A LITTLE BIT OF SUGAR

by Lindsey Brookes

  A LITTLE BIT OF SUGAR

  by

  Lindsey Brookes

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  A Little Bit of Sugar

  COPYRIGHT 2012 by Lindsey Brookes

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information:

  lindseybrookes@comcast.net

  Websites:

  www.lindseybrookes.com

  www.possumposse.com

  Notable awards: Four-time Romance Writers of America Golden Heart finalist, Finalist in Dorchester Books/Romantic Times Magazine’s American Title III competition, Winner of Harlequin’s Great American Romance Novel Contest.

  CHAPTER ONE

  It couldn’t have been a more beautiful afternoon. Of all the rotten luck! It had been raining all week. Why not today? If it had, I wouldn’t be seated on the back of Anthony Carboni’s convertible in the parade from hell.

  I shifted, adjusting the satin skirt of my old prom gown, one I’d worn to my senior prom four years before, to let some air at my legs. Sweat trickled down between my breasts, a mixture of both heat and nerves.

  You know, just when you think you’ve experienced the worst day of your life another one comes along. For example, I was certain that slipping on the dance floor at Julia Mendini’s wedding reception the summer before and flashing everyone my favorite neon green thong was the ultimate humiliation. But that was a cakewalk compared to this.

  “Don’t forget to smile, Gina,” Anthony Carboni called back over his shoulder as he sat behind the wheel of his black Mustang GT convertible.

  “Bite me,” I hissed as we drove past the countless oversized umbrella tables that lined the main street of town. The tables were filled with locals who’d come to eat and see Little Florence’s first big parade. Banners hung suspended across the road while colorful streamers curled around telephone poles like the stripes on a candy cane.

  Anthony turned to me with a wide grin, straight white teeth against a deeply tanned face. “Only if you promise to return the favor.”

  “In your dreams.”

  He didn’t reply, simply wiggled his dark brows playfully, and then turned his attention back to the float-lined road in front of us.

  I aimed my best glare at the back of Anthony’s head, but was quickly distracted by the rich, spicy aroma of tomato based sauces and garlic that drifted over the street.

  My stomach growled in protest. I had skipped breakfast that morning – no, make that I’d been too nauseous to eat. Now, I was starving big time.

  I wondered if anyone would notice if I jumped out of Anthony’s convertible. Just long enough to grab a sandwich to eat along the way and ease my hunger cravings. Looking around, I realized, much to my dismay, that there was no way I could manage it. Leaping in and out of a moving car in a full-length prom gown pretty much guaranteed a broken bone of some kind.

  I sighed in frustration. It appeared I was doomed to starve to death before this turtle-paced parade ever reached the end of the main street. That is, if I didn’t die of complete and utter humiliation first.

  We followed the parade procession down Mulberry Street, which ran through the center of Little Florence, our Cleveland suburb’s version of Little Italy.

  Looking around, I had to admit I was shocked by how many people had turned out for the day’s festivities. The sidewalks along the street were packed. Who knew sausages were so popular?

  As luck would have it, or in my case not-so-luck, several of the kids I’d graduated high school with were among those that had come to watch the first annual Little Florence Sausage Festival parade. I already lived with the fact that my family was a little different from other kids’ families. Why not stick out a little more awkwardly in their mind’s eye?

  “Damn,” I muttered under my breath. I thought for sure it would be mostly old people at the parade. You know the retired kind with nothing better to do with their free time than hang around coffee shops and talk about the good old days. I certainly hadn’t expected so many of my old classmates to show up for the festivities.

  Unfortunately for me, there wasn’t much hope of hiding from them while I was perched atop the back of Anthony Carboni’s convertible.

  I watched their mouths slide into wide grins the second they saw me. They made no effort to hide the humor they found in my newly appointed title of Sausage Queen. The weenie-shaped float behind me didn’t help matters.

  Muffled laughter followed in my wake as the convertible moved along the crowd. The same kind I’d grown up dealing with all my life thanks to being born into a family that was a little out of the ordinary. One thing was for certain - I wouldn’t be showing my face at any of my future class reunions.

  “You smiling?” Anthony called back.

  “Yeah, right. You actually expect me to smile when I’m representing that faux sausage and balloon covered float trailing behind us?”

  His husky laughter floated up into the air, mixing in with the roadside taunts being flung our way. I gritted my teeth and tried to look as dignified as one could in this far-from-dignified situation. One I found myself in all thanks to him!

  “Yo, Weenie Queen!” some punk kid in a Mohawk, ripped jeans and an Ozzy Osbourne t-shirt called out as we passed by. His taunt was followed by snorts and laughter from the group of boys he was hanging with out in front of Mr. Donatelli’s corner coffee shop.

  “You are so dead,” I hissed to Anthony through my fake smile.

  He was enjoying my misery far too much. Misery he had caused me by putting my name on the ballot to become Sausage Queen. Just what every girl dreamed of being – an eighteen year old ‘weenie queen’.

  Anthony Carboni was four years older than me and had been my next-door neighbor all my life. He used to torment me to no end when I was a kid – I paused in thought as I took in my surroundings – no, make that he still tormented me. And if I didn’t like him so much, I’d hate him.

  I raised my gold-plated, sausage-tipped staff and jabbed it firmly into the back of Anthony’s navy blue, button-down shirt. “I swear I’m going to get even with you for doing this to me, Carboni. You just wait.”

  He glanced back at me with that devil-may-care grin I had come to know so well. A sexy smile that girls went nutso over, all of my friends included. Thankfully, I was immune to his charm.

  “You can have me any time you want,” he said with a smile that irked me as much as it excited me. “You just say the word.”

  “Keep your eyes on the road,” I insisted, trying to ignore the familiar curly-cue of heat that flickered to life in my lower half. My body had obviously forgotten that it was immune to Anthony Carboni’s hunkiness.

  He shrugged and turned his attention back to the road ahead. “Fine,” he muttered. “But you’re a lot sexier than that float of Italian opera singer wannabes in front of us.”

  I rolled my eyes. I was so not getting sucked in by his flattery. I knew what he was up to. “I’m immune to your verbal foreplay,” I told him.

  “Verbal foreplay?” he repeated with a husky laugh. “Hey, I like the sound of that.”

  “I mean it, Anthony. Sex is all guys your age think about. Admit it. All you guys really want is a place to park your over-eager sausage.”

  “Gina Stewart,” he said with feigned shock. “Such naughty thoughts. So, are you interested?”

  �
�Give it up, Carboni,” I muttered with an irritated frown. “This girl’s parking garage is closed.”

  “How about giving me the operating hours and I’ll come back when it’s open?”

  I let out a groan. “Don’t you ever give up?”

  “Not when it’s something I really want.”

  “Oh, and I’m what you really want?”

  He nodded his reply.

  Even though he had his back to me, I knew Anthony was grinning. This time I jabbed my scepter into the back of his head and gave it a little push. “You’re so full of it.”

  He laughed. “How do you figure?”

  “Give me a break. You think all you have to do is flash that Carboni smile at a girl and she’ll fall right into bed with you.”

  “That’s usually how it works,” he admitted without hesitation and then ducked forward just in time to avoid getting whacked again by my scepter. Lucky for him.

  Anthony Carboni was a natural born flirt and girls ate it up. “News flash,” I told him. “I’m not falling.”

  He shrugged and glanced back at me over his broad shoulder with a toothy grin. “Hey, you can’t blame a guy for trying.”

  Teasing was more like it. And what really irked me the most was that I was enjoying it.

  * * *

  After what seemed like forever, we turned into the parking lot designated for the parade’s end. Rows of floats lined up to be disassembled while the aroma of tomatoes and spices hung thick in the air, drifting over from the sausage festival’s cook-off.

  “Finally,” I said with a sigh of relief. “I’ve never been so glad to reach the end of Mulberry Street in my life.”

  “I’ll bet,” Anthony said as he cut the engine and opened his car door.

  “My reign as queen is over,” I exclaimed in a squeal of delight.

  I had survived one of the worst days of my life and had made my father the happiest, non-Italian Italian restaurant owner in Little Florence.

  I lifted the hem of my ice blue gown and stood up from my royal perch on the back of Anthony’s freshly waxed convertible, preparing to step down.

  “Uh, not exactly,” Anthony muttered under his breath as he reached out to give me a hand, but I hadn’t missed what he’d said.

  My gaze snapped up to meet his as he helped me out of his car. “What do you mean by ‘not exactly’?”

  His grin widened. “It means that the title’s yours until next year’s festival queen is chosen.”

  I whacked him hard with my scepter and this time I made sure I didn’t miss.

  “Ouch!” he yelped, rubbing his arm. “What the hell was that for?”

  “You know full well what that was for. Just be glad it wasn’t your head I smacked instead!”

  I yanked the gaudily-jeweled tiara from my hair. Hair that had taken the beautician my mother had dragged me to that morning nearly an hour to perfect. Auburn curls tumbled down over my spaghetti strap covered shoulders, a few strategically placed bobby pins still clinging to the corkscrewed strands.

  “Has anyone ever told you how hot you are when you get pissed?”

  Lucky for Anthony he had quick reflexes because my swing was meant to knock his block off. I missed.

  “Come on, Gina, why don’t you stop fighting it and kiss me like you know you want to.”

  “Ooh! You are the most irritating guy I’ve ever...”

  My words faltered as he leaned toward me, his lips hovering just inches from mine.

  My traitorous body shifted, closing the distance between us, drawn to those perfect male lips.

  “Gina...Gina...Gina!” came my father’s nauseatingly fake Italian accent, one that had just saved me from making a fool of myself.

  I pulled back with a soft gasp. How could I have allowed myself to come so close to giving in and locking lips with Anthony Carboni? Maybe I really was genetically destined to be crazy like the rest of my family.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Hey, Dad,” I said, once again forcing a smile.

  My father pulled me into one of those bear hugs that practically squeezed the life out of me. “You did me proud today, cara mia,” he said, slightly teary eyed, as he released me.

  “I’m glad I could make you happy.” At least, one of us would be.

  “You were perfect,” he said, pinching his thumb and forefinger together. Then he kissed the tips of them with a loud smack. “You did the whole family proud.”

  Talk about a guilt trip. I hated every moment of my festival fame, but my being selected to wear the crown had made my family proud.

  One glance at the happy expression on my father’s face and I knew I could never take that away from him. There was no way I was going to break his heart by telling him what being the Sausage Queen and representing the Casa di Pasta, my family’s restaurant, had done to me. I was just thanking my lucky stars that I had graduated from high school the month before, because I’d never have been able to show my face there again after this.

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “Tony,” my father greeted with a nod and extended his hand to my pain in the ass neighbor.

  “Mr. Stewart,” Anthony replied, shaking his hand.

  “I can’t thank you enough for entering my ‘bellissima’ daughter in the competition for Little Florence’s Sausage Queen.” He gave Anthony a hearty slap on the shoulder. Not as hard as I wanted to slap Anthony at that moment, but with enough force to make him wince and me smile.

  “How could I not?” Anthony said, glancing my way with a wide grin. “A restaurant with food as delicious as the Casa di Pasta serves should be given the recognition it deserves. And what better way to do that than to have one of your beautiful daughters represent your restaurant?”

  Oh, it was getting deep in the streets of Little Florence. I should have worn my father’s work boots with my gown instead of the three-inch heels I had on.

  “Grazie. Grazie,” my father bellowed happily. “You are such a smart young man, Anthony Carboni.”

  Despite being one hundred percent Scottish with thinning red hair and fair skin, my father was determined to be every bit as Italian as the rest of Little Florence’s residents. He lived, breathed, ate, drank, and slept Italian. Obsessed didn’t even come close to describing it.

  But it didn’t stop there. My father had my mother and my younger sister, Carla, convinced they were all Italian, too. Even his sister, my Aunt Lorna, who moved in with us two years ago after her husband was killed in an accident at the pickle plant, believed she was Italian. It was either that or the rest of my family had given up trying to be anything else.

  I was beginning to think that I was the only one left in our family who remembered that we were of Scottish descent. You know as in the Highlands, plaid kilts, bagpipes, and let’s not forget the Loch Ness Monster.

  “Everyone knows the Casa di Pasta has the best spaghetti in town,” Anthony told my father with another glance my direction. “It deserves to be recognized.”

  Ha! As if he’d done it for my father’s benefit. Even if the publicity of having the Casa di Pasta’s entrant crowned Sausage Queen brought in more customers to the restaurant, I knew Anthony had put my name on the Sausage Queen ballet to get even with me for ruining his date with Lucia Manetti a few weeks before.

  Honestly, I’d done it for his own good, not that Anthony believed that. But Lucia was a total skank, no matter how hot the guys think she is. She’s the kind of girl whose number is plastered on the wall of men’s bathrooms all over town. Not that I’d ever been in one to see for myself, but I had guy friends. I knew Lucia got around. Anthony could do a lot better than her.

  “I should be getting back to the restaurant,” my father said, placing a quick peck to my brow. “Stop by before you go home today and get a bite to eat. You, too, Tony.”

  “He can’t,” I blurted out.

  Anthony looked at me questioningly. “I can’t?”

  “No,” I said in warning and then turned back to my father. “He has
to help his mother wash windows today.”

  “I do?” He grinned. “Oh, right. Yeah, I forgot all about that.”

  “Ah, you’re such a good boy, Tony,” my father said, tweaking the curled tips of his fiery red mustache. “Your momma is a lucky woman to have such a hardworking son.”

  I knew my father wasn’t complaining about having daughters. He was simply giving credit where credit was due. Anthony was only thirteen when his father passed away, but he stepped right up to fill his father’s shoes, taking care of the yard, the garbage, even repairs around the house. That’s what led Anthony to start up a home repair business when he was seventeen. All his hard work paid off. His business grew and grew and now he had a bunch of guys working for him.