Have Bride, Need Groom

“You shut up,” Nick snapped.

Jenny looked up at him and watched as the desert wind ruffled his dark hair. In his U.N.L.V. T-shirt, blue jeans and battered cowboy boots, he looked completely at ease.

A sharp stab of envy sliced through her as she realized that she’d never once felt that comfortable in her surroundings.

Maybe, she told herself, she should simply give up on the wedding. At least for tonight A quick glance at her still-bleeding knees reminded her that things didn’t seem to be going her way at the moment.

Still, a small voice in the back of her mind whispered. Would you be any safer getting into a car with a total stranger?

Humph! Only half an hour ago, she was going to marry a total stranger. And Nick Tarantelli certainly looked more trustworthy than Jimmy the Lip Baldini!

“Well?” he said impatiently. “Are you going to get in? Or would you prefer to ride on the hood?”

“Shouldn’t your prisoner be in the back seat?”

“I was here first,” Jimmy reminded her hotly.

“Nah,” Nick said, ignoring the other man. “He’s harmless. Besides, I want him where I can reach out and grab him if he decides to make a run for it.”

“I never run,” the prisoner snapped.

She held on to the car door tightly. “Where are you taking me?”

A soft glimmer in his eyes told her that he understood her hesitation.

“Don’t worry, Jenny Blake,” he said, a smile briefly touching his face. “I’m taking you to the best volunteer nurse in Las Vegas.”

“A nurse?”

“Are you hungry?” he asked as Jenny slid into the back seat. “She’s a helluva cook, too.”

After dropping Jenny’s erstwhile groom off at the local police station, Nick steered his car back onto the crowded “Strip.” In the bumper-to-bumper traffic, they were forced to move slowly, which gave Jenny plenty of time to take in the sights. As twilight deepened into night, the casinos lining the street seemed to leap into life. In daylight they were nothing more than ignominious buildings crouched behind busy sidewalks. But at night their neon souls exploded into the darkness, banishing shadows and lighting up the sky like some electrified rainbow.

Jenny stared openmouthed through the car windows at the throngs of people crowding the sidewalks. As the traffic shifted and moved, she caught her breath several times as pedestrians bailed off the curb without so much as a glance at the oncoming cars. Coin cups clutched in their fingers, their gazes locked on the next casino, they crossed the street, darting between cars and trusting luck to see them safely to the other side.

Shaking her head, Jenny tried to ignore the people and concentrate instead on the incredible casino hotels they passed. From Caesar’s Rome to a man-made volcano to a pirate ship complete with firing cannons, Las Vegas was a living, breathing amusement park for grown-ups.

“First time in Vegas?”

Jenny’s gaze snapped to him. “How did you know?”

He laughed quietly. “A wild guess.”

A few minutes later Nick turned the car off the main road onto a darker, quieter side street. Here the businesses were well lit but without all the garish displays the big casinos boasted.

When he pulled into a driveway, Jenny stared at the huge, two-storied structure in front of them. Designed to look like an old Victorian mansion, the restaurant’s parking lot was nearly full. But it wasn’t the beauty of the place that caught her attention. It was the simple white sign hanging over the latticework archway leading to the front door. The sign read Tarantelli’s Terrace.

She shot Nick a quick look. “Yours?”

He shook his head. “The family’s.” Then he pulled into a parking slot near the back of the building and helped her out.

Nick took her around to the rear entrance of the restaurant, his hand firmly clutching her elbow. Even with his assistance, Jenny had to pick her way carefully across the pebble-strewn drive. It was the last time, she promised herself, that she would wear three-and-a-half-inch heels to her wedding.

When Nick pulled open the kitchen door, waves of delicious aromas escaped the hot room and wafted around Jenny, teasing her stomach into low rumbles of appreciation. And the moment she stepped inside Tarantelli’s Terrace, she identified the mystery scent that seemed to cling to Nick. It was the delicate blend of Italian spices that flavored the air in his family’s restaurant.

“Just because it’s Italian doesn’t mean it has to stink of garlic!” A female voice rose above the clatter of pots and pans.

Beside her, Jenny heard Nick chuckle.

“I am the chef here, madam.” The imperious male voice was easy to locate. Jenny found him in seconds. A tall man with a barrel chest, a truck tire stomach and a high, white chefs hat, was waving a wooden spoon at a much shorter woman.

“But you’re using my recipes,” the woman retorted. Her black hair, liberally streaked with gray, was pulled away from her face into a tight knot at the base of her neck. Her huge brown eyes seemed to take up most of her face and despite her battle stance, the lines etched into her features spoke more of laughter than of temper.

What seemed like dozens of kitchen workers bustled around the two combatants, paying no attention at all to their argument. Jenny jumped out of someone’s way and slammed into Nick’s broad chest. He lifted his hands to her shoulders to steady her.

“Hey, Ma!” he shouted above the noise. Jenny watched the woman turn away from the chef quickly. A wide, brilliant smile flashed briefly across her features.

“Nicky!”

Jenny slanted a quick look up at him, expecting to see a wince of embarrassment. Instead, all she saw was an answering grin. She blinked at the transformation. With that smile in place, Nick Tarantelli was handsome enough to steal a woman’s breath away.

“No garlic,” the woman shouted at the chef, then scurried away without giving the tall man a chance to argue further. Hurrying to them, the slightly round woman clapped her hands, then reached up to cup her son’s face. “Nicky! I wasn’t expecting you tonight.”

“Hi, Ma,” he whispered, bending to give her a quick kiss on the cheek. “Marianna Tarantelli, this is Jenny Blake and she—”

“Call me Mama,” Marianna interrupted with a smile. “Everybody does. What happened?” She broke away from her son and let her gaze sweep over Jenny.

“I fell.” Jenny shrugged helplessly.

“Oh.” Mama clucked her tongue sympathetically. “How did that happen?” A fierce look crossed her face briefly. “Somebody push you?”

“No.” Jenny sighed. “Actually, I was chasing your son.”

The older woman spun around and poked Nick in the chest with her forefinger. “What are you doin’, making a sweet girl like this chase you?”

“I didn’t tell her to chase me.” Nick held both hands up in mock surrender. “Besides, how do you know she’s a sweet girl?”

“Humph!” Mama sneered at him and turned back to Jenny. Cupping the younger woman’s chin in one hand, she said, “I see it in her eyes. You can’t see that, Nicky?”

Jenny looked up at him and saw the stubborn frown on his face before she lowered her gaze again.

“So!” Mama commanded, letting go of Jenny’s chin only to grab hold of her elbow. “You come with Mama, now, young lady. I got just the thing to take care of you. And you can tell me all about what my son did while I fix your knees, okay?” As she began to drag her away, the older woman called over her shoulder, “Nicky! Go upstairs and get some of your sister’s things for Jenny to wear. They look about the same size.”

“Oh, that’s not necessary,” Jenny said quickly.

“Sure it’s necessary,” Mama argued, patting her hand. “You can’t wear a torn-up dress and holey stockings all night.”

Jenny only had time for a quick look back over her shoulder. But Nick wasn’t standing by the door anymore. He’d already hustled off to follow his mother’s instructions. Jenny knew just how he felt. She’d only known Mama Tarantelli a matter of moments, but she couldn’t imagine anyone ignoring one of the older woman’s commands.

Nick didn’t waste time in Gina’s room. No matter what his mother said, he wasn’t about to go rooting through his younger sister’s closet. Besides, from what he’d seen of Jenny Blake’s figure, Gina’s clothes would be too small up top and too big on the bottom-His mother must be blind, he told himself as he snatched Gina’s bathrobe from the hook on the back of her bedroom door.

As he walked down the long hall of the family living quarters toward the stairs that led to the restaurant, Nick wondered if he’d done the right thing, bringing Jenny to his mother. Sure he had, he told himself. His mother had taken care of more strays than Mother Teresa. Besides, he hadn’t had a lot of time to come up with an alternate plan.

Nick’s boot heels thumped against the worn carpet runner and he clutched the bathrobe tightly in one fist. He couldn’t very well have taken her to her room at Sinbad’s, could he? Lord, just thinking about her in that short, tight dress, with her wide, innocent eyes, strolling through the parking lot at Sinbad’s gave him cold chills.

How in the bell had she managed to find the one hotel in the whole city of Vegas that had more human slugs per square inch than anywhere else in the world? Instinct? Nick shuddered. She had been about to marry Jimmy, after all.

And what was all that nonsense about having to get married? He stopped short at the top of the stairs and told himself to forget about the odd sense of relief he’d felt when she’d admitted she wasn’t pregnant. Why the devil did he care if she was expecting or not? Hell, he didn’t even know her!

Grumbling under his breath, he started down the stairs, still clutching the bathrobe. Something told him that he’d be a lot better off if he didn’t get to know her, either. All he wanted now was to have dinner, go back to his own place, and leave Jenny Blake in his mother’s capable hands.

“So you have to be married by when?”

Jenny’s breath hissed from between her teeth as Mama Tarantelli dabbed iodine on the raw flesh of her knees. “Four days,” she said finally.

“Hmm.” Mama held a cotton ball against the open top of the iodine bottle and tipped it. When she was finished, she reached for Jenny’s other knee. Dabbing the dark brown liquid onto the scrapes, she said, “And you say Nicky arrested your young man?”

Jenny’s fingers curled around the lip of the bathroom sink she was perched on and she winced as the iodine met her flesh. Of course it wasn’t really accurate to say that Jimmy Baldini was her “young man.” But Nick certainly had arrested him.

“Yes.”

“A nice girl like you shouldn’t be marrying men who are getting arrested.” Mama shook her head slowly as she straightened and reached for one of Jenny’s hands.

“I didn’t know he was a bigamist,” Jenny said in her own defense. “In fact, I didn’t know him at all.”

“Then why in hell were you about to marry him?” a male voice asked.

Jenny turned and saw Nick leaning against the doorjamb, his arms crossed over the robe pressed to his broad chest.

“As I was just telling your mother,” she started to explain, then jerked her hand instinctively back from a splash of iodine. But Mama was as strong as she looked and didn’t release her. “I’ve run out of time. I have to be married and I only have four days to do it in.”

“What’s the rush?” he asked even as he told himself silently to butt the hell out.

“If I’m not married in four days—” Jenny’s gaze met his and he saw the shimmer of tears clouding her deep blue eyes “—my grandmother will die.”

Three

Why wasn’t he surprised? Nick wondered. Looking down into those deep blue eyes of hers, he could see that she believed every word of what she was saying. And a quick glance at his mother told him that Jenny had convinced her, as well. But then, his mother also believed in the evil eye and that she could shorten storms by smacking two sticks together.

Oh, he could see that Jenny and his mother were going to get on famously.

Somehow he knew he’d regret asking, but he heard himself ask anyway. “What does your being married have to do with your grandmother staying alive or not?”

“It’s a family curse,” Jenny said solemnly.

Mama nodded and held up her right hand, two middle fingers and her thumb folded into the palm. Already, Marianna Tarantelli was warding off the evil eye.

Nick sighed. A curse. Naturally, he thought. On the other hand, why shouldn’t he believe in curses? Look at how his own day had gone so far.

“My grandmother is my only family. I have to protect her,” Jenny said quietly.

He frowned, unfolded his arms and tossed the bathrobe he still held to Jenny. “Okay, forget the curse for a minute. Would you mind telling me how you ended up with Jimmy the Lip?”

Even Mama looked interested in that.

Jenny shrugged and draped the robe across her lap, being careful to keep it from touching the fresh iodine on her knees. “I spoke to the manager at my hotel and explained my situation. He gave me several names to call and Mr. Lip was the first man to agree.”

Nick stared at her in disbelief. If Jimmy the Lip was on the manager’s prospective groom list, he shuddered to think who else she might have hooked up with. Jimmy was pretty much a lousy human being, but at least he wasn’t dangerous. Jenny was damned lucky it had been him who’d agreed to marry her.

She turned her gaze up to his, and Nick felt a sudden blow to his middle, as though someone had thrown a punch designed to knock the wind out of him. She must have been crying while he was upstairs, he thought. Her big blue eyes were red streaked and there were small black mascara trails on her cheeks. Lord, was he glad he’d missed her crying jag. There was absolutely nothing in the world that made him feel as helpless as seeing a woman cry. Cliché, perhaps. But true.

His gaze moved over her quickly. Her hair was tangled and windblown, the hem of her dress was torn and her hands and knees were splotched with iodine. And still, she was far too pretty for Nick’s peace of mind. Obviously the other “husband candidates” she’d spoken with hadn’t seen her in person. Nick couldn’t imagine any man turning down a marriage proposal from Jenny Blake.

Except, of course, himself.

One failed marriage was more than enough for Nick Tarantelli.

“Don’t you worry,” Mama said as she twisted the lid on the iodine bottle and stashed it inside the medicine cabinet. Patting Jenny’s shoulder, the older woman went on firmly, “My Nicky will take care of this.”

“What?” He pushed away from the door frame and stared at his mother. The glare he gave her had been known to freeze fugitives in their tracks. His mother, however, planted her feet and glared right back at him.

“You heard me,” she said. “It’s your fault that Jenny isn’t married. Now you have to fix it.”

“My fault? She ought to thank me for stopping that wedding!” This whole situation was nuts, he told himself. Things had started out bad enough, but they seemed to be on a downhill slide and picking up speed.

“Thank you?” Mama chided. “For what? Getting her grandmother killed?” One hand flat against her massive bosom, she shook her head. “Is this what being the police is to you, Nicky? Killing old women?”

“What?” Nick had been in the middle of dramatic scenes like this his whole life. And he’d learned early on that the only way to fight fire was with fire. “First off, Ma,” he noted, “I’m not on the force anymore, and you know it.”

She waved one hand at him, dismissing irrelevant facts.

“Second, if I was going to kill off older women—” he straightened, forcing his mother to tilt her head far back on her neck to see him “—I wouldn’t start with a stranger!”

Mama glared at him.

“Excuse me...” Jenny tried to speak up, but the other two people in the bathroom ignored her.

“Thank God, your father-heaven rest him—” Mama muttered, crossing herself quickly, “isn’t here to listen to you!”

“Pop would be saying the same thing.”

“Pardon me...” Jenny tried again, with the same results.

“That my own son would turn his back on a woman who comes to him for help.” Mama shook her head slowly, clearly disgusted.

Nick felt that hill he was sliding down steepen considerably.

“She didn’t come to me for help, Ma,” he said. “I arrested her bridegroom!”

“If you’ll both let me talk...” Jenny’s voice was drowned out by Mama’s quick retort.

“And this you’re proud of?”

“Damn right,” her son snapped.

“Please!” Jenny shouted, and both people turned to stare at her. While she had their attention, she spoke quickly. “Mrs.—” She broke off and corrected quickly. “Mama. This isn’t your son’s problem.”

“Exactly.” Nick threw his hands wide and let them fall to his sides.

Mama sent him one long, withering look before patting Jenny again. “Of course, it is. Nicky will find you a husband.”

“Now wait a minute, Ma.”

“There isn’t time.”

“Four days,” Mama reminded her with a smile. “That’s plenty of time for Nicky. He knows lots of nice boys, don’t you?”

Nice boys. Nick groaned silently. He wondered how his former fellow officers at the police department would feel about being called “nice boys,” and then dismissed the thought. His mother was way off base on this one. “Most of my friends are already married, Ma,” he said quickly in a last-ditch hope to end the discussion. “And the ones that aren’t, don’t want to be.”

“Nonsense!” Mama waved one hand at him again. “All men want to get married. As soon as we tell them so.”

“Ma...”

He felt it. Nick felt control of the situation slipping further and further from his grasp and he was helpless to do anything about it. He looked down into Mama Tarantelli’s big brown eyes and knew that he would lose this battle. As he’d lost every argument he’d ever had with her.

Hell, he couldn’t remember a single time when his late father, his brothers and sister or he had come out on top of Mama in a fight. Even those few times when someone had backed her into a corner, Mama had always triumphed. Maybe it was because she was so tenacious. He’d never known her to give in or give up.

For one brief moment Nick wished that the others were there. If Gina and his brothers, Tony and Dino, were around that minute, they would at least have Mama outnumbered.

But Gina was in New York visiting family, Dino was at the casino where he worked squiring celebrities around town. Nick frowned slightly. And no one knew where Tony was.

“I can do this myself, Mama.” Jenny’s voice interrupted his thoughts.

Despite his own unwillingness to get any more involved, Nick couldn’t stop himself from saying, “Oh, sure you can. You’ve done a helluva job so far.”

Jenny turned a hurt look on him and Nick clamped his mouth shut. It wasn’t her fault that he was going to war with his mother. Well, actually it was, he corrected mentally. But it didn’t matter. The Tarantelli family went to war more often than any Medieval Crusaders ever had. And, Nick thought wryly, the Tarantelli’s were better at it, too.

Slipping off the edge of the bathroom sink, Jenny stood up straight to face him. But in her bare feet, she didn’t make much of an impression. The top of her head barely reached the middle of his chest.

Still, he had to give her credit. She pulled her shoulders back and stared up at him evenly. “I’ll remind you, Mr. Taraptelli, that if not for you, I would already be married.”

An unreasonable flicker of relief trickled through him and Nick refused to admit to it. What the hell difference did it make to him if she got married or not? None, he told himself. Absolutely none at all. Although, he thought as he stared into her eyes and watched flecks of green shimmer in their clear blue depths, looking into her eyes could get to be a habit.

A habit he didn’t want, Nick thought with hardened determination.

When he tore his gaze from hers, he saw Jenny shake herself as if she were coming out of a trance. He knew just how she felt.

“I—” Jenny started, stopped, then spoke again. “Thank you both for everything, but I’d like to go back to my hotel now.”

Mama clucked her tongue and took Jenny’s arm firmly in her grasp. “No such thing. You’re staying here.”

“Oh, I couldn’t,” Jenny said, and futilely tried to pull free.

Nick didn’t say a word. He’d been expecting this. And more than that, he agreed with it. He wasn’t about to take a woman like Jenny back to Sinbad’s, of all places.

“Sure you can,” Mama went on as she headed for the stairs, pulling Jenny along behind her. “You’ll stay in my son Tony’s room.”

“I can’t put your son out of his bed,” Jenny protested, and threw a wild glance at Nick, looking for help.

He ignored her silent plea and went to his mother’s side. The older woman had stopped short at the foot of the stairs and she was staring into nothingness. But Nick knew what memory she was looking at. He knew because he saw it himself, often. He knew because the pain his mother was experiencing at that moment was all his fault.

Instinctively, he went up to the older woman, draped one arm around her shoulders and gave her a quick squeeze before bending to drop a kiss on top of her head. Then he glanced at Jenny. “Tony’s not here. You can stay in his room as long as you like. Isn’t that right, Ma?”

“Yes.” Mama sniffed, straightened her shoulders and reached up to pat Nick’s hand before she nodded. “Yes, that’s right.”

“But it’s not necessary...” Jenny tried again. “I can do this myself, Mama.”

“No need for that My Nicky is happy to help.” His mother turned and fixed him with a look he hadn’t seen since he was ten years old and had smashed the restaurant window with a home run. Amazing, he thought, that it still had such power over him. His mother paused for a long moment before asking much too sweetly, “Aren’t you, Nicky?”

Warm, fed and freshly showered, the pain in her knees faded to no more than an unpleasant reminder of a shattered plan. Jenny curled up in a worn armchair by the window. Staring out at the night, she tried to tell herself that everything would be all right. That things had a way of working out.

But her mind wasn’t listening.

Over and over again, her brain counted down the days. Four, three, two, one. She had to find a husband. A mental image of her grandmother’s smiling face only strengthened her determination. Jenny wouldn’t risk losing the only family she had left.

Letting her head fall against the back of the chair, Jenny’s gaze focused on a single bright star. If only she had taken care of this sooner. If only she had more time.

More time? her mind shouted. In four days, you’ll be twenty-seven. How much more time is required, for heaven’s sake?

Even if she didn’t count the years before she turned twenty, that still left seven long years in which she should have found a husband.

And she could have, if she hadn’t been waiting for the lightning.

Jenny groaned, lifted her head and frowned. That’s where she’d made her mistake. She’d really believed her grandmother’s tales of true love and soul mates. How many times, Jenny wondered, had her grandmother told her about the lightning bolt? About how the women in her family, when first kissed by their true soul mate, would feel an arc of lightning shoot down their spines and into their hearts.

And how many men had Jenny kissed hopefully, waiting for that bolt to strike?

All right, she admitted silently. Not all that many.

But still, if she hadn’t been waiting for her grandmother’s tall tale to come true, who knew? She might already have a family and her grandmother’s life wouldn’t be in danger.

A knock at the door shattered her thoughts and Jenny turned. “Yes?”

“It’s me, Nick.”

Jenny ignored the tiny ripple of awareness that sent goose bumps racing along her flesh. Muttering under her breath about stress and a lack of sleep, she rose, crossed the room and opened the door.