Love, Laughter, and Happily Ever Afters Collection (Eight Fun, Romantic Novels by Eight Bestselling Authors)

by Violet Duke

  “Heard you opened a diner somewhere,” Lance said with a bored expression.

  “The Playbook is a restaurant on the top story of one of Chicago’s tallest buildings, Burk. It’s not a diner.”

  Lance shrugged. “Whatever.” He hooked his thumbs in the loops of his jeans and spread his legs apart in a territorial stance. It reminded Elizabeth of a pit bull readying his attack—only pit bulls could be warm and cuddly on occasion. She’d never known Lance Burk to be either.

  “Did you have an order?” Rob asked.

  “Nope. Not today. Just wanted to see you in your new digs.” Lance scoped the room and caught a beanbag as it rocketed toward the counter. He tossed it in the air a few times and chucked. “You’re really moving up in the world, Gabinarri.” He flung the silly beanbag at Rob then tapped the blonde on her tanned and toned upper arm. “Let’s go, Tara.”

  Tara batted her eyelashes at Rob one final time. “See you soon. Real soon.”

  He waved her a quick farewell while Elizabeth busied herself with filling orders. Once the Dynamic Duo walked out the door, though, she had a chance to study Rob’s face. His expression was completely unreadable, but she knew what his stony façade must mean: Jealousy. Tara looked as stunning as ever (much as Elizabeth hated to admit it), and she was with Lance, Rob’s former opponent, on some kind of casual date. Rob must surely want her back, even if he didn’t want to get married or have kids this year. And, if Elizabeth read Tara’s signs and signals correctly, Rob wouldn’t have much difficulty getting his wish.

  But, on a high note, the jugglers finally stopped juggling, the music got turned off and the customers went back to their regularly scheduled lives.

  She breathed a sigh of relief.

  When the tile floor was clear of townspeople, Jacques bounced in her direction. “Exciting day, no?” he said, still gyrating his hips and snapping his fingers. “Rob’s extraordinairement ideas make me want to dance.”

  “Everything makes you want to dance,” she said.

  He tried to engage her in a hip-hop boogie next to him, but the customers and the noise had drained her of every last ounce of sociability. Plus, she needed to save her strength for another evening with the Gabinarris. She pulled away and Jacques bopped off without her.

  Rob was cleaning some of the utensils in the backroom and had become uncharacteristically silent. Brooding, no doubt. Or, maybe, plotting Tara’s easy seduction. Elizabeth was preparing herself to return home and settle down to another four or so hours of typing when her cell phone rang.

  “Camden, how are you?” she said to her photographer.

  “Good, good, darling. Remarkably, unbelievably good. I’m in love.”

  “Oh, that’s…that’s terrific. Wow.” This was saying something. A statement for the record books, in fact. Camden was not one to easily fall. “I’m so happy for you. Who’s the lucky lady?”

  “My Annabelle. She’s the most gentle, delicate creature I’ve ever seen, hiding inside the buffest, most sculpted body imaginable.”

  Elizabeth heard some loud splintering noises on the line. It sounded like a ceiling beam had just crashed into the floor. “Cam, my goodness! Are you okay? Where are you? Please don’t tell me you’re on assignment in a war zone.”

  “No, no. I’m at Annabelle’s karate studio in Idaho. She’s amazing,” he said, his tone blanketed with an awe she’d never heard from him before.

  “Um, well, I’d love to meet her sometime. Maybe when you come over to do the photos next week she can—”

  “Oh, right,” he said. “That’s why I called. There’s no way I can make it out to Wisconsin next week or, really, anytime this month. Annabelle and I are going on a little jaunt out to Yellowstone where I’m going to shoot her doing karate poses in nature. Can you be a darling and let me reschedule for early or mid July?”

  “W-Well, sure, I guess. I’d hoped we could have the shots taken and developed well before the publisher’s deadline, though, just in case anything needs to be redone.”

  “Not a problem. Not a problem. We’ll have plenty of time to re-shoot if necessary. But you know I’m a one-shot wonder.”

  Elizabeth heard another booming crash over the phone line.

  “Ohhh,” he groaned. “Just watching her kick those muscled legs so high…and break bricks with a slice of her fragile hand…and flip unsuspecting opponents in the air the way I’d toss my Nikon bag over my shoulder… Man, it’s like hottest foreplay ever.”

  “Thanks for sharing, Cam.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “Okay, so we’ll talk in a few weeks and set the date. Jacques here is especially excited to get his éclairs immortalized on Kodak paper.”

  Another bash, bang, boom. “Fine. Fine. Tell him we’ll get it done. Gotta go now. Thanks for being so flexible, darling.” And on that note, Camden hung up.

  She stashed her phone in her purse and stepped onto the sidewalk. A young man and woman strolled by holding hands. Teen lovers, oblivious to the world, made out on a bench across the street. An elderly, longtime married couple window-shopped in the stores nearby.

  And Camden was in love with Annabelle the Karate Queen.

  And Rob was probably daydreaming about Tara.

  And she was still alone…and needing to go to yet another heartbreaking dinner at the house of the man who only wanted her to pretend to be his girlfriend.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  COULD THIS DAY get any worse? Rob thought as he cleaned up after his three to five-thirty shift and prepared to hand the reins over to Nick and Gretchen.

  Tara Welles and Lance Burk. Now there was a pair who deserved one another.

  He shook his head remembering their visit.

  Seeing Tara was like running into a pesky little sister, but seeing Burk always inspired him to violence. To want to sack him. It was the very way of him. So. Damned. Annoying.

  He spotted Elizabeth’s car pulling up in front of the shop. Punctual, as usual.

  Jacques stood by the counter, chatting it up with Gretchen. Nick played a final round of his favorite electronic game on his smart phone. Some sports thing, of course. A couple of customers lingered over waffle cones and sodas. Rob slipped out unnoticed.

  “Hey,” he said to Elizabeth. “Recovered from the rappin’ jugglers yet?”

  One small corner of one side of her mouth lifted into a very literal half-smile. It was a funny thing. For someone who didn’t talk much, the lady sure had a way of expressing herself.

  “Ah, don’t worry,” he said. “They’ve got gigs lined up for weeks. We probably won’t see them again.”

  She stepped out of the car and he saw she was wearing a long skirt. A nice one in a pretty shade of green. Very delicate ankles.

  “Th-That’s not what w-worries me, Rob.”

  “What worries you?”

  She raised a brow at him and sighed. “Let’s just go.”

  He put his palm on her shoulder to stop her from turning away. “No, c’mon. Tell me. Please.”

  Some kind of private battle duked it out on her face, but she seemed to give in to his request. “This m-m-morning, what you did, getting those jugglers. I-I didn’t like it. It was risky and it made me nervous, but—”

  “But what?”

  “But it was also k-kind of ingenious. How you p-pulled it off. It’s not something I would think of. Ever.”

  A pride he didn’t want to admit, but couldn’t deny, crept into his spine and crawled up it, making him stand taller. “Thanks, I think,” he said.

  “You’re welcome. Sort of,” she said back.
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br />   “Anything besides that on your mind?” he asked her, hoping it might be something else good but fearing it probably wasn’t.

  “No,” she answered quickly and, before he could fish for more compliments, she slid into his car, sank into the leather seats and angled herself away from him. Great. They’d make a believable couple, all right, just not a couple still in the throes of infatuation.

  He cracked his knuckles, revved up the engine and played his part by pretending to ignore her, too. And, so, onward to Mama’s for a second dinner they went. Two meals down. Only twenty-eight to go.

  As promised, a huge pan of lasagna awaited them. The aroma of oregano, basil and garlic greeted them at the door like a butler, while the “Material Girl” sang cloyingly through the speakers of Mama’s stereo. Home again.

  Mama was busy in the kitchen and the kids were with Maria-Louisa in the basement again, but Tony ushered them in, took the plate of cookies they brought, clapped him on the back and smooched Elizabeth lightly on the cheek.

  “You look smashing tonight,” his brother told Elizabeth, giving her the Male Eye-Scan (face, chest, legs, chest).

  She grinned at Tony. Tony winked at her.

  “Knock it off,” Rob said to him. “You’re a married man. You don’t get to ogle or wink or flirt.” At this, Elizabeth turned her big, surprised eyes on him.

  “What?” he said to her. “You’re my girlfriend, and my brother ought to be checking out his wife, and his wife only. There are rules.”

  She and Tony made eye contact, and Rob heard her whisper to Tony, “You know the truth, don’t you?”

  Tony reached over and took her hand, then he kissed it gently. “You’re an amazing woman, Elizabeth, and my brother is a world-class idiot.”

  She didn’t say anything to that, she merely sighed.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” he said to Tony, lowering his voice in case Mama snuck in on them.

  But it wasn’t his brother who answered him. It was Elizabeth.

  “He knows w-we’re not really a couple,” she whispered. “He’s sharp. He figured it out last night.”

  Panic gripped his throat. “When last night?”

  “During dinner, would be my guess.” She motioned to Tony with her palm.

  “Before, actually,” Tony said. “When we all talked in the hallway.”

  She nodded. “And Maria-Louisa knows, too, d-doesn’t she?”

  Tony shrugged. “Probably. We didn’t discuss it.”

  “Liar,” Rob said. “You two discuss everything.” Dammit.

  “Okay, fine, but you fooled the kids,” Tony said, his voice taking on a hard, dangerous edge. “And, of course, you sure bamboozled Mama. That’s gotta make you proud, big brother.”

  “Well, hell, you know how she gets when—”

  “That’s neither here nor there,” Tony said. “But, since Elizabeth was willing to play your game to help you, I won’t snitch on you. Not this time. But you’ll owe me.”

  Rob may have missed Tony’s moment of realization last night, but he didn’t miss the threatening note in his brother’s tone tonight, nor could he avoid seeing the sadness lingering in Elizabeth’s eyes as she looked away from him and headed toward the dining room.

  He felt like the idiot his brother claimed he was.

  The trampling of little feet thundered up the stairs and beelined straight for the table. Jeez, did those kids ever slow down? After a chorus of enthusiastic Hi’s and Hello’s to and from Maria-Louisa and the kids, Mama marched into the room.

  “Oh, good. Our Elizabeth is here again!” Mama held her tight, and “Frizzy Lizzy” embraced his mother with a warmth she might have reserved for her own dear mom.

  And now he felt like guilt-ridden fool.

  “Roberto.” Mama kissed him. “How was your day at the shop? You want to follow in your Uncle Pauly’s footsteps now? Work at Tutti-Frutti?” Hopeful, futile questions.

  “I like what I do in Chicago, Mama. And, besides, Siegfried and Uncle Pauly will be back before we know it.” He said this to try to convince himself, but four weeks still seemed like an eternity of two-and-a-half hour shifts.

  “Tell her about the j-jugglers,” Elizabeth said with a crafty look made all the more wily because she routinely passed herself off as such an innocent.

  He narrowed his eyes at her before turning back to his mother.

  “We’ve been having a little fun at the shop and doing some different things,” he explained without really explaining. “Some jugglers entertained us today for a while. No big deal. I doubt they’ll be back and, besides, I’m sure our uncles will go on doing things their same old way when they come home. That’s what works best for them.”

  His mother raised a dark eyebrow.

  “I’m not trying to interfere or change things too much, Mama. There’s no room for another person’s vision anyway. Too many chefs and all that.”

  Mama tweaked his nose. “So sure of yourself, Roberto, aren’t you? Now go wash your hands for dinner.”

  He sighed and did as he was told.

  Strange night, though, and he didn’t know why exactly. A certain vibe shimmied between him and Elizabeth. Maybe because he sat next to her tonight instead of across the table from her. Maybe because they had this shared secret. Or maybe just because the moon grew fuller as the June nights grew longer, making weird ions hang in the air everywhere. Or something.

  Anyway, for whatever reason, all through the meal he felt himself being hyper-attentive to her: The way she talked (so sweetly) to his niece and squirmy nephews. The way she interacted (so politely) with his Mama and Tony and Maria-Louisa. The way she emitted (so surprisingly) a very grownup sensuality that seemed both innate and unpretentious.

  He’d never allowed himself to think of her like that. Like a potential conquest. Partly because they’d roamed in such different spheres during high school, but mostly because she’d never been the kind of girl who threw herself at him.

  She still wasn’t.

  But, he remembered overhearing her say he had a “hot body” yesterday. That was something, he supposed, although not nearly as promising as the “kind of ingenious” compliment she gave him about getting the jugglers today. And once, during their junior year, she’d called one of his world-history project ideas “very clever” after class.

  He smiled at that.

  “Why are you laughing, Uncle Rob?” Camilla the little pixie asked him.

  “I wasn’t laughing.”

  “Yes, you were!”

  “I was smiling,” he said, noticing all the eyes at the table turning toward him and looking more interested than they needed to be. Elizabeth, in particular, seemed pretty damn curious.

  “Why were you smiling, then?” Camilla said.

  “I just had a happy memory.”

  “Oooh! Was it from your birthday?”

  “No,” he told the girl. “It was from a long, long time ago.” Then, taking a chance, “It was from a conversation Elizabeth and I had when we were in high school.”

  He put his hand over Elizabeth’s jittery one and gazed into her shocked green eyes. Hey, what was the use of pretending to have a girlfriend unless he acted somewhat affectionately toward her, right? He had to make the show believable, if only for his mother’s benefit.

  “Remember history class with Mr. Monroe?” he said to Elizabeth, rubbing the top of her hand and feeling the soft skin with the firm bones just beneath. “I remember how you used to know the answers to just about everything in there. Really impressive.”

  She tried to tug her fingers away. No way was
he letting her. He held fast with one hand and began stroking gently with the other.

  “I-I d-didn’t know all th-the answers.”

  “Sure you did.” He traced her tiny blue veins with his fingertip and grinned at her. “You sat two seats away from me, so I always noticed what you were doing. Most of the time you were looking at the clock or staring out the window. You were at least three million light years away. Then Mr. Monroe would ask a question about World War II or the Russian government or something. If you heard it, you’d slink down in your seat behind Kent Grommer. If you didn’t, you’d just keep on daydreaming. He’d ask a bunch of people, but they wouldn’t know the answer. Then, when he couldn’t stand it anymore, he’d call on you or on Matthew Landers. And, no matter what, whether you’d been paying attention or not, you could answer the question. It was freaking amazing.”

  She shot him a glare, which confused him. He’d kill for a compliment like that, but she was clearly sending an I’m-Pissed-Off vibe in his direction. And also still trying to get him to release her hand.

  He tried to put it another way so she’d get his meaning. “Look, everybody wished they could do that, too. Be acknowledged as the smartest one. That’s why girls like Tara Welles were so jealous of you.”

  She stopped both tugging and glaring. “W-What?”

  “Well, yeah. I mean, I couldn’t do what you did either, and I even liked history. I’d concentrate as hard as I could, but I could barely follow Mr. Monroe’s train of thought. For you, it didn’t even seem as tough as breathing.”

  Her hand lay like a limp dinner roll beneath his. Her blank expression gave away nothing. “Y-You’re kidding?”

  He shook his head. “Nope.” Then he turned to Tony. “Tell her. Wasn’t she like a legend in high school?”