by Chelle Bliss
A nod of my head, a text to Dino and the plan was set in motion.
Maggie
Smoke Carelli was a dangerous man. I knew that the second he tapped on my window and our gazes locked.
It was in his eyes—those dark, rich eyes of his that could cut right through you. Hard as steel when he had you at a distance. In a split second, they shifted to warm and sweet when he had his guard down, which I suspected didn’t happen a lot.
But as I walked into the dining room not ten minutes ago, spotted Smoke holding Mateo, and saw that kind, protective look in his eyes, something inside me melted.
Smoke was dangerous all right, but I was the one at the greatest risk. It wouldn’t be hard for me to fall completely for that beautiful man.
Mateo hadn’t had many men watch over him, not since Alejandro chose lines of white powder and a dripping, wet needle over his family.
For some reason, my son had taken to Smoke like he knew the man wasn’t the brooding threat I suspected him to be outside on the snowy sidewalk.
“Maggie, eat,” I heard from across the table. I forced a smile on my face when Smoke’s sister Antonia waved her glass at my still-full plate. “If you don’t, Mama or Maria will be by to fill it again.”
“I couldn’t eat another bite.” My stomach was so full, and I’d spent the past twenty minutes pushing the delicious food around, trying to make it look like I’d eaten more.
It had taken everything in me to try to finish the plate the server set in front of me, then Smoke’s mama directed the woman to give me more before I’d finished half of what I’d already been served.
“Better not say that too loud,” Dario, Smoke’s brother, said, leaning on his elbow next to me. He sat on my right with Smoke on my left. My senses were on overload with the attention both men were giving me. “Mama will run down here to spoon-feed you if she thinks you’re too skinny.”
“She hasn’t left you alone much,” I remarked, nodding toward their mother as she moved back toward our end of the table.
“Dario, my love,” Mrs. Carelli said, resting her hands on her son’s shoulders. “Did you get enough? You should eat more. When I think of the food they made you eat…” She squeezed her eyes tight like the ideas she had about Dario’s five-year stint in Riker’s was a nightmare she wouldn’t allow herself to think about on Christmas Eve.
“Mama, I got enough,” he told her. “I promise.” Dario grabbed his mother’s hand, squeezing it before he winked at me and threw me under the bus. “But Maggie doesn’t look like she’s going to finish this plate.”
“What?” Mrs. Carelli jerked her attention to my face, then her gaze dropped to my filled plate. “You don’t like it?”
“Mama,” Smoke said, stretching his arm over the back of my chair again. “Dario is starting shit. That’s Maggie’s second plate, and you keep trying to feed her.”
“She’s a nursing mother—”
“Mrs. Carelli,” I tried, worried I’d offended her, making sure I leveled a quick glare at Dario before I turned to look at her fully. “Honestly, it’s all so delicious…”
“Mama, she ate plenty,” Dario said, shrugging with a half apology I wasn’t sure I bought. “I was just messing with her. You know…it’s been a long time since I’ve been around a pretty girl.”
Instantly, my face heated and the irritation at his teasing vanished. Like his brother, Dario was handsome, tall, maybe a little less refined. Definitely rougher around the edges, but I’d been around enough people who’d served time to know that was what happened when you went away.
Sometimes, it made them awkward. Still other times, it made them very out of practice, like Dario was now. He seemed happy to be with his family, but it had taken four drinks for him to get there.
Now, he was comfortable enough to flirt, and I couldn’t say I hated it. Couldn’t say I hated Smoke’s reaction to his brother’s mild flirting either.
“Too long,” Smoke said, leaning forward to glare at his brother. “Why don’t you try to find another one?” He nodded down the table, motioning to a group of women with their heads together as they looked down the table at Dario and Smoke. “Seems like they’re more interested.”
“Why?” Dario asked, holding his glass in his hands, the grip loosening as he moved closer. “You afraid of a little competition?”
Oh. My. God.
“Not even if there was any. Which there isn’t.”
“You sure about that, big brother?”
Smoke laughed, his features hard. “Bring it on, asshole.”
I blinked, shocked by their words.
“Basta!” I heard Mrs. Carelli say, then frowned as both Dario and Smoke flinched, cupping their ears. “On Christmas Eve? Madonna Santa!”
Across the table, Mateo cried and my breasts instantly ached. Luca, the handsome man sitting next to Antonia, looked a little helpless when my son fussed again, shifting him from one side of his large chest to the other before my baby started crying harder. I pushed back from the table, excusing myself from Mrs. Carelli and her two sons.
“I didn’t know what to do…” Luca said, standing to give the baby to me, but he stopped when I smiled at him, waving off his apology.
“He’s teething,” I told him, taking Mateo, who calmed when I laid him against my chest. “Nothing is going to make him happy right now.”
“Can we get you…” Antonia tried, but I shook my head.
“No, but thank you. I’ll just walk him around a bit.”
Snow completely covered the streets now. From the large bay window on the other side of the restaurant, I could make out the frosted glass of the storefronts and the frozen leaves on the limbs nearly touching the gazebo in the town square.
My car was almost hidden under several feet of snow, and four men bundled in parkas and thick gloves had begun to shovel the streets, clearing a path on the sidewalk.
This was a weird little place. An hour from the city, Cuoricino felt like it was a million miles away. Like somewhere stuck in time, where people cared about their neighbors, hosted huge dinners, shoveled snow and, apparently, took in lost strangers from the cold.
Mateo whimpered, and I looked down at the soft features of his perfect face. It still felt terrifying to me how much I loved him. How scared I was sometimes to be the only person in the world he depended on.
And here we were, standing in a strange place, taken in by friendly people who have cared more for us than our own family.
“Maggie?” The deep, rich voice twisted something inside me. Something I hadn’t felt for over a year, growing wilder and hotter as he sat next to me all night.
“Hmm?” I said, not turning to face Smoke.
“You good?” He came closer and that wild, hot sensation lowered, his scent filling my senses.
I nodded, not trusting myself to sound calm if I answered him.
He was behind me. Not touching. The heat from his body like a tease. Like a promise that only made the needful, long-forgotten sensation spark and move until I could recognize it for what it was.
Lust.
“And the baby?”
I looked down at Mateo, his soft, easy snores pulling a grin from me.
Smoke reached for my son’s face, smoothing a finger over his forehead. “He’ll be a heartbreaker.”
“Not if I can help it,” I said, looking back out the window.
“No,” Smoke said, standing against the window, his back on the glass as he watched me. “I can’t see him getting away with shit. Not with a woman like you raising him.”
He didn’t know me.
I didn’t know him, but I got the feeling Smoke was a man who could read people well.
I was no idiot.
I’d heard the Carelli name.
He might not be the Carelli I’d heard of, but I knew they were related. He looked a lot like his infamous mafia cousin Johnny.
“And what kind of woman do you think I am?”
He pushed off the window, s
tanding right in front of me. If I weren’t holding Mateo, there’d be only inches separating us.
“What a loaded fucking question.”
I didn’t react, like I was sure he expected. From what I’d seen of him, Smoke liked reactions. He liked responses. I gave him nothing.
The strategy worked, and the man continued. “All right then, Miss Ramirez…” He looked at my face, his fingers following as he brushed the hair from my eyes. “I think you’re beautiful.” Smoke inched closer, his fingers slipping down my face, to my neck, to tickle the slope of my throat. “I think you’re strong and smart.” He nuzzled my face.
I closed my eyes, taking in the sensation of the emerging scruff on his face and how it rubbed against my cheek when he leaned down to whisper in my ear.
“I think I wanted to bash my kid brother’s face in when he flirted with you, and I love him more than anything.”
“Smoke,” I whispered, pressing closer to him, forgetting for just a second that there was a baby, my baby, in my arms.
“I think,” he continued, moving back to look me in the eyes, “that the streets are dangerous to drive. You and Mateo will stay with me, and I’ll give you a happy Christmas.”
“I couldn’t. You’ve already been too kind.” A thought occurred to me, and I took a step back, wondering what he wanted from me, debating whether that would be such a bad thing.
He was so tempting, and God, did I want him.
“Don’t think you owe me a thing,” he said as his attention slipped to the front of the building to a crowd of people laughing. “I have plenty of room. A bed for Mateo and you can take my room. I have a pullout I can crash on. But if you want…” Smoke licked his lips, moving his hand to my face to lift it up.
I thought he might kiss me, and I held my breath, waiting.
He angled my chin and moved closer, his full, wet lips glistening from the overhead light, but he stopped before he moved any closer. “If you want…you don’t have to sleep alone.”
He walked away, leaving me with my baby and the absolute belief that no one I had ever met was more dangerous than Smoke Carelli.
Smoke
I didn’t like being lied to.
Hit me. Steal from me, maybe.
But lie to me, and I got fucking offended.
Especially, when you promised not to do something, and two hours later, you did the very damn thing you gave your word you wouldn’t do.
Like touch my little sister.
To be fair, she was a grown woman.
I got that.
I wasn’t her keeper.
Antonia had had plenty of men in her bed. Granted, I didn’t want to know shit about that, and yeah, maybe I’d facilitated a few background checks and had a few conversations with assholes I knew were fucking my sister over. But this was different.
Luca DeRosa gave me his word to stay clear of Antonia, shaking my hand on it, then wormed his way into a family dinner, and sat right next to her all damn night.
Then I stepped away for ten damn minutes and they disappeared. Alone. Together.
“You didn’t see where Antonia and Luca went?” I asked Dario, who clearly wasn’t sober enough to get over being pissed at me. When he only shook his head, I grabbed his glass from him, pushing him back in his chair with one hand before he could stand. “Did you hear me?”
“Nope. Not my business.”
“Our sister is not your business?” I asked him, tilting my head to look down at him. I handed off his glass to Dino when he approached my side.
“You do your own time, man. Let her be.”
“Do your own…hey, asshole,” I told him, kneeling down to his level. Dario was lit out of his skull. “You aren’t in prison anymore.”
He blinked at me, and it took him three full seconds before the dots seemed to connect.
“Yeah, you with me?”
Dario nodded, rubbing his eyes.
“Antonia?”
“Where’s that girl? Maggie?”
I grunted, giving up, but still glanced down the table to where Maggie sat with my cousin Ricardo and his husband, David. Ma and Maria were arguing over who got to hold Mateo, and I tossed Maggie a smile when she looked up at me, hoping she knew I was serious about the offer I made.
She was wound tight. Probably hadn’t let herself go since she got pregnant. A woman like that being closed off, holding back and keeping herself alone?
She needed to let go a little.
“Dino,” I said, nodding my man over. “You see my sister?”
“Yes sir,” he said, placing Dario’s glass on the tray of a passing server. “’Bout a half hour ago she and that Luca fella went upstairs.”
A small ache started to pinch at the base of my skull, but I ignored it, nodding to Dino. “I gotta handle something. Keep my brother away from Maggie, and get someone to grab him some coffee. I don’t want my father to come back and see him like this.”
“Yes, sir. I’m on it.”
By the time I made it to the stairs and cleared the first five steps, Antonia was coming down. Her hands were in her hair as Luca followed behind her with a smug, satisfied grin on his face as he adjusted his tie.
They both stopped when they saw me.
“Shit,” Antonia said, then quickly recovered. “What?” She was immediately defiant, unapologetic, and tried to pretend not to be bothered by the look I gave her. But Antonia never really had been able to shake the need to make her family happy. She wanted everyone to be proud of her. It was a remnant of the troublemaker she was as a teenager. The little shit had caused our parents more tears than the three of us boys combined, and as she got older, Antonia felt guilty about it. But my sister was stubborn. Prideful.
I didn’t answer her. Instead, I took in a breath, hoping it would calm me, hoping there was enough Christmas spirit to keep me from knocking the shit out of Luca DeRosa.
One slip of my gaze to his collar, to the smudge the exact color of my little sister’s lipstick, and I realized the Grinch had taken me over. “Antonia,” I said, looking directly at Luca, “excuse us for a second.”
“No,” she tried, her voice whiny, high. She looked between us like she expected the frown on her face to keep the glares from passing between me and the man she can’t seem to keep out of her system. “Brother, I’m thirty years old, you have no right to…”
One jerk of my eyes to her, leveling the same threatening stare I reserved for anyone who got between me and my business, and my sister went quiet.
“It’s okay, Toni,” Luca said. “It’s just business.”
She touched his hand, squeezing his fingers. She turned to me, her features tight as she muttered, “Don’t you dare ruin this for me,” and left the stairs.
I watched her, making sure she was gone before I opened my mouth. “You got that wrong,” I said, nodding to Uncle Vinnie as he moved past the stairwell and onto the patio. “You and me, DeRosa, we got no business to discuss.”
“Smoke…”
“Merry fucking Christmas,” I said and walked away from the staircase, heading back into the dining area, ignoring my sister as she brushed past me.
Like I said, I don’t like liars.
I hadn’t had a cigarette in ten years.
Not once.
But tonight, I thought I might need one.
Antonia wasn’t speaking to me. Dario was sober now and pissed at me about that shit too. Maggie was stuck between my mama and Maria telling her the best way to wean a baby without having her tits sag—a conversation I didn’t want to hear. By the look on her face, she was clearly mortified they were having the talk in the middle of the fourth course of Christmas Eve dinner.
I moved outside onto the patio, finding Dino near the parking lot, debating whether or not to bum a smoke from him. It was stupid to even consider it.
Ten years was a long time, and even being around the smell of smoke irritated me most days. But my nerves were bad and getting worse the longer the night wore on.
<
br /> “Everything okay, boss?” my man asked, waving his hand to keep the smoke away from me as he made for the ashtray.
“Finish your smoke, man. I just needed a break from that shit.”
Dino looked at me, his head tilting to the side, his eyes narrowed. “You want one?”
I waved a hand, but he still pulled out a pack of Marlboro Reds.
“You smoke that shit and your mama will have your balls,” I heard, turning toward the sound of my father’s voice.
“Pop,” I greeted.
The smile on my face shook when I spotted my youngest brother Dante at our father’s side. He’d been spending time with our cousins in White Plains since returning from Italy and even though I’d seen him a lot since he’d been back, I still wasn’t used to how different he was.
Dante looked nothing like that scrawny shit my folks sent packing to Pistoia five years ago when Dario agreed to take the bid for the stupid shit Dante had done. Drug running, in Dario’s bar. Pops had figured if Dario insisted on doing Dante’s bid for him—pretty little thing he was would have never survived Riker’s—then the kid would have to learn his lesson.
Seems he had.
“We’re all finally here. Our first Christmas together in years,” Pop said, seeming to sense the tension.
“Yeah,” I said, shaking off the small irritation I still felt at my kid brother. “Ma’s happy everyone is home,” I agreed with him, turning to nod inside the restaurant to where Dario leaned against the wall, his fingers wrapped around a mug of coffee.
Ignoring me, Dante headed inside, grinning when Ma and Antonia jumped from their seats to hug him, followed by several of the cousins and aunts.
Dario seemed to take everything in, watching all the affection Dante got—not nearly as warm a reception as he’d gotten when he’d returned from prison.
“Dario isn’t going to let this shit go easy,” I told my father.
“It’s Christmas, son. Your brothers won’t disappoint their mama on Christmas.”