Suckered

by Gina LaManna

  I tapped his shoulder. Then, I cleared my throat. “Excuse me, I’m over here! Please keep talking.”

  “What is that noise?” He stood up, coiled like a jaguar as he moved stealthily across the room.

  Any sexual energy he’d built up had vanished as he switched into business mode. Prowling with distinctly animal-like characteristics, he waited next to the bedroom door wearing…nothing. He held the towel that’d been around his waist like a weapon.

  “There it is again.” Anthony hissed for me to be quiet, moving through the apartment with steps more silent than the wind.

  “I hear it…hold on! That’s coming from inside our room.”

  He reached the place where I’d plunked my bag on the ground. The lobby attendant had kindly hauled our bags up to the correct floor, which had saved us a lot of heartache in trying to balance gelato and baggage.

  He kicked it lightly with his toe. “Lacey, what’s in your bag?”

  I didn’t bother to mask the annoyed tone in my voice. He’d gotten me all hot and bothered, and now he wanted to talk about luggage? “I don’t remember! A few pairs of yoga pants, tank tops, and a sweatshirt. Maybe one or two fancier things. I have an entire backpack full of snacks, and I brought an extra shaker of sprinkles because someone told me you couldn’t find them here. I don’t think any of that will interest you.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “There’s something else in here.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Fine! I lied. I packed my own sugar bomb supplies, are you happy? It’s probably the marshmallows rattling around in there.”

  Anthony’s eyes flashed up, sudden recognition dawning on his face. “Did you bring something alive?”

  “Yes,” I deadpanned. “Absolutely. TSA just ignored the small human I packed in my bag. And the cat, too.” I shook my head and blew out a breath of frustration. “Of course I didn’t bring anything alive. Tupac-the-Cat has a babysitter. We dropped him off with Nicky and the girls.”

  I stood up, making my way across the room. When I reached my fiancé, he was temporarily distracted by my attire, or lack thereof, and I managed to pull his attention from the bags for a second.

  Leaning into him, I let my lips find the side of his neck, kissing the spot that I’d learned could turn his mind completely “off.”

  It worked. He murmured some sweet nothings, and I could practically feel his brain shutting down. His hands came up, pulling me close, lifting me, holding me, cradling me.

  “Finally,” I murmured. “Now take me back to bed.”

  Anthony made it two steps, his hands already working at my remaining clothes, when the unmistakable sound of something alive erupted from my bag.

  A cry. Rather, a wail. A loud, human, baby’s wailing.

  “What is that!?” Anthony dropped me straightaway, his eyes wild, his hands grabbing for a towel and wrapping it around his body. “Where did you get a baby, Lace?”

  I would’ve answered, but I was too busy getting dropped onto the floor. It wasn’t the first time Anthony had dropped me, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. Luckily, I’d perfected the art of landing on my ass without hurting myself.

  “I don’t have a baby! How could I have a baby? I don’t…baby? What? No.” I peeled myself off the floor and joined Anthony next to my bag. “That’s not mine.”

  “It’s your bag. It says Lacey on the tag. I can read.”

  “Yeah, but it’s not my baby.”

  Anthony reached out a toe and poked the bag. “Then whose is it?”

  I threw my hands up. “No clue. Last time I checked, it was against protocol to pack a child into someone else’s suitcase. I mean, nobody bestowed a handbook about raising children on me, but I think that’s common sense.”

  Anthony reached down, his face a mix of horror and disbelief as he pulled back the zipper. He unearthed a few pairs of pants from the top of my bag, his fingers landing on a piece of paper attached inside the suitcase. “It’s a note.”

  Frowning, I read the note aloud. “Dear Auntie Lacey, we figured you and Anthony would need some practice for when you get married. Grandma says you’ll have lots and lots of kids. Here is one to practice on.” I looked up, my frown deepening at the childlike hearts dotting the i’s, and scribbles crossing the t’s.

  Comprehension dawned on Anthony’s face.

  I finished reading the note. “Love, Marissa and Clarissa. P.S. Watch this baby carefully. His name is Arnold, and if you let him die, we’ll get an ‘F’ on our Home Ec project.”

  Anthony’s silence was a little bit terrifying. Fighting my urge to fly back to the States and shake Marissa and Clarissa by the ears, I raised my gaze to Anthony. The look in his eyes made my stomach flip flop.

  He stood there, cradling a baby. Except for a flimsy diaper, the plastic doll was unclothed. As Anthony swayed side to side, the crying slowed to a minimum.

  “Nice job,” I said, swallowing my natural urge for sarcasm. “You rescued Arnold.”

  Anthony’s teeth gnashed together briefly. Then a flash of pride shot through his eyes. “I made this baby stop crying.”

  My heart warmed, and I rested a hand on his arm. “You have a natural talent, it seems.”

  His pride only lasted for a second. Then, he snuck a peek at the sleeping doll. “Arnold is ugly.”

  I laughed, relieved the tension had disintegrated. Anthony tilted his arms so I could catch a glimpse of the baby’s face. Sure enough, the thing was ugly. He looked like the mutant child of Frankenstein. Eyeballs rolled loosely in its sockets, one pointing left and the other right, while lips as red as blood turned up in a Joker-esque smile. Someone had painted eyebrows on him in evil swooshes, and his hair was nothing more than a few strands drawn in with permanent marker.

  “I think he likes you,” I whispered. “He settled down as soon as you picked him up.”

  Anthony looked over the baby’s head at me, his eyes torn in confusion. “Don’t get any ideas.”

  “Ideas about what?”

  “Babies.”

  “We’re not even married!”

  Anthony cleared his throat. “I’m just saying.”

  “Are you calling me baby-crazy?”

  “No!” Anthony stuttered, taking a step back. “That’s not what I’m saying at all, I’m just saying—”

  “Are you saying you never want kids? That’s probably something we should talk about now, rather than later.”

  “No! Lacey, wait.” Anthony reached an arm out, his fingers gripping my shoulder. “I meant don’t get any ideas about me taking care of Arnold for our entire vacation. I couldn’t care less if the girls get an ‘F’ on their project—they’ll survive. But I won’t survive walking around with this thing.”

  “Those girls,” I growled.

  “Can’t take them anywhere.”

  “Can’t leave them anywhere!”

  Anthony smiled at me. I rested my head against his shoulder. Together, we watched Baby Arnold snooze in peace.

  “I like kids, Lacey,” Anthony said after a long moment. “I just prefer real ones. Hopefully with you.”

  I slid my arm through Anthony’s. “I suppose I don’t blame you. In fact, I might even agree with you.”

  “What do we do with Arnold?”

  I sighed. “I don’t know.”

  “Is this what you think it’ll be like?”

  “What?”

  “You know…” Anthony paused. “Me and you, interrupted by kids. Distracted.”

  “We’ve had Arnold for exactly one minute, Anthony. Relax.”

  “I just want to make sure—”

  I never did find out what Anthony wanted to be sure of because at that moment, Arnold’s robotic mouth opened and a scream, louder and more real than any human I’d ever heard, filled the room.

  “What do I do?” Anthony tried to shove Arnold into my hands, but I was already bent over, pulling the rest of my clothes from the bag.

  “Here.” I stood up, a diaper bag in hand. “They pa
cked some diapers and whatever this weird food is that we’re supposed to feed it.”

  Anthony eyed the tube of gel like it was poison. “He likes that?”

  “He is not real!”

  “Right.” Anthony reached for the tube, sized it up, and then gruffly fed it to the baby. Except it didn’t work. Arnold screeched louder. Anthony raised his eyebrows. “Okay, what’s next?”

  I pulled a diaper. “Changing?”

  Anthony whipped the diaper off, and some weird blue goop—probably the same goop Anthony had just fed him—started squirting from a foul place.

  “I thought he wasn’t real!” Anthony said.

  “He’s not!”

  “Then why is he going to the bathroom?” Anthony’s eyes widened. “What is this project? This is not school, this is…terrifying!”

  I quickly changed the fake baby, explaining to Anthony about practice babies. That the purpose for Arnold was to give students a realistic idea of what it was like to care for a child around the clock.

  “Are they trying to traumatize them into never having children of their own?” Anthony asked, watching over my shoulder as I wiped up goop. “Because it’s working.”

  “There, all better.” I handed a clean Arnold back to Anthony, who looked as excited to hold the baby as he’d look for a colonoscopy.

  “What is that racket?” Nora pounded on the door. “Did you get pregnant and not tell me, Lacey?”

  I quickly slipped on an oversized shirt, gesturing for Anthony to put something, anything, on before my grandmother broke the door down. When we were decent enough, I yanked open the door. “Nora, if I were pregnant, you would know.”

  “Maybe you had a secret baby.” My grandmother pushed her way past me, sounding all too excited about the idea. “Where is she? My great-grandbaby?”

  “It’s a he,” Anthony said, protectively clutching the baby closer. “And his name is Arnold.”

  “I didn’t have a secret baby!” I crossed my arms. “I live on the same property as you. I think you’d have noticed.”

  “One can dream,” Nora muttered, grabbing Arnold from Anthony’s hands. “Come here, baby, great-grandma can help.”

  After about five minutes of Nora rocking Arnold, the mechanical thing would not stop crying. Anthony looked ready to throw him out the window, and I couldn’t say I’d have stopped it from happening.

  Nora was apparently done with Robo-Baby. She stood up, handing Arnold back to Anthony. “On second thought, this grandmother needs her beauty sleep. Good night, you new, young parents.”

  “What are we supposed to do?” Anthony said. “We didn’t sign up for this!”

  “Then you should have thought of that before you played tickle the pickle,” Nora said, eyebrows pinched. “Try taking him for a car ride. That always lulled my kids to sleep.”

  “I don’t have a car,” I said weakly.

  Anthony closed the door behind Nora, leaned against the wooden frame. With a careful gaze, he pursed his lips. “This is a little bit crazy,” he said. “But hear me out. I have an idea.”

  Chapter 4

  Cruising seventy miles an hour on the back of a Vespa was probably not what Nora had in mind when she’d told us to take Arnold for a car ride.

  I’d tucked Baby Arnold inside a backpack strapped across my shoulders and climbed behind Anthony on the speedy little bike. This was probably another technique missing from the baby-raising handbook—babies did come with one of those, right?

  At least I wasn’t a complete monster. I had poked Arnold’s nose out of a small opening in the zipper which gave him plenty of oxygen. I wasn’t sure whether or not he actually knew how to breathe, but I didn’t want to take my chances with suffocation.

  The Vespa jerked and bounced as we sped over the cobblestone roads, the city of Milan sparkling around us. Though it was late—nearly midnight—the sidewalks were filled with people strolling in glamorous dresses, shiny shoes, beautiful hair.

  The distant bump of music from a local discoteca pulsed through the night, and it dawned on me that with Fashion Week just around the corner, the parties and clubs were likely hopping. Even the streets were filled with models, designers, and all sorts of fancy people glittering under the stars.

  “It’s quieter here,” Anthony called above the wind. The bike slowed some, though Anthony coasted through a series of red lights in true Italian form. He brought us to a complete stop in a quiet clearing off a side street.

  A fountain gurgled, a dog barked, but all else was silent. Climbing down from the Vespa, I twisted the backpack around and released Arnold. Thankfully, he was sleeping. With his eyes closed, his little hands balled into fists, he was almost cute—in a very Monsters, Inc. sort of way.

  “Anthony, look!” I rocked Arnold and tilted his face so Anthony could see it. “We got him to sleep!”

  “Nice work.” Anthony’s arm reached around my back, drawing me close enough to plant a kiss on my forehead and ruffle my hair. He pointed. “Now you look.”

  I followed his finger, my gaze rising from the baby, past the babbling, leaping fountain, and to the structure behind it. My jaw dropped. “A castle?”

  “Castello Sforzesco,” he murmured, his words decorating the night with a beautiful accent. “I thought you’d like it.”

  The castle came straight from a Disney movie. The light brown stone glimmered under the glow of hundreds of lights. A dusty path wound around the edges of a wide, spacious green lawn. The grass invited onlookers to meander through it, sit and enjoy a picnic, or maybe take a midnight stroll. The entire thing was so huge I couldn’t see where it ended.

  “There is just a castle sitting in the middle of the city…” I perched my butt on the edge of the fountain, my jaw dropping in awe. “To think I get excited when I find a new Dairy Queen back home. A castle!”

  Anthony’s smile grew. He perched next to me on the ledge of the fountain. Behind us the water sprayed in whimsical towers, swaying back and forth with the wind. “It’s a different place, this country. That’s for sure.”

  “You’re from here.” It came out a statement, but I meant it as a question. “Bari, you said?”

  His smiling lips faded to a mirage, a straight line across his mouth. “Yes.”

  I rocked Arnold. “Have you been to Milan before?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ahh, that’s nice.” I’d asked about Anthony’s past before, but he was notoriously tight-lipped about such things. Obviously nothing had changed in the last five minutes. “Recently?”

  He shook his head.

  “When you left Bari as a child, did you come straight to America?”

  “Mostly. A few stops along the way, naturally.”

  “Naturally,” I repeated. “Because we’ve all run away as a child and never gone home.”

  Either Anthony didn’t pick up on my sarcasm, or he didn’t care to elaborate. He did care to let his hand find the top of my yoga pants, his thumb toying with the bare skin as it slipped under the edge of my sweatshirt.

  “Don’t think you’re going to distract me,” I said, leaning into him. Arnold lay sleeping in my arms, and I lay drowsy against Anthony’s chest. “But for now, this feels nice.”

  We curled against one another, the heat of our bodies fighting the light mist from the fountain. Together, we watched the blinking lights of the castle.

  After some time, my eyes began to close. When I was ready to slide into dreams, Anthony spoke. “I left this country when I was young for reasons I can’t explain. But I can tell you that I’ve only come back once, and it was a brief visit.”

  In my hazy, sleepy state, I struggled to understand. “Why can’t you tell me where you came from? Why you left? The only reason I want to know is because I love you. I want to understand you.”

  “You’ll never be able to understand me,” Anthony said, his words clipped. “Never completely, just like I’ll never be able to completely understand you. We have pasts, both of us. It’s best if we fo
cus on the present.”

  “But—”

  “If you want to know sometime, I’ll tell you. But not now, not here.”

  “Anthony, I just want to be with you and know you,” I sighed. “I don’t understand why you won’t open up to me.”

  “I will, but not now. We’re here because of you. For your job. I don’t want to distract you with my personal business, okay? Later.”

  I squeezed his leg. “But you’re more important than my job.”

  “Just trust me. For now.” Anthony brushed a finger over his lips. “My past is past, and so is yours. The present and the future is where I’m focused.” He spoke into my hair, his lips somewhere in between a kiss and a whisper. “I love you. Can you trust me?”

  “Of course I trust you.”

  Anthony looked into the glimmering lights of the castle. “I need some time to figure everything out.”

  I sat upright. “Please talk to me when you’re ready.”

  “I will. I always do.”

  “I can’t believe he’s still sleeping,” I said after a moment, sliding Arnold down to my lap. “He’s not so bad.”

  “Debatable.” He wrinkled his nose. “I saw that blue stuff in his diaper.”

  I laughed. “Real babies don’t do that.”

  “They do worse,” he said, a smile on his face.

  “They’re cute, too!” I squirmed as Anthony’s hands brushed against my skin. He shifted me onto his lap. “Be careful,” I said. “Don’t wake Arnold.”

  Anthony groaned.

  “Since we’re focusing on work, tell me what you know about The Violet Society.” I raised a hand to the neck of Anthony’s shirt, playing with the soft fabric against his warm chest. “Just until we get back to our apartment.”

  He’d thrown on jeans and a plain black sweater, buttery-smooth against my cheek. He fit right in at Fashion Week without trying, which was just unfair.

  “The Violet Society,” he said, sounding out the words. “I imagine Lizabeth hired you to protect her new jewelry line?”

  “Yes,” I said. “She’s debuting her pieces worldwide on Friday.”

  “And you have to make sure nothing goes missing, particularly The Miranda. She’s worried about the series of thefts in the Milano area, the rumors that The Violet Society is active again?”