The Offer She Couldn't Refuse

by Marie Ferrarella

  Angry with herself, with succumbing so easily to what she viewed as a calculated act, Demi turned her anger on the only available target in the room. She pivoted on her heel to face Jared.

  “I haven’t had to explain myself to anyone for a long time. It’s just that I choose to let them—my family—in on my life.” Her tongue was getting all twisted in her mouth. Just like her thoughts were. “I mean—”

  She gave up all attempts at a civilized conversation. “Damn it, Panetta, why did you have to go and do that for?” she demanded hotly. For a moment, when she’d walked in just now, she’d thought perhaps she’d been too hard on him. Now she knew she hadn’t been hard enough. “I was actually beginning to think I might maybe, just maybe, like you the tiniest little bit.”

  Talk about trying to squeeze out a token drop, he thought with a grin. She was certainly back in form. “Was the kiss really that bad?”

  “No.” The response was automatic. Too automatic. “Yes.” But that wasn’t fair, either. And she’d always been fair, even to the enemy. “That wasn’t what I was referring to. I mean—”

  What did she mean? she thought angrily. Striving for calm, she took a deep breath. She felt as if all her systems had been scrambled. Demi looked up at him. She was just going to say this once and he had better get it straight.

  “I’m not going to fall all over myself and sell the restaurant to you just because your kiss temporarily disoriented me, any more than I would because you helped me out tonight or because you brought me a damn bunch of roses.” None of that was going to work on her. It wasn’t. She wasn’t the least little bit affected by any of it.

  Except maybe in the worst possible way.

  The smile was much too intimate, much too warm as it spread slowly on his lips. His eyes never left hers. “Did I?”

  Demi blinked, trying to get her bearings. Were they in the same conversation? She was railing at him and he looked as if he were a cat falling headfirst into a vat of cream. “Did you what?”

  He wanted to touch her. Really touch her. Jared clenched his hands and shoved them into his pockets. They remained clenched. “Temporarily disorient you?”

  Demi’s mouth dropped open. She drew a breath, knowing it was wiser to take stock before answering immediately. Cursing at him and his lineage was not going to accomplish anything—even though it might give her a temporary rush of satisfaction.

  “Figure of speech,” she bit off.

  “Oh.” He nodded as if he believed her. It wasn’t any figure of speech that he was aware of. “Well.” His eyes washed over her, silently telling her he knew she was lying. But at least one of them could tell the truth. “I guess I just might borrow that same figure of speech myself. Because you did. Temporarily disorient me,” he added when she just stared at him as if she hadn’t a clue what he was talking about.

  Demi swallowed. She was not, not, going to kiss him again, although everything within her begged her to. “That daughter you wanted to say good-night to—”

  “Theresa?”

  “Theresa,” she repeated, slowly nodding. Knowing if she nodded her head any faster, it just might spin off into oblivion, along with what was left of her brain.

  “What about her?” he prodded when she didn’t say anything further.

  He probably thought she was some kind of an idiot. Or, at the very least, someone nobody had ever kissed before. That galvanized her.

  Demi drew herself up. “Go home to her, Panetta. Say good-night in person.” She paused, then added, “Little girls like that.”

  Something in the way she said it caught his attention. He tried to imagine her as a little girl and couldn’t. Couldn’t think of her in any other way than a firebrand who stirred him.

  “Did you?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. I was always asleep by the time my dad came home.”

  He only nodded, as if he understood more than she was willing to let him. “You’re right. I’d better go home.” He walked toward the door, then turned to look at her again. “I’ll see you.”

  “God, I hope not,” she muttered.

  Almost involuntarily, she ran the tips of her fingers over her lips as she watched his shadow disappear into the darkness.

  Ever since she’d been a little girl, she’d turned to cooking whenever she was upset. She cooked to change the charged energy roaming around within her into something positive and productive.

  She’d been in the restaurant’s kitchen since 5:00 a.m. this morning.

  Augmenting the day’s menu, Demi created a special-of-the-day out of the lamb that had been left over from last night’s party. Unable to sleep, she had to do something with herself besides think about Jared and rehash their last ten minutes together over and over again.

  She didn’t care for the knowing look she saw in her grandfather’s eyes when he walked in through the back entrance at eight.

  Shrugging out of the jacket she’d bought for him two Christmases ago, he hung it on the coatrack in the corner. His dark eyes swept over the array of food on the counter. “You are here early.”

  She lifted her chin defensively, ready to get into it if he wanted to make something of her motives. “So are you.”

  His reason was simple. “I thought I would get a cup of coffee and have it in peace before Alex comes in. That man talks and talks and takes away all the pleasure out of a good cup of coffee.” He kibitzed for a moment, looking over her shoulder. “What are you doing?”

  A flip answer rose to her lips, then quickly disappeared. She hadn’t been raised to be flippant to Theo. “Cooking.”

  He nodded, as if her reply confirmed his guess. “So, how did we do last night?”

  Here at least she was on safe ground. Demi stopped wrapping the grape leaves around the meat mixture and turned around to face him.

  “Very well. Mr. Forakis was very happy with the service and the food. He says he’ll be back for his daughter’s first communion. Several of his friends talked to me about possibly renting the banquet room in the near future.” Enthusiasm fed on itself. They were overdue for a spate of good luck. “Maybe we’re back on our way up again, Theo.”

  She certainly hoped so. The due date on that loan refused to go away, and it was getting closer. She was still fifteen thousand dollars shy. It might as well have been a hundred and fifteen thousand.

  Theo took her news in stride. “That is good, but that was not my question.”

  She stared at him. What was he talking about? “Yes, it was.”

  “Demetria.” One tufted brow rose in a fuzzy black-and-gray arch over an eye that was as dark as midnight as he studied her face. “You know I was talking about the man you were kissing last night.”

  The meat mixture oozed out of the grape leaves as she squeezed them too hard. Swallowing an oath she knew Theo would have no use for, she protested vehemently. “I was not kissing him.”

  Foregoing his coffee for the moment, Theo drew a stool up to the counter and sat down beside his granddaughter. “Demetria, I am not blind.”

  She gritted her teeth together. “Not blind, just wrong. He was kissing me.”

  Theo cocked his head, trying to understand why she was objecting to what he said when she was saying the same thing. “And that is a difference?”

  She dropped the knife on the cutting board. “Yes, most definitely.”

  He didn’t see it. With a voice steeped in patience, he pointed it out to her reasonably. “If you put your left foot down first when you get out of bed, or your right foot, you still end up standing and out of bed, do you not?”

  She didn’t care for the analogy. Maybe the subject was a little too close to home. If Theo hadn’t walked in on them when he had, there was no telling where they would have wound up. Maybe even in bed, although she’d like to think that she would have put a stop to it before it went that far. Still, when Jared wasn’t talking, he had the most persuasive mouth she’d even encountered.

  “This is a little more complex
than getting out of bed, Theo.”

  The knowing smile on her grandfather’s lips only widened. “Yes, I know.”

  She could see that reasoning with him was hopeless. He was a lot like her mother when he wanted to be. The thought suddenly chilled her. “You didn’t tell Ma, did you?”

  Theo took umbrage that she should think such a thing of him. One hand dramatically covered his offended heart. “Tell her what? That I see you kissing a nice-looking man in our banquet room, standing so close to him that you are in his back pocket?” Demi winced at the image. “That is just between you and me.” And then he laughed. “And him, of course.”

  She knew she was going to need an ally in this, and her grandfather was the likely choice. Hard on his own son, he’d always had a weak spot for her. “Theo, he’s just trying to get to me.”

  The protest made him laugh even more. “I think he has stopped trying. I think he has succeeded.” With the discerning taste of a hard taskmaster, Theo took a small bite of one of the dolmathes she was fashioning. He nodded his approval.

  Demi felt relieved. At least this had gone right. “Maybe, in a way,” she allowed, admitting to Theo what she would rather be boiled in oil than admit to anyone else. “But in no way does that mean that the restaurant is in danger of changing hands.” She turned on the stool to face him. “I know what this place means to you. To the family.”

  He was looking at her without commenting, as if he were waiting for the right words. She knew what he wanted.

  “To me.” There was no question of her loyalty, but she knew that, like a man in a long-standing marriage who had once been a young groom, occasionally he needed to hear the words. Demi willingly obliged.

  “I love this place and I don’t intend for it to be taken over by anyone who isn’t part of the family.”

  He believed her, but it didn’t hurt to ask. “And that includes a man who makes you sigh?”

  Him most of all. “And that includes a man who makes me sigh.”

  Slipping off the stool, Theo gave her a quick, one-armed bearlike hug and kissed the top of her head. “I knew I was right when I told your father to let you run Aphrodite.” He looked around, taking a deep breath, as if his nose could tell him better than his eyes could. “So, is the coffee ready?”

  Demi got off her stool, ushering him back on his. “Sit down, I’ll get you a cup.”

  “Make it a big one,” he instructed as she walked to the urn. “None of those little cups your grandmother always liked to use.” Thimbles with decorations painted on them, that was all demitasse was in his opinion.

  As if she hadn’t heard his preference a thousand times before. “No problem, Theo.”

  But there was a problem, she thought, pouring the thick, black liquid. A very big problem. And it was over six feet tall, with the most sensuous lips she’d ever had the fortuitous misfortune to kiss.

  She pressed her lips together and told herself that after scrubbing them half a dozen times, there was no way she could possibly still taste him.

  But she did.

  * * *

  “But why can’t I go with you, Daddy?”

  Theresa had been following him around ever since he’d gotten up this morning. Dressed in dark blue overalls that brought out her fair complexion and blond hair even more than usual, she had the sticking power of industrial flypaper. He couldn’t shake her loose.

  Not that he wanted to, inside the house. But he wasn’t going to remain inside the house for much longer this morning.

  Periodically, his daughter went through clingy moods. Though she’d earned the right, it was something he was hoping she’d outgrow eventually.

  Yeah, and then he’d miss it, he thought, laughing at himself.

  But right now it was making things difficult. He nodded at his housekeeper, a woman he had hired specifically because of her child-care references. “Because little girls don’t go to work with their daddies, Theresa. That’s why you can’t come with me.”

  Theresa pouted as she followed him into the living room. “Allison does.”

  Looking around, he located his briefcase. He’d meant to do work last night, but when he finally came home, he’d been far too tired to do anything but park the briefcase and go to bed.

  Taking it off the hideaway desk, Jared turned his attention back to Theresa. The five-year-old was the center of his universe. It was for her that he worked so hard. So that Theresa would never lack for anything as long as she lived.

  He thought of the little girl she was talking about. Allison’s father was a friend of his and, like him, had sole custody of his daughter.

  “Her dad’s got a day-care center in his building. Besides…” he pointed out, talking to her the way he would an adult, “he stays in one office all day. I don’t.” Theresa knew that. He’d explained it to her when she’d asked him recently what he did all day away from her. “Don’t you like staying here with Alma?”

  Theresa looked over her shoulder toward the kitchen. “She’s nice.” She turned a sunny face up to him. “But I’d rather be with you.”

  She knew how to reel him in. Theresa was a con artist, he thought affectionately. But then he saw something else in her eyes. Something that looked like fear. The thought that she was afraid sliced him in two.

  Kneeling, Jared got down to her level. “Honey, are you afraid I won’t come back? Is that the problem?”

  Her small shoulders rose and fell as she sighed. “Maybe.”

  Jared silently cursed his ex-wife and the cavalier attitude that had allowed her to just walk out on Theresa. In going to find herself, Gloria had abandoned the most worthwhile person in her world—her own daughter. He could have strangled her for it.

  Jared smoothed back her hair from her face. “I come back every night, don’t I?”

  It was true, but so had Mommy. Until one day. Theresa pressed her lips together. Daddy didn’t like her to cry. It made him feel bad. “Yes, but maybe sometime you won’t. Like Mommy didn’t.”

  “Sweetheart, that is never, never going to happen.” Taking her hand, he drew her over to the sofa. “Come here.”

  Sitting down, he placed her on his lap. She weighed almost nothing. How could something so small hold his heart so fast?

  “You’re my best girl, Theresa.” He tilted her chin up with the crook of his finger, coaxing a smile from her. “A guy always comes home to his best girl. It’s in the rules.”

  Her eyes widened. “It is?”

  He nodded solemnly. “Absolutely. I love you more than anything, Theresa,” he said seriously, wishing there was some way to convince her. To make her feel instantly secure. But it was just going to take time. “Everything else can change. The sun might not come up in the morning, but I will always, always come home to you for as long as you want me to.”

  She studied him intently. “Forever?”

  He tried not to smile. “Sounds like a plan to me.”

  “Okay, I guess you can go, then.” She wiggled off his lap.

  Jared did smile then, giving her a quick hug. “Mr. Winfield will be very happy to hear that”

  Her hand in his, Theresa went with him to the front door. “If you’re not going to the office, where are you going?”

  He thought of Demi. When his pulse quickened, it caught him off guard. Enough hours had passed to diminish his reaction to her. Hadn’t they? “Well, I am going there first, but then I’m going to go to a restaurant.”

  Theresa looked at him hopefully. “To eat?”

  To try to form some sort of strategy. “Among other things.”

  Laying groundwork, even though she had no idea it was called that, Theresa asked, “Do they have games there, like Bingoland?”

  “No, no games.” Jared remembered the two grizzled old men hunched over their dusty chess board. “Well, there is one there, but it’s just a board game.”

  Theresa thought of the tall stack of boxes in her room. “I like board games.”

  How well he knew that. The
last time she’d been sick, he’d played a grand total of fifty-three games of something called “Sticky-Poo comes to Town.” He’d wanted to burn the game after she’d gotten well. “This is chess, honey. Two old men are playing chess in a corner booth.”

  Her light eyebrows drew together in tight concentration. “What’s chess?”

  “Something I have to teach you someday when I have more time.” Who knew? She had an affinity for games. Maybe she’d catch on quickly. He had as a kid, and she was more his than she had ever been Gloria’s.

  Theresa began shifting excitedly from foot to foot. “When will that be, Daddy? When will you have more time for me?”

  Funny how guilt was usually served thick so that you could spread it with a knife, then use the same knife to stick into the heart of the person covered with it Like him, he thought.

  Inspiration came. No reason why he couldn’t combine business with pleasure.

  You already did, last night, he reminded himself.

  “I tell you what, you tell Alma to get you ready and I’ll come back for you around eleven. I’ll bring you to the restaurant so you can see it for yourself.” He grinned, knowing the idea would make her feel very grown-up. “We’ll have lunch.”

  Theresa’s eyes became huge. “Just you and me?”

  “Just you and me.” He skimmed her nose with his fingertip. “Eat your heart out, Allison Cooper, right?”

  Theresa bobbed her head up and down. “Right!”

  “Waiting for him?” Antoinette dusted her hands off as she walked over to her daughter.

  Demi looked up from the stack of menus she had just cleaned. “What?”

  “I have been watching you. You keep looking at the door.” Antoinette nodded toward it. “I was wondering if perhaps you are waiting for him.” When Demi said nothing, she added. “The good-looking one.” Still nothing. Antoinette sighed. How had she gotten such stubborn children? “The one who knows how to be a waiter. Pantella.”

  “Panetta,” Demi corrected, annoyed. She went back to stacking menus. This was Friday, one of their better days. People liked to splurge a little on paydays.