When they pulled apart, Vanessa was blurry-eyed and had a big ole smile on her face. “I missed you, Lu, you have no idea how much.”
They weren’t hugging anymore, but Vanessa still had her arm draped over Lucy’s shoulders, and from that vantage point, Lucy took a closer look at her sister. Exhaustion was etched around her eyes, even under the meticulously applied makeup, and professionally curated eyebrows and lashes. Dark shadows hollowed out her cheek bones. Shestared intently, trying to piecemeal what could have her sister appearing so…bone-weary.
“How’d you get here?”
Vanessa shrugged. “Caught a flight.”
“And how’d you know I was here, at the salon?”
Pulling back completely, Vanessa laughed as she moved toward Natalie who was plugging in a curling iron. “What is this? The third degree? Geez, Lu, I wanted to be here for you, okay? And to answer your question, I didn’t know,” she said as she busied herself rifling through the supplies at Natalie’s station. “I came here to avoid going to Zia’s madhouse for as long as I could, and to see Nat, of course,” she added hastily when their cousin gave Vanessa the evil eye. “So, I texted to say I was on my way, and lo and behold, you’re sitting in the chair looking like you belong on the cover ofElle Magazine. Looks like I came in time to do your makeup.”
“I don’t need makeup. In fact, I don’t need any of this.” Lucy ran her hand over her new silky hair. “The wedding date hasn’t even been set, and the engagement party isn’t for another couple of days.”
Natalie and Vanessa exchanged a look, having a full conversation telepathically that Lucy was not privy to.
“What?” she demanded, not trusting the smug looks on either of their faces.
“Well, Brit put so much effort in, and when I realized Vanessa would be here too, I figured we shouldn’t let any of this go to waste.” Natalie gestured down the length of Lucy’s newly primped, preened, and plucked body. “So I put the word out to get some girls together.”
“Get some girls together?” Lucy parroted. She didn’t know any girls to get together. What was her cousin planning?
“Let’s call it a practice bachelorette party,” Natalie said, guiding Lucy back into her chair.
The moment her butt hit the leather seat, Brit descended on her with a hot iron. “You cannot let my fine talent go to waste,” Brit insisted, wrapping a strand of Lucy’s hair around the hot wand. “Go out and make them all fall at your feet. Queen energy, right babe?”
Lucy looked helplessly at Natalie in the mirror. Natalie shrugged and Vanessa appeared in front of Lucy, holding what looked like a massive toolbox.
“Come on, Lu. The Barone sisters together again, looking like sex on a popsicle stick? We gotta go out. We’ll call it a girls’ night if it makes you feel better.” Vanessa dabbed liquid cream on the four points of Lucy’s face, then went at it with a big makeup blender. “Besides, with you there, what could possibly go wrong?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
By eight o’clock, Joel was ready to lose his ever-loving mind. He’d come home at noon to a sticky note from Lucy saying she was out visiting her cousin and would be home around dinnertime.
Now, seven hours later, he sat at the dining room table trying to concentrate on the figures on his laptop, but his eyes kept wandering to the note stuck to the table beside him. Lucy’s chaotic, loopy handwriting stared back at him.
Back at dinnertime.
Even considering that people ate at different times, and Italians generally ate later, eight o’clock would still be considered past dinnertime. Right?
His unavoidable trip had taken longer than expected, and what he’d hoped would only be one night had become two. They’d only spent one full day living together in this apartment, but damn, he missed her. And it annoyed him how much he did knowing she planned to leave as soon as their year was finished.
It didn’t bode well for his self-preservation, this pining and making himself totally vulnerable to her again. And now she wasn’t coming home for dinnertime like her sticky note said she would. He couldn’t fucking take it.
With a gruff sigh, Joel shoved his seat back and took off the glasses he only wore when he was staring at a computer screen for too long. He loosened another button on his white-collar shirt. He’d discarded his tie hours earlier. He’d come straight from the airport to the apartment, only to find it empty, and the attempt to distract himself by catching up on the work he’d fallen behind on had clearly failed because other than burning out his old man eyes, he hadn’t gotten much done.
He picked up his phone for the hundredth time, thumbing to her contact, and checked messages. Nothing. Four years ago, she would have texted regularly, but apparently the Lucy of today did not. His fingers hovered over the message icon. The Joel of four years ago would have sent her a message by now asking when she’d be home or if she needed a ride or…
Quickly he tapped out a brief message.
I’m home. Let me know if you need to be picked up from anywhere.
The car fob was gone, so he knew she took the car. But he wanted her to know she could call on him if she was stranded somewhere for any reason. Because if she was stuck somewhere in a city she was unfamiliar with, alone while it was getting dark… His chest tightened with anxiety. He knew all too well the harm that could come to women, his experience with Ivy had taught him that, and the thought of any harm coming to Lucy made him want to put a bodyguard on her twenty-four-seven. Better yet, she could never leave his side, that would work too. He glared at his phone willing those three dots to start blinking. Nothing.
By eight forty-five he was considering driving around the city until he found her, when his phone buzzed. His hand flew out so quickly he nearly knocked his glass of water over.
The guys are at the bar if you want to come down for a drink.
Gabe. Not who he was hoping to hear from. Digging his fingers through his hair, he stared at his phone. It was either sit here and wait for God knows how long or go down to the bar and try to distract himself with friends. With a heavy sigh, he shut his laptop and set his glasses on the table. He could use a Scotch.
