“Your manners were appalling.”
“I don’t know how to break this to you,” Bree said sweetly, “but you’re my sister, not my mother.”
“And a good thing, too. If Ma’s plane hadn’t landed late, she’d have been at the party in time to see you in action. Can you imagine how she’d have reacted?”
“No.” Bree’s tone had gone from sugary to saccharine. “Why don’t you tell me?”
Obviously Big Sister hadn’t expected a reply to what she’d meant as a rhetorical question.
“Well, she’d have—she’d have—”
“Sent me to my room without supper? Docked my allowance?”
The sisters glared at each other. Then Fallon sighed.
“Okay, maybe I’m overreacting.”
“Hallelujah,” Bree said, picking up her fork again.
“But you really were abrupt.”
“I wanted to be sure Mr. Firelli got the message.”
“Which was?”
“That I wasn’t interested.”
“Gianni’s a very nice guy.”
“No doubt.”
“And he’s good-looking.”
“Good-looking?” Bree shrugged, put down her fork and reached for the butter. “I suppose.”
“Give me a break! You know he’s good-looking.”
“What I know,” Bree replied, breaking off a piece of croissant and buttering it, “is that Gianni Firelli is gorgeous.”
“Well, of course he is. He’s…” Fallon blinked. “What did you say?”
“You heard me. He’s, what, six-one? Six-two? Shoulders out to here, solid muscle straight down to his toes, black hair, green eyes, a face like a Greek god’s—”
“Italian,” Fallon said, staring at her.
“A minor detail. The point is, the man’s incredible. An out-and-out hottie.” Bree reached for her glass of white wine and smiled at the dumbstruck expression on her sister’s face. “Give me a break, Fallon. I’m not dead! Did you think I hadn’t noticed?”
“I don’t know what I thought,” Fallon said, sitting back in the booth. “Tell me more.”
“What more is there? I’m sure there were a dozen women at your party who’d have happily killed for the chance to be introduced to him.”
“But?”
“But, as I already told Karen—”
“Karen?” Fallon said, bewildered.
“Karen Massini. Tomasso’s wife.”
“Oh. Right. I keep forgetting you and she knew each other before I married Stefano.”
“Only for years and years,” Bree said, rolling her eyes. “We were friends in college. Close friends. Then she married Tomasso, moved to California and we lost touch, but ever since she got pregnant and they moved back to New York—”
“Yes, okay, I remember,” Fallon said, impatient to return to the current topic. “So, you and Karen talked about Gianni?”
“She said she’d noticed him looking at me and…You know how these things go.”
Fallon wanted to reach across the table and shake her sister. Don’t try to play matchmaker, cara, her husband had told her at breakfast. Gianni and Briana didn’t connect. End of story. Stefano had taken her in his arms. Not everyone is lucky enough to fall in love at first sight.
No. Not in love, perhaps, but something had happened between Stefano’s old friend and her baby sister. Fallon was certain. Karen wasn’t the only one who’d noticed the way he’d looked at Bree. And the way Bree had looked at him, even as she was giving him the brush-off.
“No,” she said carefully, “I don’t know how these things go. What did Karen say?”
“Oh, I don’t remember, exactly.” Bree patted her lips with her napkin and pushed away her plate. “Something about me taking pity on the guy and at least giving him a smile.”
“You see? You were so impolite that people noticed. Poor Gianni.”
“Poor Gianni,” Bree said, the words coated with sarcasm, “needs your sympathy the way a bear needs a fur coat. He has a mistress.”
“Oh.”
“Yes. Oh. A mistress, and he was coming on to me anyway. What do you think of him now? Or didn’t he bother mentioning that we’d met in the elevator and he tried a pickup line before the doors had the chance to shut?”
“Well,” Fallon said, thinking back to the first time she and her husband met, “well—”
“Look, there’s just something about the guy I don’t like, okay? End of story.”
“Bree. Honey, you’ve gone through how many relationships? Sooner or later, there’s always something about the guy you don’t like, whatever that means. Don’t make a face. I know you’re a big girl—”
“An adult,” Bree said coolly, “but neither you nor Megan seem able to hang on to that thought.”
“We just want you to be happy. To find someone to love.”
“Lust isn’t love.”
Fallon blushed. “Sometimes it’s the way love begins.”
“Well, not for me.” Bree’s expression turned dreamy. “I’ll meet the right man someday. He’ll be gentle and sweet. He’ll never do anything to upset me. He might not stand out in a crowd, but—”
“What about passion?”
“Sex isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
“Passion isn’t only about sex,” Fallon said softly, “but if you think that making love isn’t special, you haven’t been with the right man.”
“Sex Ed 101,” Bree said and, just as she’d hoped, her sister laughed. Good. She really didn’t want to get into this topic. “Don’t worry about me, okay? And lunch is on me. No arguments.”
Fallon watched Briana rummage in her handbag. “Bree?” she said, so softly that Bree looked up. “This passion thing. I know you. You’re full of fire. Full of life. Why would you want to deny it?”
“Amazing,” Bree replied, trying for a light tone. “Karen made the same speech. Do the two of you really think you know what’s best for me?”
“I barely know Karen, but I admire her insight. Did you ever consider we might be right? Maybe you’re kidding yourself. Maybe what you really want is a man who’ll sweep you off your feet?”
Briana’s eyes flashed. Fallon had pushed too far. It was time for the truth.
“Sweep me off my feet, huh? Like our father did to our mother?” She leaned forward, all attempts at good humor gone. “I was the baby, so maybe you think I don’t remember, but I do. Ma struggling to pretend it was okay with her whatever he did, smiling when she wanted to cry, never saying an unkind word to him or about him.”
“Bree—”
“Our mother turned herself into a doormat because of that ‘sweeping her off her feet’ crap. She lived for our father, lived through him, and if you think I’m going to let myself in for the same nonsense, you’re crazy!”
“Is that how you think of me?” Fallon