheepishly, handing over the receiver.
“A spy mission, my Aunt Muffy,” Lettice said in a quelling voice. She raised the receiver to her ear. “Hello? Yes, Margery, that was Ellen playing telephone operator.… Yes, I’m thrilled my granddaughter, Anne, got the Olympic equestrian team for us this year. It will be wonderful. Lovely child Anne …”
Ellen gritted her teeth at her grandmother’s effusive tone. She walked to the front door and went outside, leaving Lettice in her grand planning stages for the annual horse show in Devon. It was a charity benefit for the children’s hospital, and Ellen knew she’d be expected to put in an appearance. Life was definitely back to normal.
And she was hating every minute of it.
“Damn, damn, damn!” she muttered.
She had to rid herself of this … curiosity about the sauce. And she definitely had to get rid of her attraction to Joe.
She would take a drive, she decided, turning toward the garages. A long drive. And she wouldn’t come back until she was rid of all thoughts of Joe Carlini.
Three hours later, Ellen strode into the kitchen. Mamie, her grandmother’s housekeeper, glanced up from her dinner preparations.
“I need to use the kitchen line,” Ellen announced. “And you didn’t hear this conversation, okay?”
Mamie grinned at her. “Ya, sure, Ellen.”
Ellen took a deep breath, told the little protesting voice inside her to shut up, then picked up the telephone and dialed.
“Carlini Foods.”
She took another deep breath.
“Joe Carlini, please.”
Five
“Joe Carlini, line five.”
The page on the intercom echoed off the thick, impossibly white tile walls of the spice room in the Carlini Foods main processing plant.
“Dammit,” Joe muttered, his concentration disrupted when he heard his name. He straightened from the small bowl on the stainless steel counter. “I think you’re right, Terry. That oregano does smell … old. I think. It’s hard for me to tell exactly what’s wrong with it. I don’t have the gift like you do, Terry. All I know is that the oregano is definitely not up to our standards.”
“They’ve covered it very cleverly with some kind of oregano essence,” the foreman said. “That’s why I called you down here to confirm. It’s subtle, but it’s there.”
Terry Kowalski’s nose could smell a rose at a hundred paces, Joe thought gratefully. The spice room was kept immaculately clean. It had to be for those like Terry to distinguish the various scents they worked with. He frowned, hearing himself paged again. He was tempted to ignore it because of the problems here, but he knew it must be important or his secretary would have taken a message. She usually did when he was in the plant.
“Okay,” he said to Terry as he walked over to the wall telephone. “I’ll call Marcus Spicers. Jim Marcus won’t like knowing someone’s pulling this switch with his customers.”
“This isn’t from Marcus,” Terry said. Joe turned around in surprise, and Terry added, “Mario changed spicers, Joe. I thought you knew.”
Anger shot through Joe in a jolting red haze. Carlini Foods had an excellent contract with Marcus Spicers. That Mario had somehow circumvented it was appalling. And if the new spice was lousy, Joe was positive the price was higher—and that Mario was getting a kickback. That little creep wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d drained the company in any way he could.
He controlled his fury enough to say, “I didn’t know, Terry. I’ll call Marcus and get good oregano over here right away. And I’ll take care of this garbage. Anything else Mario changes, clear with me personally first.”
“I’m sorry, Joe,” Terry said. “He said the change was cleared in the office. I thought it wasn’t right, but he’s one of the family—”
“The fault is mine, not yours,” Joe said. He realized that employees could be taken advantage of in a family-owned business, especially by sneaks like Mario. “I should have been more clear about his duties with everyone.”
Joe turned back to the phone. He picked up the receiver and stabbed the winking button. Whoever was on the other end had better not hand him any garbage, he thought furiously.
“Hello,” he snapped.
There was a tense silence, then a feminine voice said, “Joe?”
His anger drained away, and he forgot everything as he recognized the voice on the other end of the line. He knew it intimately already.
“Ellen,” he said with immense relief. He had decided the best plan—temporarily—was to give her some time to cool down, and then he would call. He couldn’t believe she had contacted him. She had been so adamant in Atlantic City that he would have thought pride, at the least, would have kept her from making the first move.
“Am I calling at a bad time?” she asked.
“No,” he said, meaning it. His secretary had seen the picture of him giving Ellen that check at the charity dance and had even kidded him about it. She had realized he’d want to take this call. He told himself to remember to give her a raise. Smiling, he added, “It’s not a bad time at all.”
“Are you sure? You sound busy. Why don’t I call back—”
“No,” he broke in, fearing she would hang up. He remembered Terry was right behind him, so he calmed himself down before saying, “You’re not disturbing me, Ell. In fact, I’m very pleased that you called.”
She was silent for a moment, then said, “Well, I was just wondering how you made out with your uncle. He was so nice to me, and I’ve been feeling so bad for him, knowing he’d probably be very upset when he found out about Mario.”
Joe tried to suppress his disappointment. Her polite curiosity about Uncle Thomas was natural and normal. Dammit. Still, he couldn’t expect anything else. She’d been so hurt in the past, she would keep herself as barricaded as possible. He ought to be glad of any kind of offering from her.
“Uncle Thomas is just fine now,” he said, remembering his uncle’s initial shock at his warning. And all Joe had been able to do was warn. He still had no proof of Mario’s treachery. Fortunately, Thomas had already been upset that Mario hadn’t taken his own mother to the show. Evidently that breach of family etiquette had offended the older man and made him wonder. Joe had said something to h
is cousin Jamie and sister Carol too.
“I’m glad about Uncle Thomas,” Ellen said. “Well, I suppose that’s that with your problem.”
“I wish,” Joe said.
“Oh?”
He decided it must be his imagination that he heard an eagerness behind the “oh.” He continued. “A few other things have come up. I know I promised one time only, but I’ve been wondering if I could impose on you again.…”
“Well-l-l-l … I suppose one more time wouldn’t hurt. I mean, if you really need my help. We never did find that person I saw with Mario at the rink. Is Mario meeting with him again? Is that the problem?”
“Mmmm,” Joe murmured noncommittally, trying not to lie outright. He sensed, too, that anything other than a need for her help would result in “Adios, so long, au revoir,” and other forms of good-bye. “I … well, let’s just say I have my suspicions.”
“In Atlantic City again?”
“Okay.” Atlantic City had its advantages, he thought. And she seemed to like it there. “Ah … it’s tonight. Later than the last time, I think. How about if I pick you up as soon as I can get out of here, and I’ll explain it all to you then, okay?”
A long silence answered him.
“Ell?”
“Okay.”
When he hung up a minute later, he knew his smile had to be nearly splitting his face. He promised himself he would feel guilty later, and he turned around. Terry was staring at him in clear puzzlement.
“I’ll have all of this taken care of, Terry,” he said. “No problem.”
Mario would survive the spice fiasco, Joe thought as he headed for his cousin’s office. Just barely would Mario survive this.
Fortunately for his treacherous cousin, Joe was now in a very good mood.
Ellen had called.
She still couldn’t believe she had done it.
Ellen again gazed around the Palace Casino, and out of the corner of her eye she saw Joe’s smile of pure pleasure. She battled back a wave of anxiety, thinking of how quickly she’d lost her internal struggle over him. After a long drive to nowhere that afternoon, she had really thought she’d brought all her frustration under control. She had done a lot of soul-searching … and remembering. And she’d been quite relaxed returning up the long driveway to her grandmother’s fieldstone mansion. Until she stepped out of the car. Before she knew it, she was in the kitchen, dialing as if she were a madwoman. Maybe she was. What her grandmother had had to say about a second, even more sudden, trip to Atlantic City was unrepeatable.
Ellen resisted the urge to giggle. Poor Lettice.
She sobered when someone jostled her against Joe. An overwhelming urge to melt into his hard warmth rose in her, and she fought against it, finally straightening.
“Sorry,” she muttered.
Joe dipped his head, but didn’t look her way. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or hurt that he had no reaction to her closeness. Neither way helped her current dilemma.
The problem really wasn’t that she had made the call, she acknowledged. Any concerned person would have, especially after meeting innocent Uncle Thomas. But one little suggestion of further help, and she had thrown herself right into it again. If Joe had declined her new offer, she probably would have rushed down to his office and pinned him to his desk until he’d agreed.
Suddenly her brain conjured a vivid image of her and Joe utilizing the desktop in quite a different fashion. His hands skimming over her body …
“Help me, Lord,” she muttered under her breath, as she desperately erased the mental picture.
“Beg pardon?” Joe asked.
“I suppose we should start looking around,” she said, putting on a bright smile. What was it about Joe that made her forget everything?
Joe frowned at her. “For wha— Oh, for Mario and the man, you mean.”
She nodded, wondering where his brain was. Not with hers, she hoped. Slipping gratefully into the role of spy once again, she asked, “Got any impulses, Robinson?”
He grinned at her, and she instantly felt the heat rise to her cheeks.
“For finding two men this time,” she clarified, glaring at him.
“Just wander around and look,” he said.
“We could always try another page.”
He laughed. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? I don’t think Mario would fall for it twice, do you?”
“Probably not.”
“Well, we’d better look around.”
As they made their way past the various gambling tables. Ellen tried not to notice Joe’s fingers casually wrapped around her elbow. It was a simple gesture of male courtesy. And it also was igniting her attraction to Joe to a new high, for his hand brushed the side of her breast once, twice, three times through her silk blouse. Her breasts ached, and her mind traitorously dredged up more images of his strong fingers igniting more than attraction within her. Her heart reveled in the knowledge that they were alone.…
Ellen gritted her teeth and forced herself to put more space between them. She was in big trouble if she thought that wandering through a mobbed casino was “alone.” She must be nuts. Where, she wondered frantically, was her common sense? Probably out to lunch with the rest of her brain. She had to get a grip on herself. She knew more than most the unexpected ways life could hurt. She couldn’t pay the price again. She wouldn’t survive it.
She decided to quit torturing herself. Okay, so she’d made a little mistake. Now that she was here, she ought to forget it and just concentrate on helping Joe stop his cousin. And she should definitely stop this … daydreaming like a schoolgirl at a man’s touch. In fact, she ought to be feeling justified about getting reinvolved with Joe and his problem, especially after what he had told her about the oregano. Mario had to be caught and stopped. Still, there must be a better way to go about it than hanging onto Joe the entire time.
“I think we should split up,” she said briskly, “so we can cover more territory.”
“But how would we find each other again?” Joe asked, looking at her in puzzlement. “This place is bigger than the Taj Mahal.”
“Well—”
“What if you found them when I’m not with you?” he added. “By the time you found me, they could be long gone. Or if I were to see them without you, how would I know if it’s the same man from the rink? You said the guy was average. Hell, that’s just about everybody.”
“But we might spot him sooner this time if we split up,” she said lamely.
“Maybe,” he conceded. “But that’s about all we’d do. You’re making me wonder if you’re playing the impulsive spy this time.”
She shrugged. “I just thought you should have a crack at being Bill Cosby.”
“Very generous of you,” he said, rubbing her arm and sending sensual sparks to every corner of her body. “But I like things just the way they are. Look, if we don’t find them by eleven, why don’t we just relax and do a little gambling in earnest? I hate losing for Mario’s sake. Anyway, it’s a shame to be at the shore and not even take a look at the ocean, especially at night with the moonlight glowing on the waves.…”
Ellen nearly moaned. He was driving her crazy.
And she had the feeling she would love every minute of it.
Eleven o’clock couldn’t come soon enough, Joe thought, glancing impatiently at his watch again. Twenty more endless minutes until he could finally call a halt to this farce of searching every nook and cranny for a nonexistent meeting. Then he and Ellen could enjoy themselves.
He glanced at the woman beside him and felt guilty yet again that they were here on a wild-goose chase. When confronted with the bad oregano, Mario had made a very affecting plea, which even Joe couldn’t poke a hole into, of innocently experimenting with new cost-effective sources. Joe knew that right this minute his cousin was in his office, straightening out the mess and preparing a report. Joe smiled, thinking of that report. Since Mario was so eager to save the company money, Joe had decided a thoro
ugh investigation on the subject was in order and volunteered Mario to do the job.
As Ellen’s subtle and highly sensual perfume teased his senses, Joe admitted he didn’t feel that guilty for lying. He glanced at her, studying every curve of her body. Her tantalizing breasts, small yet perfectly shaped; the slender indentation of her waist; her long, graceful back as it flowed into her rounded hips. He didn’t have to put his hands on her to know those spots intimately. His imagination had played with them from the moment she had gotten into the car.
She sighed. “Are you sure Mario was supposed to be here tonight?”
“Yes, that was what I … understood. Don’t worry about it, Ell. It’s not the end of the world if we can’t find Mario this time. It’s almost eleven anyway, so why don’t we enjoy ourselves? I’m sure even the pros would say we were entitled.”
Although her mouth pursed as if she were unsure, he could see a hint of anticipation in her eyes.
Without a word, he guided her toward the boardwalk exit. He resisted the urge to caress his fingers along the satin flesh of her arm. They’d never get out of here if he did.
“Where are we going?” she asked, taking nearly two steps to each one of his brisk strides.
“To look at some fish,” he said, steering her through the gamblers.
“Fish?”
“You know. A few scales, a couple of fins, and a glassy stare.”
“Okay,” she said, clearly humoring him. “As long as they don’t have great big jaws.”
“Not a single great big jaw.”
They had no sooner stepped out onto the boardwalk when Ellen pulled back. Joe turned around.
“What?” he asked.
“I don’t think I want to look at some fish, Joe.”
He smiled in challenge. Dammit, he’d get her to take a stroll on the boardwalk if he had to carry her.
“What’s the problem with fish, Ell?”
“They smell.”
He glared at her through the gloom of the erratic street lighting. “Now that you’ve taken any romance out of the evening, you can relax.”
“As long as we understand each other.”