Francesca stifled a groan. With a little more experience she’d be better able to interpret Brett’s nuances tonight.
“Francesca?” Brett asked. “What’re you thinking?”
“That I should be married with three kids.” Then the waiting and the wondering would be over. She’d be settled and satisfied and—
Would have missed the chance at Brett Swenson.
“Then we wouldn’t be having this date,” he said, just as if he could read her mind.
“Is this what this is?” Francesca whispered. “A date?” In her jeans and her tennis shoes she was actually dating Brett Swenson?
“What would you call it?”
Something she should have used a curling iron for.
Something that warranted every feminine grace and womanly wile she’d ever heard or read about.
Something she’d wished for on every girlhood star…
Dear Reader,
I’m a little sister. And like many of us, I spun my share of romantic daydreams about my brother’s friends. One day, I imagined, they’d see beyond the braces and the knobby knees to the beautiful woman within.
I hate to say it never happened. As a matter of fact, even though I’m married and I’ve given my brother two nephews, I’m not sure he even realizes I’ve grown up. But for Francesca Milano, the heroine of The Bridesmaid’s Bet, it’s another story. Everyone is seeing her differently: her father, her four older brothers and particularly her brothers’ friend, attorney Brett Swenson.
Of course, as every younger sister knows, there’s that teeny tiny problem with overprotectiveness. Francesca has four brothers who’ve practiced it all their lives, and now Brett thinks he needs to protect her from falling in love. Too bad for him, it’s too late…or is it really such a bad thing after all when Brett’s the one Francesca loves?
I’m thrilled that Francesca and Brett’s story is part of the first Harlequin Duets. I hope that you enjoy it as well as every wonderful, romantic and fun story to come. I enjoy hearing from readers and you can write to me at P.O. Box 3803, La Mesa, CA 91944.
All the best,
Christie Ridgway
In loving memory of Judy Veisel.
1
FRANCESCA MILANO tugged her black baseball cap more firmly over her hair and stared narrowly across the kitchen at her older brother Carlo. “I spent yesterday in a bridesmaid’s dress—looking like a cross between Scarlett O’Hara and something out of Saturday Night Fever, mind you—and now you’re saying I owe you money?”
Carlo’s cool expression didn’t change. The fingers at the end of his outstretched palm even wiggled impatiently. “Fifty bucks.”
Still reeling from her hours in puce-colored polyester over a ruffled petticoat, Francesca opened the back door to her father’s apartment to let in a little air. The breeze cleared the smell of the meat-maniac pizza that was filling the stomachs of Pop and her other brothers as they watched baseball on the living room TV.
Carlo raised his eyebrows. “Stop stalling, Franny.”
She did, anyway, inspecting the short fingernails she’d recently given up biting. “Who would guess that Nicky would catch the garter?” The oldest of her four brothers seemed the most firmly entrenched bachelor.
“I did,” Carlo said. “The matrimony bug has bitten him bad.”
Francesca frowned. Nicky had nearly tackled the teenager in front of him to secure the thing. But she couldn’t see him married. “Bet he thought it would get him a shot at the maid of honor.”
Carlo shook his head. “You’re close to welshing on one bet already, little sister. Pay up.”
She pursed her lips. At twenty-eight, Carlo was closest to her age of twenty-four and usually the kindest. “Carlo, please,” she pleaded, attempting to play on his big brother heart strings—she hadn’t grown up as the only female in a household of men for nothing. “I’m supposed to be going shopping with Elise later.”
He went still. Then he grimaced and stretched his hand out farther. “The fifty. I’ll probably need it for Nicky’s wedding present.”
Francesca waved the thought away. “Nicky! If we’re talking weddings, I think it’s my turn.”
Carlo’s eyes widened and his hand dropped. “Your turn for what?”
Francesca hadn’t planned on voicing the thought, but at least Carlo was distracted from the fifty dollars she wished she didn’t owe him. “Last month I was a bridesmaid, yesterday Corinne Costello dressed me up in ruffles and got married, and my best friend Elise is saying ‘I do’ next month. I’ve got to be up next.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
Annoyed, Francesca thrust her hands in the pockets of her jeans. “Why not me?”
Carlo rolled his eyes. “Beyond the absurdity of you actually wishing yourself into romance-hell, there’s the small fact that you haven’t dated in—what?—years?”
Maybe that small fact merely underscored that it must be her turn. “I’m going to change all that,” she said stubbornly.
Crossing his arms over his chest, Carlo shook his head.
“I am!” Francesca insisted.
“Tell you what, then,” he said, a calculating smile crossing his face. “I have another bet for you.”
Despite Carlo’s crafty smile, a little thrill rushed through Francesca. Another thing growing up with brothers did was give a woman a honed sense of competition. “Double or nothing?”
“Yeah. A hundred bucks says you can’t do it.”
“Do what?” she asked warily. No telling what Carlo, who had been unpleasantly moody the past couple of months, had up his sleeve. But she liked the idea of a chance to recoup her cash.
“I’ll bet you can’t get yourself a hot matrimonial prospect by—” he paused, then snapped his fingers “—by your next stint as bridesmaid.”
Francesca grimaced. “What kind of bet is this, Carlo?”
His expression hardened. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s time…maybe we gotta get ourselves a life.”
The “we gotta” was interesting. She stared at him.
“Sheesh,” he said. “Forget it. Just hand over my fifty.”
“No, wait!” Thinking, Francesca clicked her nails against the tile countertop. “I don’t have to pay you now?”
“Nope. But you owe me a hundred when you don’t have somebody to bring to Elise’s wedding at the end of the month.”
That rankled. The assumption she’d lose did not sit well with a woman who had been scrambling to keep up with her four older brothers for the past twenty-four years. “Let me get this straight. A steady man in my life by Elise’s wedding cancels my debt?”
Carlo nodded. And his confident smirk filled Francesca with determination.
LITTLE FRANNY MILANO on a manhunt? On the other side of the open kitchen door, Brett Swenson stood, stunned by the idea.
Of course, she must have gone from little girl to woman in the twelve years since he’d left, but still Brett couldn’t resist the decades-old habit of rescuing her from sibling skullduggery.
To prevent them from finalizing their bet, Brett rapped on the doorjamb. Carlo, whom he could see clearly in profile, immediately swung his way, a grin breaking over his face.
“Brett, you old dog! You made it!”
Brett reached out to shake the other man’s hand.
“And ready to move in. I just stopped by to say hi and get the keys.”
“Brett? Keys?” Franny said, breaking in.
Brett turned her way, for the first time getting a glimpse. She hadn’t grown much. Still slight, and her features were shaded by the deep bill of a baseball cap. He let out a satisfied sigh. With all of life’s unpredictability, this one thing hadn’t changed. Tomboy Franny. Still the scrappy little sister he’d never had.
“Franny,” he said, bending slightly and peering under the hat, trying to get a clearer look at what growing up had done to her.
She looked away from him quickly, to cock her head at her brother. “What’s
going on?”
Carlo grinned. “Didn’t I tell you? Brett is back in San Diego. I ran into him at the D.A.’s office. He’s in Apartment 7 until he decides where he wants to live permanently.”
A bouncy ponytail swung from behind her ball cap as she shook her head. “Pop didn’t mention anything to me.”
Carlo shrugged. “You’ve been occupied with wedding stuff.” He rubbed his palms together. “Which reminds me, Franny—”
“Do I smell pizza?” Brett interrupted, his impulse to stop their wager resurging. He remembered another Milano bet made years ago. Francesca’s brothers had laid odds on how long their tag-along sister would cry once they ditched her for a boys-only bike expedition to the park.
Unable to stomach the thought of the little girl’s tears, Brett returned for her alone. After drying her grubby, tear-streaked face, she’d ridden with the dignity of a tiny tomboy princess, carefully balanced on the handlebars of his stingray bicycle.
Now she jabbed her thumb in the direction of another door, “They’re all in Pop’s living room—Nicky, Joe and Tony, downing a double order of a double-meat, double-cheese.”
Brett almost smiled as another unfamiliar rush of all’s-right-with-the-world flooded him. The decision to return to his hometown had been the right one. Eighteen months had passed since Patricia’s death, and it was time to restart his life.
The Milanos were just the family to help him do it. The four Milano brothers had been like his own growing up. And Franny…
“About what we were discussing, Carlo,” she said…. had been much too young to date! “How old are you now?” he blurted out, trying to turn the conversation again.
She slanted him a look from underneath the brim of the cap, then shifted her gaze to Carlo. “Old enough to get what I want when I want it. You’re on, big brother.”
“CARLO’S LOST IT,” Francesca’s best friend, Elise, said, stopping in the department store aisle to finger a paisley scarf. “And what’s wrong with you? Why’d you agree to such a bet?”
Francesca made herself touch the scarf, too. She really had no interest in the slinky, slippery thing, but she’d promised herself to start taking some clues from Elise. Her friend, engaged to be married in a month, had also never been short of boyfriends during their growing-up years. “I agreed because the bet will finally make me do something about it.”
“About what?”
“About getting that life Carlo mentioned.”
Elise swung around and squinted her eyes, her gaze sweeping over Francesca. “I’ve been saying you need one for years.”
“I know, I know. It’s just—”
“That you work for your dad. That your dad manages a bunch of apartments mainly filled with senior citizens. That you don’t have much opportunity to meet men. That you don’t know how to attract them. That you don’t know how to dress.” Elise hadn’t stopped for a breath, but she drew one in now. “Do I need to go on?”
Francesca smiled in apology. “What about Aunt Elizabetta? Don’t I always use her as an excuse, too?”
Elise nodded, and a delicate waft of her perfume drifted by Francesca. “How could I have forgotten? And you don’t have another woman to show you the ropes. Since your mother died when you were two, your only female relative is Aunt Elizabetta, otherwise known as Sister Josephine Mary of the Good Shepherd Convent.”
Francesca slapped a glass display case. “That’s about the size of it.”
“Well if you ask me,” Elise said. “It’s a bunch of hooey. I’ve begged since we were fourteen to do something with you.”
Elise wore her blond hair in a short, waved bob, and even in jeans and a white blouse—like now—she looked polished and pretty. Francesca sniffed again. And Elise always wore perfume.
Francesca sighed and looked down at her own clothes. Levi’s. Size Carlo-at-age-thirteen. She couldn’t remember if her T-shirt was a hand-me-down, too, but it advertised auto parts. Her usual ball cap was in the car, but she’d pulled her hair into a simple ponytail.
One sneaker had a hole in the toe and the lace of the other had broken twice and was knotted in two places. “Maybe I should save myself some grief and give Carlo the hundred dollars now.”
Elise picked up another scarf from the display to hold it below Francesca’s chin. “Bite your tongue! You just pry open your purse, pull out a credit card and I’ll do the rest.” She frowned. “Do you like the color rose?”
Rose? What exact shade was “rose” and how was it different from pink? “Elise…”
“Didn’t you say you wanted to get a life?”
Francesca had said it. She did want to get a life. Yesterday, standing at the altar and wearing a dress—even an ugly one—for the first time in forever had made her feel womanly and lonely all at once. “I want to primp for a candlelight dinner and have a man open a door for me and feel my heart flutter when he takes my hand,” she whispered.
And speaking of heart flutters… Francesca took a breath. “Guess who’s back in town?” He strode into her mind’s eye just like he’d walked through the door to her father’s kitchen, tall and lean with dark blond hair and those memorable, startlingly blue eyes.
Elise was inspecting the label on the square of silk. “Brett Swenson.”
“You know!”
“David heard from somebody in their old gang. He’s joined the district attorney’s office.”
Elise’s fiancé, David, had run with the same crowd as her brothers and Brett. Francesca swallowed and casually inspected her nails. “Why do you think he’s back?”
“For love.”
“What?” Francesca’s voice squeaked.
Elise raised her eyebrows. “Don’t you think? To recover from it. When that car killed Patricia she wore Brett’s engagement ring on her finger.”
Right, Francesca reminded herself. And a grieving Brett was as far from her reach as he’d been when she was a moony twelve-year-old and he a university-bound high school senior.
With a sigh she grabbed the scarf from Elise and held it up to her face herself. She looked around for a mirror. The color rose. Did she like it? She didn’t know, but she had to start somewhere.
“Why am I doing this?” she murmured, briefly giving in to doubt.
“Because you want to fall in love,” Elise said firmly.
No point denying it.
With iron resolve, Francesca relegated Brett Swenson to the mental pile of unsuitable males in her life labeled “Brothers and Others.”
“Fall in love?” she repeated, nodding. “With all the trimmings.”
BRETT TOSSED a quasi-cold bottle of beer across his new—if temporary—living room into Carlo’s cupped hands. At the baseball game’s seventh-inning stretch and with the San Diego Padres well ahead, Carlo, his three brothers and their father had helped Brett unload his Jeep and the trailer he’d towed from San Francisco. Brett’s Apartment 7 was next door to Carlo’s own apartment, and Carlo lived next door to Franny who was next door to her father. All four were in one of the complexes owned and managed by the Milano family. Actually, according to Carlo, managed by Franny and her father.
The oldest Milano brother, Nicky, was an attorney in private practice. Tony worked construction. Joe Milano was a street cop and Carlo a police detective. At thirty, Brett fell somewhere in the midst of their stair-step ages, but it was Carlo he’d always been closest to and would have professional dealings with now that he’d joined the county district attorney’s office.
“I owe you guys one,” Brett said, twisting the top off his own brown bottle. The other four men had already left.
Carlo drank from his beer and grimaced. “You owe me a cold one.” He lifted the bottle and inspected the label. “We should have stocked the fridge first instead of last.”
“Yeah.” Brett took a swallow. “I’ll make it up to all of you by springing for dinner next weekend.” He paused. “Franny, too.”
Brett didn’t know what made him bring up her name. Well, yeah
, he did. That bet still bugged him. Maybe Carlo would confess the whole thing. Explain his reasoning.
Instead, the other man grunted.
Grabbing from the kitchen counter a shoebox with “Mail” scrawled along the side, Brett tried again. “An invitation came before I left San Francisco.” He shook the box. “David Lee and Elise Cummings, huh? Getting married?” Apparently that wedding was the deadline for Carlo and Franny’s wager.
Carlo closed his eyes and took another long swallow of beer. “Right.” His voice was low and hoarse. Then he dropped onto Brett’s couch and used the remote to switch on the TV.
Brett narrowed his eyes and stared at his friend. “You okay, bud?”
Carlo stared at the TV screen and grunted again.
That was answer enough for Brett. For some reason, Carlo’s habitual good humor had slipped away, and it didn’t look like he was going to explain why. Brett shrugged. He had his own share of dark moods and didn’t talk much about what bothered him either.
None of which shed light on the bet with Franny.
Hell, why did it bother him? She was two times older than his last memory of her at twelve. And even though he’d only caught a glimpse beneath that dark-brimmed hat she wore, she was doubtless a grown woman. He didn’t have one excuse for insinuating himself into her business, unless seeing himself as a kind of brother counted.
And since she had four of the real McCoys already, she could do without him. Anyway, since Patricia’s death, he’d steered clear of female entanglements. No sense in compromising his self-made vow now.
Even with someone he merely regarded as a little sister.
THE TWILIGHT AIR smelled of pork roast and potatoes when Brett encountered Franny in the apartment complex’s parking lot. She clutched some shopping bags to her body and the handles of others ringed her arms from wrists to elbows. Her hat shaded her eyes again.
A brother would have let a sister struggle onward by herself.
Brett divested her of what he could.
With a Stetson and a Smile & The Bridesmaid’s Bet Page 18
