Across the table, Mateo cried and my breasts instantly ached. Luca, the handsome man sitting next to Antonia, looked a little helpless when my son fussed again, shifting him from one side of his large chest to the other before my baby started crying harder. I pushed back from the table, excusing myself from Mrs. Carelli and her two sons.
“I didn’t know what to do…” Luca said, standing to give the baby to me, but he stopped when I smiled at him, waving off his apology.
“He’s teething,” I told him, taking Mateo, who calmed when I laid him against my chest. “Nothing is going to make him happy right now.”
“Can we get you…” Antonia tried, but I shook my head.
“No, but thank you. I’ll just walk him around a bit.”
* * *
Snow completely covered the streets now. From the large bay window on the other side of the restaurant, I could make out the frosted glass of the storefronts and the frozen leaves on the limbs nearly touching the gazebo in the town square.
My car was almost hidden under several feet of snow, and four men bundled in parkas and thick gloves had begun to shovel the streets, clearing a path on the sidewalk.
This was a weird little place. An hour from the city, Cuoricinofelt like it was a million miles away. Like somewhere stuck in time, where people cared about their neighbors, hosted huge dinners, shoveled snow and, apparently, took in lost strangers from the cold.
Mateo whimpered, and I looked down at the soft features of his perfect face. It still felt terrifying to me how much I loved him. How scared I was sometimes to be the only person in the world he depended on.
And here we were, standing in a strange place, taken in by friendly people who have cared more for us than our own family.
“Maggie?” The deep, rich voice twisted something inside me. Something I hadn’t felt for over a year, growing wilder and hotter as he sat next to me all night.
“Hmm?” I said, not turning to face Smoke.
“You good?” He came closer and that wild, hot sensation lowered, his scent filling my senses.
I nodded, not trusting myself to sound calm if I answered him.
He was behind me. Not touching. The heat from his body like a tease. Like a promise that only made the needful, long-forgotten sensation spark and move until I could recognize it for what it was.
Lust.
“And the baby?”
I looked down at Mateo, his soft, easy snores pulling a grin from me.
Smoke reached for my son’s face, smoothing a finger over his forehead. “He’ll be a heartbreaker.”
“Not if I can help it,” I said, looking back out the window.
“No,” Smoke said, standing against the window, his back on the glass as he watched me. “I can’t see him getting away with shit. Not with a woman like you raising him.”
He didn’t know me.
I didn’t know him, but I got the feeling Smoke was a man who could read people well.
I was no idiot.
I’d heard the Carelli name.
He might not betheCarelli I’d heard of, but I knew they were related. He looked a lot like his infamous mafia cousin Johnny.
“And what kind of woman do you think I am?”
He pushed off the window, standing right in front of me. If I weren’t holding Mateo, there’d be only inches separating us.
“What a loaded fucking question.”
