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In the kitchen, Annie could hear the melter’s clattering smooth to a steady hum. Relief swept through her. Well, at least she wouldn’t have that to worry about, not

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for the time being. Emmett, bless him, had once again pulled a rabbit out of his hat.

taolo’s, on Mulberry Street, was a Little Italy institution, its old tongue-and-groove wainscoting scarred from years of chairs scraping against it, every inch of wall space covered with autographed eight-by-ten glossies of celebrities who’d dined there. Frank Sinatra. Dean Martin. Fiorello La Guardia. Tony Bennett. An etched-glass panel separated the long oak bar from the dining area. At a table against the rear wall, Annie spotted a swarthy barrelchested man in a fully-buttoned double-breasted suit, a napkin tucked in his collar, wolfing down a big bowl of spaghetti while a couple of younger men, clearly his thuggish bodyguards, occupied a smaller table near the entrance, their eyes roaming the packed dining area.

“Are they for real?” she whispered jokingly to Emmett. She couldn’t help thinking these guys were just actors the management had hired, sort of like a floor show, to make this place look more authentic.

Moments later, seated at the table only a few feet away, Emmett leaned across and whispered, “That’s Cesare Tagliosi. He’s right up there in the Bonnano family. I met him through this deal my boss and I are putting together on a couple of warehouses in Red Hook. Tagliosi and Ed Bight, the guy who’s selling the warehouses, are supposedly business partners. But my guess is it’s the kind of business where Tagliosi does the talking, and Ed listens … if you get my drift.”

Annie glanced over her shoulder at the man behind them devouring his spaghetti.

“You mean it really happens that way, like in the movies?” she whispered to Emmett. “God, I’d die.” She caught herself, and frowned. “No, I wouldn’t. I’d tell him where he could shove it.”

Emmett stared at her for a moment, then shook his head, smiling. “Sure, and the next day they’d be fishing you out of the East River. Face it, Annie, there are some things you just can’t fight.”

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“I haven’t come across one yet.” She thought of Joe. If only this distance between them were just an obstacle, a fence she could somehow climb over.

“Yes, you have.” He paused, watching as their waiter poured into his glass a small amount of the wine he’d ordered. Sipping it, he nodded to him. Then Emmett looked at Annie and said, “Me. You can’t fight me.”

The easy smile had dropped from his face, and Annie could see now how much she meant to him. How could she have missed it before? Wasn’t this exactly how she felt about Joe?

He gazed at her, his blue eyes a little somber, his pale lashes tipped with silver from the street light that seeped above the cafe-curtained windows.

“Look, Em … I’m sorry if …” How was she going to say this? How could she make it come out right? She liked him so much. If it weren’t for Joe, she might even have loved him.

His hand closed over hers, firmly, shutting off her words.

“No,” he said. “No more excuses. Look, I’m not stupid … and I’m not so crazy about you I can’t see straight.” A corner of his mouth curled up slightly. “Not yet, anyway. I’ll say it just this once, Cobb … and if you don’t want to hear it, I won’t say it again.” He paused, and picked up his wineglass, not by the stem, but by the bowl, gripping it so tightly Annie had a sudden, disturbing vision of it shattering, blood and crimson wine spraying everywhere. “Damn it, yes, I’m in love with you. I know you’re not in love with me. I know that. But if you think there’s a chance you might be someday, even a slim chance, then for God’s sake, take it. I’m not asking for any promises … just a gamble. Your chips on the table across from mine.”

Annie felt so uncomfortable she wanted to disappear, vanish. She was imagining that everyone in the restaurant had stopped talking, and they were all listening to her, waiting for her reply. Even the Mafia boss.

“Emmett, what are you asking?” Annie forced herself

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to meet his steady gaze. “What exactly do you want me to say?”

“Say you’ll go away for the weekend with me. Just that. I’m not asking for the moon, Annie Cobb.”

“Just the sun and the stars,” she replied lightly, suddenly too exhausted to argue.

He smiled faintly. “Yep. That’s about the size of it.”

Annie stared at his sturdy hands, at his knuckles big as knotholes in fence posts. She remembered the freckles on his back, and belly, and on his—

A memory pushed its way into her head-Emmett, on the night train to Marseilles, lowering the shades of their old-fashioned compartment and then slipping his hand under her skirt and tugging her panties down over her knees. Then he was unbuckling his belt, undoing his zipper, and pulling her onto his lap, and …

Heat. Quick, pumping, desperate heat that was making her glow, not just down there, but her whole body.

They’ll see us, she’d whispered, somebody will see us. Somebody will come in… .

But she wasn’t stopping, and neither was he.

She sat facing him, her knees straddling him on either side of his straining hips. She could feel the seams of his jeans pressing into the soft flesh along the insides of her thighs, and with her face buried in the crook of his sturdy shoulder, her senses were flooded with him, the quiet, economical power with which he moved, and his smell, steaming up at her, a pungent animal smell, bringing images of Emmett on horseback, dust in the creases of his jeans and his shirt plastered to him with sweat.

He was coming, but she couldn’t, too scared of their being caught, or maybe the angle was wrong. Then, Emmett was pushing her down so that she was lying on her back on the hard vinyl seat, knees hiked up, and she was closing her eyes, half hypnotized by the rackety sway of the train beneath her, the rhythmic clinking of his belt buckle as it struck the metal edge of the seat. She felt slippery between her legs, and a kind of delicious throbbing ache, then his mouth on her, his tongue inside her, and … God … oh God…

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Stop, she told herself now, feeling herself grow warm. She had to stop this. Back then with Emmett it had been just … well, not just sex; she’d been lonely, too. And maybe a little drunk with Paris.

Then she thought: So why is it so terrible to want him even though you don’t love him? It’s been so long … and what am I saving myself for, anyway? Not Joe, that’s for sure.

At the thought of Joe, her heart seemed to bump. You’re a fool, Annie Cobb, a small, sharp voice spoke inside her head. If you don’t take Emmett, you might end up with nothing.

The refrain from a Stephen Stills song popped into her head: If you can’t be with the one you love … love the one you’re with.

Then she remembered: Felicia Birnbaum’s marzipan baskets. She’d promised to have them by Monday. And that’d mean working straight through the weekend.

Annie looked down at the faint red stain their wine bottle had left on the white tablecloth. She could feel Emmett’s gaze on her.

“I’m sorry, Em. I can’t. Not this weekend.”

“Don’t shit me, Cobb,” he said mildly. “If you don’t want to, now or ever, just say so.”

“Em … I’m afraid,” she told him, leaning forward on her elbows. “And a little confused. I don’t know what to tell you.”

“How about the truth?” he said, sipping his wine. His blue eyes peered at her over the rim of his glass, bright and sharp as sunlight on barbed wire.

“Okay,” she told him. “The truth is, I have a big order to fill by Monday so I really can’t get away. But I”-even before the words were out, she wondered, Am I making a mistake?-“I wouldn’t mind having you ask me another time.”

I could still say no, she told herself. If he asks me again, I could tell him it would never work. But something kept her from telling him no. She was seeing herself ten years from now, how the business could swallow her up if she let it. And then one day she’d be like Dolly, lonely

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and middle-aged, pining for a man who could never be hers.

“Maybe I’ll do that,” he replied evenly and without a trace of rancor.

Their pasta arrived, steaming noodles piled with tomato, mushrooms, peppers, olives, all in a fragrant red sauce. Annie realized that she was starving.

After he’d eaten half of what was on his plate, Emmett leaned forward and said, “You know what ‘puttanesca’ means, don’t you? ‘Like a whore.’ That means everything goes into it but the kitchen sink. Hell, maybe that too.” Emmett was once again his old self, cocky, impudent, making her smile. “Hey, Cesare,” he called over to the big man in the rubout suit, his tone polite, deferential even. Only Annie could see the twinkle in his eye, and the tiny smirk lurking behind his smile. “How was your puttanesca? Good, eh?”

The man frowned at him; then recognition dawned, and he gave Emmett the barest of nods, wiping his greasy chin. If he thought Emmett was being flippant with him, he gave no indication of it.

Annie ducked her head, hiding her face in her napkin to muffle her laughter. She felt a little shocked, too, by Emmett’s boldness. But then, why should it surprise her? Since she’d known him, when had Emmett Cameron ever been afraid of anything or anybody?

When they’d finished their dinner, both of them groaning about the amount of pasta they’d eaten, Emmett suggested they walk a little way before hailing a cab. Strolling west on Grand Street with Annie, Emmett felt a sudden terror grip him, a sensation not unlike being grappled about the middle by a two-hundred-pound running back.

Jesus Christ in a handcart… how did I manage to get myself poleaxed by this girl? Annie was tough on the outside, but there was something inside her, a softness, a deep-down neediness, that touched him and made him want to reach out to her.

Once, Emmett remembered, on the shrimp boat he’d

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worked on, an egret had somehow gotten caught in one of the nets. One of its legs was clearly broken, but it valiantly struggled on, wildly flapping its wings and croaking frantically. By the time he was able to free the bedraggled creature, he wondered if the kindest thing would be just to put it out of its misery. Instead, he’d bundled it up and taken it home with him, and cleaned out an old dog crate left rusting in the backyard of the house he was renting. Even so, whenever he tended the little bugger, its leg splinted and bound up in adhesive tape, one wing hanging limp as a torn sail, it never missed a try at taking a chunk out of his finger. He could still remember its eyes, like flat black marbles, and its hoarse croaking cry. Never did take to him … and weeks later when he finally let it go, its leg and wing healed, it took off without a backward glance. But somehow … that damned bird had touched him. He’d admired it, not just for hanging in there, but also for the way it had seemed to be sizing him up each time the door to its cage squealed open on its rusty hinges. Nobody told you to care about me, it seemed to say, so don’t look for any reward.

Maybe that was the lesson he’d learned from that damned bird, and what Annie was teaching him now that it doesn’t always make a whole lot of sense who you care about, or why. And caring doesn’t always mean you’ll get it back in spades.

He looked at her now, striding alongside him, her hands stuffed in the pockets of her thick tweed coat, shoulders scrunched and head slanted low as if she were squaring off to do battle. But against whom? Or what?

The wind had lifted her short hair, forming a little crest above her forehead. Damn, she was pretty. Not like those models on the cover of Cosmopolitan, with their tits pushed out at you like a salesman’s calling card. No, her prettiness was the kind you couldn’t always put your finger on-like how he loved the ocean at five o’clock in the morning with a light fog squatting atop its waves, or the sound a cornfield makes in August with the wind rushing through its drying stalks. He loved the way sunlight brought out the ocher in her skin, and the way at certain

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angles her dark blue eyes looked black, and how the minkcolored hairs on her forearms stood up when she was aroused. He loved how she sucked her cheeks in when she was thinking real hard, and how she always blushed when he caught her biting her nails, as if he’d walked in on her sitting on the John.

He loved the way she looked now, each street lamp they passed under bestowing a brief, glittering halo on her dark crown, and the way the cold had formed slashes of red on her high cheekbones. He wanted more than anything to kiss her, and then make love to her … and that’s what scared him. Because, dammit, there was nothing worse than making love to a woman who’s got one man between her legs and another between her ears.

Still, Emmett knew that if he didn’t kiss her, he was bound to spend the rest of the night regretting it. There was an image in his mind that wouldn’t let go—Annie, sprawled naked on the Victorian couch of his Parisian sublet, imitating Manet’s “Olympia,” which they’d seen that day in the Louvre, her head thrown back so that she seemed to be half asleep, eyeing him through lowered lids, a thin black ribbon tied about her neck and one golden arm curled about an armrest, her thighs insouciantly, invitingly parted. He remembered how he’d stood in the middle of the living room, knocked for a loop, feeling a sudden hot rush of blood to his groin. And how Annie had laughed nervously, jumping up and throwing on a robe as if she suddenly couldn’t bear to have him see her that way, even in jest.

“Listen, Cobb, I’ve got an idea … let’s go back to my place,” he spoke casually now as they strolled up Broadway, his gut clenching in anticipation of her reply.

“Em.” She stopped near a sidewalk grate sending billows of steam up into the frozen night air, and gave him a warning look. “You know perfectly well what would happen if we did that.”

“Matter of fact, I was counting on it.” He grinned his cowboy grin that concealed so much.

“I’m not ready.”