“Don’t call me that,” she spat out.
“What now? Your name? I’m running out of things to call you.”
“I mean likethat. All slow and commanding. You’re ‘business Joel’ when you say my name like that.Luciana.” She dropped her voice a few octaves, mimicking him. “I don’t like business Joel.”
A smile lifted the corner of his lips as he shoved his hands in his pockets and walked closer to her. He couldn’t risk touching her. She wouldn’t accept it right now, but God, he loved her like this. Riled up and alive with temper. He’d only ever seen her like this with him. Like she saved the most fiery parts of herself for him and him alone.
When she was angry or frustrated with him, the truth rolled off her tongue with no inhibition. The good girl was tucked away, and the real Lucy came out to play.
“Lucy,” he offered in a hushed tone, using his voice to touch her instead of his hands.
Her mouth opened on a slight intake of breath. Desire clouded the temper in her eyes. “Shit,” she whispered. “I think that’s worse.”
Joel let his smile pull fully across his mouth, but it wasn’t enough to relieve the weight on his chest. “I’m sorry for telling everyone we’re engaged,” he said, using his tone to soothe the tension that had built around them. “It was inconsiderate, among other things. And I’ll go back rightnow and make it right.” He owed her that much, at the very least, so he started making his way back down the path to the hotel.
“And say what? That you were joking?” Her words stopped him. “Don’t bother. They’ll never let me hear the end of it if you tell them that. Or anything else. I’ll deal with it tomorrow when I’ve thought of something to say that will minimize their third degree.”
“Lucy—”
“Yep, definitely worse,” she whispered, more to herself than him. Then, after one last lingering moment, she stepped around him to leave.
He didn’t move, just stood where he was, paralyzed by his inability to manipulate the situation in his favor. He thought she was already gone, but then she said, “Tell your sister I said hi.”
By the time he’d turned around to watch her leave, she was gone.
CHAPTER FOUR
At 3 a.m. in Zia Ella’s house in Portland, Lucy called it. She’d lost enough hours tossing in fitful spurts of sleep filled with raw, emotional dreams. Her mind was on the Joel Morgan hamster wheel and there was no getting off anytime soon. Which was why she’d gone to such great lengths to avoid him and stay off the wheel. The only problem was that when the wheel stopped, she missed the hamster.
She let out a long-suffering sigh, kicked off her covers, got out of bed, and started rummaging around the guest room for a sheet of paper. She’d read in a self-help book that the best way to cure the restless brain at night was to write down everything you were thinking, put it in a box, store the box somewhere else in the house, and surrender yourself to sleep knowing that your thoughts were tucked away to be dealt with at another, more appropriate time.
There might never be an appropriate time for her and Joel, but it sure as heck wasn’t at 3:24 a.m. in her aunt’s home.
Coming up empty in the guest room, she padded downthe hallway and descended the curved staircase, trying not to creak the hardwood with her footfall as she moved throughout the house in search of a notepad. If her aunt and uncle were anything like her parents, they kept every free promotional notepad they got in the mail.
Her mother was partial to the real-estate related ones because she liked the headshots of the local agents that were front and center on every sheet. She’d told Lucy that she felt like she was on a date with Devon Wiltshire every time she took her grocery list to the store. Knowing her aunt, she’d think the same. They were sisters-in-law through marriage, but Maria and Ella Barone were two peas in a pod.
Lucy stopped short when she entered the kitchen on the ground floor. “Holy sh—” She clamped her hand over her mouth.
The marble countertops overflowed with leftovers. Stacks of cream puffs on serving plates, casserole dishes filed with rows of cannolis, and trays of traditional Italian cookies and biscotti were covered in plastic wrap or paper towels.
Her aunts and cousins spent days cooking for the family events. Even though Mariana’s wedding meal itself had been catered, they’d made enough to feed the village they came from in the old country—where Nico lived before he recently invaded her life.
Lucy went to the fridge and gasped in delight when she found it filled to the brim with charcuterie plates, meatballs, risotto balls, pasta dishes, prosciutto wrapped asparagus spears, and more. It had been a few years since her last family wedding. She’d forgotten the sheer volume of food that these multi day events involved.And since she’d onlyarrived in Portland this morning, she’d missed most of Mariana’s pre-matrimonial parties.
Better make up for lost time. She filled a plate with finger foods and headed to the dining room, snagging a real-estate notepad off the fridge on her way. Colton Rodrigues was almost as good looking as Devon Wiltshire.
She was digging into her second meatball and writing down her first problem for another time, when her aunt shuffled in carrying her own plate of goodies from the kitchen. Zia Ella wore a red silk robe and matching fuzzy slippers and had her hair in curlers.
“Couldn’t sleep,” Ella said before Lucy could ask, then sat down next to her. “Too much excitement. It has my blood pressure up.” She ate while looking straight ahead into the sunken living room.
“You can’t sleep when your blood pressure’s up?” Lucy queried. There was nothing wrong with Ella’s blood pressure, and they both knew it.
“All the stress of the wedding wreaked havoc on my nerves. Thanks be to God I only have one daughter.”
“Thanks be to God indeed,” Lucy murmured, hiding her smirk by shoving a prosciutto wrapped melon cube into her mouth.
Her immediate branch of the Barone family tree consisted of her father Luciano, his brother Gambo, and their sister Marta. After Luciano had two daughters and Marta had three, Gambo and Ella had Mariana—and decided to be one and done. Because clearly the Y chromosome would not make it into this generation of Barones. For the Italian mamas, life then became all about marrying the six girls efficiently and prestigiously. Like regency England, but in cobbler aprons.
