Читать книгу Blind Date - Cheryl Porter Anne - Страница 11

“OH.” JOE’S WORDS hit Meg like a slap to the face. “I see. You have a Linda. How nice. Is she your—” Meg winced “—wife?”

“Oh, hell no, nothing like that. We’ve been together now for about six months…and she wants the relationship to be more.”

“I see. Well.” A sudden sense of loss made Meg want to sit down in a big, dejected heap and cry. “Maybe we should introduce Linda and Carl, since they both seem to have a case of the commitment bug. That is, unless you’ve caught it, too.” She looked over at him.

When he didn’t reply right away, Meg surreptitiously crossed her fingers against his answer—and held her breath.

Joe rubbed a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. That’s why I came to Tampa. Time away to think.”

There was hope. Her mood suddenly lighter, Meg pointed at him. “So, that’s why you were asking me all those questions a minute ago. You’re looking for some insight yourself.”

Joe had the grace to nod and look sheepish. “I am, yeah. But my situation is different.”

“Is it? How so?”

“Well, no one’s been cheating.”

“Really?” Meg crossed her arms and shrugged. “Don’t give up so easily, cowboy. The night’s still young.”

Joe laughed. “I like a woman who knows what she wants.”

“Good.” Though she now adopted an air of sophisticated confidence, inside Meg was quaking with the audacity of what she’d just said…and implied.

Joe’s eyes twinkled. “You’ve certainly given me a lot to think about in the few short hours I’ve known you, Meg Kendall.”

“Yeah? Thinking of doing something stupid, are you, Joe?”

“You mean like this?” He grabbed her by her arms and pulled her tight against him. Before she could react, he’d lowered his head and crushed his mouth against hers in a bruising, passionate kiss that curled Meg’s toes and scattered her senses. His tongue explored her mouth…probing…pushing in and out…mimicking perfectly the thrusting act of sex.

People driving past wa-hoo-ed out their car windows or honked their horns.

Meg wouldn’t have cared if an actual cheering crowd, complete with marching band, had gathered behind them. Her heart was beating triple time and her knees had become weak with desire. She was helpless, unable to resist.

When Joe broke the kiss and pulled back, Meg stared deep into his magnificent eyes. “Yeah. Like that. We shouldn’t do that…again…Joe.”

That quirky little Elvis grin of his appeared on his lips—lips Meg now knew intimately.

“No. We shouldn’t.” Joe lowered his head, and Meg raised her mouth to meet his again. But he pulled back at the last second, teasing, staring intently into her eyes.

Meg’s blood heated. “Damn you, Joe Rossi.”

She reached up, gripped him around the muscular column of his neck and pulled him firmly down to her. This time, she took the lead, allowing only the tip of her tongue to dart in and out as she tasted the sensual fullness of his lips. With an evilly sexy chuckle, Joe finally captured her mouth and again plundered its willing depth as he put his arms around her and held her to him, her breasts hard against his chest, her hips hard against his thighs.

And then, unbelievably, a cell phone rang.

“AW, SON OF A BITCH!” Joe could not believe they’d been interrupted—again—by a damn cell phone.

Meg pulled back, gasping. “Is that your pants ringing—or my ears?”

“My pants. In more ways than one.” He gently released her and reached for the phone at his belt, tugging it off its clip. “I ought to throw the damn thing in the water.”

Meg stepped away from him and hugged herself as if she were cold. “I hope Linda can swim.”

Poised to push the talk button, Joe held off and looked into Meg’s smoldering bedroom eyes. He was hungry to kiss her again…and not stop there. “It doesn’t have to be…Linda.”

He hated that he’d hesitated over her name. But right now, with Meg standing less than a foot from him, the last thing Joe was thinking about was his girlfriend. Hell, he was no better than Carl, was he?

The cell phone continued to ring.

Meg’s gaze locked with his. “You might as well answer it, cowboy,” she said, sounding practical. And angry.

“You’re right,” Joe said, resigned. He pushed the button and put the phone to his ear. “Hello.” To his infinite relief it wasn’t Linda. It was… “Uncle Maury!”

Meg looked at him questioningly. Joe shrugged. He had no idea why his great-uncle would be calling him. Then, when he heard the tone of Maury’s voice, he tensed. “Wait. Slow down. What are you saying? What mob?”

“A mob?” Meg said. “At the complex? Does he mean a party at the pool?”

Joe shook his head and held up a hand to Meg. “Oh, I get it. Not a mob, but the mob?” His tensed muscles relaxed. “No, Uncle Maury, we’re not doing this. You know there’s no mob at the door.”

Meg clutched Joe’s shirtsleeve. “Is he okay?”

Joe covered her grasping hand with his free one and nodded, mouthing I think so. He turned his attention back to his great-uncle. “Well, just don’t answer it,” he told Maury. “What do you mean we can’t come home? We weren’t on our way home…. Not ever? Uncle Maury, have you been drinking?”

“What’s going on?” Meg hissed.

“Hold on, Uncle Maury. Let me talk to Meg. Don’t hang up.” Joe released Meg’s fingers and held his hand over the phone’s mouthpiece. “Uncle Maury says we can’t ever come home because the mob is after him—and now they’re after us because we’re in The Stogie,” he said matter-of-factly. “He means the car,” he added.

Meg shook her head, looking confused. “But Maury’s called The Stogie, not the car.”

“They both are. I think Uncle Maury’s letting his imagination get the best of him.”

Meg pulled back. “But he always talks about the mob.”

“Yeah, but this is going a bit too far.” Aware of his elderly uncle hanging on the line, Joe spoke quickly to Meg. “You see, there’s a legend in our family that someone, at some time in the past, was in the Mafia. Uncle Maury decided he was that person and we’ve always gone along with it. It gave him stature. But he’s never made phone calls like this saying the mob is after him or anyone else. This is new.”

Concern shadowed her expression. “Maybe he didn’t take his medicines. Or maybe he took too many. I knew we shouldn’t have left him alone. Joe, tell him not to do anything. That we’re on our way home right now.”

Joe nodded and put the phone to his ear. “Uncle Maury? Meg says just sit tight, okay? We’re on our way home.”

Blinking, Joe jerked the phone away from his ear and said to Meg, “Whoa. He’s cussing like crazy. Listen.” He put the phone to her ear, saw her eyes widen, then pulled it away.

“Tell him we won’t come home, if that’s what he wants.”

“Sure, why not. Let’s go back to the car.” He grasped Meg’s arm to guide her and again spoke to his uncle. “Uncle Maury, listen to me—No, we’re not coming home…. Yes, calm down. It’s okay. No, I’m not lying. What? Shoot at us?” Joe’s knees locked, stopping him and Meg in their tracks, and he shook his head in disbelief.

“Shoot at us?” Meg parroted. “Who’s going to shoot at us?”

Joe held Meg’s fear-widened gaze as he talked. “Now, Uncle Maury, why would anyone be shooting at us?” He paused. “They want the keys? To what, the car? Uncle Maury, if anyone wants the keys to this car, trust me, I’ll hand them over long before they have to start shooting. Not the car keys? But don’t give them up, either? Well, what else would I have keys to, that some—How much money?”

Joe covered the phone and whispered to Meg. “He says the keys are worth a fortune.”

“Forget that. I want to know who’s going to shoot at us.”

“Apparently the mob.”

“Okay, Joe, this is beyond bizarre. And a little scary, I have to say.”

“Tell me about it. But such is life with Maury Seeger.”

“Well, what do we do? Do we believe him or not?”

“I don’t know. Something’s wrong, I’ll give him that much. Something definitely set him off.”

“Yeah, and it could be nothing more than some poor pizza delivery guy at his door.”

“True. And Maury could shoot him.”

Meg’s eyebrows rose. “Maury has a gun?”

“Yes.”

“Dear God.”

“Amen.”

“Joe?”

“What?”

She pointed to the phone in his hand. “Talk to Maury.”

“Oh, hell.” He put the phone to his ear. “Hey, Uncle—What?” He listened another moment and then pulled the phone away from his ear and hit the end button. “He said he thinks they’re trying to get inside and he has to go. Then the line went dead.”

“Ohmigod,” she breathed. “Joe, could it really be the Mafia?”

“I think Uncle Maury is harmless, but sometimes the way he gets caught up in his stories worries me—” Joe’s phone rang again. He exchanged a look with Meg and answered it on the second ring. “Uncle Maury? Is that you?” He nodded at Meg to let her know it was.

She looked so concerned, waiting to find out what Maury would say next, that Joe couldn’t resist putting an arm around her and pulling her close. He wasn’t sorry when the action squeezed her breast against his side.

“Really, Uncle Maury, did you have to hang up a minute ago? Are you okay? Your voice sounds funny…. You’re in the men’s room at the pool house? Why? What are you—Of course, you’re hiding. Look, stay there where you feel safe. Uncle Maury? Hello? You just dropped the phone? Why’d you drop the phone?”

He listened and then said to Meg, “Because he thought the mobsters were shooting at him, but it turned out to be a car backfiring.”

Meg leaned into him. “I might need to sit down, Joe.”

He took her arm to steady her and returned his attention to his great-uncle. “Is anyone else in there with you, Uncle Maury? Hell, no, I wasn’t suggesting you and another man—Yes, I do know how it would look for two guys to exit a one-holer bathroom together. Look, just sit tight and—”

Joe pulled the phone away from his ear. “Son of a—The line went dead again. When we get to his place, Meg, I swear I’m going to kick his ass. I don’t care if he is in his eighties and only five feet tall. I’m still going to kick his bowlegged, Mr.-T-gold-wearing, toupee-headed ass. Come on, let’s go see about my great-uncle, the nutcase.”

THEY WERE IN THE CAR with its front-mounted vanity plate that read “The Stogie” and on the way back to Meg’s apartment complex when she first became aware that she and Joe were being followed. Or, at least, she thought they were.

“Joe? Do you see—”

“Yes.”

Meg’s breath caught. “Oh my God, we are being followed.”

“I don’t really think so. Try not to let my crazy uncle, with all his mobster talk, get to you, okay?”