Sweet Talk Boxed Set (Ten NEW Contemporary Romances by Bestselling Authors to Benefit Diabetes Research plus BONUS Novel) (39 page)

Tony crossed the threshold and stood his ground just inside. "No need to break out your torture implements. We’re just going to breakfast."

Cocking her head, she studied him. Then proceeded to shock the hell out of him. "That's too bad. I'd actually encourage it this time. Either way, getting out of the house will be good for her."

He heard someone descending the stairs and looked up to see Trish dressed in black leggings, a black light sweater that ended at mid-thigh, and a wide red belt that made it look like a dress. Or maybe it was a dress that looked like a belted sweater? Her makeup was done, earrings dangled long and played peekaboo from under her dark curls. She was dressed to go out to a club or fancy restaurant.

"I think that's the pot calling the kettle black, Rhi," Trish said as she reached the bottom. "I'm pretty sure you qualify for hermit status. You're practically agoraphobic."

"Why would I want to leave the comfort of my own home when I have everything I need here?"

Trish slipped on a pair of black ankle boots. "Yeah, okay, well let's remember to mind our own business, hmm?"

In a mock patronizing tone, Rhi patted Trish on the head and said, "Oh, sweetie, but you
are
my business. Now go have fun before I lock you out of the house and force you to stay with mom."

Trish narrowed her eyes. "You wouldn't."

Rhi answered with an evil grin. "Try me."

Tony used that as his cue and placed a hand on Trish's lower back to usher her out. "Come on, Trish. I’ve found a fast retreat is best when she starts slinging threats."

Trish snorted and let him guide her onto the porch, but called over her shoulder so her sister would hear her loud and clear. "Don’t worry, the lion with the loudest roar is always the biggest pussy.”

They heard Rhi laugh as she closed the door behind them and Trish smiled at Tony, making his chest a little tighter. When they reached his car, she stopped. "Um, Tony?"

He followed her gaze to his door. "Shit. I forgot about that." The door was dented in the middle making the seam next to the front quarter panel stick out so far he could see the hinges. "Mrs. Danvers t-boned me last night going through The Intersection.”

The Intersection was what the townies called the only road crossing with an actual stoplight on Main Street. Trish’s eyes widened. “You mean our old English teacher, Mrs. Danvers? How is that woman even still alive? I swear she was in her eighties when she taught us in seventh grade. No way she should be driving.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t know if you can call it driving. The cop estimated her speed at no more than ten miles an hour.” He stared at the twisted metal panel in disgust. “Just enough to screw up my door, but not nearly enough to do me the favor of totaling it out.”

“How much will it cost to fix?”

“More than it will to get another door from the junkyard and give it to the high school tech ed class to install as part of their final exam. But that’s a few weeks away, so I’m stuck with it until then.” Testing the door handle, he tugged on it a little, then decided to leave well enough alone. Better that it was stuck closed than open and unable to latch. “Would you be okay with climbing over from my side? Or you can sit in back and I’ll be your friendly neighborhood chauffeur service."

She laughed as they walked around and he opened his door for her. "I think I can manage,” she said, ducking into the car to start her crawl to the other side. “I won’t make you service me today.”

No sooner had the words left her mouth when she froze in place, hands on the seat, and her perfectly rounded ass poised in front of him. “Okay, that is so not what I meant to say.”

Bracing his forearms on the edge of the roof, he leaned in and used his bedroom voice. “You sure, T? Maybe you’d like to pick a different day to make me
service
you.”

Her head turned to look at him over her shoulder with wide eyes and her lips parted. He fisted his hands to keep them from reaching for her ass and pulling it back against his hardening cock. The thought of seeing her in this position in his bed, back arched and begging him for more…
Fuck fuck fuck.

Tony knew he had to erase the innuendo—make it into a joke to wipe it off their slate, just as he’d always done—if he wanted to keep her friendship and spend time with her. And given the choice, he’d always want her in his life as something, rather than nothing.

“Still so easy to tease.” Grinning wide, he winked at her. “Thought the big city life would have toughened you up. It’s nice to see I was wrong.”

She gave him a dramatic harrumph and finally settled into the passenger seat. They buckled up and he turned the car toward the bypass highway. "You look beautiful, by the way," Tony said, glancing at her briefly before returning his attention back to the road.

"Thanks, you do too. I mean, not
beautiful
, but you know. Like, buff and stuff.” Tony hitched a brow in her direction and tried to keep the amusement from his face. Unsuccessfully. Her cheeks filled with a dusky rose color as she cleared her throat and predictably changed topics. “So, where are we going?"

"I thought that since you've been gone so long it's probably been a while since you've had a cream puff as big as your head."

She gasped and without looking, he could hear her wide smile when she spoke. "Pine Cone."

"Pine Cone,” he said with a nod. “Hope you're hungry and ready for a massive sugar high."

"Absofuckinglutely."

Woman after his own heart.

***

Trish couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone to Pine Cone. It was a truck stop restaurant about fifteen minutes away with great food for cheap prices. But they were famous for their cream puffs and chocolate éclairs as big as your face. Literally. They were so damn good.

She immediately thought of bringing her nephew here for lunch before their next movie date. She’d missed so many years of Rhi’s kids’ growing up, so now she wanted to make up for it on some level and strengthen their natural bond. As soon as she’d moved in, Trish made an arrangement with teens for alternating weekly one-on-one dates with her. Typically she and her niece got mani-pedis together, and her nephew shared her love of superhero movies. Next week was his turn, and as a growing thirteen year old, the boy constantly ate his parents out of house and home. Plus, he had a huge sweet tooth. This was the perfect place to take him.

Trish walked through the door that Tony held for her—something Nick had never made a point to do—and waited at the hostess podium to be seated as the sign crafted with notebook paper and a Sharpie instructed. Tony stood next to her, looking over a menu. Trish had spent the entire car ride studying him from the corner of her eye.

He looked amazing. She couldn't get over how much different he looked from the friend in all her graduation pictures. He’d still had a boyish appearance about him back then. But the next time she saw him, he’d grown several inches and left all boyish traces behind. That had been shocking enough on its own, and now he’d bulked up—big time—so that he almost looked like an entirely different person. No, that wasn’t true. It was still clearly him. He had the same hooded eyes that saw more than they should. The same smile she found comfort in, no matter what was happening in her life. Between his body finally getting the Time to Grow memo and whatever he did to pack on the muscle, the finished result looked damn good on him.

As did the faded jeans that hugged his round ass and his concert t-shirt that pulled nicely over his chest and stretched from his biceps when he bent his arms. His coloring was a palette of browns, which sounded like a description for an ugly tweed jacket from the seventies, but looked delicious on him. She and Tony were both Italian, but him more so than her, and it showed. His hair was medium brown and curled a bit at the ends from being too long. The color of his eyes reminded her of hazelnuts, and his skin was already tan from playing baseball and soccer.

Yeah, okay, she
may
have done some social media stalking after she got home last night. But is it really stalking when people post it for all the world to see? She liked to think not. Besides, she had a lot of catching up to do on the goings-on of her old friends. When she started dating Nick, her Facebook days slowly diminished over time until she eventually stopped checking her account. He hated social media and said it was a waste of time. But then, anyone he ever knew or cared about still lived in the same neighborhood with them, so he didn’t have a need for it.

Tony didn’t appear to use his account much, but his mom and sisters tagged him in a ton of pictures. His timeline was one big scrapbook of his life, told through the lenses of others’ cameras. Everything from him playing soccer and baseball, to coaching little kids, to playing with his nieces and nephews.

The latter ones in particular had tugged on her heart a little too hard for her liking. Her biological clock had been sounding a lot more like a ticking bomb for the last couple of years, but Nick promised they’d have kids as soon as they moved out of the city. Too bad she didn’t know at the time that he had no intentions of moving, making kids a moot point.

At thirty years old, almost all of her friends had gotten married and started families years ago. It made Trish feel like an old spinster who should hit up the local animal shelters to start obtaining members for her future horde of cats. And wasn’t that the most pathetic thing ever.

Finally, the hostess led them through the restaurant, and somewhere in the world a record must have scratched. Every customer in the place stared openly at her as she walked by. But they weren’t meeting her eyes; their focus was on the rest of her body. Her clothes? She hadn’t worn anything racy, and without checking, she was fairly certain she hadn’t strapped her bra on the outside of her sweater dress. She felt like one of those celebrities on the red carpet who had unfortunate wardrobe malfunctions and ended up on
TMZ
and every tabloid known to man.

As they slipped into the booth in the back of the restaurant Tony smiled and said, “You sure know how to make an entrance.”

“Yeah, what the heck is up with that?” she asked in a hushed voice. “Do I have toilet paper hanging out of my leggings or something?”

“You really don’t know?”

Her brow furrowed in response. She hadn’t a clue.

“Okay, but don’t take offense.”

“When someone says that it’s because the other person is guaranteed to take offense,” she said wryly.

“Seriously, it’s not bad. It’s just that you look...different.”

“I haven’t even changed my hair in years. Plus, none of these people know me.”

“No, not different from before.” He nodded slightly to the dining area, indicating the customers. “Different from them.” Then he peered down at his shirt and plucked at the t-shirt. “From us.”

“Wait, are you saying they’re staring at me because I’m not in a pair of old jeans and a t-shirt?” He shrugged as though to say
what else did you expect
? “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”

“There’s nothing wrong with what you’re wearing. You look amazing, Trish.” His eyes warmed her from the inside, and the tiny lift at one corner of his mouth didn’t hurt either. “You just went and got citified on us, that’s all.”

“What-a-fied?”

“Citified. You adapted to the ways of the big city.”

“That’s not a thing.”

He arched a brow. “Looks like it is from where I’m sitting.”

“I suppose in a month when it’s hot and humid I’ll be expected to wear Daisy Dukes and a plaid shirt knotted between my boobs.”

Tony’s face turned stone serious. “Dear God, I hope so. Tell me what I have to do make that happen.”

Trish faked a disgusted sound and threw a few sweetener packets at him. He laughed, blocking his face from the sugar shrapnel. The waitress showed up with coffee and took their orders. As soon as she left, he started arranging their forks and knives in the middle of the table into what the newest generation called a hashtag, and a wave of giddy nostalgia swept over her.

“Oh my God, I don’t think I’ve done this since high school,” she said, gathering half a dozen pink Sweet-N-Low packets then handing him a few more of the white sugar packets to add to the ones he’d recovered from her attack. She placed one of her packets in a corner space.

He set a white packet in the center spot. He clearly hadn’t gotten any better at Table Tic-Tac-Toe. “How else did you pass the time in a restaurant?”

She thought about that for a moment and almost didn’t tell him. Now that she was on the outside looking in, she recognized how disconnected her life had been the past decade. For a city of eight million people, New Yorkers were incredibly isolated people. No one made eye contact while walking down the street or struck up a conversation with the person next to them on the subway. More often than not, they had their heads bowed, looking down at their phones, a book, or newspaper. Trish could describe the people she saw every day during her commute to work by their hair color, a favorite hat, or coat during the cold months. But she rarely saw their faces.

Trish shrugged and placed another marker. “Not with anything as fun as beating you at Table Tic-Tac-Toe.”

“You know I let you win, right?”

“Whatever gets you through the night, DiAngelo.”

He chuckled. "Nice to see you and Rhi are still as feisty as ever together."

"Yeah, we're still really close. I don't know what I would've done if she hadn't insisted I move in with her for a while." Trish lifted her coffee with both hands and sipped, reveling in the bold strength meant to help truckers stay awake at all hours of the night. It wasn’t for delicate palettes, that was for sure.

"You can't stay with your mom?"

She clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle the laugh trying to shoot coffee out her nose. After carefully swallowing, she said, “I could, but we wouldn’t last more than a few days before driving each other insane. I love my mom, and it’s been nice being able to see her whenever I want these last few weeks, but we do best in small doses together.”