“Spicy. You smell spicy and delicious, meaty.” Lena smacked her lips. There was something familiar and alluring and oh, so very, very enticing about this man.
She’d been doing more than eyeing him all week, but she hadn’t noticed the food smell. Today his mere presence was making her hungry, ravenous even. “I want to bite you.”
“And you have.” He winked, reminding her of the events from the previous evening.
“You liked it.” She moved closer.
He laughed, and the sound did things to Lena that no other sound had ever done.
“Do that again.” Once more she reached for his chest.
“What? Laugh?” His voice seemed to deepen as if it was trying to tease her.
She nodded. “I love the sound.”
“Lena!” Ralph’s hand circled her arm and jerked her backward. “Are you planning to hump him in the yard?” His tiara-crowned head appeared, replete with shimmering pink bow tied beneath his chin. “Think again. That’s not happening ever. Meatball. Meatball. Meatball. Meatball!”
Ralph shoved Lena behind him. “You, Mister-Not-So-Big-Bad-Wolf, are not touching my sister. I’ll send your hairy ass straight to Australia if you even think one more indecent thought about her.” He puffed his chest out. “She is a nice girl.”
“I know she’s a nice girl. I don’t think anything less of her,” Jimmy said.
“Big-Bad-Wolf?” Lena grinned. She liked the sound of that.
Both men glanced at Lena, who leaned around Ralph to look at Jimmy and admittedly was having very impure thoughts of her own which apparently showed.
“Lena!”
She jumped again and darted back behind Ralph to try to clear her head.
The two men stood eye-to-eye, neither moving for what seemed like several seconds before the silence was broken by a high-pitched giggle from the porch. It was a sound that morphed from a slight giggle into a wicked old witch’s cackle.
Ripping her attention from the standoff taking place in the yard, Lena saw the audience assembled on the porch swing. Nonna sat between Lena’s parents with her head tossed back in what she would describe as heartfelt joyous laughter. Lena described it as a cackle and would continue to do so until the day she died.
Mom smiled a gentle, knowing smile while Dad glared at Jimmy and gave an occasional chin jerk in his direction. If they’d looked their true ages, anyone would have thought the crypt keeper, a gravedigger, and a perpetual mourner had taken their places on the edge of life, just waiting for Lena to keel over.
But as with every witch or warlock they all appeared decades younger, looking like a group of college seniors watching a comedy act.
Jimmy nodded. “Mr. and Mrs. Tortellani, as promised I’ve come to work on the shelving in the pantry.” His attention went to Lena’s grandmother. “Nonna, you’re looking beautiful again today.”
“Thank you, Jimmy, you sweet boy.” Nonna blushed, which only served to make her eternally youthful appearance prettier. “I hope you’re hungry. I’ve made something very special for you.”
“You’re going to love it,” Mom said. “I know I did, and so did my husband, and my son.”
Dad grumbled.
“You will crave it forever.” Nonna winked. “I guarantee it.”
This time Lena laughed out loud, bending over to rest her hands on her knees. “It’s like they’ve gone crazy. They sound like used car dealers.”
Ralph saw Lena laughing and as usual, couldn’t help but laugh. “They are crazy. Magic meatballs, remember?”
“Yeah, but I’m never going to eat mine and the only meatball they have to serve him is your mate-ball!” Lena pointed at Ralph and howled with laughter. “Your mate-ball.”
Ralph stopped laughing.
“They think you’re gay!” She laughed even louder.
“I’m not gay. Everyone knows that.” Ralph shoved Lena hard enough to topple her in the yard, which did not stop her from laughing.
Jimmy propped the wood against the porch and glanced over his shoulder at Lena and Ralph. “That kid’s not gay? Why’s he wearing a pink crown and bow?”
Lena curled onto her side, clutching her stomach, tears streaming down her face as her body shook with silent laughter. “He’s modeling your dog’s costume.”
“I’m gonna kill you,” Ralph said to Lena, then vanished.
Lena stopped laughing and sat bolt upright. “Ralph?” Her brother had just teleported away in front of a human. A twinge of anxiety punched Lena in the gut.
When Baba Yaga found out about this, Ralph would kiss his freedom good-bye.
“Mom?” Panic nearly caused Lena to choke on the word.
“What, darling? Why are you worried?” She moved across the yard to Lena’s side by teleporting, and Lena all but screamed for her to stop.
“Why are you all doing this in front of a human?” she whispered.
Mom actually guffawed. “You poor thing. Are you hungry?”
Lena was starving. By witch standards she hadn’t eaten in an unusually long time. Since breakfast. She hadn’t had a snack or anything in five hours. She was lucky not to be emaciated.
“Yes, but I’m not eating that damn meatball.” The last thing in the world Lena wanted to do was end up tied to some sneaky warlock who was dumb enough to eat a magic meatball, especially when she knew the man standing in her parents’ front yard was the one she wanted.
“You might as well eat it because until you do, your magic and your ability to rationalize are going to be wonkier and wonkier.” Mom helped Lena to her feet. “That’s what happens when your mate-ball has been eaten and your one true love is waiting for you.”
Chapter Four
Sitting with her family in the kitchen of her parents’ home around a table loaded with platters of food was not unusual for Lena. Having a guest to Sunday dinner, again, not odd. Watching her mother and Nonna cater to a bear shifter she hadn’t recognized as being a shifter, but had been “enjoying” for more than a week who just happened to steal her mate-ball the day before, well, that was an entirely new experience.
Lena sat in her usual chair on the left side of the table positioned between her parents who sat at either end. Nonna, in typical Nonna fashion scurried around the table serving everyone and making sure they all had everything she thought they needed.
Dad vacillated between discussing the carpentry being completed in the pantry and glaring at the carpenter who he now realized was the mate-ball thief, which meant Dad needed to oblige his fatherly duty of disapproving of any man who tried to steal his daughter. With each glare Mom shook her head, which made him relax because the truth of the matter was Dad clearly liked Jimmy.
The entire escapade made Lena want to run screaming from the house.
Jimmy sat directly across from Lena in Ralph’s seat.
“Meatball?” Nonna held a softball-sized meatball above Lena’s plate.
The wonderful aroma of meat and pepperoni, slow cooked in spaghetti sauce wafted. Lena could even smell the cheese mixed into the ball. Her mouth watered.
“No!” She jerked her plate away. “I’m not hungry.”
“Stubborn. You’re so stubborn it’s pathetic.” Nonna dropped the ball back in the pot.
Starving as she was, Lena refused to eat a thing. In a couple short hours she’d developed a bizarre meatball fear. She would not be hexed into a love spell by a piece of meat—man or ball.
“Don’t you think it’s odd to want to do what you’re doing with us?” Lena broke down and scooped a helping of linguini onto her plate, making sure to avoid any meat. “Dad, I’d think you of all people would be concerned about your mother trying to marry us off with a meatball.”
Dad dunked a piece of bread in the gravy on his plate, sopping up the spaghetti sauce. He ate the bread, then shook his head. “Nope. Not worried. It’s happened to the best of us.” He looked at Jimmy, glared ever so briefly, then jerked his chin at him. “You like baseball?”
“Y
ou know I do, Giacomo.” Jimmy grinned and helped himself to a piece of bracciola and a slice of lasagna. “We talked about the Red Sox going to the World Series just yesterday.”
Dad grunted.
“Jimmy, did you build your house by yourself or did you hire a company to help you?” Mom asked.
“I had a little help from my family and friends.”
“A colonial, you said?” she asked.
“Victorian.” He ate the stuffing off a few artichoke leaves. “Very colorful, but I’ve always liked the old style homes.”
Lena’s eyebrows rose. She had always loved Victorian homes, too. In fact she’d gotten into a bit of trouble for using an enchantment spell on the appearance of the house they now sat in. Apparently, neighbors didn’t quite understand how the Cape Cod style home could so easily be transformed into a Victorian. How was a twelve-year-old witch to know these things could be an issue?
“Large rooms and a nice yard. Set in the woods, which you know works well when the family visits.”
Mom and Nonna both nodded and the barrage of questions about his family started.
“Your mother and father are still living?” Nonna served antipasto onto his salad plate, making sure to pick extra prosciutto for him.
“Yes.”
“And you see them how often?” she asked.
“They live in town so I see them at least once a week, usually twice,” Jimmy said.
“Ah, that’s a good boy.” Nonna squeezed his shoulder.
Dad reached for a piece of provolone from the antipasto platter and promptly drew back his hand as Nonna swatted him. “You come from a large family?” He wrestled the serving spoon and fork from his mother’s hands.
“Yes, four brothers and three sisters.”
“And you are number…?” Mom held a piece of chicken Parmesan over his plate and waited for his answer.
“You might have wanted to get all these answers before you left a pot of magic meatballs hanging around unguarded,” Lena said. As if time had spun back to high school Lena felt herself sliding lower and lower in her seat as her parents and Nonna grilled another “boy” she had not actually brought home but who somehow showed up for dinner.
“Oh, we didn’t leave it hanging around unguarded,” Nonna said, buttering a piece of bread. “The meatballs have spoken.” She placed the bread on Jimmy’s plate.
Mom chuckled. “You were saying.” She beamed a beautiful, if not terrifying from her daughter’s perspective, smile at Jimmy.
“I’m the first.” He smiled back and watched as she placed the meat on his plate.
“Oh, how nice,” she patted his cheek. “Lena is my baby.”
“So that makes you how old?” Dad asked. He actually forked the meatball and tried to place it on Lena’s plate, but she swiftly jerked the plate away.
“Fifty-one, sir.” Jimmy chewed a bite of chicken and moaned his approval.
“He’s too old.” Dad returned the meatball to the pot, which now took center stage, hovering a few inches above the table.
Nonna laughed. “Your father would find this so amusing. That is, if he was here to see it.”
“Giacomo, don’t be silly.” Mom looked down the table at Dad with that same you’re-being-an-idiot look she used whenever he tried to make a point that wasn’t really a point, which seemed to be on a daily basis. “You’re thirty-six years older than I am. This spread is half that.”
“As if age counts in matters of love.” Nonna grabbed a bottle of wine from one of the high shelves. “Besides where witches and shifters are concerned age is pointless. You forget your father is forty-eight years younger than me, which, looking back I probably should have known would mean he wouldn’t stick around, but, ah, he was sexy.” The forlorn look flickered in her eyes, but she smiled, then popped the cork. “Good in bed, at least he had that going for him.”
“Ma! We’re eating.” Dad banged his hand on the table, and for a split-second Lena no longer felt the extreme humiliation that had practically weighted her down under the table during the Italian inquisition. Finally, someone other than she was in the my-parents-embarrass-me until-I-want-to-die seat.
“Nonna, what was it like to fall in love back in the middle ages?” Lena asked.
“As we all know I’m not quite that old, darling.” She peeled four little Clementine oranges and dropped segments into each wine glass.
Nonna was easily closing the door on her second century, though did not look a day beyond thirty when she was having a rough day. Wearing tight blue jeans and a shoulder-less red blouse beneath an apron reading “From love potions to love handles,” she looked like the sexiest little cook in town.
She was Dad’s mother and there was no denying he was her kid. With the same dark curly hair, which he’d passed onto Lena, Roman nose, and brown eyes she was certain he was as handsome today as he was the day he’d met her mother, and probably equally as thick-headed.
“You’re too old for our daughter,” he said to Jimmy.
“Is that what she thinks?” Jimmy asked without looking up from his plate, which had somehow refilled itself with a thick steak.
“We’re eating chicken Parm. Why does he have a steak?” Dad asked.
“He’s a guest and he likes steak,” Mom answered.
“I like steak and I live here,” Dad said.
Jimmy’s gaze swept upward to meet Lena’s, and something about the way he looked at her, almost as if he dared her to say he was too old made her body tingle.
Every part of her tingled like pins and needles, but not the awful kind like when your foot has fallen so asleep it hurts to move it or the dead numb kind like when you slept too long in one position and your arm lost all sensation, thus requiring your other arm to pull it into a different position.
No, this was a situation of gentle electric currents zooming over her body, making every single cell acutely aware she was a woman sitting across from the sexiest man she’d ever met.
It was wonderful and awful all at once.
“You don’t need steak. Eat your lasagna,” Mom said, making the spatula place another square onto Dad’s plate.
“Fine. No steak for the head of the household. I’ll just eat the chicken.” He waved at the wine bottle and poured himself another glass. “This carpentry gig, does it pay the bills? How much money do you make a year? Can you support my daughter?” Dad stared at Jimmy like he was an IRS auditor searching for the truth behind some questionable deduction.
“Dad!” Could this meal get any more humiliating?
“I do quite well, Giacomo. As you know I own my house and the property outright and run a very profitable furniture business. This carpentry gig is side work, sort of a hobby,” Jimmy said.
“Lena, do you think he’s too old?” Dad jabbed the piece of chicken from the serving fork. “I think he’s too old.”
“Too old?” Lena wanted to scream, but screaming was unbecoming and played right into the lunacy of this situation. “What does anything about him have to do with anything?”
She knew damn well she cared for him, and until she’d heard he had eaten her mate-ball she thought he cared for her. But now that she knew he’d eaten the magic meatball she had serious doubts. Doubts so big she didn’t think she could stand to be around him.
She placed her fork on the table. Her body heated with pent up anger over her grandmother’s insane matchmaking meatball magic. The little electric currents zinged and pinged, and it took all she had to control her own limbs, which had a very clear desire to wrap themselves around Jimmy.
That stupid meatball was the only reason he was remaining in this house to tolerate being questioned to the twelfth degree. Fear he might not have any real interest in her beyond that damn magic nearly made Lena sick.
“He has been charmed into being here. You’ve spent thirty-three years trying to marry Ralph and me off to strangers rather than allow us to find love on our own. It’s like you think we can’t do it, like I can’t be trust
ed to find an appropriate husband.”
Lena pushed back from the table. “Not that you should worry I’m looking for a husband because I’m not.”
Jimmy watched her, unflinching, yet wearing a sly smile that somehow reached his eyes.
“No one said you can’t find an appropriate husband, but since when does a little help hurt?” Nonna asked.
“Since forever!” Lena jumped up, making sure not to look at Jimmy because the slightest smile from him could easily sidetrack her. “I have no intention of getting married. Ever! I have a career to build and I’m leaving to build it!”
“No teleporting in the house!” Mom and Dad yelled.
“Damn it!” Lena marched to the door, banged it open, and stomped the required six feet from the house before leaving.
Chapter Five
“So this is where you’re building your career.” Nonna’s voice arrived before her body, a habit of hers that should have acted as fair warning but always drove Lena nuts.
“Yes.” She hadn’t bothered to clean up the scraps of fabric, strings, and buttons pushed aside from the latest costume created by Big Dog Designs and instinctively wished the place was tidier for this visit.
From a thick cloud of pink smoke Nonna appeared wearing a long gold and pink robe and a paisley mortarboard. Her shoes were pink with giant gold flowers on the toes.
“What college graduates students in this ridiculous get up?” Lena stopped sewing the puppy appliqué on the back of a doggie hoodie. Nonna always had a way of making some bizarre statement in a very loud way.
“Tonight I receive an honorary degree from the University of Culinary Magic in Sicily.” She sighed. “Ah, to go home. I haven’t been back in several years. I’ve been so busy raising a family and helping with the grandkids. Time flies when you have a family to care for. Someday you’ll understand.”
“Right.” Lena returned to her work. She’d finished all four of the costumes for Jimmy’s dogs the evening of the disastrous meal at her parents’ house. Then, after hanging them in the window on display she received six more orders, which Ralph very quickly pointed out should not happen if the charm she’d set on her shop was working.
Magic and Mayhem: Secrets, Lies, and Meatballs (Kindle Worlds Novella) (Spaghetti Romances Book 2) Page 3
