Finder's Keeper (11 page)

For a fraction of a second, Mia saw Chase go still out of the corner of her eye. Then his bright easy smile flashed out and she decided she must have imagined his momentary tension. “Not much to tell. Typical yuppy WASPs. When did your family come over from Italy?”

“Late eighteen hundreds. My great-great-grandfather was called Gianni Correa, but at Ellis Island they got his name mixed up and we’ve all been Corregiannis ever since.” Mia didn’t miss the fact that Chase had dodged her question. He really didn’t like to talk about himself. Who was this man with the slippery charm? “What should I know about you, Chase Hunter?”

“I love to surf.”

“Um, okay.” Not exactly what she’d been driving at. Clearly a faulty question. Imprecise. “How long have you been a psychic finder?”

“I could always do it, but I’ve only been doing it for cash for the last five years.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t mention that part. Just in case my family gets suspicious.” She mentally tracked through the standard get-to-know-you small talk she’d always thought was such a waste of time. “Have you always lived around here?”

“More or less. You?”

“Except for college. Cal Tech. Did you—?” Mia broke off. Was it rude to ask if he’d gone to college? Or worse to assume he hadn’t?

“Penn,” Chase said, anticipating the question.

She blinked. “Wow. That’s a good school.”

“I dropped out.”

He said it without a trace of defensiveness or resentment. Just stating a fact, so comfortable with himself it didn’t even faze him, but Mia felt her inner intellectual snob deflate at the admission. “I see.”

“I can lie about it if you don’t want your parents to think you’re slumming.”

A blush seared her cheekbones. “No. Of course not. I would never ask you to… Lots of people don’t finish college.” Just no one she would ever consider dating. She swallowed around a sudden clog in her throat, inexplicably nervous. Awkwardness filled the car’s interior like sulfuric gas—noxious and cloying. Icebreaker. She needed an icebreaker. Didn’t people tell jokes to break the ice? “Do you want to hear my favorite joke?”

Chase gave a short coughing laugh at her abrupt question. “Sure. That’d be great.”

“It’s not a very good joke.”

He laughed again. “Then why is it your favorite?”

“Well,
I
think it’s funny, but no one else ever does. It’s a science joke.”

“I didn’t even know there were science jokes. Now I’m dying of curiosity. Lay it on me.”

“I just didn’t want you to have unrealistic expectations. I’m not a good joke teller and—”

“Mia.”

“Yes?”

“Just tell the damn joke already.”

“Right.” Mia pressed each of her fingers in turn against the steering wheel, concentrating intently on getting the words in the right order. Jokes were a serious business. “An atom walks into a bar—”

Chase snorted.

“That isn’t the funny part!” she protested.

“I’m sorry. I’ll try to only laugh at the funny parts. Carry on.”

She shot him a quick quelling glare and began again. “An atom walks into a bar. He’s visibly depressed. He slumps up onto a stool and the bartender says to him, ‘You look terrible. Are you all right?’”

A soft wheezing, panting sound came from the passenger’s side. Mia snuck a look at Chase and found him biting his lower lip to keep from laughing.

“Chase!”

A bark of laughter exploded from his mouth. “I’m sorry. See? It’s a great joke. I can’t even keep a straight face.”

“We aren’t to the funny part yet!”

“Quite right. A depressed molecule is talking to a bartender.”

“Atom.”

“Sorry. A depressed atom. Go on.”

“So the atom says…”

Chase snorted.

“Do you want to hear this joke or not?”

“The atom says, ‘Do you want to hear this joke or not?’”

“Of course not! God, you are so infuriating. Just shut up and let me finish.” She cleared her throat. “The atom says, ‘The most horrible thing happened today. I lost an electron.’ And the bartender says, ‘Oh no! Are you sure?’ And the atom sighs and says, ‘Yes.’” She smiled to herself, gearing up for the punchline. “‘I’m
positive
.’” Mia giggled. “Get it?
Positive
?”

She laughed again until she realized the car was eerily quiet.
Crap.
He didn’t think it was funny at all. She pulled into the church parking lot and threw the car into park. “You hate it,” she grumbled.

Then she looked at him and her heart developed a worrying arrhythmia. He was smiling. More than smiling. His eyes were twinkling, shoulders shaking, dimples flashing. He laughed silently, his grin broad and easy. “Mia,” he shook his head, wiping away a tear from the corner of one eye, “I think that might have been the best joke I’ve ever heard.”

She frowned. “You’re making fun of me.”

“No
.
”
His blue eyes flashed. “No, I’m not. That joke was perfect because it’s so perfectly
you
.”

“It’s nerdy. I told you I wasn’t funny. You were laughing at me the whole time.”

“I wasn’t laughing at you. Christ, Mia, do you have any idea how adorable you are when you tell that joke?” He reached up, gently brushing the pads of his calloused fingers along her jaw.

“Adorable?” People didn’t call her that. She wasn’t cute. She wasn’t sexy. She was all cutting, androgynous intellect.

“It’s a fabulous joke,” Chase murmured. His face was suddenly oh-so-close. His tan made his eyes jump out like sapphires, but it was his lips Mia couldn’t take her eyes off of. His lower lip was invitingly full. She wanted to lick it, suck it, bite it. Her breath was coming too fast and she knew if anyone looked at her in that moment they would see dilated pupils and flushed cheeks. Chemistry in action. But for once Mia was more concerned with sensation than science. He was inches away, then centimeters. Leaning in, tantalizing. Her lashes fluttered down.

A harsh knocking next to her ear had her yelping and jerking back.

She twisted and saw the twin wrinkled faces of Nonna and Zia Anna peering through the driver’s-side window, eyes wide, identical dentured grins beaming at her.

“Am I seeing double?” Chase asked.

The realization that he hadn’t been about to kiss her shattered her illusions with a crash. He’d been performing.
Of course
. Just as they’d agreed to. A guy like Chase wouldn’t be interested in a girl like her. To hide her mortification, Mia spoke rapidly. “They’re twins. My grandmother—call her Nonna, everyone does—and on the right is her twin Zia Anna. But if you can’t tell them apart, just call them both Nonna. They’re both grandmothers a dozen times over.”

“Who’s your young fella, Mia Rochelle?” Zia Anna bellowed through the glass.

“He looks like a stud,” her grandmother proclaimed at a similarly ear-splitting decibel, giving her an enthusiastic double thumbs up.

“Sweet Mary, Mother of God,” Mia groaned. “We’re here.”

Chase grinned. “And so it begins.”

Chapter Eleven

Christenings a la Corregianni

It took her family approximately seven seconds to separate Mia from Chase. Like lions separating a wounded gazelle from the herd for easy slaughter.

As Chase stepped out of the car, her male relatives swarmed him, smiling and back-patting in a deceptively genial manner. Meanwhile, Mia was flanked by her grandmother and Zia Anna as the eighty-three-year-old pair speculated gleefully about whether Chase had taken The Steroids to enhance his manly physique and whether The Steroids had adversely affected the size of his package.

Then Nonna’s hawk-like gaze zoomed in on her chest. “Mia Rochelle! Why aren’t you wearing the watch?”

“It doesn’t go with this outfit.”

Zia Anna gasped and Nonna crossed herself, both of them gawping at her like suggesting the watch didn’t match every outfit in the known universe was akin to calling the Virgin Mary a dirty slut.

She was almost relieved to see her mother sailing across the parking lot, her substantial bosom thrust out in front of her like the prow of a ship—no doubt drawn in by her standard issue one-of-my-children-is-embarrassing-me Italian mother tractor beam.

“Mia, why are you upsetting Nonna?” Her eyes locked on Mia’s cleavage—or what would have been Mia’s cleavage if she’d had breasts and a low-cut top. A frown puckered her mother’s brows and mouth in unison, accentuating the little lines that spiked out from her lips like the
Enterprise
going warp speed. “Where’s the watch?”

Mia resisted the urge to shoot Chase an I-told-you-so look. “I can’t wear it every second of every day.”

Zia Anna and Nonna gasped as one and swayed against one another, emitting little moans. Her mother took a more direct approach—pinching the skin of her upper arm and twisting it.

“Ma!
Ow
.”

“How can the watch work if you don’t wear it?” Angelina Marconi Corregianni flung her hands in frustration, her Italian-by-way-of-Jersey accent thickening as she bemoaned the stubbornness of her second-born daughter. “Your sister needs you in the sacristy.”

Her mother’s face was tense—much more stressed than it should have been on such a joyful occasion and Mia’s heart tumbled hard against her ribcage. “Is everything okay? Is it Marley?”

Her mother waved away the question with an eloquent flap of one hand. “Go.”

Mia met Chase’s gaze over the roof of the car. “Chase…”

He grinned and shooed her off. “Go on. I’m fine.”

Her brother Joey threw one All-State linebacker arm around Chase’s shoulders, his the-devil-made-me-do-it smile anything but comforting. “Yeah, go on, Mia. We’ll take care of your friend here.”

“He has immunity. Nobody touches him.” She took a moment to fix a quelling stare on each of her brothers and cousins in turn, knowing that her efforts were largely useless. Chase was on his own. “I’ll be back in two minutes,” she told him before taking off toward the side entrance to the sacristy as quickly as her uncomfortable heels could carry her.

Mia wasn’t a believer, but Catholicism wasn’t so much about belief as ritual in her family. This was their church, where every marriage, baptism and confirmation took place. She knew it better than her own condo. Letting herself into the sacristy, she found Gina pacing, bouncing a fussy Marley in her arms. Their older sister Teresa, the godmother-to-be, was nowhere in sight.

“What’s wrong?” Mia said as she crossed to Gina’s side, reaching out automatically to take Marley for a quick cuddle.

Gina passed her over. The baby, like any Corregianni offspring, was accustomed to being passed from family member to family member. She curled willingly into Mia’s arms, knotting one tiny fist in the small hairs against Mia’s neck and tipping her small, red face up to her aunt to better display her indignation. Mia breathed in her soft, clean baby smell and gently patted her back, taking up the time-honored baby sway to soothe her niece.

Gina gave a wry smile when Marley continued her hiccupping wail. “Am I a bad person that I’m happy she didn’t immediately quiet down for you? She was up a million times last night and she’s been a pain all day. If she was suddenly perfect for you, I think I would have had to kill you.”

“You’re human,” Mia said in a crooning voice designed to calm Marley, though it had no effect. “What’s the emergency? Mama looked freaked.”

“Mama’s going to herniate something.” Gina sank down onto a stack of kneelers. She’d always been round where Mia was angular and the baby had added extra padding to her curves, but she wore the weight well, looking fresh and bountiful, warm and soft and maternal. Now she laced her hands over the gentle swell of her belly.

“I need you to stand as godmother.”

Mia ignored the quick flash of pleasure the idea of being godmother to sweet, perfect, fussy, cranky Marley inspired. “Where’s Teresa?”

“Sitting in the front pew. She just said that she and Martin couldn’t become godparents. ‘Not now.’ Whatever that means. I thought Mama was going to have a seizure.”

“So the godfather…?”

“Tony’s asking his brother.” Gina turned dewy brown eyes on her. “Please say you’ll do it, Mia. I wanted to ask you in the first place but I thought Teresa would be mortally offended if I didn’t ask her and Martin because they’re the portrait of domestic bliss and you’re…”

“And I’m me. I get it. And I’d be honored.”

“Thank God. And just think, all the drama about Teresa backing out will take any attention off the fact that you didn’t bring a date.”

“Actually, I did bring a date.”

“You’re kidding.” Gina straightened abruptly, nearly falling off the stack of kneelers as it listed precariously beneath her. “The zoning guy?”

“Don’t sound so hopeful. You aren’t getting that exemption.”

“Then who?”

Mia felt her face flush. This was her first test. She wasn’t sure whether it would be her easiest or her hardest. Gina was closest to her, so would that make her easy to fool or impossible?

“His name is Chase.”

God, she was a terrible liar. She hadn’t even said anything untrue yet and already her cheeks were Bunsen-burner hot and her eyelids were starting to twitch. Mia hid her face against Marley’s dark, peach-fuzz hair.

“‘His name is Chase’?” Gina mimicked. “That’s all I get?”

“He…”

Salvation arrived in the form of Gina’s husband Tony and his nineteen-year-old pizza-delivery-boy brother who would be Marley’s other spiritual guide.

“The church is packed,” Tony boomed. He had two volumes—loud and louder. He’d never make it as a librarian, he was a total teddy bear, and he loved her baby sister more than life itself. Gina had picked a winner. Or, as she put it, the watch had picked one. Tony gave a sharp clap and hunkered down like he was inviting them all to huddle up. “We ready to get this party started?”

“Absolutely!” Mia said, rushing toward the door to the sanctuary before Gina could stall. If they were up at the altar, her sister couldn’t interrogate her about Chase.

Or so she thought.

The holy father intoned in Latin, Marley kept up a constant keening complaint, and, on this sacred occasion, as Mama and Nonna and all the aunties dabbed at their eyes, Gina stood, with her baby dripping holy water, and gossiped.