Right Place, Wrong Time (22 page)

He wondered if Gina would be happy to see him.

Or if her parents would, for that matter. Ramona had assured him that she’d make sure her parents knew he was dropping by, but he still had misgivings. Wiggling his car into a tight parking space, he flashed back on the last time he’d met a woman’s parents. He and Kim had been in the airport in Atlanta, at the gate where their connecting flight would take them to St. Thomas. Her parents had arrived at the gate from their flight out of Reagan Airport in Washington, all buffed and glossy and exuding privilege.

The minute Ethan had seen them, he’d known the trip would not be the idyllic little getaway he’d dreamed of. Forcing himself to talk to Ross about golf, listening to Ross criticize his left-side-of-the-road driving, hearing Delia go on and on—and on—about the shopping in Charlotte Amalie…He would have rather undergone a root canal.

What if Gina’s parents were obnoxious? What if they fell into the root-canal category?

Well, they’d created Gina, hadn’t they? He’d forgive them a lot, just because of that.

He climbed out of his car, turned up the collar of his leather jacket against the blustery breeze and scaled the steps to the front door, clutching the flowers he’d brought for Gina’s mother. He wasn’t planning to stay for dinner—Aunt Marcie was expecting him—but he figured the bouquet would gain him a few points. After all, he was barging in on Mrs. Morante when she was undoubtedly up to her elbows fixing turkey and stuffing and pie. He had no idea how welcome he might be; he’d
never even spoken to Mrs. Morante or her husband. Ramona had told him they wouldn’t mind his stopping by, but Ramona had her own agenda.

Fortunately, it seemed to coincide with his.

He rang the bell, heard it chime through the door and waited for someone to answer. After a minute, the door swung open and he wound up face-to-face—well, actually, his face was a good two feet higher than hers—with Alicia. “He’s here!” she shrieked, making him fall back a step and clutch the Autumn Abundance Arrangement, as the florist had called the bouquet he’d chosen, more tightly. No one was supposed to be excited by his arrival. He was just dropping in, just here to see Gina. He shouldn’t be treated as the guest of honor.

But before he could figure out how to lower Alicia’s expectations, a tall, beefy man with steel-gray hair and a warm smile clamped a hand over Ethan’s shoulder and dragged him inside. “Come on in, shut the door—it’s cold out there!” he said, continuing to drag him through the entry as Alicia had slammed the door shut. Through an arched doorway, Ethan glimpsed a lanky, casually dressed young man draped across an overstuffed sofa, watching a football game on TV. He glanced toward the doorway, smiled and waved at Ethan—and his smile was a reflection of Gina’s smile. Her brother, he deduced. The cop.

He didn’t have a chance to say hello, however, because Gina’s father continued to pull him down the hall, which ended in a small, crowded kitchen. The room was warm from the oven and aromatic with mouthwatering smells. Ramona stood at the table, fussing with a cranberry mold. Behind her, stirring something on the stove, stood an older version of Ramona, dark haired and
curvy, wearing an apron over a pair of wool slacks and a turtleneck.

“He’s here,” Gina’s father announced. “The boyfriend.”

“I’m not—” Ethan began, then shut up. He might not be Gina’s boyfriend at this particular moment, but by the time he was finished talking to her, he hoped that would change.

“She’s not here yet,” Ramona told him, while her mother set down her stirring spoon, wiped her hands on a towel and turned to face him.

Amazing how all the Morantes had the same smile—a smile as warm as the Hamiltons’ smiles had been chilly. Smiles like the Morantes’ made a man want to shed his jacket and bask in the warmth. They made him feel…accepted.

“I’m Tony Morante,” Gina’s father said, shaking his hand. “And this is my wife, Rosa.”

Rosa clasped both her hands around his free hand, releasing him only when he extended the flowers to her. “These are for you.”

“You shouldn’t have,” she protested, although she eagerly snatched the flowers out of his hand and dipped her nose to sniff them. “Mo, get me a vase, would you? You know which one? The one Grandma Alba gave me. Not the crystal one, the milk glass. You know which one I’m talking about?”

Ethan allowed himself a smile. Gina’s mother’s Bronx accent was classic.

Ramona abandoned the cranberry mold to attend to the flowers. Gina’s mother folded her hands over her apron and gazed up at Ethan, studying him. “I hope you don’t mind onions in the stuffing. I always put onions in it. I figure, everybody’s eating it, so we all wind up with bad breath together.”

“And then we eat mints,” Alicia piped up, perching herself on a chair and busying herself with a stack of paper napkins in need of folding.

“I’m sorry, but…I’m not here to eat, Mrs. Morante.”

She didn’t look alarmed. “Of course you have to eat something. It’s Thanksgiving.”

“I came only to see Gina.”
Because I haven’t been able to see her anywhere else. Except in my dreams
, he added silently.
Except every time I close my eyes.

“So you’ll see her and you’ll eat something. No big deal.” Before he could object, she patted his shoulder, then turned her back to him and resumed stirring whatever was in the pot on the stove.

“It’s okay,” Ramona mouthed as she arranged the flowers, stem by stem, in the vase.

What was okay? His aunt Marcie was expecting him. His father and cousins would be at the house in Darien, eating off bone china with real silver. No way could he devour two Thanksgiving dinners. As it was, he was nervous enough about confronting Gina to question whether he’d be able to swallow anything at all.

Nothing was okay at all. Gina’s family obviously welcomed him, but would she? Were they being nice to him because Ramona told them to, or because they wanted their unwed daughter to settle down? He hadn’t come here to propose to Gina, of course. He only wanted to talk to her, to promise her she wouldn’t have to attend any more fancy fund-raisers with him. To assure her that what they shared was special and mustn’t be tossed away.

The doorbell rang. His breath caught in his throat. Alicia jumped down from the chair, bellowing, “I bet that’s Aunt Gina!”

“You can talk to her upstairs,” Ramona coached him
in a quick whisper. “You’ll have some privacy up there. Down here, everybody’s—”

“Mommy, it’s Daddy!” Alicia yelled from the entry.

“Oh, God, what’s he doing here?” Ramona groaned.

“Go say hello to him,” her mother urged. “He’s your daughter’s father.”

Ramona shot her parents a suspicious look, then stormed out of the kitchen. Gina’s father gazed after her for a moment before turning to Ethan. “There’s a good game on TV. You want to watch?”

Ethan shrugged and, pulling off his jacket, followed Tony Morante through the dining room, around to the living room. In the entry, Ramona and yet another tall, dark-haired man conferred softly. If they were arguing, they were doing so peacefully. Alicia stood between them, an arm wrapped around each one’s waist, even though she had to stretch upward to reach.

The football game was between two universities to which Ethan had no emotional attachment. Gina’s brother straightened up and greeted him with a nod. “So you’re Ethan?”

“Has Gina talked about me?”

“Nah. She doesn’t talk about anyone. Ramona does all the talking. I’m Bobby,” he added, extending his hand.

Ethan shook it. The guy didn’t look like a cop, although that might have been because he was dressed in a sweater and jeans rather than a uniform with a gun hanging from a holster at his hip. “Gina’s told me a little about you,” he said.

“Don’t believe a word of it,” Bobby said with a chuckle. Then he leaned across the overstuffed cushions toward Ethan. “Let me tell you something. My sister Gina? She’s a little crazy, you know?”

“What do you mean?” Once again, apprehension nibbled at Ethan.

“Well, you know, with the shoes, and her single-chick attitude. But don’t let that fool you. She’s a family girl, you know? She would take a bullet for any of us. Especially Alicia.”

“I’m aware of that.” He’d seen how close, how loving and protective she’d been with her niece in St. Thomas. That maternalism was one of the things that had made him fall for her. Just remembering caused a strange image to flash in his mind: a picture of Gina holding a baby in her arms. Gina holding
their
baby, hers and Ethan’s.

Oh, God. He
had
come here to propose to her. That was the ultimate relationship—and that was what he wanted with her.

The doorbell rang again. Ramona’s husband was still standing by the door, so he spun around and opened it. “Hey!” Gina’s voice rolled over the din of the television announcers’ voices. “Who invited you, Jack? Hold the door for me, would you? I’ve got my hands full with the salad here—hey, Ali! Can you carry this bag into the kitchen for me? It’s a loaf of that sourdough bread Grandma loves, that I can get at that bakery on Ninth Avenue….” Her voice faded to silence as she peered through the arched doorway and saw Ethan.

Yes. He had come here for her, forever. To be his lover, his wife, the mother of his children. The moment he saw her, he knew.

G
INA VERY NEARLY
dropped the salad bowl. It wouldn’t have broken—it was wood—but the foil would have torn off and her parents would have wound up with shreds of oil-and-vinegar-soaked romaine lettuce scattered all over the carpet.

Why was Ethan here? Who the hell had invited him? And why did he have to look so damn handsome?

Her vision blurred, but she blinked to clear it. He rose to his feet, a strangely confident smile curving his beautiful mouth, and she briefly considered hurling the salad at him and running. By the time he’d picked all the oily bits of lettuce off his cable-knit sweater, she’d be long gone.

It wasn’t that she was scared of him. Rather, she was scared of herself, scared of the way just seeing him made her remember how good things were when it was just the two of them, when he wasn’t gritting his teeth and trooping along to her assorted social gatherings, when she wasn’t trying to blend in with his upper-crust associates but failing because her shoes were weird. She wondered what he thought about her parents’ humble house, located in the city’s least classy borough.

As a matter of fact, he looked pretty comfortable. Comfortable enough to toss his jacket onto the sofa and cross the room to her. “Ramona, could you take this?” he asked, lifting the salad bowl out of Gina’s hands and placing it in her sister’s. “Gina and I have to go upstairs.”

“Sure.” Ramona pointed toward the stairs with her elbow.

“I don’t want to go upstairs,” Gina objected. She had nothing against the bedroom level of her parents’ house, but she didn’t like being railroaded. She especially didn’t like being railroaded by her sister and Ethan.

“This won’t take long,” Ethan promised, clasping her arm and steering her up ahead of him.

“Can I at least remove my gloves?” she muttered.

“You can remove as much of your clothing as you’d like.” He marched her down the second-floor hall to the first open door and through it. The room was appallingly
pink, the walls pink, the narrow twin beds covered with flowery pink spreads, the curtains sewn from the same flowery pink fabric and a carved wood rocking chair in one corner with a pink seat cushion tied to it. “This wouldn’t be your brother’s bedroom, would it?” Ethan asked as he closed the door behind them.

She laughed, then silenced herself. She didn’t want to enjoy Ethan’s sense of humor. She didn’t want to be happy around him. “Stop being funny. I feel like you kidnapped me.”

“In your own parents’ house. And now I’m holding you hostage in your own childhood bedroom.”

“How did you get here, anyway?”

“I drove,” he answered, then had mercy on her. “Ramona invited me.”

“That bitch! Why did she do that?”

“Because I love you,” he said, his voice so steady and calm she had no choice but to believe him. “And she seems to think maybe you love me, too. She could be wrong about that, but I’m going to pretend she’s right. I’m going to assume we both love each other, and you’ve got it in your head that we shouldn’t be together because some people at a party I took you to didn’t like your shoes.”

“It’s not just the shoes, Ethan.” She heard despair in her voice—despair because he was right and Ramona was right. She loved him, and it pissed the hell out of her that he was belittling the very real problem between them. “It’s me. It’s being completely out of place in your world, sticking out like a sore thumb.”

“You stuck out like a goddess,” he told her, still sounding calm and confident. “And I loved your shoes. I thought they were great. I don’t give a damn what anyone else thought of them, and I don’t know why you do.”

Her vision blurred again, and this time no amount of blinking cleared it. Tears leaked through her lashes and down her cheeks. She pulled off her gloves so she could wipe her face. “If I were going to be with you,” she finally said, the words wobbly and damp, “I’d want to be good for you. I’d want to be able to help you in your work. I’d want to stand next to you and say all the right things so people would give your foundation money. You deserve that, Ethan. And I don’t think I can give that to you. I don’t know how.”

“What I deserve is irrelevant,” he said, gathering her hands in his. “What I need is important. I need you, Gina. I need your thoughts and your humor and your sexy body. And your silver fish shoes. I can manage my foundation without your help. My life, though—I don’t think I can manage that without you.”

The tears kept flowing, but with him holding her hands she couldn’t brush them away.

“You do love me, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she murmured.

“Then say you’ll marry me.”

“What?”

“Say you’ll marry me. I’ll fly with you to St. Thomas and buy you a big diamond ring. I hear they’ve got incredible prices on diamond jewelry down there.”