Romano's Revenge

Lucinda’s jaw dropped. “When you…”

“Indeed. When the heating system went on the blink at the Folies, the entire audience could tell you were cold.”

Miss Robinson winked and turned around. The door swung shut after her. Lucinda hesitated. Then she turned and met her own gaze in the mirror.

The Folies Bergére? She tried to imagine Miss Robinson strutting down a runway dressed in feathers and a smile. Dressed in lots less than this costume, that was for sure.

Okay. So, maybe she had seen swimsuits as revealing on the beach. She’d never worn one, of course; she’d never worn anything more showy than the black tank suit she’d worn when she was a student at the Stafford School.

Only a madwoman would go from that stretched-out nylon tank to this bit of spangles and Lycra.

She turned, poked one shoulder towards the mirror.

Besides, even if she were to agree to do this thing—not that she would, but it didn’t hurt to pretend—if she did, the men attending the bachelor party would be sorely disappointed.

Lucinda backed up a little, put on her glasses and took a better look.

Her neck was long, her shoulders too bony, her breasts too small.

She turned a little more, narrowed her eyes and took another look.

Well, small, yes. But rounded, and high. She sucked in her breath. Definitely, rounded and high. Her tummy was flat, her waist narrow. That was good. Her hips weren’t much but her backside seemed okay. From what she’d heard, men liked women to have okay backsides. Long legs, too. And hers were surely that. She’d always had trouble buying panty hose that was long enough without being saggy and baggy on top…

What was she thinking? She’d never go out there. Never.

Do you want that job, Lucinda?

Oh, Lord. Yes. Yes, she did. She’d interviewed for it with a sweet old woman. A Mrs. Romano, who’d seemed undeterred by her inexperience.

“Never mind,” Mrs. Romano had said reassuringly. “My grandson won’t be picky, Luciana.”

“It’s Lucinda,” Lucinda had said politely. “He won’t be?”

“No. You see, he needs you.”

“Needs me? I don’t understand.”

“He is a busy man. Always going here and there. Molto importante, yes? But he lacks something in his life.”

“A cook?” Lucinda had said helpfully.

“Exactly. He doesn’t eat right. He doesn’t touch his vegetables.”

“Vegetables.” That was good. She could prepare green salads with the best of them.

“You will love working for him, Luciana.”

“Lucinda.”

“Of course. Lucinda. He’s very easygoing. Charming, and gentle.” Mrs. Romano had clasped her hands and sighed. “He is caring. And sensitive. My Joseph is the most sensitive man in all of San Francisco.”

Gay, was what she’d meant. Lucinda had understood the code word, and the job had become even more appealing. A wealthy gay man who traveled a lot would be easy to work for. Gay men abounded in San Francisco, and the ones Lucinda had met were invariably low-key, gentle, and kind.

Kind enough to hire her, if the chef flunked her out of the cooking school?

“No way,” Lucinda said, and knew the time for excuses was long gone.

She kept Miss Robinson firmly in mind as she let down her hair and ran her hands through it until it had the tousled look she’d noticed in magazine ads. She had no lipstick; she rarely used makeup. But there was a little cosmetics bag in the costume box. Inside, she found eye shadow. Eyeliner. Lucinda used them all, then bit her lips to pinken them. Finally, she put on the tiara and squinted at herself in the mirror.

Something was missing, but what? Her hair was okay. The glasses were gone. The costume fit as well as it was going to fit. Still, there was more. She’d forgotten something…

She jumped as a fist pounded against the closed door. “Well, Ms. Barry?” Chef Florenze boomed. “Are you going to grace us with your presence?”

Lucinda put her hand to her heart, as if to keep it from bounding out of her chest. Then, before she could change her mind, she unlocked the door and marched out.

“Very sensible of you, Miss Barry,” the chef said with an unctuous smile.

Lucinda marched up to him. “Three hundred bucks, or I don’t move from this spot.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Three hundred.”

Florenze’s narrow mustache twitched. “Two.”

“Two-fifty.”

“Listen here, young woman—” Something in her eyes must have convinced him that she meant it. “Two-fifty,” he said, “and snap to it.”

“That’s the spirit,” she heard Miss Robinson say as she strode to the serving cart that held the cardboard cake and climbed under it.

Her stomach gave a dangerous lurch. So did the cart. The rubber wheels squealed as she, and it, were pushed across the floor. Doors slammed against walls as they were opened. She heard the sounds of music and male laughter, and then the pounding of a chord—C major, she thought dispassionately—on a piano.

“Gentlemen,” a deep voice cried, “to Arnie and his loss of freedom!”

“To Arnie,” other male voices chorused.

“Now, Ms. Barry,” Chef Florenze hissed, and Lucinda took a breath and burst through the top of the cake, arms extended gracefully above her head, just as if she were back in Boston, diving not up into the noise and the light but down, down, down into the glassy depths of a warm, blue pool.

But it wasn’t a pool, it was a stage, and she hadn’t burst free of the cardboard cake. She’d gotten tangled in it. And while she was still blinking and fighting furiously to extricate herself from the horrible chunks of cardboard, two things happened, almost simultaneously.

The first was that she realized that the “something” she’d forgotten were her low-heeled, sensible white shoes. They were still on her feet.

The other was that a man, a blur of muscles and blue eyes and black hair, had come to her rescue.

“Just put your arms around my neck, honey, and hang on.”

“I am not your honey,” Lucinda said. “And I don’t need your help!”

She slapped at his hands as he reached for her but his arms closed around her, anyway. The crowd cheered as he hoisted her into his arms.

“Go for it, Joe,” somebody yelled, and the man grinned, right into her eyes.

“Love those shoes,” he purred, and when the crowd cheered again, he bent his head, covered her mouth with his, and kissed her.

CHAPTER THREE

JOE awoke to the sort of foggy, gray morning that gave San Francisco a bad name, a pounding headache—and the nagging sense that he’d made an ass of himself the night before.

Carefully, he eased his shoulders up against the headboard of his king-size bed. If he moved slowly enough, maybe his head wouldn’t separate from his shoulders the way it was threatening to do.

The fog coiling around the bedroom windows was okay. Actually, it was fine. He was pretty sure that even a single ray of sunlight would have been enough to trigger the incipient implosion of his skull.

The pain would ease up eventually, he knew, but the feeling that he’d done something incredibly stupid might not. That was different. The feeling just wouldn’t go away.

What? What could he have…

“Oh, hell.”

He groaned, closed his eyes and slid down against the pillows.

Damned right, he’d made an ass of himself.

How else to describe a man who’d kissed the blond babe who’d come out of that cake?

He knew he’d never hear the end of it, especially since he’d always made it a point to distance himself from that kind of silliness. All right, so guys did it all the time. He’d been at a dozen bachelor bashes and there was almost always some idiot who leaped up, grabbed a girl and planted a kiss on her lips.

He’d always watched the proceedings with a bored smile.

When Joe Romano took a woman in his arms, the kiss led to something more intimate than providing a couple of laughs at a stag party.

Except for last night.

Joe slid even further down in the bed, rolled on his belly and closed his eyes. Maybe, if he lay still, his head would stop hurting—and the memory of himself, bending the blonde back over his arm like some second-rate actor in a bad movie—maybe that would go away, too.

It wouldn’t. It didn’t. How could it?

He hadn’t planned it. All he’d had on his mind was how to come up with a polite excuse that would get him out the door before the entertainment started. And then a chunky little man in a chef’s outfit had wheeled out a cart topped by the phoniest-looking cake in the world.

“Here comes the babe,” the guy next to Joe had murmured happily.

And the next thing he’d known, a blonde in a teeny-weeny bikini had come sailing up out of the top of the cardboard cake as if this were the Olympics and she was determined to take the gold in diving.

Unfortunately, she hadn’t.

A hot-looking babe? Definitely. Joe rolled onto his back, put his hands beneath his head and smiled at the ceiling. Gook on her face, but the basics had still been visible. The bottomless green eyes. The elegant, straight nose and the razor-sharp cheekbones. A soft, sexy mouth, so artfully made up that it almost looked as if she wasn’t wearing lipstick. No smile on the mouth, but hey, you couldn’t expect a babe like that to have everything.

Not even, as it turned out, a way to make a graceful exit from the cake.

To put it bluntly, the lady was a monumental klutz.

While the top part of her had been coming up out of the cake, the bottom had gotten tangled in the cardboard. Or in something. Whatever, Blondie had emerged maybe halfway and then she’d gotten this panicked look, started to flail her arms around…

Which was when he’d gone into his Sir Galahad act, Joe thought, wincing as he rubbed his hands over his stubbled face.

The leap onto the stage. The quick move, grabbing her and hoisting her free of the box.

And then, that kiss.

That kiss. Not just a kiss. A long, deep, hot kiss. And for no good reason, except that she was there and so was he.

Well, yeah. There’d been a reason. It had to do with the stunned look in her eyes, and the soft feel of her in his arms. The smell of her, too. Gardenias, maybe. Or roses. The old-fashioned kind.

“Hello, honey,” he remembered saying, and then he’d given her the kind of long, appreciative look her face, her figure, her sexy outfit demanded…

Until he got to her feet, and those shoes. Those homely, sensible, I’m-not-what-you-think-I-am shoes. He’d wanted to laugh. To tell her that a woman with her looks could wear clogs, for all he cared, and she’d still look like—

Like what? a clear, calm voice in his head had said.

Like a woman who needed to be kissed, he’d thought in response.

That was when he’d kissed her.

If only he could stop the action right there. Just stop it, cut it, edit it out like a bad piece of videotape…

Joe sat up. There was no getting away from the memory, the part he’d never live down.

The part when Blondie, without a moment’s hesitation, balled up her fist and caught him with a right, just behind his ear.

“Double damn,” Joe muttered, and swung his feet to the floor.

The other guys had loved it. The leap. The kiss. Her swing. His yelp of surprise. Her squirming out of his arms and rushing off-stage with the little guy in the white suit running after her…

Oh, yeah. He’d made an ass of himself, all right.

“Bozo and the Bachelor Party,” Joe said, and huffed out a breath.

“Way to go, Romano,” somebody had yelled.

“Drunk as a skunk, huh, Joe?” some other wag had shouted.

He’d let them think so. It made things easier on the old ego if people thought he’d had one too many, but the truth was, he hadn’t. A glass or two of wine at Nonna’s and a bottle of beer at the party weren’t enough to turn a man’s brains to mush.

By the time they’d served what they’d humorously called a midnight supper at the bachelor bash, he was hungry. But, after one cautious, awful bite, he’d put down his fork. Whoever had hired the caterer deserved to be ridden out of town on a rail.

Joe sighed.

After the night he’d had, was it any wonder his head hurt? First that unwanted gift from Nonna. Then a shot to the head from Blondie, although it really hadn’t hurt anything but his ego. You’d think she’d been wearing a nun’s habit instead of a handful of stretchy stuff sprinkled with glitter…

The phone rang. He grabbed it and growled hello before its vicious trill could puncture his eardrums.

“Joe, my man. How’re you doing?”

Moving nothing but his eyes wasn’t easy, but Joe managed. According to his alarm clock, it was just after seven.

“You’d better have a good reason for calling me at this hour,” Joe said sourly. He winced at his brother’s chuckle. “And hold down the noise, okay?”

“I guess that answers my question,” Matt said. “Big night, huh?”

“Long night. “ Joe winced and snatched the phone from his ear. “What’s that noise? Sounds like a semi, blasting an air horn.”

“It is,” Matt said cheerfully. “Susannah and I are on our way to the airport. We’re flying to New York for a long weekend.”

“Yeah. Great.”

“You could manage to sound a little more enthusiastic.”

“That’s about all the enthusiasm I can work up in the middle of the night.”

“It’s not the middle of the night.”

“It is, for civilized people.”

Matt laughed. “See? I told Susie it wouldn’t be a good idea to drop by.”

“Damned right. I’ve killed people for less.”

“Yeah, I told her that, too. So we decided we’d phone to wish you a happy birthday in advance.”

“A happy…” Joe raked his hand through his hair. “What is this, a family project? First Nonna, now you.”

“Nonna told me about the gift she gave you.”

Joe heaved a sigh. “She did, huh?”

“She means well,” Matthew said, and chuckled.

“It isn’t funny.”

“At least she seems to have backed away from the Get Joseph Married plan.”

“The good news and the bad news,” Joe said, and sighed again.

“Well, happy birthday, baby brother.”

“Thanks. And remind that gorgeous wife of yours that I’m available any time she’s ready to admit she made a mistake.”

“Keep dreaming.”

Joe laughed. “Have a good time in New York,” he said, and hung up the phone.

Okay. He felt a little better now. Still, he moved gingerly as he headed for the bathroom. A pair of aspirin would improve things.

Cautiously, he fingered the skin behind his ear where Blondie had hit him. A grin crept across his mouth.

Who’d have thought such a delicate-looking woman could have clobbered him like that?

Delicate, was right. Almost fragile. There hadn’t been much of her, when he’d held her in his arms. Well, that wasn’t true. She was small, and slender, but the package was nicely put together.

High, round breasts. A waist his hands could almost span. Good hips. A sweet, firm little butt. And long, long legs. He let his eyelashes droop to his cheeks as he thought about those legs, how it would feel to have them wrapped around him in a moment of blind, blazing passion….

“Oh, for God’s sake, Romano,” he muttered.

He stepped into the shower, turned the water on and gasped as the icy spray beat down on his head and shoulders. After a couple of minutes, he adjusted the temperature to something more reasonable.

That was better. Much, much better. So he’d acted like a jerk. Who cared? If there was one thing he’d learned early in life, it was not to look back and regret what you’d already done. A mistake was a mistake. You chalked it up to experience and moved on.

Actually, when he thought about it, he couldn’t blame the other guys for laughing. Joe’s mouth twitched as he worked shampoo into his hair. He’d have laughed, too, if he’d been the watcher instead of the watched. The kiss hadn’t meant a thing, not to him, not to Blondie, despite her protest. Not when you considered her choice of professions.

By the time Joe stepped out of the shower and grabbed for a towel, he was feeling a whole lot more cheerful. Cheerful enough to whistle softly through his teeth…

Right up until the moment the doorbell rang.

His good mood faded. Somebody at the door, now? On a weekend morning? Joe’s eyes narrowed. Nobody he knew was foolish enough to risk annihilation by turning up on his doorstep at such an ungodly hour.

Well, one person would. Joe grinned, knotted the towel around his hips and made his way downstairs. The bell rang again, just as he was opening the door.

“Matthew,” he said in a prissy, high-pitched voice, “I swear, if you can’t bear the idea of going away for a couple of days without first giving me a big, fat, juicy birthday kiss…”

But it wasn’t his brother on the porch, it was a woman. A small, slender woman clutching two huge shopping bags and with a suitcase at her feet. Her pale hair was skinned back so tightly it was a wonder her eyes weren’t on either side of her head. And those eyes—their color slightly blurred behind smoked, wire-rimmed glasses—those eyes were staring at him as if he were her worst dream come true.

As if he were standing there nearly naked, and waiting for another man’s juicy kiss.

Joe could feel heat shooting up into his face.

“Look, miss, this isn’t what—I mean, it isn’t—I mean, I’m not…” He hissed out a breath. What was he doing, explaining himself to a stranger? Any broad who went door to door at seven something on a Saturday morning had to take what she got, no excuses asked or given.

Funny, though. There was something about her. Something that made him think he’d met her before…

“Mr. Romano?”

Joe nodded. “Yes?”

“Mr. Joseph Romano?”

“That’s my name, honey. What do you want?”

Lucinda swallowed hard. Oh, this was fine. Just fine. She’d spent the entire night—well, most of it—pacing the floor of the bedroom she’d once called home, alternately wishing she’d done more than slug last night’s idiot and worrying about this morning’s interview, until, finally, she’d told herself to forget last night. It was over.

Today—this meeting—was what counted.

Then why was she standing on her new employer’s porch with her mouth hanging open and her brain on hold?

Say something, she told herself, something more than his name…But honestly, did he think this was a proper way to come to the door? Naked. Well, almost naked. And—and talking about juicy kisses from a man named Matthew—

“Lady?” Her prospective employer’s words dripped with impatience. “If you want something, you’d better spit it out.”

Lucinda’s eyes narrowed. Men. They were all alike, whether they were pretending to be superstuds like that jerk last night, or like this jerk this morning. One had thought nothing of grabbing her and kissing her, while this one figured it was perfectly fine to answer a door wearing nothing but a towel.

What did she want? For him to put on some clothes, for starters. He was so big. So tall. So broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped, and long-legged. That handsome, strong face. The ruffled black hair and sexy blue eyes…

And he liked men, who gave him big, fat birthday kisses.

A good thing, too. No way would she ever share a house with a man who looked like this. No way would she ever share a house with a man—a real man—at all. They were all sneaky, self-serving SOBs. Just look at the way her ex-fiancé had treated her. And that Neanderthal last night…

What had he looked like? Without her glasses, the man had been a blur. A big blur, but a blur, nevertheless. And it had all happened so quickly. Jumping from the cake. Her feet tangling. The man’s arms going around her. Hard arms, holding her against a hard body. His husky, teasing voice. That mouth, coming down on hers. Claiming hers. Heating hers…

Joe scowled. He folded his arms over his chest. “Lady, if you have something to say, say it. I haven’t got all day.”

Lucinda took a fortifying breath and fixed her gaze to his.

“I’m sorry. I, ah, I just wasn’t expecting…”

“Before you get yourself in gear, I already gave at the office.”

“You what?”

“I said, I’ve already donated to whatever you’re collecting for. Girl Scouts. Boy Scouts. Penguins in Peril. You name it, I gave to it. And if you want a bit of advice, lady—”

“Lucinda. Lucinda Barry. But—”

“…advice you’d do well to heed in the future,” he said, his voice rising over hers, “try remembering that the take would be better if you waited until a decent hour to start knocking on doors.”

“The take?” Lucinda frowned. “I’m not asking for donations, Mr. Romano.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s what they all say. You want to sell me magazines, right?”

“No, sir. As I said, I’m Lucinda Barry, and—”

This time the name registered. Joe blinked. “Bari?” he said, giving it the same rolling “r” as his grandmother.

Lucinda shook her head. “Barry. B-A-R-R-Y.”

Joe’s eyebrows rose. “Did you say your first name was Lucinda?”

“Yes.” Her eyebrows rose, too. “Is that a problem?”

“No. Of course not. It’s just that my grandmother told me it was Luciana. I’m surprised she got it wrong.”

Lucinda forced a smile to her lips. “It’s an easy error to make, I suppose, for an elderly woman who doesn’t speak much English.”

“My grandmother? But she speaks…” What did it matter? Luciana or Lucinda, the woman was here. Joe cleared his throat. “So. You’re the—the cook,” he said, staring at her and congratulating himself for not saying what he’d been thinking, which was, “You’re the lesbian.”

“I—” Yes, Lucinda reminded herself, absolutely, she was the cook. Didn’t the certificate in her pocket prove it? The fact that Chef Florenze hadn’t wanted to give it to her was immaterial.

“You have ruined me,” he’d screamed after they were back in the kitchen and he’d said she wasn’t going to get her certificate, after all. But her fellow students had rallied to her defense, crowding around with grim faces, and finally Florenze had yanked all the certificates from his pocket and thrown them on the floor. “Take them,” he’d snarled.

Of course, he hadn’t give her the two hundred and fifty dollars. But she had that piece of paper, the one that counted, in her pocket.

“Yes,” Lucinda said proudly, and straightened her shoulders, “That’s who I am, Mr. Romano. I am your birthday gift.”

Joe winced. He looked around to see if any neighbors were out on their own porches and could possibly have overheard what she’d said. This proper-looking martinet with her annoying, unmistakably Bostonian accent, was hardly what a man wanted as a “gift.”

For once, his grandmother hadn’t stretched the truth. Lucinda Barry, of the pulled-back hair, the wire-framed glasses and the shapeless skirt and blouse, was truly a dog. A veritable bow-wow.

“Great,” he muttered, grasping her arm and hustling her inside the house.

Lucinda held her breath, as if that would keep her body from brushing against his. It was difficult to imagine that body—that very hard-looking, masculine body—as belonging to a man who would, uh, who would accept a juicy kiss from another man.

The shopping bags shifted. She made a wild attempt at recovery but it was too late. The one in her right arm tilted, spilling some of its contents to the floor. She bent down. He did, too.

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I’m not usually such a—”

“Klutz?”

Something in the way he said the word made her look up. They were almost nose to nose, and the way he was staring at her made her uneasy.

“Yes. It’s just that—” She frowned. A little prickle of awareness danced along the skin at the nape of her neck. “Have we—have we met before, Mr. Romano?”

His eyes narrowed. “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

“I don’t—I don’t think so.”

“No.” He cleared his throat. “No, I’m sure we haven’t.”