A Crazy Kind of Love (7 page)

“Nope.” Stevie shook her head, then wiped a clean, soft towel across an already immaculate counter. “But the Stevenson kids have hooked up a motion-sensor camera to their mailbox—”

“Those kids are scary,” Mike put in, remembering the time the twins had set fire to their parents’ garage by trying to launch a homemade missile
inside
.

“Too true. And they’re offering their services to anyone else who wants to try to catch the money fairy.”

“Great.” She laughed as she imagined mailboxes all over town bursting into flames or something.

“Oh yeah. Things’re getting interesting.”

“Things’re
always
interesting around here.”

“Uh-huh,” Stevie said slyly, “and speaking of
interesting, how’s the cutie in the new house on the lake doing?”

Mike stiffened. “Cutie? Lucas?”

“Hello?” Stevie looked at her as if she were insane. “You do have eyes, right?”

Oh, nothing wrong with her eyes and, yes, she’d noticed Lucas’s a time or two, which she really didn’t want to think about at the moment. “Well, yeah. And I suppose he’s not too bad, but
cute
?”

“Hey, I’m
married
and I noticed. What’s your excuse?”

“Sanity?” She shifted position uneasily and told herself that there was no reason to get defensive. Heck, there was nothing going on between her and Lucas. Just some minor irritation and a little . . . okay, a
lot
of humming attraction, but hey. She was human.

“Very funny. But not only is he cute,” Stevie said, “Paul says he’s brilliant.”

“He would know, I guess.” Paul Candellano, Stevie’s husband, was pretty damn smart himself. A computer genius of some sort or other, he did lots of work for the government and designed programs for all kinds of things, which just baffled Mike, since the only computer stuff she was qualified for was pushing the
ON
button.

So the nerd prince was brilliant. Was she surprised by this? No. A little intimidated? Maybe. But why should she be? she thought defensively. She could have stayed in college. She could have gotten a degree—if she hadn’t been bored to tears.

All right, maybe not bored. But she did remember at
the time being too anxious to get on with living to sit in a series of classrooms. Papa hadn’t been happy about it, but he’d learned to live with Mike’s decision.

So Lucas was brilliant. Could he install a Jacuzzi tub or do a full copper repipe? She didn’t think so.

“Hey, Stevie,” a man called out from across the room. “How about a refill?”

“Coming up, Joe,” she answered, already reaching for the coffeepot. “I gotta run. But hey, Mike, tell Jo I need to talk to her about a new roof.”

“For here?”

“Yeah.” She stopped and smiled. “There’s a leak over the bedroom in the loft apartment. I hardly go up there anymore since I got married. So didn’t notice it until yesterday when I went up to clean out the last closet.”

“Sure,” Mike said as she walked away, “I’ll tell her.”

Hmm. The loft apartment over the shop was empty now that Stevie had moved into Paul’s house. She’d been in that apartment. It was big, roomy, and God knew, it was close to coffee.

There was no reason now for Mike to keep living at home. Not now that she wasn’t saving up for her dream house. Why shouldn’t she think about renting Stevie’s old apartment? It’d be good to get out of the family home. Especially, she thought with an inner cringe, if Papa started bringing Grace home. No
way
did she want to be around to see the two of them cuddling and cooing.

Something to think about, she told herself, and happily sipping the world’s best coffee, she left the shop to enjoy her day off.

• • •

Lucas sat in his car and seriously considered throwing it into reverse and just backing the hell out.

All he’d wanted was a cup of coffee to go, and now he not only had no coffee, but wasn’t going. Because of
her
.

Mike Marconi and a dark-haired woman were standing directly outside the Leaf and Bean. Beside the brunette, a small, blond girl and a big golden retriever waited impatiently to get moving again.

Lucas’s gaze locked on Mike Marconi and, despite his better instincts, he looked her up and down in slow approval. For once, she wasn’t wearing her uniform of battered jeans and faded T-shirt. Instead, she wore tailored slacks and a silk shirt that clung lovingly to every curve. Her long blond hair hung loose to the middle of her back in a fall of sunlit waves. She swayed slightly as she talked and his gaze locked on the curve of her hip. Damn it, he’d thought her a distraction in the jeans and T-shirts. The way she looked now took the word
distraction
to a whole new level.

Then he noticed her tense smile.

Why tense?

Her body language was tightening up even as he watched her. She folded her arms across her chest, took a step back from the pretty, dark-haired woman she was talking to, and shook her head while she pointed vaguely across the street. Trying for an escape?

Grumbling, Lucas climbed out of his car and stalked the few steps separating him from the two women. Mike turned at his approach and gave him a smile usually
reserved by kids for the arrival of the ice cream truck on a hot summer day.

“Lucas! Hi. Sorry I made you wait,” Mike said, threading her arm through his.

He felt one eyebrow lift, but then he saw something in Mike’s eyes that had him going along with her. “No problem,” he said easily. “Haven’t been here long.”

“New friend?” The dark-haired woman winked at Mike, then smiled up at Lucas. “Hi. I’m Carla Wyatt. This is my daughter Reese and, well, the furry beast currently leaning against you is Abbey.”

“Nice to meet you,” he said and petted the dog before glancing at Reese when she tugged at his pants leg. “Yes?”

“Abbey’s gonna have a baby, just like Mommy.”

“Really?” He felt Mike’s fingers tighten on his arm just a little, so he straightened up and added, “Congratulations. To you and your dog.”

Carla laughed. “Thanks. It’s pretty exciting.” She laughed again. “Abbey’s probably not excited, but I am. Just left my husband in his office mumbling something about college funds and high quarterly yields or whatever.” She grabbed the little girl’s hand and started for the door of the coffee shop. “Now I’m going in to tell Stevie I win the baby bet. We were sure she was going to be the one pregnant first, because, you know, Paul’s working at home most of the time now and, well, Jackson’s been out of town a lot and—” She caught herself, laughed again and shrugged. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to give you the whole story. Just excited. You know?”

“Sure,” he said, though he didn’t have a clue. Lucas
had never really been the “fatherhood” type. He’d always been too focused on his work to think about spending any time with diapers and baby puke. But anyone with half an eye could see that Carla was excited enough for four people. So why wasn’t her good friend Mike happy for her?

He shifted a look at her, but she was watching Carla.

“Tell Jackson I said happy baby, okay?”

“You bet,” Carla said, still grinning. “And tell Sam I’ll call her tomorrow.”

“Right,” Mike said and backed away, drawing Lucas with her.

When they reached his car, Mike let him go, and then walked around to the passenger side and got in. Lucas stood there, looking at her through the windshield. Until she waved her fingers at him in a “come on” motion.

Once in the car, he glanced at her. “Why are you in my car?”

“Hello?” She blinked at him in stunned amazement. “Because I just told Carla Candellano that I was meeting you and you went along with it, so I had to get into the car or she’d think I lied to her.”

“You did lie to her.”

“Well, I don’t want
her
to know that.”

“I thought her name was Wyatt.”

“Is now, but she’ll always be a Candellano.” Mike tossed her purse onto the floor. “Italians may get married, but they never leave the family.”

“Like the Mafia family, you mean?”

“Stereotypes. I’m panicking and he’s talking sterotypes.” She sighed. “Not
the Family
. The family. Her family. The Candellanos.”

“Ah . . .”

“Are you going to fire up the engine any day soon?”

“Where are we going?”

“I’m not picky.” She propped her elbow on the window ledge and speared her fingers through her hair. “Let’s just get gone, okay?”

“
You
not picky?” He stared at her, dumbfounded. “The woman who changes every line and drawing on my damn blueprints
isn’t
picky? The woman who put
parrots
in my kitchen
isn’t
picky?”

“Funny.” She looked around furtively. “Should I drive?”

“Then do I get to know what’s going on?”

“Sure. Whatever. Later.”

Muttering things under his breath that his mother would have slapped him for, if she were still alive, Lucas started the car, put it in reverse, and backed out. As he steered the car down Main Street, he spared another quick look at her. Her eyes looked a little . . .
haunted
. He snorted. When the hell had he gotten so sensitive? Why was he noticing Mike’s eyes at all? And why the hell had he ridden in to her rescue like some modern-day knight on a two-door red charger?

Screw that.

He didn’t need this.

Scraping one hand across his jaw, he asked tightly, “Where do you want me to drop you?”

“My truck’s back in town.”

“Naturally. I’ll take you back.”

“No.” She shifted in her seat, turning her back on the ocean on her right, to look at him. “I’ll just go where you were going.”

“Not a good idea.” He shot her a quick glance and tried not to notice that her long blond hair flew about her head like a distorted halo. Which, considering her temperament, was a joke and a half.

Hell, he didn’t want her along. He’d left his house early this morning in an apparently futile attempt to keep her from “dropping by.” So what does he do instead? Pick her the hell up in town?

Was there a conspiracy of some sort going on around here? Some twisted sense of fate that kept throwing this woman at him, like darts at a target?

“Why? Robbing a bank?”

“Nothing so interesting. I’m buying furniture. You’d be bored.”

“Bored?” she repeated and gave him a grin that zapped something deep inside him. Something he was going to ignore completely. “How could I possibly be bored, shopping with someone else’s money?”

He sighed, threw the gear shift into fourth, and stepped on the gas as they took the coast road. “What was I thinking?”

The furniture salesmen followed Mike around the store like kids scrambling to be the first one into a carnival. They jockeyed for her attention, and when she smiled at one of them, they acted as though someone had handed them a fistful of cash.

Lucas couldn’t blame them. Even he was impressed. She knew furniture. She knew fabrics. And damned if she didn’t have an opinion about everything in the place.

Not that he cared. He knew what he wanted.

“I’ll take this one,” he said, and was forced to grab the arm of the salesman closest to him because the man was so focused on Mike he was hardly breathing.

“What? Yes. Oh sure.” The guy looked from Lucas to Mike and back again. “This one?”

“Yeah.” Lucas looked at it again. Mission style, the big bed would go along with the Spanish-style house. Plus, it was huge. Simplicity itself, the head and footboard were made of wide, polished oak slats and at each corner stood sturdy oak posts. Perfect.

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

He looked at Mike. She stared at the bed for a long minute and then looked up at him again and shook her head. “That’s all wrong.”

“How can a bed
I
want be the wrong bed for me?” He folded his arms across his chest and loomed over her. Not too difficult since the top of her head hit his chin. But the woman was nothing if not sure of herself.

She glared right back at him. “Just because the house is Spanish style doesn’t mean everything inside it has to be. Expand your horizon a little.”

The salesmen standing around her in a half-circle all nodded sagely as if she’d just stepped down from the Mount with two tablets in her arms.

“My bed. My house.”

“Your house,” she agreed. “Please, not that bed.”

“What the hell difference can it possibly make to you?”

“Oh please.” She waved one hand at her own face. “It would upset anyone with a sense of style. Could
there be a more boring bed? It looks like a high-school wood-shop project.”

One of the salesmen sniffed.

Mike ignored him.

“Why are you here again?” Lucas muttered.

“To save you from yourself apparently.” Mike smiled, took his arm, then parted the sea of salesmen with the wave of one hand. Steering him across the showroom, she slipped behind a set of leather sofas and a plaid recliner that looked damn comfortable and came to a stop in front of the bed
she
preferred.

“This is the one.”

Lucas was determined not to like it. Damn it, she’d stuck her nose into everything in his life in the last two months and the only thing he’d stood his ground on was his damn balcony in his own damn bedroom. Well, Mike Marconi was in for another disappointment. No way was he going to like the damn bed. No way was he caving in. He wanted the big, plain, sturdy bed and that’s just the one he was going to . . .

He looked at the one she’d chosen.

Bigger than the Mission style, the sleigh bed was solid mahogany and richly beautiful. “One of a kind,” the salesman closest to him muttered and Lucas believed him. The dark wood was burled on the head- and footboard and deeply carved into the grain was a twining spiral of ivy. The mattress was high and thick and damned if it didn’t look inviting.

“You like it.”

Yeah, he did. But he hated like hell to admit that to her. He glanced at Mike and the satisfaction on her face made him grit his teeth. “It’s all right.”

“Lie down, sir,” one of the salesmen prompted. “You’ll see. Your wife has selected one of our finest pieces. I’m sure you’ll be swayed. She seems to have excellent taste.”