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

by Violet Duke

  Tony didn’t speak. He merely answered with one of his sage nods and a grin.

  Camilla piped up, “Was that your happy memory, Uncle Rob?”

  “Kind of,” he said, knowing he’d be too embarrassed to explain the real recollection. He turned to look deep into Elizabeth’s eyes and saw a flash of something there. Her big brain must be hard at work trying to process his words, evaluate their merit. What her conclusion would be was anyone’s guess, though.

  “Ah, young love,” his Mama mused, standing to clear away the dessert dishes. “Why don’t you all go relax on the patio?”

  “Th-Thank you, Mrs. Gabinarri,” Elizabeth said, almost jumping to her feet, “but I have to g-get back a little earlier tonight.”

  “You do?” Rob said. She hadn’t mentioned this to him before.

  Her head bobbed vigorously. “Work.”

  Like hell.

  “Okay, sweetheart.” He patted her hand, which was clenched tight again. What had he done to get her so angry and why was she shorting him forty-five minutes? Not that he didn’t want to leave, too, but they had a deal. “Sorry, Mama. I guess Elizabeth’s cookbook project can’t be put off any longer.”

  “Well, that’s all right,” Mama said. “We’ll see you both again tomorrow, yes?”

  Elizabeth smiled at his mother. “Of course.”

  “Absolutely,” he said at the same time.

  Mama disappeared into the kitchen. Elizabeth snatched her hand away from him once and for all and turned abruptly away.

  He glanced at his still-seated family members, and he saw how Camilla tilted her little head in thought. And Maria-Louisa squinted at him. And Tony, never one to hold back, rolled his eyes and pressed his knuckles to his own lips.

  “Have a terrific night, you two,” Tony called after them as they walked out the door. Although, Rob could tell his little brother expected the remainder of the evening to be just the opposite.

  *

  ELIZABETH MASSAGED HER temples and took full, body-cleansing breaths in Rob’s car.

  “Thanks for springing us early,” he said a few blocks down the road, “but what happened back there?”

  “N-Nothing.” What could she tell him? That having him caress her hand the way he did at the table was torturous and hurtful since he didn’t mean it? That his preposterous fib about her being envied by girls like Tara was even more so?

  The tips of his ears turned an attractive shade of pink, but Rob’s temper seemed to run several degrees hotter. “Nothing? You practically sprinted out of my mother’s house. We may be playing a charade in there, but be straight with me here.”

  “B-Be straight with y-y-you?” She clasped her fingers together and shook them in front of her, imagining she had them around his neck. “Rob, you’ve d-done nothing but lie to me since you came into town.”

  “What? I didn’t—” He swerved the car over to the side of the road and parked it.

  Oh, goody. This was becoming a nifty nightly ritual.

  “Okay, now you listen up, Elizabeth Daniels. The only thing I lied about was telling my family we were a couple. With Tony and Maria-Louisa guessing the truth, the only person I’m lying to—and asking you to lie to—is my Mama. And yes, yes, I know that’s still scummy of me, but I have my reasons, and I already told those to you. I haven’t lied to you about a thing since then.”

  “We’re also lying to the k-kids.”

  He shrugged. “But they don’t really care.”

  “They do. Camilla does especially.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “That’s why you’re mad? Because of them?”

  It was partly the truth, but she didn’t clarify, which also made it partly a lie as well. Still, she wasn’t going to explain that if he touched her again she might have to choke him to make him stop. Every cell inside her body went haywire with desire for him when their fingers joined together. And looking into her eyes, so sincerely it seemed, for those few nanoseconds before she realized he was just acting…that almost did her in at the Gabinarri house.

  “Huh. You really like kids, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “How much do you like them?” he asked, his voice laced with suspicion. “When you get married, how many children do you want to have?”

  Well, there was no denying it. She wanted what she wanted. “If I get married, I w-want four.”

  “Four! For real?”

  She nodded, shrugged and turned to look out the window.

  “Jeez,” he said. “What is it with you women?”

  She figured this was a rhetorical question he didn’t expect her to answer. She was wrong.

  “Elizabeth?”

  “What?”

  “Explain this to me. Why on earth would you want a brood of little rug rats tearing up your house? They make messes everywhere. They ask a gazillion questions. They fight and bicker with each other until you’re crazed with wanting to get away from them. Granted, they’re cute and all, especially when they’re asleep, but that’s hardly a reason to have so many of them living with you.”

  She thought about her mom—the delightful messes they made together in the kitchen when she was little, the long walks they took while asking questions about each other’s day, the warmth and closeness they’d always shared. Motherhood was such a special relationship. A gift to treasure. Then, knowing she’d sound like a Hallmark card but not caring, she said, “Because pparenting is about real and true love.”

  This comment seemed to halt his wagging tongue.

  “So what’s wrong with getting a dog or a cat or a pet alligator?” he said finally. “You could fall in love with a baby black widow. I’ve seen it happen. This guy in my college dorm treated his spider like royalty. He named her ‘Legs’ and he kept her in a golden—”

  “Rob.”

  “What?”

  “That’s not the same thing. At all.”

  He sighed. “I guess not. I just—well, it’s hard for me to imagine I’d ever feel ready. That I’d ever know I could handle the problems that’d come up. My mother—she’s amazing. She knew when we were really sick and when we were faking. She helped us with our schoolwork even though English was her second language. When Dad died, she kept the family together, despite her own sorrow. I mean, she must’ve just wanted to crawl into bed and hide in her room for three months, but she didn’t. She worked. She made our meals. She let us be sad or angry or whatever we felt.” He gave her a serious look. “I wouldn’t be able to pull off something like that.”

  Elizabeth remembered when Rob’s dad had died, just before their senior year in high school. She hadn’t imagined he’d been so haunted by it, though. That it would have affected his decision whether or not to be a father. Then again, the deaths of her parents had affected her as profoundly—only in the opposite direction.

  “You’d b-be able to do it. No matter what, I think everyone has fears about being a parent.”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  “Tony must’ve had worries when he became a dad. Did you talk to him about it?”

  An odd look came over his face. “Umm, not recently. Look, we’ve got some time before I have to be back at the shop. If you’re able to stay away from your computer for another half hour, I could buy you some coffee or something. What do you say?”

  What could she say?

  “O-Okay.”

  “Great. Let’s get out of here.”

  A few minutes later they were seated at Karen’s Koffee Shoppe on First and Central. She’d gotten a handf
ul of cappuccinos here over the years, but she’d never ordered and sat in a booth. Least of all with a guy. She always took everything to go. And this…this…outing, or whatever it was with Rob, felt suspiciously like a date.

  Too bizarre for words. Though most things were.

  “So, where do you usually hang out on Saturday nights when you aren’t surviving stressful family dinners with old high school friends?” Rob said.

  Stressful dinners, she wouldn’t argue, but old high school friends? Is that what he thought they were?

  But she didn’t say that. She said, “Gretchen, Nick, Jacques and I get t-together sometimes. We have Treat Swaps.”

  “Treat Swaps? What’s that?”

  “We each bring something we m-made to share. Tortes, crepes, chocolate, pastries…anything good…and we taste test.”

  “Mmm. That sounds fun.” He licked his lips and she felt her attraction to him rise from her belly, still churning with suppressed anxiety, to her own lips, which trembled strangely but, she hoped, unnoticeably.

  “It is,” she said. And, then, to her own astonishment, she added, “M-Maybe you can join us sometime.”

  His eyes lit up like a little kid being handed his first triple-decker ice cream sundae. “Thanks, Elizabeth. That’d be great. Just let me know when you’re going to do it again. I can’t promise to make anything fancy like you guys do, but I’ll bring along something for everyone, too.”

  She nodded and took a long sip of her cappuccino. He’s only here for a few weeks, she reminded herself. Don’t think you can adopt him into your little group. Don’t think he’ll become your new best friend. Don’t think someone like Rob Gabinarri will stay around for a second longer than he has to.

  But it was hard to deny that niggling little hope, that unruly wish that she’d get the answer wrong for once.

  They got on the subject of kids again, a topic Rob couldn’t seem to move away from.

  “So why, if you like children so much, didn’t you become a teacher or something? You seem really at ease when you’re around Tony’s kids, and they listen to you,” he said.

  At this she had to laugh. “Don’t you realize how much t-talking is involved in teaching? I’d freeze.”

  He squinted at her as if trying to figure out a Great Mystery of the Universe. “I’ve heard you with them, though. Your speech is really smooth.” Then he paused as if weighing his words. “You don’t stutter then, Elizabeth.”

  Well, at least he was able to openly acknowledge her disability. Two points for him and a big brownie with chocolate chips on top. At least he wasn’t one of awful people who pretended to ignore her stuttering while looking like they were going to crawl out of their skin with impatience. Or, even worse, one of those people who spoke louder when they talked to her.

  “I’m c-comfortable with the kids. I don’t feel the kind of pressure from th-them that I do with adults. Unfortunately, teaching is not just doing art projects with seven-year-olds and a bunch of Popsicle sticks. There are the parents and the staff members and the administrators.” She took a breath after her long explanation. “Writing lets me p-put everything on paper first. Even most of my communication with m-my editor is done through e-mail. That works best for me.”

  “Okay, fair enough. But I’ve also heard you talking to Gretchen, Nick and Jacques. You barely ever stumble with them.”

  She squeezed her lips shut. How to explain this? If she said that they were her friends and that’s why she could speak freely in their presence, would he be offended? He seemed to think of the two of them as friends, too and, yet, she was anything but at ease with him.

  “I’ve known them a long time,” she said.

  “You’ve known me a longer time.” He raised his eyebrows at her in challenge, but the smile on his lips told her he was still in good humor. “What’s the difference?”

  She took another sip of cappuccino to buy a few seconds. “Did y-you ever run into someone after a f-few years had gone by and, when the two of you started talking, it was l-like those years disappeared? You felt the same feelings you felt before just by being around that person?”

  He grinned. “You mean the way I feel like I’m ten again whenever I’m back at Mama’s house?”

  “Kind of. Yes.”

  “Well, sure. Certain people pull you back into the context of whatever time period you shared. When I get together with my college roommates, it’s like we’re twenty-year-old slackers again, just interested in playing football in the courtyard and watching action flicks on TV and drinking beer at a sports bar.”

  She nodded and watched his handsome face as realization slowly dawned.

  “You mean, being with me puts you back into high school mode? Makes you feel like you’re there again?”

  “Now you’re on it, Detective Holmes,” she said.

  He crossed his arms, shooting a faux-scowl in her direction. “Did that snide, stutter-free comment really come from you, the reputedly oh-so-sweet-and-not-very-communicative Miss Lizzy Daniels?”

  A giggle escaped her lips without permission. “Elizabeth,” she told him.

  He laughed then gulped down some of his own coffee. After a few moments he said, “Was it that bad for you back then? I always kind of thought not being in the spotlight would’ve been a little easier. But what do I know.”

  It had been bad but, no, she didn’t plan on telling him that. He didn’t need to know about the nasty “observations” popular girls like Tara made about her or the unkind remarks sports-hero guys like Lance said to other, similar, sports-hero guys. Guys like Rob. If he didn’t remember it for himself, she sure as heck wasn’t about to remind him.

  “Y-You didn’t like being adored by the masses?” she asked instead. “You didn’t want everyone drooling over your opinion of just about anything or…or driving out in droves to watch your Midas touch on the football field?”

  He fingered his stirring stick and flicked a few coffee droplets on the napkin in front of him. “I’d have traded it for something else in a heartbeat.”

  “What kind of ‘something else,’ Rob? There weren’t that many choices for cliques. And, c’mon. You c-can’t expect me to believe you wished you’d been unpopular.”

  He looked up at her, his dark eyes intense. “Okay, maybe not ‘unpopular’ but I sure could’ve lived without that Golden Boy crap. That was a lot of pressure to live with. People projecting their wishes on you all the time. No one taking you seriously in any area but sports. Feeling like every single move you made was being watched and recorded by somebody who wanted something from you, but you were never sure what it was. God, I hated that.”

  None of his characteristic good humor remained. He was in full glowering form. But, for the first time, it occurred to her that maybe they both craved the same thing: To be seen as they were now, not as they once had been.

  “I guess neither of us felt too happy w-with our lot in life back then,” she admitted.

  “Ain’t that the truth.” He squinted at her. “So, why did you stay? Why not ditch Wilmington Bay the minute you could blow town?”

  “Like you did?”

  He nodded.

  Why did she stay? “I guess there are a few reasons. Living here is ‘the devil I know,’ so to speak. I don’t spend much time out and about the town, but when I do, I know my way around. My only living relative is Uncle Siegfried, and he’s here. My three best friends are here, too. I wouldn’t want to start all over in a new place. Plus, Wilmington Bay has some g-great memories for me also, especially of times I’d spent with my parents.”

  “Okay, I get that. But ar
en’t you ever nibbled by the wanderlust bug? Want to go out and see what else the world has to offer?”

  “Maybe a little,” she admitted. “I went with my parents to California once. To a spot my mom really loved. Mendocino. I wouldn’t have minded spending more time there. It was beautiful. But Wilmington Bay is home. I don’t plan to ever move away.”

  “Hmm.” He stared at her for a second, brows pushed together, and then pointed with his chin to her cappuccino. “Want a refill to go? I have to get back to Tutti-Frutti before your ‘longtime friends’ skewer me with a swizzle stick for tardiness. Scary, those people.”

  “Are not.”

  “Are, too,” he insisted. “But I like them, and I can see why you like them.” He gave her a long, scrutinizing look. “I can also see why they like you.”

  He grabbed a second round of coffee for each of them and tossed away their trash before driving them back to the ice cream parlor.

  “Thanks for the evening,” he said, opening her car door and helping her out. Not that she needed help. She was just too stunned to refuse.

  With her second cappuccino in one hand and his fingers gripping her other one, it was all she could do to step onto the sidewalk and nod her thanks at him.

  He smiled and brought his lips to the back of her hand, making every nerve fiber tingle. “See you tomorrow, Elizabeth,” he said. “Sweet dreams.”

  Oh, yeah. That was going to happen all right. Damn.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “DID YOU LIKE your surprise, Boss Man?”

  “You’re the best,” Rob said on the phone to his favorite Chicagoan, admiring the three big boxes of milk-chocolate-covered fruit slices Miguel had stashed between the folds of his requested casual attire. “You know just what I like. Now, tell me about my restaurant. What disasters are happening down there in my absence?”

  Miguel huffed on the line. “There are no disasters with me at the helm, oh, ye of zilcho faith. The staff’s hopping around like rabbits trying to keep up with demand. We’ve been book solid every night since you’ve been away.”