“I wonder where he picked them up,” Lisa said, referring to the blond by his side and the two brunettes following close behind. “He was just going to his house to get some fireworks for Sophie.”
“Apparently he picked up more than a few smoke bombs. Who are those women?”
“The blond is Gail something, I don’t know her married name, but her dad was Judge Tanner. The two behind him look like the Howell twins, Lonna and Lanna.”
Delaney remembered Gail Tanner. She’d been several years older than Delaney, and their families had occasionally socialized. She also recognized her as the woman Nick had pick up at Henry’s funeral. The Howell twins she didn’t know. “Gail’s married?”
“Divorced.”
Delaney turned around for a better look. The women wore tight tank tops tucked into jeans. Delaney would have loved to dismiss them as tramps, but she couldn’t. They looked more like centerfolds than hookers. “Did Gail get a boob job? I don’t remember her being that big.”
“A boob job and a little fat sucked out of her butt, too.”
“Hmm.” Delaney’s gaze returned to Nick and the triangle of thigh visible through the tear in his jeans. “Have you seen them do liposuction on TV? Damn, it hurt my buns just thinking about it.”
“It’s disgusting. Looks just like chicken fat.”
“Would you ever have it done?”
“In a second. Would you?”
Delaney looked at her friend as she thought about it. “I don’t think so, but I’ll probably have my breasts lifted when they start to sag past my belly button. Hopefully, that won’t be for twenty more years.” Delaney’s statement drew Lisa’s attention to her chest.
“You always did have pretty good boobs. I never had great boobs, but I have a really nice butt.”
The two women switched their attention to Lisa’s behind.
“Better than mine,” Delaney admitted, then returned her gaze to Nick and the three women making their way across the beach toward the bottom of the stairs leading to the deck. “So, which one is his girlfriend?”
“I don’t know.”
“Probably all three.”
“Probably,” Lisa agreed.
“None of them,” spoke Louie from behind.
Delaney did a mental groan and closed her eyes.
She’d been caught gossiping about Nick. Worse, she’d been caught by Louie. She wondered how long he’d been standing there. She wondered if he’d heard her talking about getting her breasts lifted, but she didn’t dare ask. Slowly she turned to face him, racking her brain for something to say.
Thankfully, Lisa didn’t have the same problem. “Are you sure he isn’t dating the twins?”
“No,” he answered, then announced with a completely serious look on his face, “Nick is a one-woman man.”
Delaney glanced at Lisa and the two of them burst into laughter.
“What’s so funny?” Louie wanted to know. He crossed his arms over his chest, and his dark brows formed one prominent line across his forehead.
“You,” Lisa answered and kissed his firm mouth. “You’re crazy, but that’s what I love about you.”
Louie put an arm around Lisa’s waist and pulled her tight. “I love you, too, alu gozo.”
No one had ever whispered exotic endearments to Delaney-unless she counted “Do me, baby.” No man had ever loved her the way Louie obviously loved Lisa. And no man was likely to, either, as long as she was stuck in Truly with nothing to do but walk dogs. There had to be something better than picking up dog poop. “Do you know who owns the building next to you?”
“You do now.” Louie shrugged. “Maybe your mother. I guess it depends on how everything shakes out in your father’s will.”
“I do?” As she absorbed the news a big smile parted her lips.
“Yep. Henry owned that whole block.”
“Your offices, too?”
“Yep.”
She had a lot to think about and took a step backward. “Well, thanks for having me,” she said, fully intending to beat a retreat before she got within spitting distance of Nick.
“You just got here,” Lisa pointed out. “Stay until after the fireworks. Louie, tell her we want her to stay.”
“Why don’t you stay?” Louie said and took the bota he had hanging from his shoulder and held it toward her.
Great, now she’d look like a baby if she left. She took the pigskin bag from him and asked, “What’s in this?”
“Txakoli.” When she didn’t drink, he added, “Red wine. It’s for special occasions and holidays.”
Delaney lifted the bag and hit her chin with a thin stream of wine before raising it to her mouth. The wine was sweet and very potent, and when she lowered it again, she got wine on her throat. “I guess I should stick to a glass,” she joked and wiped her chin and neck.
From behind, the bota was plucked from her hand. She turned and stared at a wide chest and faded green cotton. Her stomach twisted like a pretzel as she slowly raised her gaze past Nick’s lips to his gray eyes. The Allegrezza boys had a habit of sneaking up on her from behind.
“Open up,” he said.
She tilted her head to one side and stared at him.
“Open up,” he repeated and raised the bota to within several inches of her face.
“What are you going to do if I don’t? Squirt wine all over me?”
He smiled, slow and sensual. “Yes.”
She didn’t doubt him for a moment. The second her mouth opened, wine shot between her parted lips. She watched helpless as Lisa and Louie walked away. She would have followed if she hadn’t been forced to stand very still. Then the stream of wine was gone without leaving so much as a drop anywhere. She swallowed and licked the corner of her mouth. She didn’t say a word.
“You’re welcome.”
The breeze carried the scent of his skin and tossed strands of his thick dark hair about his bare shoulders. He smelled like clean mountain air and dark sensual man. “I didn’t ask for your help.”
“No, but you need a lot of txakoli to kill that bug up your butt.” He leaned back slightly and raised the bota. A red arc filled his mouth, and his throat worked as he swallowed. Fine black hair shadowed his armpit, and for the first time, Delaney noticed the tattoo circling his right biceps. It was a thin wreath of thorns, and the twists and barbs of black ink looked remarkably real against his smooth tan skin. He lowered the bag and sucked a bead of wine from his lower lip. “Were you going to run me over the other day, wild thing?”
She tried not to react. “Don’t call me that, please.”
“What? Wild thing?”
“Yes.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t like it.”
Nick didn’t give a damn what she liked. She’d tried to run him over, no doubt about it. He slid his gaze down the curves of her body as he screwed the cap onto the spout of the bota. “I guess that’s too bad.” The second he’d stepped foot on the deck, he’d noticed her, and not just because she wore a turtleneck and green leather vest when everyone else had dressed for summer. It was her hair. The setting sun caught all those different shades of red and set them ablaze.
“Then I guess the next time I see you in a crosswalk, I won’t put on the brake.”
Nick stepped forward until she had to tilt her head back to look up at him. His gaze moved over her flawless porcelain cheeks to her pink lips. The last time he’d been this close to her, she’d been naked. “Give it your best shot.” White and pink. That’s what he remembered about her most. Soft pink mouth and tongue. Firm white breasts and tight pink nipples. Silky white thighs.
She opened her mouth to say something, but whatever she meant to say was silenced by Gail’s approach.
“There you are,” Gail said as she wove her arm through Nick’s. “Let’s hurry and get a place on the beach before the show starts.”
Nick stared into Delaney’s big brown eyes and felt a tightening in his groin that had nothing t
o do with the willing woman by his side. He stepped back and turned his attention to Gail. “If you’re in a hurry, go ahead without me.”
“No, I’ll wait.” Gail turned her gaze from Nick to Delaney. Her grip on his arm tightened. “Hello, Delaney. I hear you’ve moved back.”
“For a while.”
“The last time I talked to your mother, she told me you were a flight attendant with United.”
A slight frown wrinkled Delaney’s brow and she glanced around as if she were desperately looking for a reason to escape. “That was five years ago, and I was a baggage handler, not a flight attendant,” she said and took a step backward. “Well, it was nice to see you again, Gail. I’ve got to go. I told Lisa I’d help her… ah… do something.” Without a glance in Nick’s direction, she turned and walked away.
“What’s going on between the two of you?” Gail asked.
“Nothing.” He didn’t want to talk about Delaney, especially not with Gail. He didn’t even want to think about her. She was trouble for him. She always had been. Since the first time he’d looked into her big brown eyes.
“When I walked up it certainly looked like something.”
“Drop it.” He shook free of Gail’s grasp and moved into the house. Earlier, when he’d gone to his own house to get the fireworks he’d promised Sophie, Gail and the twins had been knocking on his front door. He didn’t like women dropping by his house. It gave them unrealistic ideas of his involvement with them. But it was a holiday, and he’d decided to overlook the intrusion this one time and had invited them to Louie’s. Now he wished he hadn’t. He recognized that determined look in Gail’s eyes. She wasn’t about to drop anything.
Gail followed close behind Nick, but waited until they were in the deserted kitchen before she continued, “Do you remember when Delaney left ten years ago? A lot of people said she was pregnant. A lot of people said you were the father.”
Nick tossed Louie’s bota on the counter, then reached into a cooler. He grabbed two Miller’s and twisted the caps off each. He remembered the rumors. Depending on who you listened to at the time, gossip had him and Delaney getting it on in a hundred different places and in very imaginative ways. But whichever version you heard, the ending was always the same. Nick Allegrezza had put his dirty hands on Delaney Shaw. He’d impregnated the princess.
Henry hadn’t known what to believe. He’d been enraged at the very possibility that the rumor could be true. He’d demanded Nick deny it. Of course, Nick hadn’t.
“Were you?”
Now it was ironic as hell. Ten years later, Henry wanted him to knock up Delaney. Nick handed Gail one of the cold beers. “I told you to drop it.”
“I think I have a right to know, Nick.”
He looked into her blue eyes and laughed without humor. “You don’t have a right to know squat.”
“I have a right to know if you see other women.”
“You know I do.”
“What if I asked you to stop?”
“Don’t,” he warned.
“Why not? We’ve gotten close since we’ve become lovers. We could have a wonderful life together if you’d let it happen.”
He knew for a fact he wasn’t the only man on Gail’s list of potential husbands. He just happened to be at the top. For a while, being number one on Gail’s sexual hit parade had been amusing. But lately she’d begun to get possessive and that irritated him. “I told you from the start not to expect anything from me. I never confuse sex and love. One has nothing to do with the other.” Nick raised the beer to his lips and said, “I don’t love you, but try not to take it personal.”
She crossed her arms beneath her breasts and leaned her behind against the edge of the counter. “You’re such a shit. I don’t know why I put up with you.”
Nick took a long drink. They both knew why she put up with him.
Delaney felt Steve’s strong masculine arm encircle her waist and pull her against his side. Red, white, and blue exploded in the black night, showering the lake with fiery sparks as Delaney tested the feeling of Steve’s embrace. She decided she liked it. She liked the contact and the warmth. She felt alive again.
She glanced to the left and watched Nick bury the bottom half of a pipe in the sand. A few minutes earlier, she’d gotten a real good look at the fireworks “Uncle Nick” had brought his niece. There wasn’t so much as one legal sparkler in the sack.
A cascade of gold illuminated his profile for a few brief seconds, and she looked away. She wasn’t going to avoid him anymore. She wasn’t going to limit where she went because she didn’t want to run into him. And she wasn’t going to spend the rest of her time in Truly like she had the past month. She had a plan. Her mother wasn’t going to like it, but Delaney didn’t care.
And she had a wedding to look forward to in November, too. Lisa had approached her again about being in her wedding and Delaney had gladly said yes. She remembered the many times she and Lisa had pinned dishtowels in their hair and pretended to walk down the aisle. They’d speculated over who would marry first. They’d hoped for a big double wedding. Neither of them would have believed they would remain single until the ripe old age of twenty-nine.
Twenty-nine. As far as she could tell, she was the only one of her school friends who wasn’t at least engaged. In February she would turn thirty. A thirty-year-old woman with no home of her own and no man in her life. The home she wasn’t worried about. With three million she could buy a home. But the man. It wasn’t that she needed a man in her life. She didn’t, but it would have been nice to have one around sometimes. She hadn’t had a boyfriend for a while and she missed the intimacy.
Her gaze was drawn again to the dark silhouette of the man lighting rockets from a pipe near the water’s edge. He turned at the waist and looked over his shoulder in her direction. A funny little tickle settled in the pit of her stomach, and she quickly glanced up into the night sky.
The town sent up a finale so spectacular it lit the lake like dawn and caught the canopy of Colonel Mansfield’s pontoon boat on fire. The people loved it and showed their appreciation by setting off their own bombs from beaches and balconies. Happy Dragons, Cobras, and Mighty Rebels burst in fiery showers of sparks. Legal fireworks like Whistling Pete’s, modified to screech and take flight, buzzed the night sky.
Delaney had forgotten what pyromaniacs the people of Truly were. A shrieking missile whizzed past her head and exploded in a red shower on Louie’s deck.
Welcome to Idaho. Land of potatoes and pyros.
Chapter Five
The Miata’s door handle dug into Delaney’s behind as Steve pressed into her front. She placed her hands on his chest and ended the kiss.
“Come home with me,” he whispered above her ear.
Delaney pulled back just far enough to look into the dark shadows of his face. She wished she could use him. She wished she was tempted. She wished he wasn’t so young and that his age didn’t matter, but it did. “I can’t.” He was handsome, had pecs of steel, and seemed genuinely nice. She felt like a cradle robber.
“My roommate is out of town.”
A roommate. Of course he had a roommate. He was twenty-two. He probably lived on canned chili and Budweiser. When she’d been twenty-two, a well-rounded meal consisted mostly of corn chips, salsa, and sangria. She’d been living in Vegas, working at Circus Circus, not even concerned with the rest of her life. “I never go home with men I’ve just met,” she told him and pushed until he took a step backward.
“What are you doing tomorrow night?” he asked.
Delaney shook her head and opened her car’s door. “You’re a nice guy, but I’m not interested in seeing anyone right now.”
As she drove away, she looked into her rearview mirror at Steve’s retreating back. At first she’d been flattered by the attention he’d paid her, but as the night had progressed, she’d become more uneasy. A lot of maturing happened in seven years. Matching furniture became as important as a killer stereo, and somewhe
re along the way, the phrase “party till you puke” lost its appeal. But even if she’d been seriously tempted to use Steve’s body for her own pleasure, Nick had ruined it for her. He ruined it by just being at the party. She was much too aware of him, and there was just too much history between them for her to ignore him completely. Even when she did manage to forget him for a few moments, she’d suddenly feel his gaze, like hot irresistible tractor beams pulling at her. But when she’d looked at him, he was never looking back.
Delaney turned up the long driveway and pressed the garage door opener on the dash. And even if Nick hadn’t been there, and Steve hadn’t been young, she doubted she would have gone home with him. She was twenty-nine, lived with her mother, and was too paranoid to enjoy a one-nighter.
After she parked next to Henry and Gwen’s matching Cadillacs, she headed into the house through the door off the kitchen. A bug light and several citronella candles cast a dim glow on the porch out back, illuminating Gwen and the back of a man’s head. It wasn’t until Delaney walked outside that she recognized Henry’s lawyer, Max Harrison. She hadn’t seen Max since the day he’d read Henry’s will. She was surprised to see him now.
“It’s good to see you,” he said, standing as she approached. “How do you like living in Truly again?”
It sucks, she thought as she sat in a wrought-iron chair across the matching table from her mother. “It takes some getting used to.”
“Did you enjoy your party?” Gwen asked.
“Yes,” she answered truthfully. She’d met some nice people, and despite Nick Allegrezza, she’d enjoyed herself.
“Your mother was just telling me you’ve been busy training Henry’s dogs.” Max took his seat once again, and his smile seemed genuine. “Maybe you’ve found a new career.”
“Actually, I like my old career,” she said. Ever since her conversation with Louie, she’d been thinking about the vacant building downtown. She hadn’t wanted to discuss her ideas with her mother until she was sure she could pull it off, but the person she needed to talk to most just happened to be sitting across the table, and her mother would find out sooner or later anyway. “Who owns the building next to Allegrezza Construction?” she asked Max. “It’s a thin two-story with a hair salon on the bottom floor.”
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