An Offer He Can't Refuse (13 page)

"What's up, boss?" she asked instead, tossing her neon backpack onto the padded secretary's chair.

"Hey, Rachele. Good afternoon, Beppe." Téa moved around the desk to double-kiss Rachele's dad's cheeks. Then she stepped back, beaming at them both. "Guess what? Johnny Magee said yes."

"No kidding?" Rachele shrieked, jumping toward her boss to deliver a boisterous embrace. "Make-me-throb gave us the job?"

"
Hush, figlia mai!"
Her father said, his voice shocked.

Téa laughed, her hands already at work to undo Rachele's hug damage, straightening her clothing from mussed to its usual neat dowdiness. "Don't try to rein her in, Beppe. You know it's an impossible task."

Her father knew no such thing—

"She's a nice girl," he said, frowning. "And she needs to act like one."

—
see?

"Of course she's a nice girl," Téa assured him. "Nothing to worry about there."

Ignored by the other two as if she'd left the room, Rachele rolled her eyes. Here she stood, of legal age, wearing outrageous hair coloring, amethyst lipstick, and more stud jewelry than some rock bands, and her nearest and dearest were convinced this particular "nice girl" would never do anything to cause them concern.

It made her want to throw off her clothes and dance naked on the desktop. It made her want to embark on a new career path at some place like Hooters. It made her want to run away with a completely unsuitable man.

Which wouldn't be the least bit difficult, come to think of it. Her father considered
any
man over the age of fifteen and under the age of sixty-two unsuitable. And if they were below or above that range, yet not of Italian descent—fuhgeddaboutit.

But as she trudged toward her chair, she dismissed the wild ideas. Watching her watusi in her birthday suit would put her father into cardiac arrest, and unlike Téa—who spent a fortune on minimizing brassieres—she didn't have the rack for titty-bar work. As for finding some man to break her out of her rut…

Maybe her father's warnings regarding the hairier sex had sunk in over the years or maybe she was waiting for that love-of-a-lifetime feeling she was certain her parents had shared. Whatever the reason, she'd never yet been pricked by Cupid's arrow.

Settling behind her desk, she half-listened to the drone of her father's conversation with Téa.

How was her mother?

Fine. •

No, really. How was her mother?

Really. Fine.

The conversation went like this every time the other two met as well. Her father had been Salvatore Caruso's best friend, and he still worried about Sal's widow, Rachele knew. As a matter of fact, her papa worried a lot, seeing bogeymen behind every bush. Sometimes she wondered if it was more than that, though. Sometimes she wondered if his concern for Bianca Caruso was a different kind of concern altogether… but no. Her father was as saintly in thought and deed as Rachele wished she wasn't.

Téa drew him into her adjoining office to discuss an upcoming project. Though mostly retired from a landscaping and rockwork business, her father still enjoyed looking at blueprints and home designs. So Rachele was alone in the reception area when the front door half-opened.

One boat-sized black hightop stepped inside. Rachele caught a glimpse of a classic Beatles flop of dark hair.

Both retreated.

Bemused, she watched the door open again and two big feet enter this time. Then followed a lanky body of a male in his mid-twenties. He had a laptop case strapped across his chest, that shaggy mass of hair, a pair of cool, thick-framed glasses, and the shyest, sweetest grin she'd ever seen in her life.

Ouch
. A little nick, right over her heart, caught her by complete surprise. Then liquid fuel ignited somewhere inside her, propelling her in one big
whoosh
, right out of her comfort zone. Gripping the edge of the desk, she could only hold on for the ride and stare at the man who, in the space of a step, a heartbeat, a half-drawn breath, had just rocked her world.

"I had to doublecheck the address," he explained, with a self-deprecating shrug. "I have a lousy sense of direction."

Rachele ran a hand through her purplish hair. "You've found the right place," she said over the hip-hop beat of her heart.

He appeared pleased. "I have?"

"Uh-huh." Her certainty wasn't because he carried multiple sets of rolled blueprints, Inner Life's stock-in-trade, under one arm. It wasn't because he'd done that doublecheck of the address. She rose from her chair, comparing her own five-five height to his—six?—feet. Perfect.

With one hand, he worried the frayed collar of his aloha shirt. On a yellow rayon background, men lolled on a beach, watching hourglass-shaped hula girls dressed in red grass skirts and orange coconut shells. "Do we know each other?" he asked.

"Yes."

"I thought so." He nodded, then handed over the blueprints. "Johnny was going to bring these by himself, but he was unexpectedly called back to Las Vegas."

Tea will be sorry to hear that."

'Téa…" he seemed to be searching his memory, then he cupped his hands in a double wave. "Curvy woman, right?"

Perhaps she should have been jealous, but there wasn't a leer in the gesture or in his eyes, though he must possess

X-ray vision to detect Téa's measurements beneath the usual tailored body armor she wore. "Yep."

He nodded again, then reached into his back pocket to pull out a business card and hand it over. "Give her this too, will you? She can reach me on my cell if she needs anything."

Rachele looked down.
Calvin Kazarsky
. "Nice to meet you, Calvin. I'm Rachele Cirigliano."

"It's Cal," he corrected, and if he thought the introduction strange after her assurance that they knew each other, he didn't comment upon it. There was a long pause, in which she could have sworn her pulse synced with his.

"Now what?" he finally asked.

Téa came to stand in the doorway of her office. "Now what, what? Hey, is that you, Cal?"

"Affirmative."

Affirmative? Was that the cutest or what?

"Johnny had to dash back to Vegas," Cal continued. "He said to tell you he'll be in touch very soon."

"Oh." A strange expression—disappointment?—flitted across the boss's face. "I understand."

Cal gestured toward Rachele's desk. "I brought by the original house plans and also those of the previous renovations. Johnny thought you could use them."

Rachele's father shadowed Téa in the doorway. "Who is this Johnny?" Then his gaze lasered in on the younger man and his voice went Papa Bear deep. "And who is this?"

Rachele didn't allow herself a hesitation. "Calvin Kazarsky, my father, Guiseppe Cirigliano. Papa, this is a client of ours."

Her father bustled out of Téa's office to stand between the other man and the two young women. He was shorter than Cal, and his chest only looked more like a barrel in comparison to the younger man's lean body. But his handshake was a white-knuckler, and Rachele was impressed that Cal didn't cry out. Instead, he hung in there, his gaze never leaving her father's. When their grips broke, she let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding.

"Beppe, come over here. You'll enjoy seeing these." Téa's voice was excited as she spread the blueprints Cal had brought on the long table at the far end of the reception area.

With a suspicious backward glance, he strode away, leaving Cal and Rachele gazing at each other. The younger man adjusted the strap of the laptop case over his shoulder. "Well

Panic fluttered in her belly. That was a good-bye well. A have-a-nice-life well. A go back to laundry, antipasto, and nothing-more-than-the-occasional-swear-word-for-Father-Mike-to-hear-in-the-confessional well.

Well, noway!

Over her dead body was she going to let Cal run off. Then, thinking of her father's strangling handshake, her stomach dipped, hoping it wouldn't be someone else's dead body that got between them.

But if she wasn't willing to let Cal out of her life so fast, how the heck to make a play with her father sharing the same carpet space? He wouldn't be happy to hear his "nice girl" doing her best to lasso a near-stranger.

Thinking quickly, she dug in her backpack for her cell phone, and quickly dialed the number on the business card, shielding the screen beneath the desktop.

She heard a low buzz, then Cal started and reached under the tails of his shirt for the phone he must have clipped to his belt. He frowned down at the phone's screen.

She knew what he saw.

IT'S ME

Looking up, she made a point to catch his eye and nod. He frowned again, then looked back at the screen.

She rubbed the spot of that wound right over her heart, then took a first step toward living her own grown-up life by sending another text message to him. cu @ cob?

Translation: See you at close of business? He glanced up at her, then glanced back down. f2f? appeared on her screen. Face-to-face?

YES Y MSG?

Wasn't it obvious why she was text-messaging him? She considered how to signal "Overprotective Italian papa bent on protecting only daughter's virginity until menopause is standing six feet away."

She settled for pos, Parent Over Shoulder.

OIC, he replied. His gaze flicked toward her father to show that oh, he saw very well indeed.

ok? She messaged.

Looking up into her face, he hesitated.

She bit her bottom lip.

He froze, his eyes narrowing, and her skin tingled from cobalt-painted toenails to silver eyebrow ring. A hot flush followed.

Did his gaze darken? She only knew for sure that he could text message one-handed and without looking at the keypad.

slap showed up on her screen.

Sounds Like A Plan.

Rachele couldn't stop the smile from breaking over her face.

"You're sure?" he said softly.

Her heart leaped toward her throat and seemed to expand there. "You're not?" she said around it.

He grinned, melting it right back down into her chest. "My friends say I'm too smart for my own good."

Rachele sent a warning glance in the direction of her father and placed her finger over her lips.

He nodded, then turned toward the door.

As it closed behind the man of her dreams, Rachele flopped back against the padded back of her desk chair, stoked with this new feeling, this unexpected infatuation, this… love.

She'd always suspected love was going to be easy. And it was. The right guy walked through the door and
bam
! She went from immature and untried to a woman knowledgeable in the ways of the world and men and women.

Her imagination played it all out. With Johnny Magee as their client, there would be plenty of opportunity to run into Cal Kazarsky. And no one—her father—would be any the wiser. A smile played over her face as she watched the future unfurl.

"Oh my God!" Téa's shocked exclamation startled Rachele out of her seat.

"What? What?"

"I just
knew
there'd be more problems." Téa was hugging herself, as if the air-conditioning had suddenly gone arctic. Rachele's father's face was grim.

"What? What?" she repeated, rushing toward them.

In answer, Téa pointed a quivering fingertip at the name on the bottom of one set of blueprints. "Prepared for Giovanni Martelli," it read.

Oh my God. Oh my
God
.

Apparently the house they'd agreed to redesign was once owned by Giovanni Martelli, the Mafia triggerman who reputedly had taken out Téa's father. As quick as it had come alive, Rachele saw her promising new love die a swift, painful death.

The wound over her heart throbbed in unrequited agony. Unless Téa took this job, Rachele would never find a way to get close to Cal Kazarsky. She would be stuck in the purgatory between girl and grown-up forever.