Kiss the Bride (24 page)

“Thanks,” she said again.

They looked at each other.

“We should talk about what happened the other day,” he said. “I’m sorry about my behavior. I was out of line.”

“So was I.”

“I can promise nothing like that will happen again.”

“It’s okay. I talked to your grandmother. She and Trudie are going to come over every day and act as our chaperones.”

“That’s pretty pathetic. We’re adults, and we can’t be trusted in the same room alone together.”

“Things just got out of hand.”

“I apologize for kissing you,” he said. “But I don’t regret it. It was bound to happen.”

“I’m sorry if I hurt you. I’m sorry I said you were just something to get out of my system. The way I said it made
it sound like you didn’t matter, but you do matter and that’s precisely the problem. You’re a good person, Nick, and you deserve a woman who’s free to love you, wholly, completely. In another time, another place…” She let her words trail off.

“Yeah.” He nodded, but did not look at her. Restlessly, he ran his hands down the sides of his jeans. “It would be a lot easier if this was just an itch that needed scratching.”

That was the hell of it. Underneath the guilt, her heart was breaking from the desolation of knowing she would never again feel the pressure of his lips against hers. If he had just been something to flush from her system, she wouldn’t have felt such shame. But the kiss they’d shared held too much meaning to dismiss as a simple hormone rush.

“So we understand each other?” She looked deeply into his eyes. “Nothing more can ever come of this.”

“Never,” he croaked.

S
ince she couldn’t shake things up with Nick, Delaney shook things up by decorating Lucia’s house in a Tuscan style. Lucia heartily approved and her input was invaluable. She told Delaney stories, reminiscing about her childhood in Tuscany, describing the countryside, the food, the people. Through her narrative, Delaney fell in love with a country she’d never seen, but soon felt as if she knew by heart. It sounded like a magical place, and she hoped someday to visit.

Her creativity took on a whole new facet as she explored aspects of color and lighting, texture and dimension, that she’d never before explored.

Most of the walls they painted using Venetian plaster technique. It was time-consuming, but the results were well worth it. In the kitchen, they installed new appliances, replaced the Formica countertops with Italian tile, and refurbished the cabinets. Delaney selected Roman shades as window treatments for the rooms. They added crown molding for visual flair, installed scroll casing around the doors, and exchanged the small baseboards for wider ones. They put in rounded archways and atmospheric lighting.

Lucia and Trudie helped out in what ways they could—refilling paint trays when they ran low, handing Nick tools as he worked to repair leaky pipes, making lunch, tending the flower garden.

Other members of the family put in appearances when possible, mainly on weekends, pitching in wherever they were needed. Delaney loved being around when the whole group got together. Even when they were arguing, the Vinettis had fun together. Teasing and disagreeing, laughing and squabbling and loving one another in ways Delaney envied.

Throughout the whole restoration project, Nick and Delaney kept a respectful distance from each other. Making sure they never accidentally touched or brushed up against each other, which was sometimes difficult in the confines of the small rooms. But even though it was possible to maintain their physical distance, it was almost impossible to keep from bonding emotionally.

Nick was a passionate man, yes, but he managed to retain his cool when things went wrong. Delaney admired that about him. He had a tolerance for the tedious and a willingness to start over from scratch if a project wasn’t working out. His patience surprised her. She hadn’t expected it.

Besides tales of Tuscany, Lucia told Delaney stories of Nick and his siblings when they were growing up in this house. How Nick had gone through an
Untouchables
phase when he was six—dressing up like Eliot Ness complete with suit, tie, hat, and plastic tommy gun. Even then, he was a cop in the making. She told of how he climbed up the chimney one Christmas to see if he could find Santa. And how he slid down the banister, crashed into his sister, and knocked out her front baby tooth.

On the long Fourth of July weekend, the Vinetti clan returned for one final big push on the project. It would be the family’s last holiday in the house on Galveston Island, and no one wanted to miss it.

For four days they worked and joked and ate and drank. Teased and cried and laughed and sighed. At times it was something of a madhouse with all the activity. But miraculously, on the final day almost all of the renovations had been completed. Delaney and Nick would be left with only touch-ups and strategic decorating before the house was ready to display. Delaney’s job was almost done, and oddly enough, she found herself feeling as nostalgic for the house as the rest of the family.

“I’ll see you after the Fourth,” Delaney told Lucia as she got ready to leave for the day. The family was standing in the kitchen, admiring how well it had all turned out. All except for Nick. He’d disappeared somewhere, and Delaney had to force herself not to look around for him.

“You’re not coming to our barbecue tomorrow?” Lucia asked, disappointment in her voice.

“My mother…” Delaney waved a hand. “She has this event she sponsors for the Houston Symphony every year. I’m expected to attend.”

“Can you get out of it?” Gina asked. “The party won’t be the same without you.”

Delaney’s heart squeezed, and for some weird reason she felt like crying. “I always go.”

Trudie clicked her tongue. “Tsk. Such a shame. You haven’t lived until you’ve had Fourth of July with the Vinettis.”

“We have fireworks,” Zack said.

“And homemade ice cream,” Jack added.

“And watermelon,” lanky, teenage Tony threw in. “It’s a blast.”

She wanted so badly to say yes, but from the time she was little more than a toddler, Delaney had been attending the annual Fourth of July Symphony Under the Stars bash her father funded and her mother orchestrated. And all that time, she’d wished for the simple pleasure of backyard barbecues and fireworks.

There’s no law compelling you to go to that symphony event. Tell Lucia you’ll come and deal with Mom later.
It was Skylar’s voice whispering in the back of her head, urging her to misbehave.

“We’ll miss you,” Gina said.

Delaney smiled gently. “There’s over two dozen people spending the night in this house; I seriously doubt I’ll be missed.”

“You underestimate yourself,” said a deep voice from the doorway. “The party won’t be the same without you.”

Her pulse spiked. She looked over to see Nick standing there with an enigmatic look in his eyes.

“You want me to come?” Delaney murmured, unable to take her gaze off him.

“I’m just saying you’ll be missed.” His tone was grave, and he broke their eye contact.

Delaney’s breath hitched in her lungs.

“Don’t pressure her,” Lucia scolded. “If she’s got a previous engagement, she’s got a previous engagement.”

“I’d love to come to your barbecue, Lucia,” Delaney surprised herself by saying. “I’ve been attending that boring symphony thing for as long as I can remember. I can skip one year.”

“Really?” Lucia’s face brightened so significantly,
Delaney knew she’d made the right choice. If Honey got upset with her for skipping the event, she could just lump it.

“Really.”

Her announcement to Honey that she wasn’t going to the symphony turned out to be amazingly anticlimactic. Her mother seemed very distracted about something, and while she expressed displeasure over Delaney’s absence from the program, she didn’t badger her the way she’d expected. So it was with a light heart Delaney arrived at the Galveston Island house at midmorning on the Fourth. But when she got out of the car and headed up the sidewalk, arms laden with grocery sacks filled with offerings for the barbecue, her legs started to quiver.

She spied Gina and her husband, Chuck—partially hidden by an overgrowth of bougainvillea along the fence—kissing like teenagers. Chuck’s hand tenderly cupped Gina’s bottom, and her arms were entwined around his neck.

The sense of jealousy-tinged sadness that swept over Delaney was so intense it almost brought her to her knees. Would Evan be pulling her in the bushes for a passionate kiss after they’d been married for ten years?

He doesn’t do that now, why would he do it in a decade?
muttered Skylar’s annoying voice again.

Mentally, Delaney shook herself and tore her gaze from the amorous couple. What was the matter with her?

“Need a hand with that?”

And then there he was, coming up the sidewalk behind her, the source of all her internal distress.

Nick Vinetti.

Looking as if he was the answer to all her most
subversive fantasies, in his tight white T-shirt and black shorts.

He’d replaced his knee brace with an Ace wrap and his limp was barely discernible. He looked very strong and incredibly handsome, and Delaney was feeling as if she possessed the moral resolve of a jellyfish.

Suddenly she wished like hell she hadn’t come.

“Here.” Nick reached out and plucked the two heaviest plastic bags from her hands. His fingertips brushed against her skin and heat rushed to her cheeks.

She was achingly aware of every nuance between them. His manly nutmegy scent collided with the delicate lavender of her own perfume, producing an intoxicating clash of woodsy and floral. The sharp differences in their bodies—his sinewy muscles versus her supple softness. The emotional vastness of the very short distance between them—the tips of her sandals almost touching the toes of his sneakers.

“Where’s your brace?” Delaney asked, fixing her gaze on his knee so she wouldn’t have to meet his eyes and find out if he shared the same awareness of her that she did of him. She didn’t know which thought scared her more. That he felt it too, or the possibility that he didn’t.

“I don’t need it any longer.”

Helplessly, her gaze was drawn up past his hard-muscled thigh, to his narrow hips, to the flat of his belly barely hidden by his thin cotton T-shirt.

She raised her lashes and slanted a coy glance at his face and was caught in the trance of his bemused smile.

He lowered his head.

He’s going to kiss me!

The thought set off a fire alarm in her head.
No!

Please let him kiss me.

She lifted her chin, held her breath, eyes locked with Nick’s, and waited. “Don’t you dare kiss me, you scoundrel,” she said, sounding exactly like a woman who desperately needed to be kissed.

From behind her, she heard Gina and Chuck giggle, and thankfully that broke the spell.

Delaney sucked in air and held up the remaining sack in her hand. “Meat. For the barbecue. Needs refrigerating.”

Oh, gosh, how pathetic. He’d so rattled her that she couldn’t even speak in complete sentences.

With that, she hurried past him, grateful that she was almost finished with the house and would soon be far away from the temptation of Lucia’s maddeningly mesmerizing grandson.

Nick would have kissed Delaney and broken all the promises he’d made to her, if Gina and Chuck hadn’t come strolling from the bougainvillea bushes with self-satisfied smirks on their faces.

It was a good thing they were there, he told himself as he frowned at his sister and her husband lounging against the fence, arm in arm. Otherwise, there was no telling what he might have done.

Then, unable to keep himself from watching her, Nick turned his head and enjoyed the view of Delaney’s hips swaying as she hurried toward the house.

He thought about how her cheeks had turned red when he’d touched her while reaching for the grocery sacks. He grinned. Aw, Rosy. She disappeared around the side of the house, headed for the back door that the family used, and his grin widened.

Delaney was astute. He was a scoundrel. And he wasn’t
proud of it. But he wasn’t ashamed of it either. Okay, he was a little ashamed, but only because she was engaged to his doctor.

But what if she wasn’t engaged to Evan Van Zandt?

She is, so stop thinking about it,
he rebuked himself.

It was easy to say, but not so damn easy to do. Because ever since he’d kissed her, Nick hadn’t been able to think of anything else.

By midafternoon the food was ready and everyone had assembled. The backyard picnic table was laden with food. Barbecued chicken, grilled Italian sausages, and hamburger patties. There was potato salad, cole slaw, corn on the cob, and baked beans, along with cold macaroni salad, an assortment of cheeses, antipasto, and tomato bruschetta. Dessert was a bountiful selection of fresh fruits, homemade brownies, and tiramisu. Two ice cream freezers churned batches of homemade peach ice cream. There was lemonade for the children and iced tea or cold beer or chilled white wine for the adults.