to her common sense, she interrupted the drift of the conversation by sliding the priority envelope in front of him. “Anyway, this just came for you. It looks important.”
When he picked it up, she turned. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Carlo.”
“Wait.”
She didn’t spin back around. “It’s after five.”
“But we’re old friends, and I was thinking that since you’re doing me the big favor of filling in—” His voice broke off. “Damn.”
Curiosity reversed the direction of her feet. “You were thinking…?”
He was staring down at what looked to be a pair of tickets in his hands. “I was thinking, no, I know,” he said, grimacing, “that I could use a date for tonight.”
Lucy swallowed. “Is there someone you’d like me to get on the phone for you? Tamara, or…?”
“You, Lucy.”
“Me?” She was beginning to sound like an echo machine.
Carlo was up and around his desk before she could run for the door. Not that she really wanted to. Not when he came close enough to do up her buttons again…or undo them.
The air was jittering with tension. And heat. Or maybe that was just her. No. No. Carlo was standing over her and she saw his nostrils flare as he took in another breath of her perfume. He was looking at her in a manner that surely he wouldn’t waste on Pippi Longstocking.
You smell like a girl.
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
