The Santinis: Marco, Book 2 (2 page)

As she neared the cottage, the noise level rose. There was laughing and she was sure insults. She smiled. It reminded her a lot of her brothers when they were younger. Kai and Mikala always seemed to have their volume set to twenty on a scale of ten. She knocked on the door, then had to do it again because apparently she couldn’t be heard over the discussion.
 

The door opened with a whoosh and she came face to face with a younger version of Santini. Except, this one was blond and had golden brown eyes. He blinked, then, his lips curved. Two dimples appeared.

Oh, my
.

“Well, hello. Can I help you?” he asked.

“Who is it, Gee?” a man asked loudly from somewhere in the cottage. She wasn’t sure if it was Lieutenant Santini though.

“I have no idea but I think I’m in love,” the aforementioned Gee said.
 

“Lieutenant Santini, it’s just me.”

She thought she heard him curse, then he came to the door with a frown. Oh, no, he was irritated with her. She always tried her best to stay out of her tenants’ way but she wanted to make sure his brothers were welcomed properly to the island.

“I just brought some pineapple by for your brothers.”

“You can move now, Gee,” the lieutenant said.

“I think Mom would be embarrassed by your manners.” He didn’t stop staring at her and something tickled the back of her throat as she felt her face heat up. He took her hand in his. “My name is Gianni, but everyone calls me Gee. Will you marry me?”

Before she could answer, another of the brothers showed up. This one was older and if possible, bigger. Dark haired and blue-eyed, he was just a gorgeous as the others. Goodness.

“And you can call me, Vince.”

“Go away. I found her first,” Gee said playfully. “If you won’t marry me, how about just dating me?”

Vince bumped his brother in the back but Gee ignored him. The older brother sighed. “How many times do I have to tell the rest of you? Finders are not keepers, especially when there’s a Marine around.”

“She’s mine,” Marco said.

Both brothers broke their attention from her and looked at him. She did the same and thought his cheeks were turning pink. It was actually very cute. He was such a big man and to see him blush…well it made her like him even more.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way. I meant this is my landlady, Alana Kailikea. These are two of my idiot brothers. The third is on the phone with his wife.”

She couldn’t say anything. There was just too much male beauty to form a coherent thought. Two of them were smiling at her and one was frowning, but it didn’t matter. Any heterosexual woman would have problems speaking around them. Lord, Honolulu wouldn’t know what hit them.

“Guys, you’re making her nervous. And, Gee, it’s going to be hard to be a PJ missing a hand.”

 
Gee raised her hand to his lips, kissed it, then winked before letting it go. After the brothers shuffled back in the house, Santini sighed.

“I’m sorry about that. They can be pains in the a…butt.”

She smiled. “No worries. My brothers were the same way. Here’s the pineapple. I don’t want to intrude on your weekend, but seeing that you’re men, I have a feeling you won’t make it to a good produce stand before they leave. Everyone needs to have fresh pineapple when they come to the islands. It’s a rule.”

Good lord, she was rambling on about fruit and Hawaii. She blamed it on the Santinis but it was one reason she avoided long conversations with the lieutenant. She babbled when she was confronted by a gorgeous man.
 

He took the fruit and smiled. “That sounds fantastic. But we might have some decent food since Vince likes to cook.”

“I’m not cooking for you, Marco,” his brother yelled from the other room.

“I’ll let you get back to your brothers. Make sure you let me know if you need anything.”

He nodded and just kept staring at her. He was so quiet at times, it was hard to be in his presence. For a few moments, she just stood there and stared. When she realized what she was doing, she stepped back.

“Have a good time.”

“Thank you for the pineapple.”

She nodded and turned to walk. She was hoping he went into the house, but she had a feeling he was standing there staring at her. He did that a lot. He always seemed to want to make sure she was in the house or on her way before he broke his attention from her. It had to be a SEAL thing.

When she walked around the corner she found Colin waiting for her. “You’re supposed to be in the house.”

He rocked back on his heels and smiled. “I have to look out for my girl.”

She snorted. Colin had never been interested in her and the feeling was mutual, but he did feel it was his duty to watch out over her now that she was alone. “I don’t think you need to worry about that.”

“I’m not so sure about that. They all seemed to be interested,
very
interested. Especially the tenant.”

She rolled her eyes and walked past him into the house. She didn’t need to get all excited about how that made her feel. She had a little crush on the SEAL since he moved in a couple months earlier, but she had learned early in her life men like him would be interested only in her for her money. Otherwise, they were just nice to her. Like a brother. A really hot brother.

God, she needed to get her mind on something else.

“I think you’ve gone mental,” she said as Colin shut the door behind him.

“I think you have a blind spot. And, I think you need to take a chance again.”

She didn’t want to talk about Pete or the mistake she had made. It had been five years and she still felt like a fool. Her romantic life had been desperately barren since the episode, but it was better that way. A woman in her position couldn’t take a chance on a man, not when every one of them knew how much money she had. The thought that Pete would have gotten ahold of the money for the charity still haunted her. Thankfully, she had found out what a scum he was before.

“I don’t want to talk about it. Tonight is only for happy discussions. Unless you want to bash Sara.”

He wanted to say more, she could tell from the expression on his face. He rarely held back when it came to her love life, but thankfully he refrained.

“I’ll make the drinks, you get out the carbos that will kill my waistline,” he said with a smile.

“You got it.”

And maybe, just maybe, she wouldn’t go to sleep thinking about one sexy lieutenant just yards away from her bed.

Chapter Two

“So, she’s not a senior citizen,” Vince said conversationally.

Marco wasn’t fooled. Vince wanted to take a few jabs at him. He said nothing as he grabbed up his keys to drive for the night trying to ignore Vince’s amusement. He was still trying to deal with his feelings about watching his brothers flirt with Alana. One thing he knew, any kind of discussion would lead to a fight that would definitely turn physical. Santinis didn’t mind mixing it up a bit, but he wasn’t in the mood. He didn’t want Alana finding out. He had been attracted to her from the start, but it didn’t explain the urge to beat the hell out of Vince and especially Gee.

He glanced at Vince. “No.”

That had been one thing he had felt guilty about. He let his brothers assume she was older because he was sure they wouldn’t see her. It had nothing to do with the fact that he knew both of them would want to get to know her better.
 

Of course, Vince wouldn’t let it go. “And, she’s hot.”

Why did he invite them over for a visit? Why didn’t he just keep her to himself? Dammit. He had to remember she wasn’t his.
 

He noticed that Vince was looking at him in that way that made the three younger Santinis nervous. He liked to know what was going on in their lives just like some little old woman.

“Don’t talk about her that way.”

Gee came walking out. “That’s right. Don’t talk about my future wife that way.” He closed his eyes and hummed. “That voice of hers about drove me crazy.”

Marco knew what his brother was talking about. The Hawaiian lilt was something he’d gotten accustomed to, but there was something about the way she talked, the roll over her voice as she spoke made him lose his thoughts. He wanted to hear her say his first name, against his skin, in the dark.

Shit.

He ignored his brothers, saying nothing because he knew they would make more out of it than it was.

“Are you ready, yet? Can someone tell Leo this is his bachelor party…or at least
not a bachelor any more
party?”

Gee nodded. “Leo, stop talking to my girlfriend and let’s roll.”

Leo was walking down the hallway. “So, what did I miss?”

Vince smiled. “Marco here almost beat the hell out of us for flirting with is landlady.”

“And I found the woman I’m going to marry,” Gee said.

“You’re going to marry some old woman with a lot of money in Hawaii?” Leo asked as he slipped on his shoes.

“No. Who cares about her money? She’s not old,” Gee said, wiggling his eyebrows.

“Yeah?” Leo said as they headed out the door. “How old?”

“Not old. Very young,” Gee said.

Leo grunted. “Like could get thrown out of the military young?”

“No.”

Marco tried to ignore the byplay of his brothers but it was hard.
 

“I would say twenty-eight,” Vince said.

“No, I would say about twenty-one. Or maybe twenty-two,” Gee responded.

“Twenty-five. She’s twenty-five,” Marco growled. He hated rising to their bait but they would just keep going on. Proving his point, Gee continued.

“And gorgeous.”
 

Marco snorted. “You only like her because she brought you food.”

“No. That’s not it. She has some meat on her bones and I do like a curvy woman. She’s got hair all the way down to the middle of her back. Also, she told me she loved me.”

Marco shook his head. “She did not.”

“Yes, she did. With her eyes. And, as you said, she brought me food. That makes her a fifty on a scale of one to ten.”

“Air Force math never adds up,” Vince said laughing.

“I don’t care. She wants me. She loves me. That’s all that matters,” Gee said.

This time Marco wasn’t so irritated when he said, “Shut your pie hole.”

“What’s on the agenda tonight?” Vince asked, apparently realizing they needed to switch subjects. There was always a chance the brothers would end up fighting for no other reason than to fight if they didn’t.

“I suggest Honolulu. There are a few clubs we can hit.”

“Any on the list?” Leo asked.
 

Being military, there were a lot of places restricted to them, depending on where they were stationed. Marco almost rolled his eyes but didn’t.
 
Leo acted like he was the mother hen of the group now that he was married.
 
Marco had been in the military long enough to know the rules, but Leo seemed to feel the need to check on them.
 

“None of the ones I go to. The ones on the list are there for a reason. Especially here. There are some bad parts of downtown Honolulu. Besides, there are plenty of Honolulu clubs that can handle us.”

“Not sure any of them can handle the Santinis but I’m willing to give them a try,” Gee said. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

*
 
*
 
*
 
*

“So, I think that possibly we should go over to Maui for a week,” Colin said.
 

She sighed. When he drank after a breakup with Sara, he was always planning trips for the two of them.
 

“And why should we do that?”

“We could go all wingman for each other and find some hot loving.”

She giggled as she took a healthy sip of her lava flow. “I don’t think that’s going to work in my case. You know how I am.”

“I know what you need to do. You need to be a slut, as least for one night.”

“And why would I do that?”

“Then, you might not feel so badly about what happened with Pete.”

“So, according to you, I need to loosen up my morals and sleep with a man I don’t know for an evening—”

“Men.”

“As in more than one?”

“Yes.”

“Now I know you’re drunk. The man who always threatens my dates wants me to have a gangbang to get over my mistake.”

He frowned. “I didn’t say that I would approve, but it might help you.”

She cast her gaze to the heavens but found no help. When she looked at him, he was studying her. His eyes were glazed over from the amount of alcohol he had consumed but he was thinking. When Colin thought, it was a bad thing.

“What?”

“You like Santini.”

Damn. If Colin sniffed out her attraction, he would make the lieutenant’s life miserable.
 

“I don’t care what you suggest, I will not have a night with all the Santini men.”