I see that you’re all grown up.
A woman.
“So will you go with me to a party tonight?” he asked.
She curled her fingernails into her palms. “Oh, well…”
“I can introduce you around. Maybe find you—”
“The man I’ve been missing?” Lucy couldn’t say what made her utter the words. They came out of nowhere, sounding a little hoarse, a little flirty, a little like she was flirting with him.
She felt both appalled and excited. Outside of a few jokes and that one humiliating kiss, she’d never been overt when dealing with him.
Carlo’s brow lifted, and a corner of his mouth ticked up, too. One of his fingers reached out to wrap itself around a lock of her hair. He tugged. “Lucy. Is that what you’re looking for?”
Her tongue trailed across her bottom lip and she lowered her lashes—again in what seemed a totally unthought-out, yet obviously flirty way—to gaze at him through them. “It depends on how far I’ll have to go to find him.”
Carlo shook his head, an amused, masculine smile quirking both corners of his mouth. “My, my, my. You have grown up.”
Enough to know what this was. No mistaking it now. Carlo was looking at her with a new kind of interest, with the sort of heat she’d only fantasized about before. Her blood raced through her body, waking up thousands of nerve endings with the thrilling news.
Carlo’s looking at me the way a man looks at a woman!
His knuckle ran down her cheek and she felt it all the way to her toes. “Eight o’clock,” he said. “Cocktail attire.”
“Yes.” Yes, yes, yes!
“Where shall I pick you up?”
The racing movement of Lucy’s blood stopped, stilling in one fell swoosh. That shimmering heat continued between them, but she wondered for just how long.
“Where, Lucy?”
“My sister’s. Until I find my own place, I’m staying with Elise.”
And then Lucy had her answer. The tension, the temperature, the thread of attraction running between them didn’t last even another moment, instead dropping like an anchor from one of the boats traveling through the bay she could see over his shoulder. She leveled her gaze at the pretty sight, even as she noted the unpretty view of Carlo’s expression closing down.
His hand dropped, his feet stepped away. “I’ll be there at eight.”
He didn’t renege on the invitation. Former cop, old family friend that he was, he wouldn’t be out-and-out rude to her. Even if it meant picking Lucy up at the home of her married sister.
Her sister. The unrequited love of Carlo Milano’s life.
Chapter Two
There was a rap on the door of the guest bedroom as Lucy stood before the open closet, frowning. “Come in.”
Her sister stuck her head inside the room. “Dad called while you were in the shower. He wanted to know how your first day went.”
“I hope you told him I haven’t quit,” Lucy said. “And I didn’t get fired, either,” she continued, muttering under her breath. Though not true, she suspected that was what her family had assumed each time she’d changed jobs.
Her grumble caused a frown to mar her sister’s perfect face as she stepped into the bedroom and swung the door shut behind her. “Are you okay?”
Lucy avoided a probing gaze by turning back to the closet. “Cocktail attire. For an advance party to hype the Street Beat rock music festival at the end of the month. Don’t you think that calls for something a bit less conservative than a little black dress?”
“I don’t know,” Elise replied, coming to stand beside her. “You’re the music lover. Carlo was smart to invite you.”
“Yeah. Smart.” Lucy figured it was more out of convenience than IQ. Carlo had needed a date for the business thing and she’d been the closest available woman. Those short moments of self-delusion when she’d thought her fantasies had come true…well, self-delusion said it all. “Since I’m working for him, I thought I’d better say yes. Though I’m sure he has a black book full of numbers he could have called.”
“He dates. I know that.”
Lucy slid a look at her sister. How much did Elise know? Was she at all aware of Carlo’s feelings for her? Lucy didn’t think so. Even though, when Elsie had married her husband, John, six years before, it had been clear to anyone paying close attention that Carlo had lost the girl of his dreams.
Lucy had noticed because he’d been the man of hers, but she doubted that Carlo had ever deliberately shared with others how being best man at Elise’s wedding had broken his heart. Lucy might have doubted it herself, except on the big day, wearing her own bridesmaid’s tulle, she’d overheard Carlo’s sister guess aloud his bitter secret. Lucy’s own heart had fractured as he’d reluctantly confirmed the truth. The woman of his dreams was walking down the aisle. Away from him.
But it hadn’t changed the way she felt about him, ever. Just as his stiff expression when she’d mentioned her sister made it clear his feelings for Elise were rock solid.
It was why Lucy hadn’t made up her mind about what to do tonight. Should she really go? There was still time to claim a migraine or call in an excuse of stomach cramps.
Still uncertain, she reached for a hanger draped with a stretchy garment in sunset colors and sprinkled with sequins. “What do you think about this?” she asked, holding the various straps and scraps of fabric against her terry-cloth robe.
Elise’s laugh burst out.
“What?”
Her sister couldn’t seem to stop grinning. “Oh, I think you’re going to be good for our Carlo.”
Her Carlo, Lucy corrected. “I don’t understand.”
“Let’s put it this way. Getting out of police work and into his own successful business didn’t lighten up the man.”
“Losing a partner to a bullet might account for that,” Lucy defended, frowning at her sister. “Patrick McMillan was like a second father to Carlo.”
Elise sighed. “It wasn’t a criticism.”
Crossing to the bed, Lucy tossed the dress down and then grabbed a bottle of lotion from the dresser and started to smooth the cream over her legs. “What did you mean by it, then?”
“You’ve seen how he’s changed over the years,” her sister said. “He used to smile more. Heck, he used to laugh. But now he ducks from most of the invitations our group of friends sends out, and when he does say yes, he broods in a corner or brings a date who does all his talking for him.”
Like that too-pretty Tamara? Though apparently she was yesterday’s news.
“I don’t think he knows how to have fun anymore.” Elise nodded toward the spangled dress stretched across the bedspread. “Maybe you could make that part of your job description.”
Lucy’s palm stopped halfway up her shin. “Aren’t you afraid I’d botch that up just like I’ve botched up every other job I’ve had since graduation?” She knew that’s what they all thought, even though leaving her positions in the accounting departments of the law firm, the school district and the insurance company had been completely voluntary. It wasn’t that she hadn’t done good work…it was that she hadn’t enjoyed it.
Elise rolled her eyes. “You’ve been listening to our brothers too much.”