Bachelor Boss

by Christie Ridgway

  She opened her mouth to protest. They could indulge, couldn’t they? What was wrong with a no-strings fling? She wanted to indulge.

  But that wasn’t a good enough reason, she conceded. Not with all the connections between their families that a casual affair might mess up. There’d be a million future moments that wouldn’t be made better with a stilted goodbye between them. Not to mention his long-held feelings for her sister…

  And anyway, Lucy had come here to get over her crush!

  A woman who read Cosmo or who lived vicariously through soap operas or friends’ love lives—which sometimes had strikingly eerie parallels—knew you couldn’t fling someone out of your system. She had a crush on Carlo and was working here with him in order to crush it, not nurture the inconvenient feelings with naked kisses and caresses.

  She sighed, then flopped against the back of the couch. “Okay.” Withdrawing her fingers from his, she patted the back of his hand. “Okay, you’re right.”

  He looked relieved, and she tried to be fine with that. Maybe it would be best if she resigned from McMillan & Milano, she thought. Put up with the guff she would be sure to get from her nosy family for leaving yet another job. It would be the easiest way to avoid having to be with this beautiful, maddening man—you’re the sun, Lucy—every day.

  But there was that. That, you’re the sun, Lucy. Despite everything, she liked the idea that she could bring light to Carlo’s darkness. He’d lingered in the shadows for far too long.

  “Friends, Goose?”

  If it kills me.

  * * *

  The hours at McMillan & Milano were going to be the thing that killed Lucy. Not only was there the regular work week, but she had grabbed at the offered overtime and came in on Saturday. Though she could use the extra money, by the afternoon she was exhausted, sick of the same walls around her, and even then she didn’t look half as burned out as her temporary boss.

  As she brought Carlo the umpteenth cup of coffee, she couldn’t help but notice his blank stare at the layout spread across his desk. It was the design of the Street Beat festival venue, with its five stages, food areas, first aid and bathroom facilities. In previous years, Street Beat had been shoehorned into the busy, revitalized downtown area—“a security nightmare,” according to Carlo—but it didn’t look like the festival’s relocation to the parking lot of the football stadium was making the head of security sleep any better.

  Without the cramped quarters constraining the ticket sales, the expected attendance—and presumably the nightmare factor—had gone way up.

  Lucy set the mug down on the corner of his desk. He didn’t even grunt his thanks as he usually did. She wondered for a second if he was asleep with his eyes open.

  “Are you even seeing that?”

  “Seeing what?” he mumbled, without glancing up.

  She was used to that. In the days since their passionate interlude in that very chair, in this very office, Carlo had done his best not to catch her eye. One time he had, his gaze meeting hers as she brought in a stack of reports, and it had all rushed back.

  His mouth on her breast.

  His hot, rough palms on her naked hips.

  The tenderness of his touch.

  You’re the sun, Lucy.

  But since then it had all been business.

  How could she warm him, make him smile, if the man who’d had business cards made up for her wouldn’t let himself look her in the face?

  “Let’s get out of here,” she said.

  “What?” He lifted his gaze to her left shoulder.

  She bent her knees so that it was her eyes he was seeing instead. “We’ve been inside here too long. Let’s go to the beach.”

  “Huh?”

  “You know. That place with sand and ocean. The reason so many people choose San Diego to live. You’re not getting anything done here. I’m giving myself paper cuts due to claustrophobia.”

  He blinked, looked concerned. “You’ve hurt yourself?”

  She shook her head. “Lack of fresh air is making you dumb if you can’t discern hyperbole when you hear it. But okay, yeah, I’ve hurt myself and the only cure is you let me take you to the beach.”

  It surprised the heck out of her when he rose from his chair. “You’re right. We both need a break.”

  But she should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. When they reached the parking garage, he peeled off toward his car.

  “Carlo!”

  “I won’t leave until I make sure your car starts.”

  Lucy rolled her eyes and stomped over to him and grabbed him by the elbow. “This way. My car. Me and you. The beach.” His feet dragged against the concrete.

  “Goose…”

  “You called me that name again. You owe me for that alone.” Then they were at her Volkswagen Bug and she was stuffing him into the passenger seat.

  “I don’t fit in here,” he protested as she pushed on his knees to fold them further.

  “Stop complaining.”

  He didn’t. Though he wasn’t loud about it, he did continue to mutter. He even heaved a sigh as they came to a stop in the parking lot of Belmont Park, the amusement area alongside Mission Beach.

  His eagerness to get out of the car wasn’t as gratifying as it might have been when he unpretzeled himself from his seat. “Five more minutes and you could serve me with mustard,” he said, giving her a squinty glare.

  The comment made her feel hungry, not guilty. So their first stop was the ice cream shop, where, as they were waiting in line, she caught him pulling out his cell phone.

  “Give me that,” she ordered, snatching it away and slipping it into the front pocket of her jeans. “You need a break, you take a break.”

  He rolled his eyes this time but paid for their cones and then followed her onto the boardwalk. They strolled among others enjoying the beautiful autumn day, dodging skateboards and bicycles, and zigzagging around little kids dragging plastic buckets of shells. Lucy sucked in big lungfuls of air between long licks of her rocky road ice cream.

  Tongue out, she caught Carlo studying her over his pralines and cream. She lowered her cone. “What?”

  He shrugged. “I was just trying to calculate how long it’s been since I’ve hung out at the beach.”

  “Too long.”

  “Yeah.” His head turned and he stared out at the water. “My dad used to bring my brothers and sister and me here all the time.”

  “Brave man.” Carlo was the youngest of four brothers; his sister, Francesca, was younger than him.

  “We were hellions. Our favorite trick was to convince Franny to catch seagulls.”

  Lucy had never heard about that. “Catch seagulls? How do you do that?”

  “We’d dig a hole big enough for Franny to lie in. Then we’d cover her with a beach towel and cover that with corn chips. When the gulls swooped down for the bait, she was supposed to swoop up and trap them inside the towel.”

  Lucy blinked. “And she would actually do this?”

  “For an ice cream cone and the promise that we’d play school with her later.”

  “Oh, and I bet that happened.” Lucy knew all about the promises of elder siblings.

  “We did play with her. But we always acted up enough so that Teacher Franny sent us home early.” He grinned. “I haven’t thought about all that in ages.”

  They walked a little farther, then turned back toward the amusement area. “My sister and brothers wouldn’t play my games,” Lucy said. “And included me in theirs only under great duress.”

  “Even Elise?”

  She shot him a sidelong glance. “Perfect Elise wasn’t always so perfect, you know.”

  His neutral expression didn’t change. “Who said she was?” As they passed a trash can, he threw away the remains of his cone. “I only thought as the other girl in the family she’d do girly things with you.”

  “Nope. You should remember that all my sibs were manic about board games. They’d play marathons of word
games. Imagine me, Lucy, trying to compete with Jason and Sam and Elise. They’re all enough older that they could count better, spell better, and had vocabularies that included attorney and financier and actuary. ”

  Carlo laughed at her bitterness. “Funny, how they then came to choose those professions.”

  “Yeah, and this when I was at the stage where I wanted to grow up and raise magic ponies.” Her brothers and sister still teased her about it. If you opened any old game box at her parents’ house, you’d still find the old tallies. Years and years of Lucy coming in last. “So in the game department, Goose always earned the big goose-egg score.”

  Carlo wrapped his arm around her neck and drew her against his chest in a hug that was all about affection and nothing about seduction. “But you’re working your magic now, Luce.” He smiled down at her and his teeth were even whiter in contrast to his weekend stubble. “Who else could have enticed me away from my desk and then dragged me to the beach for an ice cream cone and a ride on the roller coaster?”

  “Ride on the roller coaster?” Lucy hoped her voice didn’t squeak, and she also hoped he couldn’t tell she was trying to hang back as he directed the two of them toward the line for the old-time wooden ride, the Big Dipper. “We don’t have to do the roller coaster.”

  His grin only widened and the sunlight was sparkling in his dark eyes. “Make me happy, Luce.”

  Make him laugh, is what he meant, she thought, recognizing the dare in his eyes. Hadn’t she grown up with brothers? Hadn’t he just told her about the way he’d get his little sister to let herself be seagull bait?

  She slipped out of his hold and stomped to the end of the line. “Don’t whine to me if you get a stomachache.”

  Behind her, his free-and-easy laugh made the flutters in her own belly worthwhile. If she was his sun, then his laughter was the bubbles in her champagne. Being with him like this—Carlo relaxed and funny and comfortable—made her happy.

  Not happy enough to override her nerves when they were shown their seats in the coaster. Pasting a cheerful smile on her face, she made enough room for him so that she couldn’t even take comfort from his warmth. She didn’t need it, she told herself.

  “This is going to be fantastic fun!” She hoped she wasn’t lying.

  Carlo glanced down at her and grinned again. The ocean breeze ruffled the edges of his businesslike haircut and made him look ten years younger. Before Elise had broken his heart. Before his partner had died.

  “Lucy,” he said. “I can’t remember the last time I’ve had such a great afternoon.”

  Short of expiring from fright, nothing could take away from that perfect moment. Carlo’s handsome face. Carlo’s carefree and handsome face. The smile that he was beaming down at her, and at her alone.

  She hung on to that perfection as the car lurched into motion. Her smile was pinned at both corners by pure determination as they started the climb. With luck, he wouldn’t notice her white knuckles clamped around the restraining bar.

  They’d almost reached the top. Lucy’s eyeballs felt cold and as wide as the pit in her belly. She didn’t like heights. She detested fast roller coasters. She hated the sense of falling, so much that she avoided elevators whenever reasonably possible.

  But she couldn’t ruin Carlo’s wild ride.

  There was that horrid suspended moment at the top and then they were falling, speeding, rushing. In the car behind them, someone was screaming over and over.

  Lucy dug her fingernails into the metal lap bar and kept a determined hold of her rigor mortis grin. Until Carlo reached out and wrapped her shoulders with his arm. He pulled her close. “Wha…?” She looked up, trying to say something over the scary, rushing wind.

  His mouth tickled her ear. “I need somebody to hang on to.” And then he tucked her closer against his chest and she surrendered to her fears. Burying her face at his throat, she clung to him through the next thirty-seven years of her life.

  Later, he told her it was more like thirty-seven seconds. But that was when her feet were on solid ground and she could appreciate that she’d survived. She could also appreciate that glimmering light in his eyes and that smile of his that didn’t show a single sign of dimming.

  An odd chirping from deep in her pants pocket interrupted her self-congratulation. When she realized it was Carlo’s cell phone, she would have liked to have ignored it, but he was already putting out his hand.

  So what? she thought, drawing it out. His shoulders were relaxed, his lips were still curved, he still looked happy. And it was all thanks to Lucy.

  He flipped it open and held it to his ear.

  At a public-safety demonstration, Lucy had once watched a man use a blanket to smother a fire. It was like that now with Carlo’s expression. All that was glowing with life was gone in an instant.

  It was as though nothing warm had ever existed.

  CHAPTER SIX

  As he folded his cell phone closed, Carlo grabbed Lucy’s hand and tugged her in the direction of the parking lot. It was still bright enough for sunglasses, but he didn’t feel the sun’s warmth. A little kid ran across their path and the child’s vivid red shorts and neon-orange T-shirt hurt his eyes. Teenagers off to the right were laughing and the sound rang too loudly in his ears.

  Even the smiles on the people he passed in his hurry to reach the parking lot felt wrong. It seemed as if a dark well had opened up in his gut and sucked down everything good about the day.

  “Carlo? Carlo, what is it?” There was an edge to Lucy’s voice.

  Gritting his teeth, he shortened his stride so he wasn’t dragging her behind him. Keep it together, Milano. You won’t help anyone by losing your cool.

  “Carlo?”

  “It’s Germaine.” He schooled his features so they betrayed nothing as he glanced down at Lucy. Their afternoon’s adventure had delivered a slight sunburn across her cheeks and a light sprinkle of freckles on her nose. She was so damn pretty. So damn sweet. For a minute he wished he could run away with her, go some place far away where there was no darkness and nothing to worry about besides finding ways to make her eyes sparkle and that rosebud mouth of hers to curve in happiness.

  “Carlo?”

  He shook away the little fantasy. “Germaine had a fall. Or maybe worse. Her neighbor caught sight of her lying on her front walk and called 911, and then called her sister and me.”

  Lucy’s hand tightened on his. “Why didn’t you say so right away? Let’s go.” She picked up her speed, now tugging him. “I know the hospital nearest her house.”

  He had to go there, of course. He was practically the closest thing she had to family, now that Pat was gone.

  Pat. At the thought of his old partner, Carlo’s footsteps slowed, but Lucy was having none of it. “Come on,” she said, yanking on his hand.

  He forced himself forward. Keep it together, Milano. Keep it cool. Lucy didn’t need to know how this was going to cost him. Lucy wouldn’t know, because he’d send her on her way first. Walking into the hospital would set off a rockslide of memories, but he’d be alone with them. Maybe not better equipped to handle their impact, but at least without a witness to their damage.

  Lucy didn’t prove so easy to shake. At the hospital, she zipped past the hospital entrance and sped toward the parking area without giving even a token tap on the brake pedal when he protested.

  “Just drop me off at the front,” he told her. “I’ll catch a ride home by calling a cab or one of my brothers or something.”

  Her little Bug whipped into a narrow parking space. “Germaine needs you. You need a friend.”

  He stared at her and dumbly repeated her words. “I need a friend?”

  “Everybody needs a friend,” she asserted, and exited the car with brisk movements. “We’re buddies, right?”

  “Bosom buddies,” he muttered, following in her wake. For someone so short she could cover distances in an amazingly brief amount of time. He watched the plate-glass entrance doors automatically wh
isk open as her running shoes hit the black rubber mat. From his place on the sidewalk, he watched them close behind her. Six steps toward the front desk, he saw her register that he’d remained outside.

  She flitted back out the doors. “Are you okay?”

  No. Not okay. That pit in his gut had now been filled with boulders and branches and broken pieces of glass that were churning and turning and tearing at his insides.

  But that was his private pain. Taking a breath, he started forward. “I’m coming. I was just…thinking.”

  Thinking too much. Remembering.

  Keep it together!

  The doors opened again and seemed to draw them inward along with some of the odors of the world outside: warm asphalt, grass newly mowed, the acrid exhaust of a laundry truck. And then the plate glass closed behind them and the outside world and its scents disappeared, leaving Carlo trapped in this other world that smelled of cold equipment, old magazines, desperate hopes.

  Lucy was heading off toward the front desk again, but Carlo snagged her arm. “E.R.,” he said. “I know how to get there.”

  She shot him a strange look, which made him guess that he sounded as strangled as he felt. He cleared his throat. “Lucy. Look. You go on home. I’ve got things covered.”

  “Sure you do,” she answered, but she was walking again, this time in the direction of the emergency room.

  He glared at her back in mounting frustration as he followed behind her. “Lucy, go home.” Damn it, she was going to make him nuts and he wasn’t in any shape to fight it, not when every inhalation of what the hospital called “air” made him think of the night they’d brought in Pat. Even without closing his eyes he could see the stain spreading on his partner’s sleeve from beneath his bulletproof vest. Blood bubbling from his mouth and running over the silvery five o’clock shadow on the older man’s chin.

  Without thinking, Carlo reached out to stroke the back of Lucy’s sunny hair. It was the color of butter and felt like that, too, smooth and soft. The picture in his head of Pat receded. “I don’t need you, Lucy,” he said, even as he twined his fingers in her blond strands. “I don’t.”