An Offer He Can't Refuse (23 page)

"Let's Sit This One Out"

Vic Damone

My Baby Loves to Swing
(1963)

"What the hell are you doing here?"

Standing on the sidewalk outside Johnny's front door, Téa jumped at the sound of his voice. Her fingers slipped off the tape measure's lock. Its long metal tongue, extending more than twenty feet, recoiled, the end whipping back and forth as it was pulled back into its bright yellow housing. "I'm doing my job," she said, trying to sound pleasant while not looking at him. "The one you hired me for."

There was no reason not to sound pleasant, she reminded herself, as she picked up the memo pad lying next to her briefcase to make a notation. Though their "date" on Friday night had ended abruptly—at least it felt that way to her—it didn't have a bearing on this Monday afternoon and their remaining relationship. The professional one.

From the corner of her eye, she saw him across the pool and moving closer. Taking a quick sidestep, she pressed her ankle against her briefcase, keeping herself between him and the secret she'd hidden inside.

The book. The Loanshark book.

All weekend, as she alternated between brooding over Johnny's abrupt abandonment of her outside her office—not to mention nary a phone call to apologize or to explain—and working at her sketchpad on designs for the house, the book had intruded on her concentration. Even now it seemed to call to her in a low, whispery voice.

"And what the hell are you wearing?"

This voice was crabby, abrupt, and much too close by. Téa jolted again, her startled movement knocking over her briefcase and spilling its contents. Pencils, an art eraser, a
Modernism
magazine, and a bulky black nylon makeup bag slid onto the pavement.

Téa crouched to reclaim the items, reaching for the makeup bag first.

Johnny was faster. His long fingers closed over the black nylon as he bent too. "Why are you dressed like that?"

She didn't need to look at what she was wearing. It was a simple, polished cotton shirt dress that was fastened from knees to throat with snaps. So instead she stared at his hand, holding fast to her history, holding fast to her shame. Inside the bag was a Pepto-pink pre-teen diary, the kind that came with a little brass lock and key. Both were ineffective in really keeping away eyes interested in the confessions of a twelve-year-old, but the package made a perfect disguise for the grown-up secrets of a Mafia boss. No one, not in the mob or in the FBI, had ever suspected that the Loanshr.rk book they wanted so badly to find had always been hidden in plain sight—in the room of Salvatore Caruso's eldest daughter.

Conveniently there, because Salvatore had given his eldest daughter the responsibility of all the record-keeping, from the entering of new names to the adding and subtracting of sums. The little job that had made her feel like his most important princess.

"Téa?"

Her heart stuttered inside her chest. She hadn't seen a man's hand holding that book in sixteen years. While she'd prayed for that time to come during the first days of her father's disappearance, she'd prayed just as hard it wouldn't happen in the many, many years since.

'Téa."

Johnny's bark brought her gaze to his face. And from there to the rest of him. She stared.

"What's the matter with you?" he asked. "You're silent, you're jumpy, it's near ninety outside and you're dressed in another of your nun-suits."

He wasn't dressed at all. Elegant, urbane Johnny Magee, the one who she was designing a home for filled with sophisticated decorations like a George Nelson slatted bench and Joseph Blumfeld original wool rugs, had gone jungle on her, wearing nothing more than cut-off Levis, ratty tennis shoes, scruffy whiskers, and a sweat-dotted tan.

"What have you been doing?" she replied, noting streaks of dirt across his arms and chest and a leaf in his hair. If she had to hazard a guess, she'd say he'd been working with the landscapers she'd seen about the property on her way in. In the parking area she'd squeezed her Volvo between two decrepit trucks with guerroro gardening painted on the doors and plywood walls extending the sides of beds nearly filled with palm fronds and half-decayed vegetation.

But would the urbane Johnny she knew play day laborer? Though this didn't
feel
like the Johnny she knew. Gone were the easy smiles and the facile charm. This man was a tense, bad-tempered stranger who was looking at her as if he wanted to push her away… and eat her up whole at the same time.

Her throat closed down, trapping the air in her chest. With panic fluttering in her belly, she grabbed the makeup bag from him. It didn't matter what he had been doing or what he was doing to
her
. On Friday night, spooked by her mother's warning, she'd considered having sex with Johnny so she wouldn't have to be alone. Dumb. Really dumb. But now she remembered that she had a job to do, that they had a business relationship.

End of story.

Clutching the bag to the chest of her basic black shirt dress, she forced in a breath and aimed a polite smile just past him. "I was hoping to get inside and take some measurements this afternoon," she said. "I warned you that we'd be tripping over each other if you were living here while I worked, but if you want me to come back another time—"

"No," he muttered, running a hand through his hair. "No. You just surprised me, that's all."

"Okay."

He hesitated, ran his fingers over his hair once more. "I haven't been sleeping well. I apologize for…
shit
."

He apologized for… what? For being rude this afternoon? For leaving her on Friday night? For causing her to go home alone and remember the way he'd kissed her, touched her, and then left her with all the unrequited sexual lust that he'd promised in his devil's voice would be so simple to slake?

She hadn't slept well either. So she'd pulled the Loanshark book off her bedroom shelf and paged through it, studying line after line of perfect Catholic schoolgirl handwriting. For the thousandth time she'd considered shredding it or burning it or burying it deep, deep, deep in her tiny backyard, and for the thousandth time she'd wondered if her father might really be alive. If he came out of hiding, he could use the information inside the book for leverage with the Mafia or with the FBI.

And whether or not she loved him or she hated him, the mob boss's daughter continued to protect him.

It was why she'd decided to carry it with her, instead of leaving it in her empty house all day.

'That's it," Johnny suddenly bit out, pulling on the bag-covered book in her hands to bring her toward him.

"What are you doing?" she said, allowing him to tug her forward because she was unwilling to release the book. But as he drew her too close, she let go and folded her arms against her chest. "What's gotten into you?"

He shook his head. "I don't the hell know. I was just going to… I wanted to kiss you again."

"Well, don't." Téa flushed. "I mean, I don't want you to."

"I don't want to want to either," he replied, glaring at her. His hand slashed the book through the air in a impatient gesture. "But then you show up in the butt-ugly dress and…
shit
."

And I want to strip it off you and lick you from your pretty little toes to your hot little tongue.

Oh, no, Téa thought. She wasn't going to let her imagination go wild again. Pretending she heard Johnny's voice in her head only fueled the sexual fire he ignited inside of her. But she wasn't going to burn this time.

"Look, Contessa, the fact is that I'm on a short fuse here, and—"

"You're on a short fuse?
You're
on a short fuse?" The anger she always tried to keep locked away in her mind was rattling its cabinet doors. Her grandfather was trying to rope her back into the family, her business was always on the verge of collapse or the object of public contempt, dozens of dangerous men were moving into town, all who would eagerly, literally,
kill
to find the book that was right now in the hands of the one man who had promised her miracles but paid off in misery.

Sexual misery, the lowest kind of all.

"I'll have you understand," she continued, "that I didn't ask for any of this. I could have gone along just fine, ignoring this… this so-called chemistry. I didn't want to know you any better than knowing whether you prefer floor lamps or hanging fixtures. But
you're
the one who told me it was 'simple,' and that I should stop my self-denial and start eating sugar again."

She lunged toward him, meaning to swipe the bagged book out of his hand.

He held onto it. "Maybe I was wrong—"

"
Maybe
you were wrong?" She tugged at the book, but he wouldn't let go. "Then
maybe
you should have figured that out before backing me up against my front door Friday night and then leaving me feeling… feeling—"

Realizing what she'd been about to give away, she broke off and went back to yanking on the Loanshark book.

Johnny tightened his grip. "Leaving you feeling what?" he prompted, his voice turning softer. Silkier. 'Tell me, I want to know."

"Look, let's just forget about it, okay?" Now that he was gazing at her instead of glaring at her, she wanted to drop the subject.

"Perhaps we should just be honest with each other instead."

"You want honesty?" How ironic the notion was when they were holding her shameful secrets between them. But she managed to stare him straight in the eyes. "Go ahead, Johnny. You start."

He hesitated. For several long, tense moments.

She laughed as his hands relaxed and she was able to pull the makeup bag from his grasp. "It's not as easy as it sounds, is it?" With the book in her hands, she could breathe better. She tucked it back in her briefcase, stuffing it deep, then took pity on them both by doing the same with the personal turn of their conversation.

She stuffed that deep too, and returned to her professional responsibilities. "I'd like to show you some sketches I've prepared. They're preliminary, of course, but I want to make sure I'm on the right track with what you have in mind."

"Fine." He took a deep breath, let it out. "Sure." With another deep breath he strode to the front door and held it open for her.

It was pleasantly cool inside, but their footsteps clattered in the emptiness. Apparently he'd added no more furnishings besides those in the master bedroom, and she couldn't understand why he'd want to live with all the eerie echoes. "I have a few pieces in mind, a chair and a love seat, that I could get in here in a day or so, if you'd like—and if you like them," she said, glancing over at him.

He shrugged.

She crossed to the seat-level fireplace hearth, pushing aside a tall stack of newspapers to make room for them both. "They'll make you more comfortable."

"I doubt it," she thought he muttered, but then he said more loudly. "Would you like some coffee? A soda? I have sugarless."

So he was backing her no-sweets habit now. Téa ignored the little stab of disappointment and shook her head. "Come sit beside me and let me show you my sketches."

"Just a sec."

He disappeared through the front door again. She heard a splash and peered through the glass wall at the pool. But he was out as quick as he was in. In another two minutes he was back in the living room, his hair wet and a blue-and-white striped beach towel wrapped around him from hip to knees.

Certainly he still had on those low-riding Levis, right?

He seated himself on the hearth beside her. She leaned down to pull her sketchpad from her briefcase, her gaze sliding over to his long legs and the damp golden hairs already springing away from his tanned skin. She stared, fascinated, as a lone drip of pool water worked itself from somewhere above and rolled over his knee and toward his ankle.

A flush of corresponding heat rolled over her, and she jerked upright, pulling from her briefcase—the makeup bag.

"Your sketches are in there?" Johnny asked, glancing down at her lap.

"No, no." She dropped the bag like a hot potato and grasped the spirals of her sketchpad instead. With a quick flip, she located her first drawing.

She tilted it to give him a better view of the quick sketch she'd made of the house as seen from the courtyard surrounding the pool. "It's preliminary as I said, but what I propose is to return the exterior and interior walls to the sand color called for in the original plans."

"You know I don't like things around me to be boring."

Like her clothes. Like
her
? Was that why he hadn't brought her back home on Friday night? Téa pushed the thought from her mind. "The color will come from the furnishings and from the outside environment. As a matter of fact, I want to take my cue when it comes to color
from
the outside environment."

He scooted closer as she flipped another page. Her arm, bare beneath the short sleeve of her shirt dress, brushed his cool skin. Setting fire to hers.

She hugged her elbow to her ribs and swallowed hard. "Most of the wood floors in the house can be refinished, but the one here in the living room needs to be replaced. What I was thinking was mimicking the pale turquoise of the pool in a ceramic floor tile for this room. Not only would it visually extend the pool setting into the interior, but it would be cool in the hot months. In the winter, the reflection of a fire in the fireplace against the tiles would be spectacular."

"Spectacular," he murmured. His body shifted again, and his towel-covered thigh pressed against her hip.

"Well?" she asked, glancing over to find him gazing not at the sketch, but at her face. "What do you think?"

I think I want you, right here, right now.

The voice in her head matched the look in his eyes. "Johnny…" Her body seemed to sway toward his and, cursing her imagination, she snapped her spine straight, forcing herself upright. With a breath, she focused back on the pad and the pieces of furniture she'd drawn there.

"I can get a couple of vintage pieces from a local shop I know." She pointed her forefinger at the page. "A slat back sofa like this one and a van der Rohe lounge chair similar to this. If you like them, I can have them delivered in a couple of days. Would that make you more comfortable here?"