Crush on You

by Christie Ridgway

  “It’s not a game, Alessandra, it’s visitors.” He gestured behind her with his chin. “We’ve got company.”

  She whirled. Through the open doorway, she could see Clare and Sally climbing out of a car. “Oh, God.”

  “I was hoping to hear that in an entirely different context,” he murmured.

  A rattlesnake would have envied the venom she put into the look she sent him over her shoulder. “No way.”

  “Way,” he replied. “Maybe not now, maybe not today, but between your history and our combined combustibility, we’re not going to be able to ignore this chemistry forever.”

  It was too late to put him in his place, not with the other women almost over the cottage’s threshold. Alessandra settled for pasting a smile on her face, and it was a genuine one, too, full of the welcome only a woman who’d been saved—partly from herself, she had to admit—could feel. “Sally! Clare! I am so happy to see you!”

  She pretended not to hear the dark chuckle behind her.

  Lucky for her, it seemed the mother-daughter pair’s preoccupation with the upcoming wedding caused them to overlook her flustered state and still-burning face. At their request, she showed the bride and her mother around the cottage, describing her vision of the finished product.

  They ended in the bridal boudoir, where Penn was at work again. He’d removed his T-shirt, revealing the contrast between the pale blue of his low-slung Levi’s and the toasty, warm color of his skin.

  Clare nudged Alessandra with an elbow. “Poor you,” she whispered. “Having to work all day with a guy who looks like that.”

  Pretending she didn’t notice the play of muscles in his shoulders, arms, and back, Alessandra shrugged. “The fact is Penn doesn’t really need me. I’ll be back to my regular work in the office tomorrow.”

  The hitch in his hammer stroke told her he’d heard. His backward glance touched her face, then moved on to Sally’s. “Ah,” he said. “But I don’t think I can guarantee this place will be wedding-ready without that extra pair of hands you provide.”

  The instant alarm on Tommy’s mother’s face goaded Alessandra into stepping closer. She ignored the distracting ripple of Penn’s pec muscles as he turned to face her. “Listen,” she told him, “there’s no doubt whatsoever—”

  “We had a deal, didn’t we?” he said. “And you said you had someone filling in at your desk.”

  The intern was nearly as good as Alessandra herself, not that she’d tell him that. “I know, but—”

  “And face it,” he continued. “You’ll have a better chance of restarting your social life out here with me than if you’re holed away in your office.”

  Oh, that rat.

  Sally was already swinging toward Alessandra, a new distress in her expression. “Allie, are you . . . are you dating ?”

  “No.” When Tommy’s mother’s tension didn’t ease, Alessandra shot Penn a sharp look and raised her voice. “No.”

  “My bad, Mrs. Knowles,” Penn put in affably. “I can’t help myself. Around my friends, I’m always the one match-making.”

  Oh, please.

  He smiled at Alessandra, all pearly whites and Hollywood-style sincerity. “I see a pretty young thing like this,” he pointed to her with the business end of his hammer, “and I just can’t help myself from wanting to . . .”

  “Wanting to what?” Sally prompted.

  His glance slid to Alessandra, his eyes laughing. Her neck burned again as she relived the sensation of his fingers on her breast. Admit you like me touching you.

  “He wants to embarrass me,” she muttered.

  Clare was regarding her with raised eyebrows. “I think he’s right, you know I do,” she murmured. “It’s past time you returned to the dating circuit.”

  Dating wasn’t what Penn had in mind, and unfortunately, Alessandra’s traitorous body wasn’t interested in miniature golf or a night at the movies, either. “I’m not looking for anyone.”

  Sally sidestepped closer and slid her arm around Alessandra’s shoulders to hug her close. “Because it would be impossible to replace Tommy in her heart. Everybody knows that.”

  “Everybody knows that,” Alessandra echoed. “So let’s let Penn get back to what he was doing—”

  “Not when Penn thinks it would be so easy to find a man to take my Tommy’s place,” Sally countered. “If you’re going to be working together every day until the wedding— and Allie, I’ll only feel confident if you’re right here by his side—I need to take just a minute to explain how very irreplaceable my son is.”

  Alessandra barely held back her groan, now neatly trapped into weeks of more togetherness with Penn.

  As Sally began describing for Penn the superb athlete, student, and cancer survivor her son had been, Clare pulled Alessandra a short way from the other two.

  “I really thought my wedding would give Mom a new purpose,” she said in a low voice, her expression glum. “But she’s still focused on Tommy.”

  Alessandra patted her friend’s arm. “She is enjoying herself, Clare. And letting her make so many of the decisions has been very generous of you.”

  Her friend didn’t look cheered. “Just trying to live up to my dead brother.”

  “Oh, Clare—”

  “But let’s not go there,” the other woman replied. Her face brightened. “I want to pump you for information instead.”

  “About what?”

  “Your cousin, Gil. Tell me everything you know about this woman he’s seeing.”

  Alessandra frowned. “Gil’s always seeing a woman. They come, they go, they—”

  “Never exceed their ‘best used by’ date.” Clare pushed her newly highlighted hair over her shoulders. “But I have a feeling this one is different.”

  “I don’t know who she is. Anyway, you’re his best friend. If he’d tell anyone, he’d tell you.”

  Clare was already shaking her head. “No, he’s very close-mouthed around me these days.”

  “Interesting. But maybe there’s nothing to tell. If the relationship is so new, he’s probably not having sex with her yet.” Alessandra met Clare’s gaze.

  “Nah,” they said together.

  “Six-foot-five, two hundred twenty-five pounds . . .” Alessandra started.

  “Of sexy Italian stallion,” Clare finished, then her voice turned sly. “And speaking of sexy.”

  Alessandra kept her gaze from even flicking toward Mr. Hollywood. “Yes? Do you need help picking out your honeymoon nightwear?”

  Clare made a face, then jerked her thumb at Penn, the movement hidden from him by the angle of her body. “Allie, why not? He’s delicious, and you deserve a, um, social life. Why don’t you . . .”

  “No.” She wouldn’t let her friend finish the thought. It was bad enough that she was going to have to work with Penn. Going “social” with him was completely out of the question. A dozen reasons made it a bad idea, ranging from his annoying arrogance to her sinless status in the community.

  Clare didn’t appear convinced. “Allie . . .”

  “I mean it,” she told her friend, loud enough to get her point across, she hoped. She would work with him, but that was all. “Not going there. Definitely not going there.”

  “But you already said yes,” Sally Knowles’s voice joined their conversation.

  Alessandra blinked, then realized her words had been taken as part of a different discussion. “I’m sorry, Sally, I was responding to something else.”

  “Oh, good,” Tommy’s mother answered. “For a moment I thought you were backing out of the barbecue at our house tomorrow night. I invited Penn to come and I assured him that while you don’t ‘date,’ no one will think anything about the two of you attending together.”

  For a nun, Penn thought with irritation as he followed Alessandra from her car to the Knowles’s barbecue, the woman dressed too damn sexy. In Cinderella-blue, the sleeveless dress dipped squarely across her breasts and then fell in petal like folds to her knees. A skinny
black belt was buckled around her narrow middle and matched the strappy sandals on her feet. Yes, it was entirely unfair for her to look so good since he’d made—yet another, but this time for good—vow to keep his hands off her.

  He took his gaze from Alessandra’s swaying hips and the enticing little flutter of her dress’s hemline to glance around the spacious area behind the sprawling, ranch-style home. There was a long, wide deck running along the rear of the house. On one end, painted wooden steps turned toward a sparkling swimming pool. On the other, a short staircase led to sloped grass that was shaded by big oaks. At the bottom of the incline, water trickled along a narrow creek bed.

  After listening to Sally Knowles eulogize her son Tommy the day before, it was impossible not to see the young man on that lush grass, sending a football spinning into the warm summer evening air. He would have crossed the wooden deck with an armful of books, preparing to ace yet another exam. And once it was dark, he would have snuggled close to his little sweetheart, their bare feet tangling in the cool creek water.

  Even after he’d gone into remission, Tommy Knowles had been no slacker. He’d enrolled in college. He was getting back into sports. He’d acted as chairman for the survivor’s charity ball put on by the regional chapter of the cancer society. The event had taken place three weeks before the wedding that hadn’t happened.

  Sally Knowles had even shown off a picture of the guy, and Penn imagined his blond, crew-cut good looks had been the perfect foil to his fiancée’s sweetly exotic beauty. Alessandra’s beauty.

  No wonder the young woman was still devoted to the love of her life. Who was Penn to determine the limits of her grief? The only thing he’d mourned recently was the loss of his self-respect after Lana had taken him to the cleaners.

  Still, he thought as Alessandra paused beside a tub of ice to fish out a beer, it was a damn shame he hadn’t kissed her. Wasn’t going to happen now, of course, but the sparks between them would have started one spectacular fire.

  She held out a dripping bottle and he moved to take it from her. Their fingertips met and even that small brush put off heat. Her gaze flew to his and he saw it all in her bedroom eyes: the wide mattress, the soft sheets, her tight nipples, and the way her lashes would lower and her bottom lip pout as he thumbed those hard tips and insisted she tell him the truth. Admit you like me touching you.

  She yanked her hand off the glass between them. “Stop it,” she hissed. “Stop looking at me like that.”

  He held his hands up, away from his body. “I don’t mean to do anything, sweetheart. It just happens this way sometimes.”

  She shot him a suspicious glance. “For you, maybe.”

  “With you, baby. But I’m officially done trying to get into the hot pants you wear beneath your habit, little nun.”

  “Right.” More skepticism.

  He used his free hand and started to sketch an X over his chest. “Cross my heart and—”

  “Don’t.” Alessandra lunged for his fingers, grabbing them. “Don’t finish that thought.”

  “Okay, okay.” Hoping to die wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

  Remembering why, he withdrew his hand from hers. Sparks or no sparks, he was leaving her alone. Glancing around the party, he decided there had to be sixty, seventy people there, none of whom he knew from Adam. “Go off and enjoy yourself.”

  She hesitated, obviously torn between playing Miss Manners or protecting herself from the unwelcome sexual chemistry that bubbled between them like that science experiment he’d botched in senior year Chem.

  “You good girls . . .” Penn sighed, shaking his head. “Look. You better keep moving or I’ll renege on my promise and slide my hand under your short skirt to answer that eternal question: thong, boy briefs, or bikinis?”

  He’d gone for outrage, and for a long, silent moment he thought he’d got it, but then she laughed. “All right, Penn, I’ll let you scare me off.” She turned to go, but stopped herself long enough to send him a wicked look over her shoulder. “But you forgot one other option . . .”

  The Nun of Napa with the devil in her eyes sucked his breath straight from his chest. “Huh?” he managed to choke out.

  “Think about it, Penn.” Her voice lowered to a husky whisper. “Maybe under there I’m . . . bare.”

  A man with faster reflexes would have caught the saucy flutter of her hem and reeled her back. But Penn was paralyzed. He’d met Demanding Alessandra, Angry Alessandra, Vulnerable Alessandra, but Flirting Alessandra—it was a contradiction in terms. And it caused his head to spin. He stared after her retreating figure until someone jostled his elbow.

  Stevie Baci was regarding him with interest, looking slim and cool in a pair of formfitting white jeans and a sleeveless tunic. “When my little sister said she’d meet me here, she didn’t mention she had a date.”

  “Because she doesn’t,” he replied. “Everybody knows Alessandra doesn’t date.”

  “Hmm,” Stevie said, still studying him. “But I don’t think that stops you from wishing she would.”

  Just then, the sister in question emerged between two nearby clusters of guests, rushing their way. Her appearance saved Penn from having to answer aloud. Inside, though, he agreed, if by “dating” Stevie meant he’d get to stroke that luscious flush of pink on Alessandra’s cheeks and be the focus of the bright eyes that were right now fixed on her sister.

  “Emerson is here!” she said as she came to a stop, her voice breathless. “Stevie, Emerson Platt is here.”

  The taller woman stilled for a moment, then she shrugged. “So what?”

  “You said the next time you saw him you were going to shove him in a swimming pool. He’s right over there, by the deep end.”

  “I threatened that because he doesn’t swim well,” Stevie explained, then shrugged again. “I don’t care enough to murder him anymore, though.”

  Alessandra looked indignant. “He should pay. He was supposed to be your happy ending.”

  “A man who broke things off by leaving me with the impression he’d merely been slumming with me is not my happy ending, Allie.” Stevie reached into the nearby bucket to extract a diet cola, and her chin-length dark hair slid across her cheek, hiding her expression. “I don’t have a lot of faith in those anyhow.”

  “You don’t believe in happy endings?” Alessandra echoed with a frown, then looked toward Penn, her expression an unspoken plea: Tell her you believe.

  He opened his mouth, ready to cave on the instant. Then his cynical outlook reasserted itself, and he cut the words off with a snap of his teeth. Good God, he thought, they were right. You shouldn’t look her in the eyes.

  “Penn?” she said, once more all irresistible appeal.

  He steeled himself. “Hey, don’t ask me,” he said. “My dear old dad made a quick deposit then boogied out of town, so I don’t hold much with the ever-afters, either, honey.”

  Her mouth pursed, which on that pretty kisser looked more like a pout than disappointment, and he shook his head at her sentimental streak. Silly kid, clearly she was one of those daydream believers, which chalked up yet another reason to keep clear of her. Why risk tarnishing her bright fancies?

  “Alessandra!” From the doorway leading into the house, Sally Knowles beckoned to the young woman.

  With a last glance for her sister and Penn, the little nun headed toward the mother superior of the Convent of Saint Tommy. Penn made sure not to look after the youngest Baci this time. He’d promised himself not to indulge.

  Popping the top off his beer, he smiled at Stevie. “So, what is it you do again?”

  Her gaze was over his shoulder. “I own a limousine service,” she said absently, her eyes narrowing. “You know, airport runs, driving people on tasting tours, that sort of thing . . .”

  Her voice trailed off as she tensed. The new alertness sent a bad feeling tiptoeing down Penn’s spine, but he wasn’t going to turn around. It wasn’t any of his business, even if the Nun of Napa was hypnotizing yet
another victim or stripping down to her birthday suit.

  Okay, fine. The idea of Alessandra naked—bare!—had him taking a quick glance back.

  Nothing looked out of place. The woman was still wearing that summery blue dress, and if anything she was more covered—she held an oversized, buff-colored envelope to her breast.

  “Christ on a crutch,” Stevie cursed.

  Penn turned back to see Alessandra’s sister’s stricken expression. “Not again,” she said.

  “What?” He was a pretty laid-back guy, but her alarm sent another ice cube down his back. “What is it?”

  “They arrive out of the blue,” Stevie muttered. “She never sees them coming, and it’s like being kicked in the stomach every time.”

  “What arrives out of the blue?”

  Stevie glanced at him then grimaced. “I’m talking about letters from Tommy. When he was ill with cancer, he wrote a number of them to Allie, commemorating certain special events to let her know his thoughts in case he wasn’t here to share them with her.”

  Penn winced. “Morbid.”

  “Or romantic,” Stevie said with a shrug. “That’s what Tommy’s mom thinks anyway. Though I think Tommy’s dad, Dr. Knowles, objects, Sally follows instructions and hands the damn things over to Allie. It’s hard to know what my sister feels, but she can’t exactly refuse to accept them.”

  Penn glanced back again, to see the Nun of Napa spin away from Tommy’s mother and push through the crowd in the direction of the sloping grass and the oak-shaded creek. One tight fist clutched the buff envelope.

  Stevie groaned. “Damn! I guess I’ll have to go after her. I never know what to say.”

  Chivalry wasn’t a quality Penn aspired to, so it came as complete surprise to hear himself murmur, “I’ll do it.”

  “Really?” Stevie gaped. “You’ll go?”

  And hell, he was going, Penn thought as he actually found himself trailing in Alessandra’s wake. He couldn’t articulate why, not even to himself. When it came to this girl, impulse was the best explanation he had—which only underscored the problem. He wasn’t an impulsive kind of man, and didn’t want to become one, especially after the debacle that was Lana.