The Care and Feeding of Unmarried Men (19 page)

C
harlie called Larry instead of going after Jemima, like every midlife hormone he had was urging. “Hey,” he said, trying to sound casual. “How was basketball tonight?”

He could picture his old friend in his mind's eye—receding hairline, slight paunch, his face still red from the evening's game. “That damn Orlando has elbows like ice picks,” Larry grumbled. “His inside game sucks, though. George shut him down.”

“The Brits can't shoot for shit.” Charlie settled back into the cushions of his sofa and propped his feet onto the coffee table. “Next week I'll be back to show 'em how it's done.”

“Now that sounds like the real Charlie,” Larry said, chuckling. “I was beginning to think the surgeon had
cut something more significant than a few years off your pretty face.”

“Fuck you.” Charlie frowned. “What's that supposed to mean, anyway?”

“It means I haven't heard anyone whine so much about a little pain since Levy hit the floor from that knee injury.”

“Next time a doctor drags your face up by the roots of your hair and staples your cheeks behind your ears, we'll talk about whining and pain.”

“That's one benefit of working my side of the business. I can look as ugly as I want. Speaking of business…how's my beautiful girl?”

Charlie cleared his throat. “Your beautiful girl. What girl is that?”

“Jemima Cargill, dumbass. Did she like the bouquet I sent her for her birthday?”

The birthday Charlie had ignored. But not Larry. Larry had remembered and had probably sent her some extravagant arrangement. Roses, Charlie would bet. God, that just pissed him off.

His hand tightened on the phone. “What are you thinking, Larry?”

The other man sounded puzzled. “About what?”

“You're married,” Charlie bit out. “To a woman I introduced you to fifteen years ago. What the hell are you hitting on Jemima for? You having some sort of midlife crisis and now you're running around after teenagers?”

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone.

“Well?” Charlie practically shouted the word.

“Well,” Larry finally said. “I sent Jemima flowers on
her birthday because she's my client. You know I would never betray Natalie by going after another woman.”

“Jemima Cargill is a
girl,
” Charlie grumbled. “You said it yourself.”

“Right now she seems a hell of a lot more mature than you. What's going on? Those sutures still hurting?”

His balls were aching, that's what was wrong. And his head. And his heart. He was lusting after a much younger woman, and the stupid truth was he'd been unable to talk himself into believing it was merely that. It wasn't just physical. He was in love with her. From the top of her twenty-one-year-old head to the bottom of her twenty-one-year-old toes.

Shit.

“Let's talk about something else,” he said. “What's up with poor old Levy? Has he seen a doctor?”

“Oh, yeah. The diagnosis is that he tore the meniscus cartilage in his knee.”

“Damn. Levy lives for basketball. Guess that means we'll have to find a replacement for him in the league. Maybe Orlando can recommend another Brit with a bad shot. If we let the young guys in, they've gotta be lousy to make up for it.”

“Oh, Levy's not out.”

“You're kidding.” Charlie ran his hand over his left knee. “The meniscus—”

“Levy's getting it fixed. He went to see one of the orthopedic guys for the Lakers, and he said if Levy was still playing full-court basketball he was much too young to be letting a bum knee put a stop to it.”

“Yeah?” Charlie rubbed his own knee again. “But Levy's older than we are, and after Tuesday nights it takes
me
three days to recover.”

“But on the fourth day you're eager to do it all over again, right?”

“Right.” As much as he hurt Wednesday mornings, it was a good kind of hurt, an I've-still-got-it kind of hurt. “You don't just lie down and quit because there might be some pain involved.”

“Nope,” Larry concurred. “The game's too fun, hell, too important, for that.”

But it didn't seem too mature either. “Does that mean we're fools, Lar?”

“Are you kidding? That means we're
wise.
We know what matters, and it's not the year on our driver's licenses or the strained muscles in the offing. It's good for us. Gotta keep the ol' heart working, right?”

We know what matters.

It's not the year on our driver's licenses.

Larry had been talking about basketball, but…

“Right,” Charlie said slowly. His headache eased, and so did the frustration that had been plaguing him for days. He found himself standing up. Striding toward his sliding glass door. “You're right. Gotta keep the ol' heart working.”

He didn't remember ending the call or walking onto his patio and then around the partition. But suddenly he was on Jemima's patio. Standing by her back door. The curtains were drawn, but the lights were on.

She wasn't sleeping.

But she was dressed for sleep, he noticed when she slid open the door to his light knock. He stood there, hypnotized by the sight of her in a pair of filmy pink bikini panties and a powder blue T-shirt that skimmed her belly button.

His eyebrows rose as he took in the text stretched across her breasts. “‘Mack's my man,'” he read aloud.

She stepped back, then turned around. He followed her inside, shutting the door behind him. Now in better light, her panties appeared even more transparent, the shadow of the cleft between her cheeks drawing his gaze. Sweat popped out on his skin, and his sutures started to itch.

He jerked his focus upward. There was text across the back of the shirt too. “If Mack can't do it, no one can.”

Maybe he said it out loud, because she glanced at him over her shoulder. “You don't recognize it? Comes standard with every Mack Chandler Fan Club membership.”

He made a vague gesture at the shirt. “What is this?” he asked, his voice hoarse. “A taunt?”

She spun around and crossed her arms over her chest so that Mack was no longer her man. “I could ask you the same question, Charlie. Why are you here? Is this a taunt?”

“I…” He closed his eyes, wondering what the hell it exactly was. “A hope,” he finally said. “It's a hope.”

She was silent, so he was forced to open his eyes.

Her beautiful dark eyes were narrowed.

“What?” he asked.

“Just trying to figure out if that's a line you're throwing me, Charlie. Something from one of your old movies, like that Aussie accent you put on.”

“Ah, Jem.” He ran his hand over his refreshed face. Here he was, the older one, but he'd acted like a boneheaded boy. “I'm concerned that…”

Her eyebrows rose. “I'm waiting.”

He didn't know what to say.

She tapped her twenty-one-year-old toes. “I'm still waiting.”

“Damn it, Jem!” He wanted to tear out his hair. He wanted to turn off his feelings. He wanted Jemima Cargill.

All his frustration and fear sounded in his voice. “Young hearts bounce. Old hearts break.”

And there, finally, was the truth. The truth about why he'd been resisting her.

It wasn't that she was too young or that she might get hurt. It was that
he
might get hurt.
Old hearts break.

She stepped up to him. The palms she cupped around his face were gentle. “Then I guess I'll have to take very good care of yours.”

He sighed, his hands coming around her, his fingers linking loosely at the warm small of her back. “So now you know.”

Looking up, she smiled at him, and he thought of all the nights she'd smiled just like that while he'd kept himself hidden from her. It hadn't saved him from this. From her.

Thank God.

“Now I know what?”

“Now you know I'm not a hero,” he said. “I've just played one on TV.”

Her smile deepened, and she moved back to strip off that appalling Mack Chandler T-shirt. “I can get a hero any time for the price of a movie ticket. What I want forever is you, Charlie. Just you.”

And thank God for that, too. He took the shirt from her hand and flung it across the room. Then he reached for the woman he had decided to marry. He hoped it wouldn't take long to convince her.

It was time to get off the bench and live—and love—for all he was worth.

E
ve took advantage of the near-deserted state of the Kona Kai bar—it was the last shift, and most of the resort's guests were early birds, not owls—to give herself a critical once-over in the mirror behind the call liquors. In the past few days since the impromptu run to Diane's house in the desert, she hadn't been feeling like herself. With all the time she'd been spending in Nash's company, she wondered if she'd caught something from him.

There was a definite flush along her cheekbones, which made sense, considering the perpetually heated state of her skin. And her stomach had been so jumpy lately!
She'd
been jumpy, and every time she'd tried inhaling a deep breath it had gotten caught at half-lung level, instead of the relaxing belly-breathing she practiced in yoga.

She hadn't been eating either, because she'd had too much revved-up energy to do anything detailed like make a meal, let alone eat one. With Nash still watching over Jemima, he'd often eaten with her. The few times Eve and Nash had met over a table, she'd played the shell game with whatever she'd ordered: asparagus tucked behind the baked potato, baked potato bites pushed beneath the ribs of a chicken breast.

With the tips of her right-hand fingers pushed together, she lifted her hair where the part met her forehead. Her pinky brushed something—

She held back her hair to bare the skin. A zit! Her pinky had brushed a zit!

Eve Caruso had never had a blemish in her life.

With a quick glance around the room, she hurriedly feathered the hair back over the reddened spot. This is what she got for not following her rules. With Nash in her bed every night, she wasn't getting enough sleep. He was following
her
rules, that was good, though he rolled his eyes every time she dragged him upward by his shoulders, but she wasn't following her own. No men were supposed to stay the night in her bed.

Up that close, you might start believing you could rely on them.

For Nash, she'd made an exception…. She saw the dreamy smile tilt the corners of her lips, and although she knew it was goofy of her, she couldn't help herself. Nash, with his heavy, rounded muscles. Nash, who'd led her to the discovery that she was a glutes woman.

And a hamstrings woman.

And a biceps woman.

And a washboard abs woman.

You named one of his hard, bulging muscles and she loved it.

A snort of laughter bubbled up, and she clapped her hand over her mouth. Not only was she getting goofy but she was getting sex-obsessed as well.

What Nash could do to her body had totally revised her opinion of orgasms. What in the past had always been a healthy half hour of exercise culminating in a little
ta-da
toot delivered by kazoo was now hours of greedy touching, sinuous writhing, and soul kisses climaxing in a whole symphonic crescendo, complete with kettledrum and cascading chimes.

Last night, when she'd happened to mention it to Nash—in an unguarded moment when sated satisfaction had overruled good sense—he'd suggested she write letters of apology to all her previous lovers. He'd blamed the lackluster events on her!

“Face it, Party Girl,” he'd said. “It sounds as if you've never lived up to the ballyhoo of your beautiful face and centerfold body.”

“So, I've never lived up to my advertising,” she'd retorted, “until now? Until you?”

He didn't even bother hiding his smugness. “Damn straight. Until now. Until me.”

Annoying, arrogant, luscious man.

How did he know just how to make her smile?

Movement in the corner of her eye made her body still, even as her belly jumped and her nerves stretched tight in welcome anticipation. She couldn't tell without turning her head, but it was probably Nash. He'd had calls to make, he'd said, but it would be just like him to show up near closing time and help her break down the bar. She drew her fingers along her throat toward her breasts, unfastening the next two buttons of her tailored white shirt.

A game of try-to-pick-up-the-bartender sounded like a fun way to end the evening.

Prepared to saunter over to the new patron with her sex appeal set on Oooze, Eve licked her lips, then turned.

Her hand hastily refastened her buttons. Playful disappeared from her smile. “Uncle Tuna!”

Tony Pesce, known as The Fish to her grandfather's crew, called Uncle Tuna by Eve and her sisters all their lives, hitched himself onto one of the barstools. He smoothed his hand over the front of his pearl-colored silk dress shirt. “
Buona sera,
Eve.”

Knowing him to be a friend of Bill W., Eve picked up a cup and saucer. “Decaf or the hard stuff?”

“Decaf.
Grazie.
”

She served the coffee along with a kiss to each of his lean, olive-skinned cheeks, stretching across the cold marble to make the deliveries. “Mmm. Acqua Di Gio,” she said, naming the Armani cologne. Nash smelled of nothing fancier than shaving cream—and sometimes her. Uncle Tuna, though, perhaps because of his malodorous nickname, always made it a point of pride to smell like the best at the men's fragrance counter.

“You like it?” Uncle Tuna covered her fingers with his.

“I adore it.” She turned her palm to squeeze his hand. It felt too dry, and the skin was thin, she realized. The hand of an old man.

A pang squeezed her heart. Uncle Tuna was edging up there in years, yet he was still younger than her grandfather, Cosimo, the only male blood relative Eve had left in the world. “Is everything all right?” she said. “Nothing's happened?”

With the announcement of Cosimo's retirement, something
would
happen, that was sure. Maybe not tonight, or next week or even next month, but the shuffle in the Caruso leadership would shake everyone up, from within the family and without. She suddenly remembered the lifeless figures of the canary and that pitiful stuffed cat on her doorstep. As far-fetched as it sounded, was the mob trying to send messages through her?

“Nothing's happened,” the older man reassured her, lifting his cup between both hands. “This is a courtesy visit, that's all.”

Relieved, and telling herself that nothing had happened at her place either, she let him sip his coffee, then watched him return the cup to its saucer. “What kind of ‘courtesy'? Nino passed along Grandpa's last message.” That she was supposed to lay to rest any rumors about family discord as she went about the social circuit. “I've been doing what I can.”

Uncle Tuna waved his hand through the steam rising from his cup. “Just checking in. Cosimo is hoping you're not starting to avoid him like your big sister, Téa.”

She relaxed. Téa had issues with their Mafia ties, but Eve didn't want—couldn't afford—to turn her back on the meager amount of family she had. And a Caruso was what she was damn grateful to be. “You tell Cosimo I'll get by and see him just as soon as I can.”

“You're not answering your cell phone.”

“Well. You know how it is.” Trying to avoid the SEC and Vince Standish made it imperative that she rarely picked the thing up, but of course she didn't want to get into that. “How have you been, Uncle Tuna? Any new lady in your life?”

“No, no.” He looked down at his coffee, sighed. “No time for women, not with all the
disordine
caused by Cosimo's retirement. And my brother, the one in Chicago? He was indicted last week.”

“Oh.” Eve reached for the pot to top off his coffee. “I'm sorry to hear that.”

Uncle Tuna shook his head. His tone was morose. “Conspiracy to commit.”

Murder,
Eve finished for him in her head.

“Goes back to 1986. Two of his guys turned on him. They were helping the feds build a case.” He shrugged his shoulders in a whatcha-gonna-do? way.

Eve mimicked his sigh, his shrug.

Uncle Tuna continued glumly. “He's got the prostate, you know. I heard they've got good health care in those prisons, but I worry. They say the mob kills, but the cancer—it does more than its share.”

“You're right. But I'm certain the doctors in prison will take good care of your brother.” She patted Uncle Tuna's hand, then couldn't help but wonder what Nash would think if he actually did choose this moment to come into the bar.

Would The Preacher understand or be appalled by her commiserating with Tony “The Fish” Pesce?

She whirled away, busying herself with the pot of decaf. What did it matter what Nash would think? That was the whole point of her rules. If she didn't let a man too close, she didn't have to deal with his judgment, his disappointment.

His defection.

Though of course they now knew that her father, Salvatore,
hadn't
left his family willingly. He'd been killed accidentally. Still, during his life he'd never given his wife his whole heart. As much as Eve had
loved her father, life with Salvatore and Bianca had proved the danger of giving a man emotional mastery. Salvatore's unfaithfulness with Eve's mother and others had brought unbearable hurt to his wife.

Eve never wanted to be in the position of needing a man's love. Her rules were to ensure that never happened.

Swallowing hard, she met her eyes in the mirror. If Nash Cargill walked into the bar right this minute, the smartest thing for her to do would be to tell him their affair was O-V-E-R. She'd let him know up front, right away, that she held the reins on this…relationship—for lack of a better term—and that she'd decided to pull back and get off the ride.

She glanced over her shoulder. Maybe an introduction to Uncle Tuna would do all that for her.

Except she could see that her aging mobster “uncle” was rising off his stool. Turning to him again, she tried pasting on a smile. “Leaving already?”

“
Sí
. I have to go now,
cara
. I'll be sure to tell your
nonno
that you're doing fine.”

But she wasn't doing fine! No matter how smart it was, the idea of breaking up with Nash was making her stomach churn instead of jitter. Her skin was cold, instead of hot.

But Eve forced her expression smooth and took hold of both of Uncle Tuna's old, thin hands. “You take care of yourself.”

His eyes began to twinkle, and his head gave a little tilt in the direction of the far end of the bar. “You have a new customer. And it looks to me like he's the one who wants to take care of you.
Ciao
.”

Eve looked after Uncle Tuna instead of looking at
the bar's latest patron. It was Nash, of course. It had to be Nash.

And she had to break things off with him.

Taking a deep breath, she squared her shoulders. Reminding herself it had been destined to end when Jemima left Palm Springs anyway, she turned to tell him that instead it was ending now.

But it wasn't Nash who was sitting on a stool, wearing a small smile, his avid gaze focused on Eve.

It was a stranger.