Читать книгу Going Too Far - Tori Carrington - Страница 8

MONDAYS HAD A WAY OF challenging even Marie Bertelli’s good-girl tendencies. The weekend always seemed to go by too quickly. All too often the first day of the workweek seemed more like an ugly three-eyed monster to conquer rather than a fresh start to finish what she hadn’t the week before.

She laid on the horn then shouted at the driver who had just cut her off, showing a tiny glimpse of the bad girl she had let out once and only once in her twenty-six years and didn’t dare let out again. She justified the brief transgression by pointing out the other driver couldn’t hear her through the windows of her ’67 ragtop Mustang, closed against the late January chill of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Of course, it didn’t help that she hadn’t had a man in her life for…well, much longer than she cared to think about. Especially when Valentine’s Day loomed around the corner and everywhere she turned red and pink hearts were popping out at her, reminding her of the pathetic state of her love life.

She glanced at her watch. What also didn’t help was that she’d been waylaid by an accident on I-40, and now grumpy and preoccupied Monday morning drivers threatened to send her careening over an emotional edge that she’d preferred not to be teetering on just then.

“Marie Antonia Bertelli, is that the mouth you use to talk to your mother?”

Marie sighed and moved her wireless phone from under her chin where she’d thought her mother couldn’t hear her. Ha. “I wasn’t talking to you, Mama.”

Although for all intents and purposes she should say exactly what she’d said to the driver to Francesca Bertelli. Her mother sometimes acted like she’d immigrated from Italy last week, with her old-world traditions and speech patterns, rather than the second generation Italian-American that she was, who’d placed first runner-up in the Miss New Mexico beauty pageant.

Francesca went on as if they hadn’t been interrupted. “About dinner tonight. I want you to wear the blue dress. You know the one I’m talking about? The one you wore to Anthony’s wedding. It makes you look like you have breasts. And, of course, it brings out the blue in your eyes.”

Marie’s mood worsened with each word her mother said. “I’m not coming to dinner tonight, Mama,” she told her for the third time in as many minutes. Her mother had a habit of only hearing those things she chose to hear. Which was very little of what Marie had to say.

“The blue dress,” her mother said again.

The blue dress was the most hideous of hideous bridesmaid’s dresses and was packed away in the bottom of a box somewhere, though Marie had seriously considered burning it. The poofy clown-like nightmare made her look like a blue elephant.

“I’m making your favorite. Farsumagru o briolone. You have to come to dinner,” her mother complained.

The Sicilian meat roll wasn’t her favorite. It was her older brother Frankie Jr.’s favorite. But to tell her mother that now would only encourage her to go on. In fact, the mix-up might be a trap altogether. Entice her into an argument of what they would have for dinner, and she would end up going to the dinner and forgetting that it was the last thing she wanted to do tonight…or ever.

Marie bit the inside of her cheek. She’d finally moved into her own apartment a week ago after living with her family for ten months upon her return from L.A. Since the move, every morning like clockwork her mother called to invite her to dinner. Marie had made the mistake of going last Sunday, thinking there was only so much her mother could do during a family meal. She’d been sorely mistaken. There, seated to her right, had been Benito Benini, a guy she’d gone to kindergarten with and twenty years was not enough time to erase the memory of him launching green Play-Doh out of his nose. A nose that had grown considerably since then.

“No,” Marie said. “Absolutely not.” She hesitated as she negotiated a right-hand turn into the Bernalillo County Courthouse parking lot. “I…I already have plans.”

She resisted the urge to bang her forehead against the steering wheel as she said the words. What was she thinking?

“Plans? With whom? What’s his name? Do we know him?”

“We,” of course, referred to the entire Bertelli family. Her father, Frank Sr. Her mother. And her three older brothers, Frankie Jr., Anthony and Mario, all married and either with or starting families of their own. And each with their own reason for butting into every aspect of Marie’s private life.

“Never mind, Mama,” Marie said as she zoomed into a parking space in front of another car. She ignored the blast of the other driver’s horn and gave a friendly wave. She moved the wireless phone to her other ear then shut off the car engine. “Look, I’ve got to go. I’m at the courthouse and I’m already late meeting my client.”

“Late? See, you should have stayed home. You wouldn’t be late if you were home.”

“I was late because there was an accident, Mama. The highway was backed up for miles.”

“Accident? You got into an accident?”

“No. I said there was an accident. One that, I am happy to say, I was not involved in.” But with five minutes more of this conversation she might wish otherwise. “Goodbye, Mama. I’ll call you later.”

“This is how you would leave your mother? Worrying about what ax murderer you’re meeting tonight?”

Marie leaned her head on the rest behind her. “I’m not going out with an ax murderer. I’m meeting Dulcy and Jena for dinner.”

“Oh.”

Was that a note of disappointment in her mother’s voice? Yes, it definitely was. The realization made even her little white lie easier to swallow.

Marie smiled. Interesting. Was her mother to the point where she’d welcome even a potential ax murderer into the family just so long as he was a possible husband?

“You could bring them to dinner. It’s been so long since we’ve seen your friends.”

That was because on the few occasions that her best friends had met up with her family the police had almost needed to be brought in. Mostly because Jena had a hard time believing the family really did think they had a right to meddle in Marie’s life and had challenged them on the point. And the Bertellis had a habit of referring to Jena as “the loose one” who would tarnish their only daughter’s reputation.

If only that were the case. Marie couldn’t even pay for a reputation, good, bad or otherwise.

“I don’t think so, Ma. Gotta go. Love you, bye.”

She clicked her wireless closed on her mother’s automatic protest then quickly switched the phone off altogether, routing any incoming calls to her voice mail.

How she’d survived twenty-six years in the Bertelli family was anyone’s guess. And the phone conversation she’d just had with her mother was nothing compared to what it was like to actually grow up in the Bertelli house. Directions on how she should do this, wear that, fix this. Oh, she adored her family. Loved them to death. Unfortunately, she also feared they would be the death of her.

She put her keys in her purse and gathered her things together from the passenger seat. Whatever had possessed her to pick up her phone without looking at the display so early in the morning? She should have known it would be her mother trying to railroad her into another blind date with another old classmate that used to do something disgusting with play materials. Last week it had been third grade and Johnny Russo who had tried to paste her to her desk chair. The week before that she’d been hopeful that her family was running out of prospects when they’d actually invited a third cousin to dinner. A cousin was family, no matter how many times removed, and she’d easily sidestepped that matchmaking attempt by casually bringing up the increase in risk of birth defects all throughout dinner. “Why just the other day I heard that someone who had married her cousin four times removed on her mother’s side had a baby with two noses. Two.” She’d held up two fingers to emphasize her point.

Marie hoisted her bulging briefcase from the passenger’s seat, wondering if coming up with inventive stories to shock her parents was going to be the state of her life forever or if eventually her family would wake up and realize that what they had in mind for her, and how she saw her life, were two completely different things. She didn’t want to be matched up with a guy to whom marriage was synonymous with slavery. Didn’t want a loveless marriage to a man who was acceptable by the sole criteria that he was either full-blooded Italian or Italian-American and knew the difference between pinzimonio and agliata.

You would have thought they’d have learned after she ran away to L.A. nearly three years ago.

Marie stared at her reflection in the rearview mirror, scrunching a couple of runaway red curls, then smoothing the liner under her right eye. No, she supposed her family wasn’t very quick on the uptake. When they’d virtually gone ahead and planned a wedding without her being aware of it, sent out invitations and the whole nine yards, then told her a week before the event that she was marrying a man coming in from Italy, she’d finally blown her stack and pointed her vintage ’67 Mustang in the direction of L.A. and hadn’t stopped until she got there. Not even her best friends, Dulcy and Jena, had known where she was until she’d landed a job in the L.A. district attorney’s office and had sublet an apartment from a B-movie actress going off on a two-month film shoot in South America. She’d passed onto them the responsibility of telling her family she was okay. She hadn’t been surprised to find out they’d filed a missing person’s report on her. She’d spent two hours on the phone with the Albuquerque sheriff’s office assuring them she was fine and wasn’t rotting away in a Dumpster somewhere.

She hadn’t directly contacted her parents until three weeks after that. She’d called and told them she was okay, that she hoped the wedding went well without her, and that she would be in touch. Nothing more. Because she knew if she had told them where she was, her brothers would have promptly been sent to drag her back home.

No, she hadn’t shared her apartment address until she was sure her parents had gotten the picture. Either butt out of her personal life or she was going to butt out of their lives…permanently.

Of course, that really hadn’t been her first real revolt. The first one had involved sexy neighbor Ian Kilborn, a lifetime of suppressed hormones, and a boatload of rebellion aimed toward her controlling family. But only she, Ian and the pantry walls knew about that one incident—a steamy, heat-filled white-hot flash in time when she was eighteen and had unleashed the wild woman that lurked just below her good-girl surface. And, oh, what a time she and naughty Ian had had. And if now, eight years later, she thought about reliving the event every now and again, it was only because, instead of living down the street from each other, she and Ian now spent most of their time in the same courthouse as attorneys.

Marie self-consciously cleared her throat as she climbed from the car, then closed the door after her. January in Albuquerque, New Mexico, was a world away from the weather L.A. was experiencing right now. And she’d still be there enjoying the sun and her freedom if Dulcy and Jena hadn’t contacted her nearly a year ago and held her to the promise they’d made when they were young. They’d convinced her to sign on with well-known attorney Bartholomew Lomax and establish the partnership they’d always planned on.

And now her mother was resorting to her old behavior.

A hot guy exited the seven-story brand-spanking-new courthouse as she neared. Marie smiled at him but he seemed to see right through her. He passed and she slowed her step. Was she really that desperate that she had to rely on her family to fix her up to land a man? She glanced at her plain navy-blue suit. Okay, so maybe she wasn’t Nicole Kidman, and she was on the short side, but she’d never thought she was unattractive.

Was she?

A man opened the courthouse door in front of her. She moved to step around him only he entered before her, nearly causing her to slam into his back. She frowned then caught the door before it could slam against her back.

Okay…

So maybe she was having a bad day. Everyone had them every now and again, didn’t they?

If only it didn’t look like she was having a bad decade.

She hurried down the hall, trying to forget the state of her personal life and concentrate on her professional—something she usually did very well.

“Marie!”

She was halfway down the hall before she realized someone was calling her name. She turned to find her friend and partner Jena McCade rushing after her.

“God, woman, where is your head? I must have called you three times before you heard me.”

Marie made a face. Jena looked great. As usual. With her shiny straight black hair, her sexy figure, her confident posture, Marie was sure no one ever let a door close on Jena.

Of course, now that Jena was married to ex-hockey hunk Tommy “Wild Man” Brodie, her attractiveness seemed to have merely increased. Her skin always seemed flushed and her eyes always had a faraway dreamy look in them. Jena had told Marie and Dulcy that it was the properly laid look. Marie preferred to think it was love.

Jena twisted her lips. “I’d ask if it was a man messing with your head, but I’m guessing it’s probably your mother.”

“Right.” Marie made a face. “She wants me to come to dinner again tonight.” She looked down at the hall. “What are you doing down here so early?”

“Judge Bullock wanted to talk to me in chambers. Seems there have been some problems with the district attorney’s office and all cases are being put on hold.”

“Oh?”

Jena waved her hand and continued walking down the hall, forcing Marie to turn to face her. “Shouldn’t impact your big corporate case. Something to do with new DNA procedures.”

“Good. I’d just as soon have this case over with as not.”

“Difficult run?”

“No. Just boring.”

Jena laughed. “That’s the first time I’ve heard you say that.”

“This is the first time I’ve ever felt this way.”

“You know, your mother wouldn’t get to you so much if you weren’t so picky about men yourself,” Jena said.

Marie made a strangled sound.

“What?”

“I can’t believe you just said that.” Marie glanced around the hall. Another attorney she was vaguely familiar with grinned as he moved past them. “And in front of so many other people.”

Jena crossed to stand in front of her. “I can’t believe you haven’t gotten laid in over a year.” She poked her perfectly manicured finger against Marie’s blue suit jacket. “And you pay entirely too much attention to what other people think.”

“I’m not picky.”

Jena smiled. “Yes, you are. Why else aren’t you dating anyone?”

“Because I’ve been busy helping get a law practice going.”

“So have Dulcy and I, but that hasn’t stopped us.”

If Marie thought her day was bad before, it had very definitely just taken a deep nosedive.

Jena started walking backward toward the door. “Take my advice, Marie. The next guy you see? Grab him and don’t let him go until he wipes that ever-present grimace from your face.”

“I don’t grimace.”

Jena began to turn around, the distance between them lengthening. “I’ll see you back at the office later then?”

“Office. Yeah.”

Marie stood for long a moment staring after her friend’s retreating back. Oh, sure, to be Jena’s friend was to be in a perpetual state of mortification. If Jena wasn’t sharing details on her orgasms and the frequency of them, she was commenting in a very open way about others’ sex lives.

Marie just wished Jena hadn’t picked that moment to aim a very sharp arrow at Marie’s sex life.

She absently raised her fingers to her lips. Did she grimace? She suddenly realized that, yes, she did. Quite frequently. In fact, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d smiled. Really smiled. Was it a week ago? A month?

What was she thinking? Of course she smiled. She smiled all the time. Just this morning she’d smiled at the guy at the coffee shop. Hadn’t she?

She directed a frustrated wave down the hall to dismiss her friend and her unwelcome advice. Of course, Jena was right in that it had been awhile since she’d dated. Heck, she’d even caught herself eyeing Play-Doh nose’s powerful thighs last week for a brief second. The moment of insanity had, of course, been followed quickly by the overpowering urge to vomit.

Grab the next man she met, indeed…

She turned the corner and ran smack dab into the last man she should grab. But she’d be damned if she didn’t want to grab him anyway.

ONE MINUTE, IAN KILBORN had been thinking about the perfectly good proposition the pretty court reporter had just thrown his way. The next, he was running into the woman he’d spent a good portion of his adult life thinking about having sex with again without a chance in hell of its coming to pass.

Ian caught Marie Bertelli by the arms and stared down into her flushed face. At one time a quirky eye-catching little girl down the street, now she was a sexy-as-all-get-out full-grown woman. It didn’t seem to matter that years had passed since anything intimate had passed between them, or that they were both attorneys now, or that he’d had countless women since Marie. No matter what else was going on in his life, he’d inevitably find his thoughts beginning and ending with the good girl/wild child that had crawled under his skin a long time ago and he had never been able to rid himself of.

Ian’s gaze skimmed her features. Damn, but she was stunning as hell up this close and personal. And that she had no idea just how sexy she was only lent to her appeal. But what got to him was that no matter how much time passed, the thundering desire that ignited in him for the fiery redhead was still immediate, complete, and more than a tad uncomfortable. Red-hot memories of cramped spaces and soft moans and great sex made him one very horny adult for this woman he’d always had the hots for, and probably always would.

“You can let go now.”

While he watched the words exit Marie’s provocative little mouth, it took a moment for them to register in Ian’s brain.

He cocked a grin at her. “Are you sure? Looks to me like you still need a little propping up.”

The color in her cheeks deepened as she batted at his hands, nearly dropping her briefcase in the process. She glanced around, only there was no one around to witness their collision. While the main corridor was always busy, the side halls were usually pretty quiet, allowing for a privacy Ian hadn’t had with Marie for nearly eight years. And his body was letting him know that it had been much too long.

He chuckled quietly as he let her go, mildly amused by her fussing with her suit.

She blew out a long, shaky breath. “God, will you ever change, Ian Kilborn? I swear, when you wake up in the morning, the first thing on your mind must be sex. And it’s probably the last thing you think about every night before going to bed…”

He scanned her features, only half hearing what she was saying. He’d learned a long time ago about that if you wanted to hear what Marie had to say, you didn’t listen to her words, but rather her body language. And the shaky breath she’d just exhaled, the way she slowly smoothed her free hand over her hip, and the quiet tone of her voice combined to tell him that not much had changed since their tryst in her parents’ pantry. He had the feeling that, if he asked, she’d hand him her panties right there and then. And, oh, how tempting it was to do just that.

He grimaced. Of course this fortuitous meeting would have to come on the heels of the phone call he’d received from her father yesterday. And for that reason alone the last thing on his mind right now, or at any time in the immediate future, should be Marie’s panties.

It dawned on him that she had stopped speaking. He tugged his gaze away from the way her jacket draped over her soft breasts then blinked up into her eyes.

And he froze.

There, in the depths of her blue, blue eyes, lurked a curious and suspicious determination.

Ian squinted at her. Uh-oh. He knew that look only too well. She’d worn it only one other time. And while that one other time had led to his finally stroking her sweet, slick flesh, it had also held the potential for disaster if her family found out what had gone on in the tiny room off the kitchen.

An aroused Marie was a breathtaking sight. A rebellious Marie scared the living hell out of him, no matter how much he wished they were back in that pantry right then.

Ian smoothed down his tie to keep from reaching out and touching her, then cleared his throat.

But Marie spoke first. “You have a case this morning?”

Ian raised his brows at her softly spoken words. “Filing a motion.”

She smiled at that. “The caped crusader for criminals is hard at work, huh?”

He took a physical step backward. “Something like that.”

When was the last time he’d seen her aside from down the hall of the courthouse? Three months? No, two. Judge Bullock’s Christmas party. She’d been friendly then as well. But he suspected it was because she’d been as sorry to be at the party as he had been and was grateful for a familiar face. He’d spent a few minutes talking to her about the weather, noting how she’d scratched at her dress as if she couldn’t stand the material against her skin.

And what a dress and skin it had been, too. Marie had always leaned toward the conservative side. High-neck blouses, loose-fitting jackets and longer skirts. But that night she’d had on a sexy number that fit her in more ways than one. And he’d been hard-pressed not to follow her around the party, tongue panting, in the hope that she’d take pity on him and bring him home with her.

Now he looked at her and wondered if she’d somehow found out about her father having secretly retained his services. But no. He didn’t think Marie had that type of self-control. When she found out, and he was sure she would, she wouldn’t be quite this…nice.

“You know, I was just thinking,” she said now, jarring him out his thoughts. “Ever since you moved back here from Chicago, we really haven’t had a chance to talk, have we?” She licked her lips, a move he suspected was completely unconscious, which made it all the more mesmerizing. “You know, caught up on things.” She shifted her briefcase from one hand to the other. “What are you doing tonight?”