Ambrosia (Nectar Trilogy, Book 2) (31 page)

She had the sort of lips women paid to upgrade to. For a second, while looking at her file, my jaw tightened at the fact that my man had taken this photo of her, looked at her in those scraps of material. I felt like a possessive prick, wanting to knock him out for even looking at her. She was semi-sexually active but not slutty, on birth control, but no boyfriend for the past month or two.

Earl told me that there was a little punk ex-boyfriend sniffing around, trying to get her attention again. She was giving him the brush off. I had video of him trying to talk to her over a fence while she was in that bikini. She seemed like she could be a bit of a cock tease. She had a bit of sass but not enough to come across like a bitch. No, it was just enough to make me want to bring her to heel.

The girl hadn’t had it easy; her old man was a piece of shit, by the sounds of it. She worked part-time at an ice cream shop near the foster home but she also did volunteer work at the animal shelter as well as at a nearby old age home. She wasn’t a typical 19 year old girl out to party and spend and that appealed to me, too.  Not a virgin but not a slut.

After way too much attention spent looking at videos of her and flipping through a file of photos and general intel I decided to stroll in and size up the potential chemistry in person.  Regardless of what she looked like, I needed to know if there would be any sort of spark before moving forward.

Yeah, most would say I should just let her go, let her go live her life. If I was a nice guy that’s what I’d probably do. There were girls out there that I’d already been with who’d be more than happy to wear my ring and sleep in my bed. But I guess I’m not a nice guy. The thing was that my Pop had a claim on her so either I took the gift or he’d give her to someone else. Either way, she was now Ferrano property. That was my justification, as twisted as that was. She was property of the Ferrano family so if I had to get married she’d might as well become mine. Yeah, I know; I guess I’m not even a little bit of a good guy.

** ** **

Bells jingled over the door to the small store as I walked in.  Music played and it had a fifties diner theme going with a long white counter flanked by a dozen or so red and chrome stools and half a dozen little red tables, some for two, some for four, in front of a big window that looked out to the busy street. She was working alone and the shop was empty except for a prepubescent kid playing on his handheld game system at the counter while nursing a drink and making an annoying slurping sound as it was obviously just a few ice cubes rattling around in the bottom of the cup. I gave him the ‘scram’ stare and jerked my chin toward the door. The kid gulped, grabbed his skateboard, and took off.

I stood at the counter and watched her. She was up on a footstool stocking a shelf above her head with small boxes of ice cream cones and she was humming along to the song on the radio. Her arms over her head made her tank top ride up, showing her bare lower back and two sexy dimples at the base of her spine. My pants suddenly felt tight.  She had a juicy heart-shaped ass popping from those tight low rider jeans. And the knowledge that it was mine? In that moment, with that knowledge, I had to take a deep breath to stop myself from taking her right then and there.

She turned around and smiled at me expectantly. Then she instantly blushed. Yeah, I had that effect on women. Nope, she didn’t look like a teenager in person, either. She looked closer to 25. Her pictures didn’t even do justice; she was fucking beautiful.

“Can I help you?” she beamed. She quickly moistened her full pink lips with the tip of her tongue and eyed me in a way that I liked. It wasn’t the look of a woman hunting man prey, which was a complete turn-off for me. No, this was shyness and anticipation. This was a girl tingling at the idea that the guy in front of her could be remotely interested in her. Clearly she had no clue how beautiful she was. And obviously she liked what she saw when she looked at me.

“I hope so,” I smirked at her.

She climbed down and straightened her black tank top, pulling it down slightly to cover her midriff but resulting in revealing just the scalloped tops of the cups of a lace black bra and (probably unintentionally) giving me an even better view of her cleavage. Great rack. Full C-cup, maybe even a D.

“What do you recommend?”

She flushed even pinker and it was clear she’d seen where my eyes had landed, “Umm, we have ice cream, cold drinks. If you want something hot I can do coffee, hot chocolate, cappuccino…” she trailed off.

Hot. Yeah, I’d like something hot.
“Surprise me,” I told her.

She chewed her lip shyly, “Well, what do you like?”

“I see plenty that I like. What do
you
like?” I asked, widening my eyes at her and then trailed my gaze from her eyes to her mouth, down to her hips, and then back up. I did this slowly, being very obvious that I was checking her out.

“Hmm,” she smiled at me and eyed me up and down, too, showing me she liked what she saw, “Hungry or thirsty?”

Mmm.
“Hungry,” I said.

“We don’t have much for food, really. Popcorn, nachos, ice cream?” she suggested.

“What flavor?” I asked her.

“There’s a list up there.” She motioned behind herself.

“What’s your favorite flavor?” I asked.

“Call me weird but I really just love plain old vanilla.” She shrugged.

I almost laughed at her. My face split into a grin. I bet she did. I bet vanilla was all she’d been exposed to so far.

“You
are
weird,” I said.

She wrinkled her nose up at me and fuck, but it was adorable.

“Vanilla when there are so many flavors to choose from?” I drummed my fingertips on the counter, staring into the ice cream freezer, “Bah, vanilla sounds like a good start.” I sat on a stool.

“One scoop or two?” she asked, flushing even pinker. I wondered if she picked up on the double entendre.

“Two.” I was eyeing her luscious round tits.

“Cup or cone?” she asked.

“Cone.” I raised a brow.

“Sugar cone?”

“Oh yeah,” I said low and gave her another grin.

She gulped, fumbled, and got the ice cream for me. Then she put a cherry right in the middle of the top scoop. A fucking cherry. I could’ve come in my pants right then and there.

“That’s three bucks,” she’d said, holding it out to me with both hands demurely but something flirty in those eyes. Gorgeous eyes. Jade green, long thick black lashes.

Oh it’d be a lot more than three bucks. I could buck all fucking night if I had her in my bed. I’d put a $20 in her hand, then grabbed her wrist for a second before she could turn to the cash register and told her to keep the change and then wiggled the tip of my tongue against the cherry and winked at her before letting go of her wrist.  Then, I walked out.  

I used the tip of my tongue to scoop the cherry into my mouth and dropped the cone in the trash bin outside the shop and glanced in the window. She was staring at me, mouth open. After a few flicks of the tongue behind my teeth, I pulled out the stem and showed her that it was now knotted and then put it between my teeth, winked, and then I got into my car and drove directly to my father’s office, tonguing that stem while I drove.

I didn’t knock; I strolled right in, interrupting a phone call and ignoring the 4 other people sitting there with him at a conference table, one of them my brother.

Pop had looked up at me and put his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone.

“Tia O’Connor? Make it happen,” I told him, dropping the knotted cherry stem into the trash can beside the table.

“On it,” he’d answered with a huge smile and then lifted his chin at Dario, my brother. Dare got up and cracked his knuckles, “Let’s go,” Dare said to Bruce, Gus, and Earl, who were all sitting there with him.

Later that night, Dare called me and told me he’d visited with Greg O’Connor and told him the score. He walked in and told him Tom Ferrano was calling in his debt. If he didn’t have cash on the spot, he was to hand over his daughter Tia, that Tia would be presented to Thomas Ferrano Jr. as potential marriage material and that if marriage didn’t happen she’d remain Ferrano property in order to clear his debt.  Dario had brought muscle with him, expecting resistance even though Pop told him not to bother.

O’Connor hadn’t even seemed all that surprised, according to Dare. Said he knew that my father wasn’t done with him yet and had a feeling this day would come. That my father had warned a few weeks prior that Tia might be the payback for what’d happened back in the day, whenever and whatever that was.

O’Connor had told my brother it was almost a relief that the day had come and that Tom had chosen to handle things this way because he’d been carrying around the worry for years. What the fuck? Piece of shit. Whatever the beef was between him and my Pop he wasn’t even gonna try to barter or fight for his daughter? What a sorry excuse for a father, for a man.

Of course she was already mine in my head so there was nothing he could do even if he had the money to pay the debt but that the man wasn’t even trying? He’d get zero respect from me.

Dare thought it was funny that Pop had done this to get me married off and said he was surprised that I was going through with it. I told him it was a means to an end and we joked about the fact that he’d be next. I’d seen Dare date plenty; he got a lot of female attention and had even been engaged already but she’d broken his heart and in return he’d broken the jaw of the guy she was fucking as well as bankrupted the guy’s family’s business. Since then he was about as interested in settling down as I was.

I saw my Pop the next evening at dinner at his house with him, my two sisters, their families, and Pop’s wife, wife #4 if I hadn’t lost count yet, and he told me on the side that he’d told O’Connor years back that he’d have his daughter someday. I tried to ask questions but again he brushed me off.

Why that son of a bitch didn’t leave the country to protect his little girl was beyond me. I mean, we had reach across borders but if you’d at least tried to get out of his line of sight maybe you’d have somewhat of a chance of getting off his radar.  I knew that O’Connor had left his kid to rot in foster homes right under my Pop’s nose while he put cocaine up his own nose, while he repeatedly bet all his earnings on the horses and in card games, while he paid no attention to his kid whatsoever. Knowing Pop was threatening his kid, how could he stay around here?

I didn’t know what the beef between Pop and O’Connor was about as Pop was being tight-lipped but it had to be a pretty big beef for Pop to let a wound fester for years and then decide that the payment would come in the form of about 120 pounds of flesh. For whatever the reason was, I’d be getting that flesh in my hands right after she graduated from high school. It was all arranged. Dare would pick her up and deliver her to me.

Tia

The SUV stopped in front of a gatehouse and then when the gates opened, it pulled up a driveway in front of a gorgeous Tudor style house. A mansion, really.  I clutched my purse close and when the SUV emptied, big black scary dude reached for my hand and helped me out. He gave me a little smile.  Hmm, not so scary, really.  Now that he’d smiled at me, he reminded me a little of Michael Clarke Duncan. The guy from the Green Mile isn’t scary, just misunderstood. Maybe this guy wasn’t scary.  The other two, burlies one and two
were
scary, though. Burly Number Two from the back seat looked a tad like Lou Ferrigno, the Incredible Hulk. Burly One looked like a total criminal --- Sopranos or Godfather henchman type --- angry dark eyes, uni brow, deep acne scars on his cheeks. All three of them were huge men.  The blond driver in the front looked little less scary but his attitude was scarier than all the other guys. He was in maybe his mid-20’s, and while he was good-looking, wearing an expensive suit, he looked pissed off and impatient. He seemed like the one in charge.

The Michael Clarke Duncan-looking dude finished helping me out of the SUV and blond angry hot guy motioned for me to follow him. I did, wondering what the heck I was walking into here.  I was on a gated property with several big scary guys and I’d bet money they all carried guns.  The blond guy led me through a big foyer into a room down a long hallway and rapped on a door.

“Come in,” A man answered from the other side.

The two burlies and the Michael Clarke Duncan guy stopped and waited in the hall while the blond guy opened the door and signaled for me to walk ahead of him. My heart felt like it was in my throat.

I was inside a large office and a man was behind a desk. He had salt and pepper hair and light brown eyes and looked handsome for his age, kind of George Clooneyish. He wore a suit and he looked tall and muscular.  He looked more businessman or hot shot lawyer than mobster.

A guy in a mansion with all these thugs or whatever was buying debts from bookies? It didn’t add up. How big could Dad’s debt actually be? Who would front him more than a few hundred dollars on a poker game, knowing he wasn’t capable of earning more than the minimum wage?

“Athena, I’m Thomas Ferrano. Call me Tom. Please sit.” He motioned toward a chair in front of his desk.

I sat. His name sounded familiar. His face sort of seemed familiar, too.

“Aren’t you lovely? You graduated high school today, I hear.
Congratulations.”