That's Amore (11 page)

Jeff, his arms aching like he’d just been weight lifting with The Rock, trudged back and forth across the living room as Justin gave little whimpers and gasps in his arms.

The kid had cried himself out of tears by now. His eyes were puffy and huge quantities of snot were smeared across his face. The crying had petered down to snuffling and gasping, but he wouldn’t fall asleep.

And if Jeff so much as tried to set him down, Justin’s siren scream went up.

At last check, it was two a.m. The time of night when the only two things that appealed to him were REM sleep and Paige naked. This didn’t even come close to either.

“I’ll turn the TV on again,” Paige said with a yawn. “He liked that last time. Maybe you can sit down at least.”

Jeff watched Paige stumble over to the TV and feel around the sofa for the remote. It was really great of her to stay up with him and Justin like this, especially since the whole mess was his fault. Justin could be sleeping in his own crib right now if Jeff had taken him back to his mother after Gina had called.

Of course, Paige didn’t know that.

Now he was convinced Justin was never going to sleep again and all of his muscles were going to freeze in the position of cradling a baby. Which would make a pick-up game of football pretty hard to do.

Carefully, slowly, he eased himself down onto the sofa, sighing as Justin remained silent. The baby clung to Jeff’s T-shirt with chubby fingers, his swollen eyes drifting closed. Jeff couldn’t help but groan out loud a little as his back shot out electric jolts of pain.

Paige sat down next to him, and he turned his bleary eyes to the TV, the blue lights of the screen flickering around the darkened room.

He settled in to watch Princess Diana: The untold story, on the Biography channel.

Three seconds later he was asleep.

The phone woke Paige up. She jerked forward, and realized she was semi-sitting up.

Yuck. She had slept on the couch. And had the crick in her neck to prove it.

Jeff and Justin were both asleep, curled up on the far end of the couch. Justin was spread out across Jeff’s chest and his little body rose and fell with Jeff’s breathing. Jeff’s hand was still clasped on Justin’s behind and Paige smiled to herself at how adorable they looked. Jeff was a macho, tough kind of guy, yet he had taken to parenting with natural talent.

She’d always known he had soft edges. Seeing proof of that just made her want him all the more.

The cell phone sat on the coffee table and she grabbed it, not wanting her sleeping beauties to wake up.

“Hello?” she whispered.

“Paigey, it’s Gina. Is Justin still asleep or do you want me to come get him now?”

Paige blinked. “Gina?” Either she needed coffee bad or Gina’s words made no sense. Actually, either way she still needed coffee badly.

“Yeah. Who else would it be?”

Good question. Paige’s sleep deprived mind struggled to wrap itself around this one-sided conversation. “Are you home?”

“Yeah. So let me know when you want me to swing by and pick Justin up.”

Paige stood up as she sighed in relief. Well, that was one problem solved. Gina sounded absolutely fine. “Are you okay? When did you get back? Did Frank talk to Johnny?”

Gina’s voice was puzzled. “Didn’t Jeff tell you? I called him last night and told him everything.”

Paige remembered Jeff taking a phone call from Gina last night, but she distinctly remembered him saying there was no change in the situation. A bad feeling swept over her as she stumbled towards the kitchen to start the coffee.

“He didn’t tell me.”

“Johnny let me go last night, which there’s something I have to tell you, by the way, but it will keep until I see you in person. Anyhoot, Sam and Sal picked me up and I offered to swing by and grab Justin on my way home, but Jeff said you were fine keeping him for the night.”

Oh, did he? Paige’s eyes narrowed as she dug through the cabinets. Instant, decaf, she didn’t care what it was. She needed coffee now.

“What time was that?” Paige was trying to remember when Jeff had been on the phone, but her brain wasn’t working correctly after only five hours of sleep. She was an eight consecutive hour sleep kind of girl.

“I don’t know. Eight o’clock or so. Why?”

The can of Folgers in front of her went blurry and she remembered exactly what had been going on when Jeff had been on the phone with Gina. She had been in the bedroom looking for condoms.

She had been walking back into the living room carrying them right as Jeff had been hanging up the phone.

The cabinet slammed shut without her even realizing she was doing it. She no longer wanted the coffee. All the coffee in the world wasn’t going to fix this.

Her mother’s voice rang in her head.
Benedetto boys are only after one thing.

Damn it, she really hated it when her mother was right.

Jeff had neglected to tell her Gina was coming home because they had been on the verge of making love. He had lied to get her into bed.

Fury was there, swift and sure, but hurt came like a bee sting, out of nowhere, a painful and pinching surprise.

Jeff wasn’t supposed to be like his brothers. He was supposed to be honest and thoughtful. She had been so sure he was.

But three years ago he had walked out on her. And last night he had lied to her.

“What’s with all the noise?” Jeff said from the kitchen doorway, lounging against the wall. “You’ll wake up Justin.”

He looked good enough to eat, standing there with tousled hair. He was wearing his wrinkled, black T-shirt that he had dragged on sometime during their walking sessions with Justin the night before. His jeans were getting that soft worn look, where they start to hang loose in strategic places, having stretched from wearing them for twenty-four hours.

“The phone rang,” she said carefully, wanting him to be innocent, wanting him to somehow deny what Gina had told him.

“Oh, yeah?” He yawned and started towards her, his arm reaching out for her.

She crossed her arms tightly across her chest so he couldn’t pull her into an embrace. “It was Gina.”

He stopped walking. His head snapped up. The sleepy look had evaporated. His eyes were wary. “What did Gina have to say?”

Geez, did he have to
look
so guilty? Paige’s stomach rolled. Forget coffee. Forget breakfast. She felt sick.

“She said that she came home last night and that she could pick up Justin any time today.”

Jeff didn’t say anything for a long pause, staring at her in horror, then said, “Well, that’s good. Whew. What a relief she’s all right.”

At least he was a bad liar. It made her feel a little better.

“She also said that she told you all of that last night, around eight o’clock, and that she even offered to pick Justin up last night and you refused.” Her hands went to her hips and she spread her bare feet out a little, ready for a stand off.

“Uh…” He shoved his hands in his pockets, evading her eyes.

“Jeff!”

He cracked like a criminal under interrogation. “I’m sorry! I didn’t think it was a big deal.”

Wrong answer. The fury resurfaced with a healthy dose of indignation. “What? You didn’t think it was a big deal that you lied to me? That the reason you lied to me was because you wanted to sleep with me?”

“That’s not true!” he burst out.

Then he frowned and shuffled his feet a little. “Well, okay maybe it was true. But come on. You wanted to be together too!”

She prayed that she wouldn’t strangle him. Her fists curled and uncurled and she took a deep breath. “Then you should have told me about the phone call. I would have stayed with you. You didn’t need to lie about it!”

“Well, I didn’t know that you’d stay, did I?” he said with perfect male logic.

Male logic that was so illogical to Paige that the only sound she could make was a garbled gasp.

“Paige,” he pleaded. “I’m sorry. It made sense at the time. I just didn’t want anything to interrupt our night together.”

His hand reached out and took hers off her hip. His rough thumb caressed the back of her hand. His voice had taken on seductive tones. “I’ve been missing you for three years. I couldn’t wait another night.”

Do not give in, do not give in
, she told herself. Especially since it was his fault they hadn’t been together in three years.

Her body wasn’t listening to her brain commands. She was relaxing, letting him pull her forward. In another second she would be wrapped up in his arms, lost to all common sense.

She forced herself to ask, “Is there anything else you need to tell me? Have you kept anything from me or lied about anything else? Here’s your chance to come clean.”

Jeff’s hesitation was just long enough that she glared at him in suspicion, still an arm’s length away from him, with no intention of going further. “What is it, Jeff?”

“Nothing.”

Paige tried to catch his eye, but he was studiously avoiding looking anywhere but at her. Clearly lying. But what could he be lying about?

She hadn’t seen Jeff in three years, and during those three years he had never attempted contact. She didn’t think that their being in this apartment together was anything more than coincidence and rotten luck.

He had been surprised to see her, and that gun being waved in Jeff’s face back at the construction trailer hadn’t been a hoax.

Which meant it was something else. Something later.

Paige remembered Jeff’s frantic digging through the grocery bags and his not-so-innocent look when he’d stood up. The bulge in his jeans that was not due to nature, despite what he wanted to claim.

And the amazing coincidence that she had found an
unopened
box of condoms in the drawer of the nightstand.

“Jeff,” she said in warning.

She pulled her hand out of his and he crossed his arms, his black eyes guilty as sin.

“Did you buy those condoms at the store?”

His arms fell. His mouth dropped open. That was all the confirmation she needed.

“Jeff!” Her finger shot out without warning. She wagged it back and forth in the style of her Grandma Lombardi. “And you’d better not lie to me.”

He snapped his jaw closed. He cleared his throat. “Well, you see it’s like this…”

That was all she needed to hear. “Ugh, never mind, I don’t want to hear it. I’m leaving, Jeff. I’m done.”

She needed to get away from him, fast, before she said something she would regret. She was going home and never so much as looking at a man ever again.

The convent needed nuns. Maybe they would take her.

Torrid images of the night before flashed into her mind. Okay, so she wasn’t exactly pure anymore, but maybe her dad could pull some strings.

Either way, Jeff Benedetto was never touching her again.

EFF WATCHED PAIGE stomp off and slam the door to the bedroom. He heard her click the lock. Just in case he had any naïve misconceptions about following her, that deafening bolt forced them to shrivel up and die.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Every word out of his mouth was ticking Paige off. And he couldn’t blame her. He might as well have said he’d planned to bag her from the first minute he’d laid eyes on her yesterday. It couldn’t have gone over any worse than what he’d really said.

But while it was technically the truth, it wasn’t the whole truth either. Despite what Paige now thought, his feelings had never been just physical. It had never been about just getting Paige into the bedroom with him.

It had been about wanting her. Wanting everything about Paige. Anxious, desperate desire for all that she was. To have her, to touch her, to be with her.

To hear her laugh and to fit her body flush against his.

To love her.

Christ, he didn’t know how he was going to fix this.

Making himself some black coffee, heavy on the caffeine, he took it into the living room to see if Justin was still sleeping.

His nephew was still on his stomach on the sofa, his arms spread out up over his head.

He was getting kind of fond of the little guy. He might even offer to babysit for Gina once in awhile. Now that Gina was giving Frank the boot, Justin was going to need male influences in his life. Jeff and his brothers could step up to the plate and teach Justin how to play ball and spit long distances.

The kid was on his own when to came to women though. Jeff had no advice to give there.

Unless Justin needed instructions on how to tick off the woman you love in three easy steps.

Jeff brooded in the leather recliner and prepared to wait. Paige had to open that bedroom door sooner or later. He’d be sitting here when she did.

Paige threw the offensive T-shirt and shorts Jeff had bought for her in a crumpled up ball on the bathroom floor. If her father’s apartment had a fireplace, she’d burn them.

She settled for kicking them, wishing it was Jeff’s rear end. Every time she thought they were on the verge of happily ever after, Fate laughed at her and said,
Wrong!

That was getting old.

Sometime during her twenty minute shower, when she had blubbered freely into the hot stream of water, she had come to a conclusion.