Christine finished her tea and licked her lips as she rose, wondering if she could find an excuse to drop in on Mary Jo again. The food she normally ate on her work break was more in the peanut-butter-and-jelly vein.
Moving the lemon cookies to a cooling rack with the smooth efficiency of a seasoned pro, Mary Jo winked at Vito. “I can’t wait to meet the man you finally deemed good enough for your little sister. Did you tell your friend Christine about the time you followed Giselle to her prom and then hid in the bushes when she went parking with her date?”
“That story got really blown out of proportion.” Vito backed toward the door as if to flee, but Christine thought she had time for a final Vito story.
She remained rooted to the spot.
“Apparently he neglected to tell me that one. Can you possibly spare another cookie, Mary Jo?” Even after the plateful of scallops, she was dying for a sweet. And the kitchen smelled so lemony good.
“I always have plenty,” she insisted, dealing out another red ceramic plate and three cookies faster than a Vegas card sharp. “In fact I’ll pack up a box for you to take home while I tell you about poor Giselle’s prom night.”
Christine snagged one of the warm cookies while Vito groaned behind her. She was finding it increasingly difficult to reconcile her initial impression of him as Mr. Flashy in his European suit and expensive gold watch with the same person Mary Jo Kowolski kept talking about.
“Well, none of the Cesare boys liked anyone to date their sister. I can’t tell you how many young men I saw approach their house once Giselle turned sixteen, but those brothers sent all of them away because none of them was good enough for her as far as they were concerned.”
“Mrs. K., that’s not totally true—”
Mary Jo shook a finger at Vito and smiled. “You had your chance to share the story, but you didn’t. Now it’s my turn.”
Christine wondered if anyone ever got a word in edgewise around Mrs. Kowolski.
“Anyhow, we were all surprised when Billy Spears asked Giselle to the prom and she said yes. I had my doubts about whether or not Giselle would actually make it out of the house that night, but sure enough, I saw her leave just as I was putting the finishing touches on a friend’s wedding cake.”
Christine understood all too well how difficult it could be to have overprotective older brothers breathing down your neck. She’d grown up with two brothers determined to keep her safe, especially after their father walked out, which meant they usually scared off all prospective boyfriends.
No wonder she found herself rooting for Giselle and Billy.
“And then, what do I see out my kitchen window?” Mary Jo pointed with a thumb over her shoulder to her view of the sidewalk and the Cesares side yard. She removed a huge silver bowl from underneath the electric mixer and moved it to another counter where she’d set out her cookie sheets. “Huey, Dewey and Louie, better known as Vito, Nico and Renzo, all pile into the family car to follow them.”
“We were going to a party,” Vito interjected. “Both Marco and Giselle had gone out, so we felt entitled to a night on the town, too. We weren’t following my sister.”
Mary Jo gave him a brush-off smile as if she didn’t believe a word. “Still, Vito and his brothers came back a few minutes after Giselle pulled into the driveway with her date and—”
“We knew when she was supposed to be home and we were running late,” Vito explained, cramming his words in on top of Mary Jo’s.
She paused in the process of dabbing globs of cookie dough on the baking sheets. “And when he found his little sister necking in the car, he probably took ten years off Billy’s life by personally hauling him out of the vehicle.”
Vito shook his head as if still disgusted with the incident that was probably nearly a decade old. “The punk was all over my sixteen-year-old sister and gunning for first base—in my driveway, no less. I was damn proud I handled the matter with no bloodshed.”
Thinking she’d probably tormented Vito enough with this walk down memory lane, Christine scooped up the box of cookies and drifted closer to the door. “In other words he took the whole protector thing pretty seriously?”
Mary Jo winked. “I think he still does.”
Vito was already outside holding the door for Christine.
She hoped he didn’t think she needed any chivalry. She’d left home the moment she turned eighteen just so she could be her own person and make her own mistakes.
Which, of course, she’d done in spectacular fashion. She’d thought she was being so smart and conservative by getting to know Rafe online before she let herself get swept away by his sensitive notes and romantic poems. At least she hadn’t jumped straight into bed with him, right?
Ha! She would have been a lot better off having a fling than getting engaged to a man who already had a wife and had lined up seven other sucker fiancées.
“Thanks for the cookies, Mrs. K.” she called, stepping outside into the Florida twilight.
“Nice meeting you, hon,” the woman hollered back as the screen door slammed. “Come back anytime!”
“Sorry about that.” Vito paused when they reached the street. “I didn’t mean to spend so long at her house, but she’s a really nice lady even if she likes to trot out all my secrets.”
“I bet that’s not all your secrets.” Christine savored the marginally cooler air now that the sun was setting. If she hadn’t known better, this time spent with Vito could almost feel like a date. Good thing she wasn’t such a starry-eyed romantic anymore, right? “I’ll wager your lifestyle abroad is a far sight more colorful—and secret—than your life over here.”
God, that sounded like a come-on. Giving herself a mental shake and a stern reminder of where fanciful thoughts had led her the last time, Christine decided to make tracks back to her sweaty physical labor before she started thinking about other ways of getting sweaty and physical with the undeniably delicious Vito.
Turning her gaze back to the torn-up Cesare yard, she promised herself she’d ditch Vito and all thoughts of a sexy interlude ASAP.
VITO STARED DOWN at Christine in the rosy light of sunset and wondered how many more neighbors’ ancient stories he’d have to suffer through before he could go home.
With her.
“I refuse to answer that until you tell me something about you.” In fact, he wasn’t budging until he knew more about this woman full of contrasts. Her pixie figure versus her very healthy appetite was the most recent of his intriguing discoveries about her. “You know all the dirt on me now, but I don’t know the first thing about you other than you run your own business and you don’t like anyone to handle your petals too roughly.”
He didn’t know what demon within made him add in that last part. He had the feeling he shouldn’t be flirting with her if he wanted to convince her they could successfully share the same house for the next six weeks.
But she didn’t blush or look the least bit flustered. Instead, she jammed her box of cookies under one arm and faced him head-on. All business.
“Fair enough. I’m a Tampa native but I went to college in L.A. I wanted to put as much distance between me and the overbearing men in my family. But now I’m back in the same state as my older brothers and I’m determined to develop my own business independent of anyone’s help—financial or otherwise.”
Was it his imagination, or did he detect a note of warning in her voice? And how had she come to be so damn prickly at such a young age? She couldn’t be much older than twenty-five.
She waved to a little girl pushing her way down the sidewalk on a scooter before she took up her story again. “My five-year plan sees All Natural thriving as an independent success while my ten-year goals include opening offices in other Florida cities. Either that, or I might just open a nursery of specialty plants you can’t find anywhere else. I don’t date much because I work too hard and I spend the majority of my waking hours with dirt under my fingernails.”
He found it interesting she opted to slide in her dating stance. Another warning, no doubt.
“Just out of curiosity’s sake, are men in the five-year plan?” Not that he was jockeying for position or anything.
“Men aren’t even in the long-term planning unless I get really lonely. And even then…Well let’s just say I don’t need much in that department to tide me over.” Glancing around the neighborhood, she peered back at Vito’s ranch house. “And I think that bit of sharing probably evens up the score don’t you? I really need to do a few more things around the yard before it gets totally dark.”
Letting her off the hook for now, Vito definitely planned to ask her about her opposition to dating sometime down the road. Her stance surprised him since he had her pegged for more the home-and-hearth type with her green thumb and nurturing career.
But he had to admit, her anti-relationship views opened up some very intriguing possibilities for them this summer.
“Don’t you want to go talk to a few more neighbors?” Vito had seen Mrs. Hollenbeck walking her dog on the street earlier. She’d vouch for him in a heartbeat, assuming she’d forgiven him for feeding Fluffy pizza the one and only time he’d done any dog-sitting. How was he supposed to know Fluffy had wheat allergies?
“Are you kidding? I just got your whole life story from Mary Jo.” Christine hurried back over to his yard, her low-cut work boots moving silently over the dark ground, her hair fluttering around her chin with the help of a welcome breeze. “I’m confident there’s not a chance you could be a homicidal maniac without her knowing all the details. Even if you did have a dark and wicked side, I’m sure you wouldn’t want to exercise it for fear of jeopardizing lifetime access to the best cookies in southern Florida.”
Setting her box of sweets on the tailgate of the rusty pickup truck parked under the carport, she circled around to retrieve a few tools still lying around the property.
Vito ducked into the carport to turn on a couple of floodlights and then followed her across the yard, enjoying the view from behind. “The people around here are pretty nice. They were all really good to the family after our folks died. Mrs. Kowolski fed us for a week before Giselle decided she wanted to take up cooking. Nico grew pretty talented in the kitchen, too, but me and Renzo—forget it. We would have been living on Cap’n Crunch without some help.”
Giselle’s exploits as a superstar chef were a welcome topic of conversation normally, but Vito didn’t want to overload his guest on his first day back in town. She probably knew more than she ever wanted to know about the Cesares.
