Читать книгу All A Man Can Be - Virginia Kantra - Страница 11

He had pulled some boneheaded, shortsighted stunts in the past, Mark thought as he polished off the last Palermo’s crescent for breakfast. School fights. Petty vandalism.

He snagged a quart of milk from the fridge, sniffed and drank from the carton.

Scaring his new boss in the parking lot didn’t rank up there with the time he’d liberated a powerboat to go joyriding at the age of twenty or his career-ending screwup in punching out an officer. But it was still dumb.

He’d be lucky if Blondie didn’t fire him.

Unless… He lowered the milk carton. Unless that had been his aim all along. Piss her off enough, and he wouldn’t even have to take responsibility for quitting.

Self-sabotage, his sister would call it, with the authority of a woman who had gotten her start editing the “Ask Irma” column in the Eden Town Gazette. Mark didn’t believe in that psychobabble self-help bull. He replaced the empty carton in the fridge and closed the door. Anyway, he took responsibility.

When he had to.

Which, admittedly, wasn’t very often.

He shuffled through the bright stack of advertising flyers until he uncovered the cream-colored letterhead from the lawyer.

“Jane Gilbert” was typed below the nearly illegible signature. The phone number was printed above. His gut tightened.

He glanced at his watch. Eight-twenty. He wasn’t due to meet Blondie at the bar for another forty minutes. Plenty of time to call this Gilbert broad and find out what the hell she expected him to do about the bombshell she’d lobbed into his life.

Hell. He picked up the phone.

She had let him intimidate her, Nicole thought grimly, meeting her own serious blue gaze in the bathroom mirror. She knew it.

And she knew better.

It was all covered in chapter six of Losing the Losers in Your Life. You couldn’t always control the people around you, but you could control your reactions to them. And her pulse-pounding, breath-catching reaction to Mark DeLucca—which had to be apprehension, it would just be too awful it if were lust—well, anyway, that would have to stop.

She nodded decisively at her reflection and got an encouraging nod in reply. Yanking open the bathroom door, she marched into the hall and collided with her exquisitely turned-out roommate.

“Ouch,” the redhead said. “You’re in a hurry this morning.”

Nicole felt the hot sweep of blood in her cheeks. She didn’t care what the author of Losers said, it was impossible to control a blush. “Sorry. I don’t want to be late.”

Kathy lifted a penciled eyebrow. “Got a hot date with Delicious DeLucca?”

“Yes. No. Sort of. I don’t want to be at a disadvantage when I see him again.”

“Sweetie, a guy that gorgeous puts every woman at a disadvantage.” Kathy peered past her at the mirror, tweaking at her hair. “Well, almost every woman. The man’s a menace.”

“Yes,” Nicole said dryly. “So I heard.”

Kathy’s hand froze. “Who told you?”

“He did.” Nicole swallowed the lump of betrayal that burned in her windpipe. “You should have said something.”

Her roommate continued to fuss at her reflection in the mirror, still not quite meeting Nicole’s eyes. “What was I supposed to say? It happened months ago. Before I came to town. Besides, the paper said he didn’t do it.”

“I know.” She had checked the on-line archives of the McHenry County papers last night. “I also noticed that at least two of the articles were written by someone named DeLucca. Any relation, would you guess?”

“His sister,” Kathy said. “But that doesn’t change the fact that the guy is innocent.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because they locked up somebody else.”

Nicole drew a deep breath. She hated confrontation. Which was one of the reasons her boyfriends had a tendency to wipe their feet on her before they walked away. But all that was changing now. She was changing. “That’s another thing. Why didn’t you tell me the former owner of the bar was convicted of murder?”

“Why should I? His wife was handling the sale.”

Okay. Still…

“You should have told me,” Nicole said stubbornly. “I might have been interested to learn that I was buying the business of a convicted killer and employing the other main suspect in the case.”

“See? That’s exactly why I didn’t say anything. I knew you’d blow things out of proportion. This was a good deal, Nicole.”

Kathy’s voice awoke the echo of other voices, other accusations. Her mother’s. Charles’s. Kevin’s.

Don’t make a fuss, Nicole.

I only kissed her. You’re overreacting.

Why do you always have to make such a big deal out of everything?

“A good deal for you,” Nicole said.

Kathy rolled her eyes. “Well, sure. This was my first big commercial property sale on the new job. What do you want me to say? I appreciate your business?”

Nicole was shaken. “No. I just—”

“Fine. Because I do. And thank you. But you were the one who couldn’t wait to get out of Chicago.”

“Yes,” Nicole said. “You’re right.”

But Kathy was on a roll. “You were the one who lost your job.”

“The owner sold the company,” Nicole corrected her.

“After he broke up with you.”

Nicole flinched. “Yes.”

“And didn’t you say you wanted to move further away from your parents?”

Nicole felt herself visibly shrinking, like Alice at the bottom of the rabbit hole, drinking from a bottle she never should have opened. “You’re right,” she said again. “I’m sorry.”

Kathy shrugged. “I just don’t like you thinking you’re doing me any favors. You were as eager to clinch that sale as I was. An established business in a great location with available living space doesn’t come along every day.”

“It’s a wonderful property,” Nicole said truthfully.

And wondered, as she drove carefully to work along unfamiliar streets, how soon she could renovate the upstairs apartment and move in.

With a sigh, she saw that Mark DeLucca had managed to get to the Blue Moon before her. His black Jeep Cherokee occupied the parking space closest to the entrance.

Nicole wasn’t upset. Really. It wasn’t like the space had a big sign on it that read Owner.

She tugged on the door. Locked.

Well, of course he would lock it while he was alone inside. Hadn’t she told him last night that she appreciated his concern for security?

She fished in her bag for her new keys, trying not to twitch with irritation. Her hand closed on her keyring just as the door opened, and Mark DeLucca stood framed against the shadows, every bit as lean, dark and dangerous as he’d looked last night.

He wore a navy work shirt with the cuffs rolled back, exposing his muscled forearms. His hair clung damply to his temples. A tiny bead of sweat streaked the harsh plane of his face.

Oh, my.

She wanted him the way a nicotine addict craves a last cigarette, wanted to breathe him in and hold him inside her.

Bad idea. Get with the program, Nicole.

He frowned. “Sorry I didn’t answer right away. I was in back cleaning up.”

“Oh.” Because that didn’t seem to be sufficient response, she added, “Thank you. I noticed last night that the place could use a thorough cleaning.”

His expression became shuttered. “I can get you a mop and bucket from the closet, if you want.”

Nicole blinked. Was he teasing? “I thought I would hire a cleaning service.”

He shrugged, already moving away from her toward the bar. “It’s your money.”

It was her bar. Still, she expected to operate it at a profit.

She nibbled her lip. “Do you think that would be too expensive?”

“Depends on what you call expensive.” He began to restock his work station with coasters and napkins, his movements so quick and practiced she had to wonder if he were even aware of what his hands were doing. “Commercial cleaning a place this size, including the degreasing, will run about fifteen hundred dollars. More, if you don’t want to close for the day and have to pay the crew to come in at night.”

She nodded. She would check his figures later, but what he said sounded reasonable. “I’d rather not close if I can help it. There will be enough disruptions with the remodel.”

“Hold the train. What remodel?”

Oh, dear. This was not how she had planned to introduce the topic.

“Well…” She would talk about her plans for the lunch room later, she decided. “There’s that empty storage space upstairs. That could be converted into an apartment.”

“Sure it could. If you could find somebody willing to rent rooms over a bar.”

“I wasn’t planning on renting. I want to live there.”

“What about the noise?”

She shifted on her stool. “Soundproofing would of course be part of the renovation.” God, she sounded stuffy.

“What about the inconvenience?”

“What inconvenience? I’m used to immersing myself in my work. I’ve had enough of hour-long commutes. And this way I’d always be available to keep an eye on things.”

“Swell. The next time I have to break up a bar fight at one in the morning, it’ll be a real comfort to me, knowing you’re on hand to keep an eye on things.”

She stuck out her chin. “I’m not really concerned about your comfort level.”

He muttered something that sounded like, “No kidding.”

“This is a business decision,” she said firmly.

Which was a lie. It was intensely personal, this need to have a place that was wholly hers. She was tired of making room in her heart and her life and her closets for men who moved in, made a mess and moved on. The Blue Moon was hers.

“Anyway, it’s my decision,” she said, which was true and made her feel better.

“Well, that puts me in my place.”

Heat swept her cheeks. “I didn’t mean—”

His lips twisted in a smile. If he hadn’t looked like Lucifer rejoicing over the fall of mankind, she might have thought he was teasing. Or even sympathetic.

“Forget it,” he said. “If you don’t see any problem with a young, single, attractive woman living alone over a bar, it’s not my job to educate you.”

Pleasure spurted through her. He thought she was attractive.

No. He thought she was dumb as a rock.

Keeping her voice cool, she said, “Actually, it is your job. To educate me, I mean.”

He leaned against the bar. “Now that could get interesting.”

She ignored the little jump of her pulse. “Why don’t we start with a review of the employee schedules,” she suggested.

He went very still. And then he nodded once, in a brief gesture of…acquiescence? Respect? “You’re the boss.”

Or was he mocking her?

For over an hour, they discussed schedules and procedures and suppliers. Nicole took notes on her laptop. Mark showed her the work schedule pinned to a bulletin board in the back and the contact numbers taped by the phone, but most of the information he seemed to keep in his head.

It was inefficient, she decided. And intimidating.

“Deanna’s the only waitress with the hours to get benefits,” he was saying. “Then you’ve got Joe on days, and me on nights. Both full-time. And Louis, who runs the kitchen. You meet Louis yet?”

A slightly built, softly spoken black man with a bald head and a dry handshake. She nodded.

“Everybody else is part-time,” Mark continued. “You’ll meet them all eventually.”

She wanted to hold a staff meeting and meet them all at once. “Actually—”

“Payroll’s done by a service,” he went on. “I’ll give you—”

Nicole cleared her throat. She was getting tired of interruptions. It was time to take control. “Wouldn’t it be cheaper to calculate the deductions and write the checks ourselves?”

“Yeah. If you have time for that kind of thing. Which I don’t.”

She smiled, pleased to have discovered an area where she could make an immediate and positive difference. “But I do. Have the time. And the software.”

“You want me to give you a gold star?”

He didn’t sound jeering, she decided. More…amused.

“How about a cherry in my drink?”

He grinned suddenly, and the shock of it ran through her system like a computer virus. “You don’t strike me as the fruit-and-paper-umbrella type.”

“I don’t?”

“Nope.”

Drop it, her new, improved self ordered. You are not a healthy woman. You are a relationship addict. You cannot indulge in a flirtation, even a tiny one, without going on a love binge.

She moistened her lips with her tongue. “What type am I?” she asked.

Her better self groaned and threatened to call their mother.

Mark DeLucca studied her with his flat, black eyes. “Hard to say. Yesterday I had you pegged as a chardonnay girl.”

“And…today?”

“Today I think that’s too ordinary.”

He thought she wasn’t ordinary. Excitement licked along her nerves like flame set to paper.

The phone behind the bar rang.

They both reached for it.

Mark’s hand, hard and lean, closed over Nicole’s. She felt her cheeks color, but held on. This was her establishment. It was her phone.

After a moment he let go.

“Good morning, Blue Moon,” she said breathlessly into the receiver.

“Good morning.” The woman’s voice was pure Gold Coast, warm and rich as melted butter over lobster. “Is Mark DeLucca in?”

Nicole’s insides congealed. “One moment, please.” She thrust the phone at Mark. “It’s for you.”

He took the receiver from her cold hand. “Thanks. Mind if I—”

“Please, take the call. I think we’re done here.”

She was looking at him funny, like he’d said or done something on purpose to upset her, instead of just flirting with her a little.

But Mark didn’t have time to figure it out.

He didn’t have time to figure her out, not if this was the call he was expecting.

He held the receiver to his ear. “DeLucca here.”

“Mr. DeLucca, this is Jane Gilbert. What can I do for you?”

He turned his back on Nicole Reed, with her too-blue, too-interested eyes. “Isn’t that supposed to be my line? You wrote to me.”

“Yes.”

“So, what do you want?”

“I want whatever is in the best interests of six-year-old Daniel Wainscott. It remains to be seen if you can help me there.”

He didn’t bother to take offense at her tone. Hell, he agreed with her.

“Have you—” His heart was beating harder than it had on the airstrip at Kabul. His palm was sweaty on the receiver. “Have you said anything to him about me?”

“No. I see no point in raising the child’s hopes unless and until it is established that you are indeed his father. Are you?”

He was dimly aware of Nicole behind him, moving away to the other end of the bar. To give him more privacy?

“I don’t know,” he said.

He sure hadn’t thought about becoming a father seven years ago when he was making it with shy blond Betsy every chance they could both sneak away. Or when her mother figured out what they were up to and her daddy put a stop to it. Or at the end of that summer, when he’d joined up and shipped out, or in any of the intervening years since. But he’d given it plenty of thought in the last twenty-four hours.

“I could be,” he said.

“Then your first step should be a paternity test,” Jane Gilbert said briskly. “There are home kits, of course, but it would be better if you had the test done at a collection center, to establish a proper chain of custody. In case your claim to Daniel were to be questioned in court.”

His only previous court experience had been as a defendant. He wondered what her lawyership, this Gilbert woman, would make of that.

Daniel’s grandparents have expressed interest in adopting Daniel and appear ready to pursue all legal avenues to do so.

Hell.

“What do you need?” he asked. “Blood?”

“No. The technician will take a buccal swab—a sample of skin cells from the inside of your cheek.”

“How much?”

“How large a sample? I’m afraid I—”

“No. How much is this going to set me back?”

The lawyer’s voice chilled like vodka over ice. “The cost can probably be recovered from Elizabeth Wainscott’s estate. However, a test of the child and alleged father can run anywhere from $450 to nearly $800.”

“Why the difference?”

“I haven’t decided yet whether to subject Danny to the normal testing procedure or to collect a special sample.”

It was too much to take in.

He should have suggested he call her back, this afternoon, maybe, when he had more time to think.

And fewer distractions. Even with the length of the bar between them, he could still smell the light, expensive scent of Nicole’s perfume, could still hear the soft click of her computer keyboard, rappity-tap-tap behind him. He so did not want her getting the drift of this conversation. Which was dumb, since it wasn’t like he was going to make it with her anyway.

He pulled his mind back. “What kind of sample?”

“Chewing gum,” Jane Gilbert said simply and unexpectedly. “The lab can extract Danny’s DNA from well-chewed chewing gum. I’m told Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit works best.”

“So then he wouldn’t know what was going on.”

There was a little pause. “In a case such as this, when a child may already be feeling upset or abandoned by one parent’s death—”

Mark didn’t need a lawyer to tell him about children’s feelings of abandonment.

“Do it,” he ordered.

“Excuse me?”

“Get the special thing. I’ll pay for it.”

“It will take a week longer to process,” the lawyer warned.

Mark had already spent—what, six years? seven?—without knowing that he was a father. If he was a father.

“I can wait,” he said.

“Very well.” Did he imagine it, or had the lawyer’s voice warmed ever so slightly? “There’s probably a lab or doctor’s office near you that could take the sample. However, if you choose to have the test done in Chicago, we could meet. To discuss Daniel.”

To see if getting him mixed up in the kid’s life would be in the best interests of the child, she meant.

“Yeah,” he said. Rappity-tap-tap, went Nicole’s fingers behind him. “Yeah, that would be good. When?”

“Next week sometime?”

“Sure.”

“Thursday? Four o’clock?”

“Fine.”

He hung up the receiver, annoyed to note that his hand wasn’t steady. When he turned, Nicole was watching him with narrowed blue eyes.

“You got a problem?” he asked.

Swell, DeLucca. Make it a perfect day. Pick a fight with the boss.

Her slim shoulders squared. “Not necessarily. Do you?”

He could almost like the way she didn’t back down. Almost.

“Not necessarily,” he said, mocking her. “I need next Thursday off.”

“All right. I—did you say Thursday?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry. I have a previous commitment that night.”

Mark shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll switch hours with Joe.”

“And if he’s not available?”

“I’ll work something out.”

“I need someone who can close the register.”

He was unwillingly pleased that she trusted him with her money. But that didn’t give her the right to command his time.

“So, you do it.”

“I told you, I have plans for that evening.”

He might have just dismissed her as a spoiled rich girl. But her voice was stiff with distress. Her shoulders were rigid.

He frowned. “What kind of plans?”

“If you must know, I’m attending a party with my parents.”

Any temptation to feel sorry for her died. “A party is that important to you?”

She sighed. Some of the starch left her shoulders, like the wind abandoning a sail. “No. My parents are important to me. Their good opinion is important to me.”

Betsy had cared about her parents’ opinion, too, Mark remembered.

More than she’d cared about him.

More than she’d cared about…their son?

Pain stabbed an old wound, making him snarl. “Sorry. I’m not going to give up my plans so you can make nice with your parents.”

Nicole glared. “Well, I’m not giving up my evening so you can make time with your married lover!”