For Better or Cursed

Dear Reader,

When I was seventeen, I fell in love with a rogue. You know the type of guy I mean, all sweet talk but little commitment. Somewhere during my senior year in high school my rogue asked me to marry him. Unable to see the inevitable future, I said yes, and after months of hot-and-heavy, he said, “I need to go out into the world and find myself…without you.” Devastated, I vowed never to date again. Then I fell for another rogue, then another and another, until I thought for sure I was incurable.

Which brings us to Rudy Bellafini—the rogue poster boy. Although he’s totally fiction, he’s totally real to me and with my slightly quirky Italian heritage, it’s no wonder there’s a curse involved.

I’m not attracted to rogues anymore, just like I’m not attracted to expensive clothes and chocolate truffles.

Yeah, right!

Best,

Mary Leo

P.S. Please come visit me on my Web site at www.maryleo.net. We’ll talk some more.

Cate looked sinful, but also elegant in her backless halter-style wedding gown

Her sister Gina had picked out the semi-designer creation and Mrs. Crocetti had discounted the dress for good luck. All was good.

“Let’s take a second and hit the highlights.” Gina’s words made Cate stop before she left the room. “You’re doing this revenge wedding because—”

“Because I don’t want anything bad to happen to any other guy I may be interested in.”

“And?”

“And this is the only way to break the curse. He jilted me ten years ago.”

“And?”

“And because my last fiancé nearly choked to death on a cannoli.”

“Makes perfect sense to me, but are you happy?”

“No.”

“Great. Everything’s as it should be.”

Aunt Flo burst into the room. “What’s the holdup, dolls? We got over a hundred people down there waiting for the bride. So are you going to walk down those stairs or are you going to jilt him now?”

For Better or Cursed

Mary Leo

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

For Better or Cursed is Mary Leo’s follow-up novel to Stick Shift. She’s had careers as a salesgirl in Chicago, a cocktail waitress and keno runner in Las Vegas, a bartender in Silicon Valley and a production assistant in Hollywood. She has recently given up her career as an IC layout engineer to pursue her constant passion: writing romance.

Mary now lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and new puppy.

To: Janet Wellington, for her endless energy;

Maureen Child, because she keeps me sane;

Cheryl Howe and Crystal Green, for their continued

encouragement; Holly Jacobs, who answers all

my lame questions; Rick, because he’s rational

when I’m not; and most of all to Kathryn Lye,

the best editor a girl could have.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Epilogue

Prologue

There’s a belief on Taylor Street in Chicago’s Little Italy that if a man jilts a woman after a proposal of marriage, then her love life is forever cursed…unless, of course, the man returns so the woman can have her revenge.

RUDY BELLAFINI COULDN’T MOVE , at least not without agonizing pain, but as he lay in the snow, his skis pointing straight up in the air, a person stood over him snapping his picture.

“What the…?” Rudy said as he spit snow and debris out of his mouth, angry over the amateur paparazzo with the disposable camera.

“Don’t worry about a thing, Mr. Bellafini.” Click… “The ambulance is on its way.” Click…click…click.

Rudy couldn’t believe this chick. Did she have no shame?

“Come on. I’m a mess here. Could you stop with the pictures?” Rudy pleaded, and held up a hand to block the camera’s focus.

Click… “Sorry, honey, but I thought guys like you loved this kind of stuff. Besides, it’s an even trade. I called the ambulance. You owe me,” she purred.

“I owe you? I’m lying here next to death and I owe you for calling an ambulance?”

“It’s about giving something back.”

“That would mean that I took something from you, which I didn’t because I don’t know you. Do I?”

Click…

“Stop taking—” Rudy mumbled, but the chick wouldn’t give it up.

As Rudy dropped back in the snow, completely defeated, a curious memory drifted into his consciousness. A memory he thought he had successfully tucked away forever.

“Stop taking my picture,” Rudy chided.

“I want to remember this when you’re rich and famous,” Cate said as she snapped several pictures of Rudy’s face. They leaned up against the far wall in the back of his father’s closed restaurant, teasing each other with kisses and laughter as a snowstorm howled right outside their door.

“You make me crazy,” he said right before he kissed her gently on her full, wet lips.

“We came here for food,” she taunted. “You told me that your dad left us a couple sandwiches.”

“You are my food,” he whispered between playful kisses.

She snapped another picture.

“I’m the one who’s hungry. Not you. You ate like a pig today,” she told him.

“I’m hungry for you,” he said, not believing the words that came tripping out of his own mouth. All he knew at that exact moment was that he wanted her, right then, right there, and nothing could stop him. Her hair smelled like the rain, her skin tasted as sweet as sugar and her full breasts were softer than he had ever imagined. He had unbuttoned her sweater, and slipped her camisole off one shoulder to reveal her breast and now he couldn’t keep his hands or his mouth away from her body.

“I thought you were in so much pain you couldn’t move,” she told him.

“I was, until you gave me that back and shoulder massage. I thought I wouldn’t be able to ski again for the rest of the season. Then you came along. Did anybody ever tell you that you have the magic touch?”

“You’re the first,” she said, smiling.

“We should get married,” he said after a deep kiss that sent a thrill through his entire body. He could feel her heat as she pressed up against him, leg twisted around his, arms surrounding his neck, his shirt undone so he could feel her breasts tickling his chest.

She pushed him back. “Are you asking me to marry you?”

He looked into her glistening brown eyes, saw that loving look on her sweet young face and answered a resounding, “Sure. Marry me, Cate Falco. Be mine forever. I’ll give you all the gold and diamonds in the world.”

“I don’t want all the gold and diamonds in the world. A single strand of white gold and diamonds would do just fine. But we’ve only been dating for three months.”

“Since when did dating-time have anything to do with marriage?”

“I don’t know. Isn’t it a rule or something? Aren’t we supposed to get to really know each other first? I mean, we haven’t even spent a whole night together, or had one decent argument. Aren’t those the two main ingredients of happy marriages?”

“So that’s it…sex and arguments? That’s what makes a happy marriage?”

“I think so, and maybe a few thousand other things, but you obviously don’t have time for the list. At least we should know…”

He kissed her again, then pulled back to continue on his quest.

“What’s to know? You’re the girl with the magical touch, and I’m the guy who needs a little magic in his life. Sounds like the perfect match to me.”

“You’re the one who’s crazy. You know that?”

“You could be right, but let’s get married, anyway.”

She stared into his eyes as if she were searching for the right answer, then pulled him in tight and rested her head on his shoulder.

He hugged her even tighter, hoping for the right answer.

“So,” she whispered.

He waited while she tickled his ear with her tongue, sending shivers right through him. He pulled his head away and looked at her, hoping, praying even, for a yes.

“So?”

Cate beamed with a smile that lit up her whole face. “So, yes. Of course I’ll marry you. How could I not?”

He picked her up and twirled her around shouting, “Yes. Yes. Yes,” as she snapped another picture of his smiling face.

“Yes, Cate, yes,” he said out loud.

Two burly men from a rescue team picked Rudy up from the snow. “That’s some dream you’re having, Mr. Bellafini. But you need to relax now. You’re going to be fine.”

“Sure,” Rudy said. “Relax. Like it’s easy with your foot pointing in the wrong direction. Look at that. You should be on this stretcher, dude, trying to relax.”

A woman from the same team, with black satin hair and pure brown eyes, a Latin angel, told him to breathe normally through the tubes poking into his nostrils. Rudy smiled and shut up long enough to finally lose all consciousness.

1

“IT’S NOT YOU . It’s me,” Cate Falco said while sitting across from Joey Delano in the trendy dinner house on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. She watched as he tried to cut his rare steak with a blue cast wrapped around two of his fingers and halfway up his right arm.

“Come on. That’s such a line,” he said trying to get a grip on the knife.

“I know, but it’s true. It really is me.”

He put his flatware down and looked at her. “You’re breaking up with me?”

“Yes,” she answered in a cool, calm voice.

“But why? I thought we had a good thing going.”

She thought this would go easier, but he looked seriously confused. “I’m thinking that since you met me, you’ve broken two fingers, fallen down a flight of stairs, got stuck in an elevator for five hours, sprained your wrist and got hit in the balls with some kid’s baseball. I can’t date you anymore. I’m a hazard to your health.”

Cate sat back in her chair, getting a little weepy-eyed. She really liked this guy. He was funny, cute and got her weird sense of humor, but she just couldn’t let it go on any longer.

“But they were all accidents. You weren’t even there.”

“I know, but believe me, this is for your own good.”

“I don’t get it.”

“You know how everybody in Chicago believes the Cubs are cursed? Well, it can happen to people, too. I’m love-cursed and you’re just experiencing the results.”

“You expect me to believe this?”

Cate looked into his sweet brown eyes and said, “Yes.”

“This is bullshit,” he said.

It was at that exact moment that the waitress tripped while walking by, nearly dropping her tray of drinks in his lap.

“No, this is real. You’re the last in a long line,” Cate said. “I’m giving it up.”

“What? You’re not going to date anymore?”

“That’s absolutely right. I’m embracing celibacy. I hear it’s quite calming.”

He stared at her for a long moment, then stood up, pulled some cash out of his pocket, slipped it under his plate and left.

Cate let out a heavy sigh.

THE NEXT MORNING Cate and her father, Ted, sat in their kitchen eating breakfast and reading the Chicago Sun Times. Ted ate soft-boiled eggs out of the shells, really-bad-for-you bacon, and vitaminless white toast, while Cate crunched on her completely-good-for-you bowl of organic Optimum power breakfast cereal with flaxseed, soy fiber, dried blueberries and 500 mg of OMEGA-3’s.

They at least agreed on the coffee—Starbucks house blend, strong and black.

“Will ya get a load of this?” Ted announced with a flourish, tossing part of the paper across the table.

“What?” Cate asked as she picked up the sports section.

“Look whose mug is on the front page,” he said while tightening the belt on his plaid robe. It was chilly in the large kitchen and her father not only wore a wool robe over flannel pajamas, but he liked to wear a white stocking cap on his balding head…to keep the heat in.

Cate took the paper, and there, spread across three columns was Rudy Bellafini, lying prone in the snow, looking absolutely awful. Aside from the fact that his body was the shape of a pretzel, his hair was way too long—shaggy and over his eyes, with a little curly flip just under his right ear—Cate wondered if the slight mustache and almost beard was due to a lack of shaving or if he had done it on purpose, for that scruffy-Hollywood effect.

She caught herself lingering over the picture a little too long. Cate purposely didn’t react. A reaction would send her father into some lecture on “the guy who jilted you,” and Cate didn’t want to get into it, especially after last night.

“He never did like to get his hair cut,” she said as she tossed the paper back to her father.

“That’s all you got to say?”

“No. I’m sorry he’s hurt.” She took a big bite of her cereal. The crunching muffled her father’s voice, but unfortunately, she could still make out what he was saying.

“He ain’t just hurt. It says there that some girl named Allison might’a pushed him off one of them ski chairs.”

“What does that have to do with me?”

“Because of him, you’re thirty years old with no husband.”

“I’m twenty-nine and I don’t want a husband. I’ve got a good life just the way it is.”

“You ain’t got such a good life. He’s got a good life. Winnin’ all them gold medals, and for what? Slidin’ down some bumpy hill. Who with a sane mind is gonna do that? Nobody, that’s who.”

“Those bumpy hills are called moguls, and it’s an Olympic sport. You know that. You were glued to the TV every day during the games.”

“Yeah, well it don’t look like no sport to me. Skiing down a mountain like Alberto Tomba does is a sport. He’s a champion. But them bumpy hills, that’s no sport. It’s just dumb.”

She pushed herself up from the table. “No. This argument is dumb. I have to get to work. I’m booked all day.”

But once her father started, there was no stopping him. “And what about them restaurants of his? He’s made a million bucks on them bad Italian restaurants. What have you got? Sore hands.”

“I like what I do. I’m a great therapist. I make a good living.”

Cate leaned on the table ready to go at it with her father.

“Well, it ain’t right for a single woman to be rubbing on some guy’s hairy back all day. Only perverts and them weird sex people who like ropes and chains do that kind of stuff.”

“Here we go!” She sat back down in her chair. “We’ve locked up all our ropes and chains. They leave marks.”

“It wasn’t so bad when you was going to school and working out in California. I don’t know those people, but now that you got your own business right here in the neighborhood, I don’t like it. I gotta see these people every day.”

“Then don’t go out.”

“See what I mean? You don’t care about the shame I gotta live under. It ain’t right. You should be married to Rudy Bellafini and have a million bucks.”

Cate grabbed her bowl and cup and put them in the sink. She hadn’t really let herself think about Rudy in years, and now he was back, like lint in her dryer. “I have to go to work,” she said, and kissed her father on the cheek.

“And tell that sister of yours it’s time to get up. She does this every morning. Always late, that one.”

Cate obeyed her father and knocked on Gina’s door, but that was all she would do. She wanted to get out of there quickly and had no time to coax her sleepy sister awake. Not this morning. Not with Rudy Bellafini on the front page of the sports section.

As soon as Cate stepped out of the house, she walked straight to the newsstand on the next corner, bought her own copy of the paper and sat down on a cold, worn-out bench at the bus stop to read all about Rudy Bellafini, the man she never could shake. The man who had single-handedly cursed her entire adult love life. The putz.

The story read like it should have been inside a tabloid rather than a reputable newspaper. The focus of the piece was Allison Devine, Rudy’s latest squeeze. According to insider sources, Allison had a temper that most of Hollywood tried to avoid. They listed her many outbursts: she had thrown a chair across a movie set; trashed several dressing rooms; assaulted an unnamed costar; and backed her BMW right into her last boyfriend’s Ferrari. The article went on to say it was highly unlikely that Rudy had fallen without some assistance from the “Shrew of Hollywood.”

As if anybody cares!

Cate threw the paper into the overflowing trashcan next to her and proceeded to walk to work. Part of her thought he deserved Allison Devine. She was perfect for him. Maybe they’d get married and live miserably ever after.

She could only hope.

But the other part of her wished he’d come back to Chicago, just once, so she could somehow expunge this curse thing and be done with Rudy Bellafini once and for all.

2

FORTUNATELY FOR RUDY nothing was actually broken, but the two-hundred-pound amazon therapist who currently pulled on his very sore legs only made matters worse. He had been in therapy for almost a week. Granted, he was older now, thirty-one, and it took longer for him to heal. His knees were shot, so he didn’t expect much healing to go on there, but she really didn’t know what she was doing.

“Dude, this is crazy. Do we really have to do this now?” Rudy asked in between bouts of shooting pain. He was on the floor lying across a very thin mat.

“It’s good for the spine,” she said, smiling at his agony.

“I’ve got a great spine. A perfect spine. It’s my hip that’s hurting.”

“That’s why I’m pulling on your leg.”

“But it’s my other hip.”

“Oh,” she said, and dropped his leg, then picked up the other one. The heel of his foot hit the mat with such force that it took all that was in him not to howl in pain.

“Look,” he said trying to yank his leg away. “Could we do this some other time, like when you’re at home and somebody else with more experience is on duty? I’m too tired for all this pulling and hurting right now.”

“Nope. We have to do it now. Can’t let that hip lock up. I’ve got a whole routine planned for you. Once I finish with your leg, I move up to your neck.”

“Look,” he glanced at her name tag, “Linda. You seem like a nice enough girl, a little rough around the edges maybe, and it could be, a lot unprepared, but, hey, there’s a whole group of guys who like rough, incompetent girls. Gives them a mission in life. Unfortunately, I’m not one of them. Let’s get this straight. There’s nothing wrong with my neck. It’s my shoulder.”

She stopped pulling and looked at the clipboard she had carried in. “That’s not what it says on my chart.”

“Well, your chart’s wrong.”

She flushed, then looked from left to right. “I’m sorry, Mr. Bellafini, but I’m not really a therapist. I work in the front lobby, but when I heard you were recovering here, I thought I could get the real story on how you fell off that lift. I mean, like, I don’t want to be a receptionist forever. I’m studying to be a journalist. I go to night school. You’re this week’s assignment. So, tell me, Mr. Bellafini, did your girlfriend really push you off that lift?”

“No. It was an accident.” But he wasn’t so sure about that himself. Rudy tried to remain calm, tried to move away from her and ring for a nurse, but the red emergency alarm was in the middle of the wall, well out of his reach. “All I want is some rest. Can’t a guy get some rest?”

“Sure, if you’ll just answer a few of my questions. I’m your biggest fan. I was rooting for you when you won your first gold medal. By the way, when you hang all three medals around your neck, are they heavy?”

“Where’s the nurse? Who let you in here?”

“Mr. Bellafini, please don’t get upset. Just one little question.” The woman straightened up, cleared her throat and said, “Is it true that you were caught messing around with some other Hollywood actress and that’s why your girlfriend, Allison Devine, pushed you off the lift?”

She smiled at him and waited for her answer, as if he would actually give her one. Rudy stared at her, trying to imagine what kind of insanity ran through this woman’s mind. When she opened her mouth to begin her next question, Rudy lost it. “Nurse,” he yelled. “Help! Nurse!”

The journalist-in-training got scared and stood up, turned on her heels and quickly walked out of the rehabilitation room, carrying the chart but leaving Rudy sprawled across the mat, entirely unable to move.

IT HAD BEEN a little over a week since Cate had seen Rudy’s picture in the paper, and so far she’d been unable to think of anything else. She blamed it on her new vow of celibacy. She was positive once she fell into the rhythm of this self-imposed, sex-depravation thing, all men would completely vanish from her thoughts, and she’d become as saintly as her aunt Flo, her mother’s fifty-eight-year-old, silver-haired sister.

“I heard Joey’s left nut blew up to the size of a melon,” Aunt Flo said while she lay on her stomach on a table at Cate’s Wellness Center.

Cate stopped the massage. “I’m not going to treat you if you keep this up.”

Cate had been working on Aunt Flo’s neck and shoulder every other day for the past month, but she still wasn’t getting any better. Cate didn’t know if the kink was real, or if Aunt Flo just wanted the attention. Cate was hoping for a little of both. She didn’t want to believe that all her hard work wasn’t helping.

“What?”

“Can we talk about something other than my love life?”

“Sure, doll. Anything you want.”

Cate continued with the massage. “How about the weather? That’s a neutral subject.”

“What’s to talk about? It’s winter. There’s not much conversation about ice and snow. And speaking of ice, at least you still got Henry O’Toole. He took care of Rocky pretty good. And come to think of it, you probably never would have met him if poor Rocky hadn’t croaked on your wedding day.”

“Rocky passed on, Aunt Flo. He didn’t croak.”

Cate speeded up her treatment. She wanted to get Aunt Flo out of there.

“You’re right, but them undertakers sure do make good money, and he’s Irish. The curse won’t take him. And even if Henry is old enough to be your father, sometimes that’s what a girl needs…another father.”

“Henry’s just a friend.”

“They were all your friends, but you didn’t love any of ’em but Rudy, that’s your problem.”

“My only problem is everybody telling me about Rudy Bellafini. He’s gone and out of my life, and that’s the way it is. Forever.”

“So, we won’t talk about him. Who is he, anyway? Just some boy who hurt my beautiful niece, that’s all. Just the boy who stood her up at the altar, like that devil Pinky did to me thirty years ago. And now you and me both gotta carry the curse.”

Cate refused to admit to anyone in her family that she actually believed in the curse. It just gave them more fuel.