Chapter 9

9

Connie was all apologies when she called Odalie the next morning to cancel the Broadway-show date.

“Angel and I were really looking forward to it,” she wailed, “but we just can’t make it. I’m so sorry!”

“It’s okay. Really,” Odalie assured her. She hadn’t been enthusiastic about the evening out anyway. “Another time, maybe.”

“Another time,” Connie agreed. “Angel says he’s really sorry to miss it.”

“He’s nice,” Odalie replied.

Nice. Connie heard that note in the other woman’s voice and drew a wistful sigh. She’d hoped Angel had made an impression, but it didn’t sound as if he had. She’d hoped to have Odalie in the family one day. Now, thanks to Tony, that wasn’t going to be possible. She almost told Odalie why she’d been forced to cancel the date, but she was too wary of Tony’s temper to do it.

It was odd, the way he tried to keep everybody away from Odalie. If Connie and the others hadn’t shown up at the Long Island party, they’d probably never have met Odalie. Tony didn’t seem to want any of his people around her. And she was so nice. It didn’t make sense.

But then, Tony played his hand close to his chest. She just accepted that he had some reason for not wanting Odalie around the Jersey family.

Odalie had no idea that Tony had nixed her date with Angel. She hadn’t seen him since he’d made it very clear that he knew how she felt and he didn’t want her interest. It was a good thing that Stasia had stayed in Texas, because now Odalie wouldn’t be dragged to any more of Tony’s parties. Not that she wanted to go anyway. She had her singing lessons to carry on.

But there was a small party at the art gallery the next weekend, and Stasia flew up from Texas for it. Odalie tried to opt out. It didn’t work.

“Tony won’t want me there,” Odalie protested as she put the finishing touches on her face. She was wearing a beautiful black cocktail dress with puff sleeves and a deep V neckline. She wore rubies with it—drippy earrings in yellow gold with a matching necklace and bracelet. She left her hair long and loose around her shoulders.

“You look gorgeous,” Stasia said. “Men will follow you everywhere,” she added teasingly.

“Heavens, I hope not,” she replied with a mock shiver. “Every time I go to one of these parties, some drunk immediately becomes a homing pigeon and I’m stuck with him until he passes out.”

“Not at Tony’s party,” Stasia assured.

She sighed. “I don’t want to go,” she muttered. “He treats me like a fatal virus.”

“I don’t believe that for a second,” Stasia replied.

She looked at Stasia. “I was going to go to a Broadway show with Connie and Angel, but she called to cancel it. I liked Angel, too.”

Stasia pursed her lips. “Angel is a little rough for polite company,” she said.

“He was an absolute gentleman,” Odalie protested. “Between the three of us, we almost wiped out the inventory at a Japanese restaurant eating sushi,” she added, laughing.

“I’m glad you had fun. But Angel isn’t supposed to be around us. Tony will have a long talk with him if he finds out.”

She glared at herself in the mirror. “I don’t understand why,” she said.

“Good. Let’s keep it that way,” Stasia said just as there was a knock on the door.

Ben was standing there, looking around as he spoke. “You two ready to go?” he asked.

“Yes, we are,” Stasia said, smiling at him.

Odalie picked up her purse and they climbed in the limo.

“Is the place already crowded?” Stasia asked Ben.

“To the eaves,” he replied as he started the engine. “And he’s not happy about Angel taking our future opera star to any Broadway shows.”

“What?” Odalie asked, stunned.

“Boss will explain it to you,” he replied. “It’s complicated.” And he raised the window that cut off the passenger area from the driver.

Odalie let out a long sigh. “It will be my fault, somehow,” she predicted.

“Tony isn’t mad,” Stasia assured her. “He really does have a bad temper, but it only shows itself when people he cares about are threatened.”

“He’d feed me to a shark in a heartbeat and assure the authorities that the poor creature was starving and he was doing something for the ecology.”

“I can just picture Tony dangling you over a shark pit,” Stasia laughed, “but he’d never really do it.”

“You think?” She shook her head. “At least the art gallery isn’t near the ocean!”

Stasia just laughed again.

Ben let them out at the entrance and went to park the car. The two women found a path through the guests, and there were many, to find Tony at the buffet table.

“And I thought you said you never fed people during these shows,” Stasia teased him.

Tony was wearing a tux with a red handkerchief in his breast pocket. Under it, his shirt was carelessly unbuttoned, with no tie, showing a glimpse of the thick black hair on his broad chest.

“I think what I said,” Tony replied with amusement as he hugged her gently, “is that I never fed people to lions. And I said it because you were eating half the table all by yourself.”

“I’m a growing girl,” she teased, indicating the swelling of her stomach that accommodated the baby growing there.

“Boy or girl?” he asked.

She lifted her chin. “Surprise,” she countered and then grinned. “We don’t even know ourselves. We like the mystery.”

He just shook his head. “To each his own,” he replied, his eyes approving of the simple sheath dress she was wearing. “You look nice,” he said softly, pointedly ignoring Odalie in her couture finery.

“Thanks,” Stasia said reluctantly.

There was a small band playing bluesy tunes and a few couples were on what passed for the dance floor, the room temporarily empty and waiting for a new exhibit. “Nice band,” Stasia remarked.

“Yeah. One of them is a cousin of Connie.” He said that deliberately, with a glare in Odalie’s direction.

“Connie must have a lot of cousins,” Odalie said. “But her brother is really cute.”

“You don’t need to get mixed up with Angel,” he said curtly.

Odalie was getting odd messages in her head. “You told them not to take me to the show,” she said suddenly.

His face tautened. “Yeah. So what?”

She started to shoot back, but Stasia got in the way. “Where is Maddie Brannt’s exhibit?” she asked Tony. “I’d really like to see that.”

“So would I,” Odalie added.

“Follow me.” He started walking, then paused long enough to grab a glass of champagne off the tray of a server. He offered some to the women, but Stasia didn’t dare drink, and Odalie couldn’t handle liquor.

“Shades of prohibition,” Tony chuckled, shaking his head as they moved along.

“I can get drunk off the fumes of alcohol,” Odalie remarked. “So I don’t drink.”

“And I’m pregnant, so I can’t drink alcohol,” Stasia added. “The baby wouldn’t like it. He’d tell me so with a kick that a football player would envy,” she said, rubbing her stomach and laughing.

He laughed. “That’s a good omen,” he teased.

It was, but Stasia didn’t say it out loud.

Tony stopped at a cabinet in the front window of the gallery. And there, in all her glory, was the redheaded fairy that Maddie Brannt had done for Tony. It didn’t look like any of the women he knew, which was the only reason it hadn’t joined his private collection.

“I remember that one,” Odalie remarked, smiling. “It was in one of the books I gave Maddie. I have a copy, too.”

“The artist did a great job,” Tony said. “But a statuette is perfect in every way so that you see the person, or the fairy, in all the angles.”

“Yes, you do,” Stasia agreed. “Maddie is incredibly gifted.”

“So are you,” Odalie said with real warmth. “Your paintings capture everything.”

“They do, but the woman who painted that portrait of Tony over his mantel at home, she was fantastic.”

“My adopted daughter in Jacobsville did that one,” Tony said. “It was true to life, and she’d never seen me. She did it from photos and really good insight.”

“Oh, there’s Mr. Naguchi,” Stasia said. “I need to double-check with him about next month’s exhibit here!”

“I could handle that, but I’d rather you did. You’re not as hotheaded and stubborn as I am,” Tony chuckled.

“I practice diplomacy with words,” she said in a loud whisper. “I don’t need a gun to do it!”

“Spoilsport,” he shot back.

Odalie was nibbling on a small plate of crudités with a few drops of dressing. She liked raw veggies, but she was tired and sleepy. Tony was speaking to a gorgeous brunette, completely ignoring Odalie.

Well, she thought, two can play at that game. She walked away from the buffet table toward the band. She wondered which of the musicians was Connie’s cousin. Most of the band members had dark hair and eyes. She was looking for a man who looked Italian. But they all looked Italian.

A man she didn’t know asked her to dance. He was bad at it. Her feet felt like open wounds because he kept stepping on them. He apologized. It didn’t help.

The dance ended and she was just starting to go the other way when Tony caught her by the upper arm and pulled her along with him to his office. He brought her inside and closed the door behind them.

“Why did you come?” he asked shortly. “My secretary sent out the invitations and I’m damned sure you weren’t sent one.”

She felt her face flaming. “Stasia wanted me to come with her,” she said. “She didn’t tell me about any invitation.”

He glared down at her. “I have to put up with you occasionally, but you don’t need to show up every time I have an exhibit, regardless of whether Stasia comes or not.”

She ground her teeth together to stop from saying what she’d have liked to say. “I won’t be here long. Stasia said we’d leave by nine o’clock. She tires easily.”

Her calm tone was at odds with her heartbeat, which had gone wild from the moment she spotted him. Even now, it was shaking the thin fabric of her bodice.

“Then watch the clock,” he said shortly.

“Angel was nice,” she muttered, glaring at him.

“Yeah, he’s nice. He’s also engaged to the daughter of a friend of mine,” he added. “I would hate being put in the position of telling him that his son is going around with another woman.”

“We had sushi,” she said, flabbergasted. “Sushi! Dead fish with three people. No romantic interlude, no rendezvous!”

He was in the wrong and he knew it. But he wasn’t going to let her go around with anyone who had his hand all over the rackets. Angel did.

She just looked at him. Glowered at him. “If you’re through telling me who to date, I’ll ask Ben to drive me home. Or I can walk.” She smiled icily.

“For two bits, I’d let you walk,” he muttered.

That hurt, as it was meant to. She turned around and ended up on the dance floor, where Stasia was dancing with one of the guests.

“Tony, can you still do that box step?” she teased.

“Of course I can!”

“Odalie, make him prove it,” Stasia challenged. “Go on!”

Tony glared at her. She glared back. But they were going to cause gossip if he walked away. He caught her around the waist and pulled her close. His head was already swelling. He felt joy well up in him like light from the sun as he brought her so close that he could feel her heart beating wildly against him.

This was a tragedy in the making, he thought furiously. She smelled of spring flowers. That dress she was wearing left her back bare to the waist, and his big hand was resting there, feeling her warm flesh. He ached all over, and there was no relief. He didn’t dare let her stay around him. It was too dangerous, in many ways. But it was sheer heaven to hold her, to rock her in his arms, just to dance with her.

Odalie felt the same sensations, but she was certain that Tony was hating this. She could feel his posture go stiff. He was only dancing with her to spare any gossip if he refused. But he didn’t have to do it for long. The band wound down and stopped.

Tony and Odalie were at the end of the room, temporarily alone. Her hand had slid from his vest into the opening where his muscular chest was visible, thick with black hair. Involuntarily, her hand rested there, and she was feeling safe and happy as sensation overwhelmed her. His arm was still around her, keeping her close. She let her hand move on his chest, slowly, along the line of his collarbone, while he fought for sanity.

He wasn’t going to get mixed up with a woman who was too young, too naive, too everything! He had to get away from her. Now!

He dragged her hand away from his chest. “Stop trying to touch me,” he said in a gruff undertone, watching her face. “It’s disgusting to me! I don’t want you. Got that?” he asked with pure venom in his tone. “Now, go home and stop finding excuses to come here and make my life miserable!”

She felt the words all through her body. She hadn’t wanted to come. Stasia had insisted. Until now, she’d had at least the illusion that Tony might like her one day. But he’d taken away every wisp of hope she’d ever had. He thought she was disgusting. She almost laughed at that. Considering the men she’d refused all these years, she knew she wasn’t disgusting. But to him, perhaps she was.

She shrugged and drew in a breath. “Sorry I offended you,” she said quietly. “I’ll see myself out.”

His hands balled at his sides as he watched her walk away with quiet dignity. He’d gone too far this time. He was sorry he’d opened his mouth. She’d never forgive him for what he’d just said. He could have smoothed it over, surely. It was cruel, doing it this way. But he had to keep her at arm’s length. He couldn’t afford to get attached to her or let her become attached to him. She was destined for a career in opera.

In fact, she didn’t know it yet, but Teddy and his wife had pulled some strings for her on her private audition that was upcoming in November. She’d find out about it later. She certainly had the talent. She’d sweated it out from spring until now, working with voice teachers, to avoid the competitions. Better to apply singly and in a private audition, she had told herself when she applied. Hopefully it would be less nerve-racking than the regional competitions. And these private auditions were held at the Met itself.

Tony had gone into his office and closed the door after he’d chased Odalie away. Stasia knocked on the door and went in when he called to her. She wasn’t smiling. “Did you just say something to Odalie?” she asked. “She said she had to leave.” She hesitated. “She was crying, Tony.”

He ground his teeth together and averted his eyes. “We had a little disagreement,” he lied.

“You told her to leave, that she hadn’t even been invited. How is that a disagreement?” she asked gently.

He took a deep breath and turned around. “I’m almost thirty-eight years old,” he said curtly. “You know my background. She wants a career.”

Stasia didn’t dare tell him what she was thinking. He’d already confirmed it, in a roundabout way. “What does your age have to do with her career?” she asked.

He wouldn’t look at her. “She’s got a crush on me,” he said stiffly. “I’m not about to take advantage of it. She can’t see the roadblocks, but I can.”

Stasia hurt for him. She could only imagine why he’d hurt Odalie, and it had to be because he also had feelings for her and he didn’t think there was a future for them. He had a past that he couldn’t hide. Besides, any woman he was serious about was a weakness he didn’t need. Or want. Of course, Stasia saw right through him.

“Nice story,” she said. “I could write one almost as good.”

He glared at her from black eyes.

She just smiled at him. “Don’t worry. I won’t sell you out.”

“That would be a nice first,” he muttered, jamming his hands deeper into his pockets. “I’ve been sold out my whole life.”

“Some of the people who let you down are dead. Most of them, in fact. And you still have people in your life who’d die for you. Ben, for one.”

He grimaced. “I suppose so.” He stared at the bookcase in his office. It was overflowing. He needed to put some in boxes he guessed. His eyes went back to Stasia. “I’ll apologize the next time I see her,” he bit off. His conscience was already stinging. “She was crying?” he asked, and felt as if he’d pulled the wings off a butterfly.

“Yes.” She hesitated. “I could count on the fingers of one hand the times I’ve ever seen Odalie Everett cry,” she added solemnly.

He drew in a long breath, wincing inside. He’d been brutal. “There are things going on that you don’t know about. That I can’t let you know about. But the fewer people I have around me, the safer they are.” He turned around. “You could tell her that when you go home.”

“I could. But I won’t,” Stasia said. “You’ve got a problem that you created. You’ll have to solve it on your own.”

He glared at her.

“The stare won’t work, either. I have one just like it that I’m married to.”

“Damn,” he said softly. “Oh, all right. I have to be near the apartment tomorrow around lunchtime. I could apologize over coffee.”

She laughed. Tony was incorrigible. “Okay. I’ll pave the way for you. But you’re still going to have to smooth it over.”

“I’ll work on it,” he said.

“I’ll hold you to that.”

Odalie was still crying when Stasia came in. She hugged her friend and rocked her, making soothing sounds until the tears finally ended.

“I disgust him, he said,” she sobbed, wiping away tears.

In a pig’s eye, Stasia thought, but she didn’t say it. And Tony should have been flogged for telling her sister-in-law such a blatant lie.

“I should just go home,” Odalie said heavily. “I don’t think I’m cut out for a career in a big city.”

“That doesn’t sound like you,” her friend pointed out. “And you haven’t been sleeping well. Go to bed and don’t think about it. Problems solve themselves if we wait patiently.”

“How about if we wait impatiently?” Odalie asked.

“Go to bed anyway,” she replied with a smile. “Sleep well.”

“You, too,” she said, knowing that she’d lie awake all night with Tony’s heart-crushing words ricocheting in her mind.

The next morning, she was on her way out the door with her coffee in a travel mug when she noticed a solitary man across the street, staring out toward the traffic in the distance.

Luckily, her taxi pulled up before he spotted her. She jumped into the cab, and they sped away before Tony could get to her. She didn’t want anything to do with him ever again. If it took her years, she was going to pry him out of her heart.

The voice lesson went very well. Her voice teacher advised her to go by the Met and speak to a certain man backstage. It sounded odd, but she did as he said and made a stop at the complex on her way home.

Mr. Perkins was the manager, and he already knew about Odalie’s talent and her reluctance to participate in the regional competition. He’d also heard the recording that her voice teacher had made, and he was impressed. He gave her a date for the private audition, and she agreed with tears in her eyes and many expressions of joy.

Now all she had to do was show up and sing. Surely she could do that. She’d have to get used to looking out at a much bigger audience when she sang in an opera. She’d been afraid of it from the very beginning, when she’d performed in other venues. The tension was back again as she faced the new challenge. She could do it, she told herself. She could do it. Maybe.

The cab pulled up in front of her apartment. She paid the driver and thanked him and started to open the door. And there was Tony, sitting on the steps. It had been almost two hours since she’d walked out the door.

She couldn’t face him. Not yet. She moved away from the door and told the cab driver to go around the corner without stopping. Then she walked into a small bookstore near her apartment and bought a book she really didn’t want, just to kill time. Maybe he’d be gone when she got back.

It was clouding up two hours later. It looked as if a storm might be on the way. The wind was rising, and the heat was blatant.

As she turned the corner, there was Tony, all at once, tall, dark and raving mad.

“You saw me sitting there,” he accused angrily, pointing at the steps. “And you had the cab driver go right by me!”

She drew in a breath. She was hurting inside and out, and her temper, usually nicely buried, stood up and blew flames at him. “You!” she accused. “You think I can’t wait to see you, after what you said to me?” she raged. “What do you think you are, some pinup male model that I can’t keep my hands off of?! I slipped! I wasn’t trying to seduce you in front of a crowd of art patrons! What kind of a stupid idiot do you think I am?!”

Tears of pure rage were running down her cheeks.

“You don’t have any idea what I think of you!” he raged back.

“And I don’t care anyway!” She turned on her heel, unlocked her door and slammed it shut behind her.

Tony stood there with the door in his face. He was smoldering inside, so full of rage and passion and fury and desire that he could barely get his breath. She was the most maddening damned woman he’d ever known in his life. He wished he’d never met her. She was driving him nuts!

He boiled over all at once. He threw open the door and slammed it shut behind him.

“You get out of my apartment!” she sobbed. “You...you hoodlum!”

“You don’t even know how to insult people,” he grumbled, making a beeline for her.

“I do so! I can...!”

“You can what?” he asked, his voice husky.

Before she could come up with an answer, he had her up in his arms. His mouth hit hers like a storm, sudden and hard and insistent. And delicious. Maddening. Expert. Drowning her in pleasures she’d never experienced in her whole life.

She should protest. She should hit him. Or something. But his mouth softened almost at once on her lips, gently insistent, caressing, hungry.

Months of suppression hadn’t helped his humor. He’d ached for her since his first sight of her, and this was like a feast following a prolonged fast. He waited for her to slap him, push him away, protest.

She did nothing of the sort. She was as hungry as he was. Her arms met around his neck, and she pushed up against his mouth, inviting something even more insistent than before. And when he obliged her, she moaned, a soft, sweet piercing sound that brought his blood up so hard, he thought he’d choke on his own desire.

“Bella mia,” he whispered deeply, his voice rough, his big, beautiful hands sliding all over her back, caressing and slow and arousing while his mouth devoured hers. He wouldn’t have stopped if a gun had been pointed at him. This was feast after famine, ecstasy beyond ecstasy. Locked in each other’s arms, they gave in to the passion that had been denied for so long.

Her mouth opened under his and she made a wild little sound as his became more demanding, as his arms folded her so close that she could feel his heart beating.

Tears were running down her cheeks, but not from anger or hurt. She was crying because it was the first real, passionate kiss she’d ever shared with a man. The child of overprotective parents, with two vigilant big brothers and a town full of kindly gossips who would have told on her for any amorous adventures, she was as innocent as Tony’s first wife.

He’d always suspected that, long before she was in his arms and proving to him how unsophisticated she was. He loved it. He smiled against her mouth, and his own gentled again, cherishing the softness of lips that were experiencing something totally new.

Finally, he was able to lift his head. He looked down into drowned blue eyes, drowsy with passion, wide and searching on his face.

“This,” he whispered, “is a very bad idea.”

She nodded slowly.

“You are going to get in over your head very soon.”

She nodded again.

“Your parents are going to lock you up and never let you out of the house again.”

She nodded.

He let out an exasperated breath. “Are you hearing me? I’m telling you what’s going to happen, and you’re just nodding your head!”

“Couldn’t we go back before the lecturing part to the kissing part?” she asked, her eyes dropping to his mouth.

“Oh, God,” he groaned as she tugged at his neck.

There was no way he was going to resist her. He’d always known that he couldn’t. That’s why he’d worked at keeping her away. Now it was too late. This was all his fault. It was going to blow up in both their faces.

But that would happen tomorrow or the next day or next week sometime. For right now, right here, she was his girl, and he was going to make the most of something he’d have died for.

She tasted of flowers and candy and innocence. He was getting drunk from the taste of her. Her arms locked around his neck as he lifted her even closer, his mouth hard and insistent on hers. And just as he was about to do something much worse than just kiss her, a key sounded in the lock and the door swung open.

They jumped apart guiltily. Odalie tugged down her blouse and Tony moved back two steps.

Stasia walked in to total silence and stopped suddenly with her eyes wide open. “So that’s what the bodyguards were snickering about outside,” she murmured with a quickly hidden grin.

“Snickering about what?” Tony asked gruffly. “I told you I was coming over here to apologize.”

“It looks as if you apologized with a broom,” she replied, with a speaking glance at the disarray of Odalie’s blouse and hair and makeup.

“Not nice,” he said. “And after all I did for you, too. For shame.”

She just chuckled as she laid her purse on a side table. “I’ve been shopping for the baby,” she said, dangling a designer bag.

“And you’ll want to show it to your sister-in-law. Count me out. I don’t do baby things,” he said, turning toward the door. He hesitated. “I’ll make lasagna if you two want to come over for supper tonight.”

“If you’re cooking lasagna, I’m coming,” Stasia said.

He turned at the door. Dark, soft eyes slid to Odalie’s flushed face and quickly away. “Fine. You can bring your friend here with you, if you want to.” He grinned at both of them and went out the door.

“That man!” Stasia sighed, exasperated. “Honestly! Did he really apologize?”

Odalie looked stunned. She nodded.

“Well, I’m shocked. I mean, he does usually convey an apology, but not in real words. Did he use real words?”

Odalie swallowed. She could still taste Tony on her lips, and she was breathless, still trying to make sense of what had happened. “He used a few words.”

“And a few something else?” a delighted Stasia persisted.

Odalie turned beet red. “I have to get into something comfortable,” she blurted, heading for her bedroom. “Be right back.” She went into her room and closed the door.

Stasia pursed her lips and tried not to laugh. Things were definitely heating up. And it wasn’t because of the weather.