Baby by Design: Designing Love Book One (Crimson Romance) (15 page)

“Fine. I screwed up,” he admitted with a steady gaze on Vin’s face. “Happy now?”

Vin slapped Tony’s shoulder. “Come on now. You know me better than that. I won’t be happy until you’re happy, man. Really happy, not this quasi bullshit you get by playing around.”

Tony flinched, rolling his shoulders forward like he’d been socked in the gut. “Why do you even care?”

Vin shrugged. “Don’t know. Maybe I miss the camaraderie of the Marines, all that living and working as one. Maybe that’s how I look at us. A team.” He wrinkled his wide nose. “Or maybe it’s because you’re the screw-up brother I always wished I had, the one I could beat into shape and then take all the credit for his success.” He grinned. “Yeah, let’s go with that.”

He was trying to make Tony feel better, but by the rocks in Tony’s gut, it wasn’t working. Tony was such a tool. While he was out here moping about Trish, Nonna was in there fighting for her life, a thought that prompted a curse beneath his breath.

“What if you’re wrong, Vin? What if there’s no big success? What if this is it? What if Nonna dies, Angie hates me, and Trish ends up with Stu?” He choked—and not on the name.

“So there’s more to this story?” Vin relaxed his posture, dropping his arms to his side and bringing his hands together at the waist, where he rubbed them together. “Let me tell you something about women. They need stability. If they think we’re playing around on them or on life, they’re not going to like it one bit. And a good woman will only take so much of that before she finds a man who can give her what she needs.”

Stu.
Tony clenched his hands into fists, but then he scoffed at Vin. What did he know about good women? “You’re so full of shit, man. Who are you to be giving me advice?”

Vin nodded. “Fair enough. Go on, laugh and point out all the things I did wrong where Carrie was concerned, but none of that changes the fact I’m right about this. I’ve lived and learned. Now it’s your turn, man. Your turn.” He poked a finger into the skin over Tony’s heart, emphasizing each word.

Damn.
Now was one time Tony wished he could skip a turn.

• • •

Trish placed her elbows on her mother’s dining table and dropped her face into her hands.

“I mean, multiple, giant tattoos. Darling, you had to know. You had to see them when…before you…” Her mother’s sentence broke apart—thank God—amid sniffles.

Was she really crying over this? Yes, Tony walks around her house shirtless, and he has tattoos. Big deal. Trish looked at her distraught mother. Apparently it was a big deal to her…and Stu…and the entire Perrault family, who by now had certainly spread the news to every member of Three Rivers Country Club, which was Delores DeVign’s greatest fear.

Trish, fortunately, didn’t share the same societally conscious genes. “You can’t measure the merit of a man by the number of his tattoos.” Funny words, so funny she bit back a snicker. Tony would appreciate the wit, but her mother? Not so much.

Delores whimpered. “Oh no? Then tell me how you can measure his merit, because I thought I raised you better than that. He’s a smooth talker, a pretty face. Oh, Trisha Anne. You let him touch you.”

This time Trish laughed. She didn’t attempt to hold it in. Her mother was going to need to double her current anxiety and anti-depression meds if Trish turned up pregnant.

“What about Stuart?” Dolores dabbed a white cloth napkin across her brow.

“What about him?” Trish said, sounding more casual than she felt. Ever since the showdown between Stu and Tony, her insides had been tangled like cheap embroidery thread.

“What do you mean, what about him? Are you really going to throw away another chance at him for a chance at this…hoodlum?”

Trish shook her head. Part of her problem was the unbelievable revelation that no romantic feelings remained for Stu. He’d stood on her doorstep, eager to see her, and all she could think was he looked older. She didn’t want another chance at Stu. And as far as Tony being a hoodlum…

“Tony is a great guy, Mother. You know that. You thought he hung the moon the night of the wedding. In fact, you’re partially to blame for this. ‘Stay,’” Trish said, mocking her mother. “‘One more dance, kids.’” Trish threw up her hands. “Didn’t you see the way we were dancing? You had to know where that would lead.”

Yes, Trish was tired of shouldering the blame for this crazy situation. It may have been her plan in the first place, but other people pushed her over the edge, pushy people like her mother and Tony.

Delores blushed and looked away from Trish, content to fiddle with the crystal salt and pepper shakers. “Yes, well, that was before I knew that he has tattoos.”

What the heck, she might as well get it all out of the way…in case she was pregnant…in case her mother was going to have to love a baby that was half the product of a man with tattoos. “He rides a motorcycle, too,” Trish said, bracing for the melodrama.

“Your father is going to…”

“What am I going to do?”

Trish inhaled long and loud before she looked at the willowy man, striding through the dining room. “Hi, Dad.”

“Darling.” He removed his golf hat before kissing the top of her head.

“Devlin, please, help me talk some sense into her.”

Devlin smiled. “Trisha, stripes do not go with plaids. There. I talked some sense into you.” He winked, like Tony loved to do.

Trish’s heart hiccupped.

Dolores growled. “The man has tattoos! Mary Perrault says her housekeeper’s son got hepatitis from tattoos.” She shuddered. “Devlin!”

“Is he good to you?”

“I’m sure he’s
good to her
. Did you see how he dances?”

“I meant, is he kind? Does he make you laugh? Does he help you? Of course, good dance moves don’t hurt either.”

If Trish could be biologically related to either one of her adopted parents, she would pick Devlin. In her own way, Trish loved Delores, but the woman was exhausting. She tried too hard, always wanting to fit in and be noticed. Devlin didn’t worry about those things, probably because he worked too much and too hard to notice. He was who he was, like it or not. Serious confidence and swagger came from living like that. The man was charismatic, decent, and true…just like Tony.

Trish made the connection so swiftly and easily, her head lightened. “Is Tony good to me?” she asked, repeating her father’s question, staring off into space. “Yes, he is. Very.”

He was kind enough to bring her diet caffeine-free soda. When she was around him, she couldn’t help but laugh. And he helped her. Big time. From work projects to this… She smoothed a palm below her belly button. Using her father’s criterion of kindness, laughter, and helpfulness, Tony was far better to her than Stu had ever been. Plus, Tony thought she was beautiful in a sweatshirt with messy hair. Even her mother wouldn’t go so far as to say that.

“Then I don’t see any harm in it, Dolores. Tell Mary Perrault to mind her own business and go make me a sandwich for lunch.”

Dolores gasped, but she regally rose from her chair and walked toward the kitchen.

“She only wants the best…for all of us. Try to remember that.” Devlin kissed Trish on the head again and playfully swatted her arm with his golf hat. “Stay for lunch if you can.”

Trish left five minutes later, after kissing her mother and assuring her for the thousandth time that tattoos were not a prediction of future prison time. She wasn’t sure if she managed to allay all her mother’s fears, but at the very least she propagated the charade should she be carrying Tony’s baby. Better to have her mother think the baby was born from something real than to ever know the truth. And as an added bonus, Dolores wouldn’t be heartbroken when the relationship didn’t “work out.”

Trish’s heart pinched and her stomach clenched. She dropped a hand from the steering wheel to rub away the unrest. The relationship couldn’t work out. Even if on some level she wanted it. Even if on that same level Tony wanted it, too. The idea that both of them were too comfortable in these romantic roles threw her for a loop as she stood in her foyer the other night, having just closed the door on Stu.

Yes, she and Tony shared a mutual attraction. Yes, he was good to her. Yes, he referred to them as
we
and
us
and acted awfully jealous when faced with Stu, but what were the chances they could make it work? What were the chances any couple could make any relationship work? Wasn’t it something pitiful like fifty percent? With Angie and a potential baby between them, they couldn’t take the risk. They didn’t need bad blood. Break-up blood.

Nope
, Trish thought, shaking her head. This was better, a little awkward, a little depressing, a little frustrating too, but certainly far from the misery she’d expect if they tried to be a couple and failed. At least she could pick up the phone and call him without worrying about the call disintegrating into name calling and general post-breakup venom. As if to prove it, she hit a button on her steering wheel and dialed up Tony.

He didn’t answer.

What should she make of that?

• • •

Tony looked at Angie striding toward him across Nonna’s narrow backyard, and then at the ringing phone in his hand.
Boss Lady
glowed on the screen. Talk about being between a rock and a hard place.

He sent the call to voicemail and lifted his butt off the picnic table bench so he could return the phone to his pocket.

“Ange.” He nodded.

“Tone.” She nodded back, and then she sat beside him with a huff. She hadn’t been this close to him on purpose in weeks. “This is stupid. I’m in there watching Ma and Aunt Connie help Nonna into the bathroom, and I’m pissed more at myself than I am at you for the distance between us. So can we quit being mad?”

“I’m not mad,” he said, leaning forward, elbows to widespread knees.

“Okay, then can I quit being mad?”

Angie’s version of an apology was more humorous than heartfelt. He glanced at her over his shoulder, and sure enough, she was squirming against the wooden bench and blinking uncomfortably into the sun.

“Yeah, you can quit being mad.” He spied a clover in the grass and stretched to reach it.

“Good.” She released a noisy exhale. “You can come back to work in the garage now. You’re paying rent for the space, you know?”

“I know.” He popped the head of the pinkish flower from its thin, green stem and tossed both pieces to the ground.

“No work?”

“I got work.” A recycled materials coffee table, as a matter of fact.

“Then get it done,” she said, rolling her right shoulder into his upper back.

Tony nodded, letting silence settle between them. Eventually birds on the power line squeaked. Tony was oddly thankful for the sound. It gave him something to focus on beside the things that remained unsaid, like Angie not mentioning Trish. He should be the one to ask if this truce extended to her, but after his conversation with Vin, Tony was all Trish-ed out. He didn’t want to think any more about helping her, about wanting her, about why she didn’t want
him
.

“How’s Trish?”

It figured. Tony straightened until his mid-back pressed against the weathered table. He dropped his elbows to the scratchy wood and lifted his chin to the blue sky. “You should know how she is. You’re her best friend.”

“Don’t be an ass, Tony. You’ve seen her more than me lately.”

“Whose fault is that?” Maybe it wasn’t nice and all, after Angie came out to make things right, but still…he didn’t like the idea of Angie being rude to Trish.

Angie leaned forward and assumed Tony’s former position, elbows to knees. She glared at him over her shoulder, her hard-set face framed by pitch-black hair. Her eyes were the most ominous black sometimes. “What do you want me to do, bleed? I said I’m sorry.”

Tony chuckled. “No you didn’t. You asked if you could quit being mad. That’s not the same thing.”

“Fine, then. I’m sorry.”

She wasn’t looking at him, so he didn’t know if she was sincere, but those words coming out of her mouth were an oddity, so he decided to give her the benefit of the doubt.

“You owe the apology to Trish.”

“Probably.”

More silence. Tony thought about getting up and going inside, saying his goodbyes, but he dreaded every goodbye since Nonna’s diagnosis. Each one felt like it could be their last, the way she pinched his cheeks and stared hard into his eyes. Intense. So he avoided goodbyes, prolonged them, anyway he could.

“Who’s Stu?” The question spit from his lips like skunked beer, and immediately he felt like a moron. Avoiding goodbye wasn’t worth acting like this.

“Never mind,” he said, standing.

“She told you about Stu?”

He stopped mid-step and faced Angie. As much as the conversation made him uncomfortable, some part of him wanted to know. “I met the guy. Didn’t like him.”

“He’s back? Holy shit.”

“Back from where?” With a suit like that and a side-part to boot, it sure as hell wasn’t prison, unless he was a white collar criminal. Tony could dream.

“He moved to Paris to front his father’s European operations. A couple years ago, I think. Maybe three. Where’d you meet him?”

“At her house. He stopped by while I was there.” Tony couldn’t keep the sneer from his lips.

“Shit,” Angie said again, her eyes widening.

“You don’t say.” Tony dropped his head and shoulders, and spied the decapitated clover littering the grass at his feet. What the hell was he doing? This was supposed to be about giving Nonna the ultimate joy. How had it turned into Tony being…?

“Wait a minute, are you jealous? Worried? You are. Both.” Angie stood. “You think she’s getting back with Stu? Did she tell you she was getting back with Stu? I thought things were good between you guys.”

Too many questions. They mixed with the questions already crowding his mind. “Yeah, sorry. I’m done, Ange. No more. I gotta get outta here. Go for a long ride. I’m gonna clear my head. See you tomorrow.”

He didn’t wait for her protests. He trampled grass beneath his feet until he reached the backdoor. With a deep breath, he opened the screen and stepped inside, ready to face another goodbye, hoping this one wouldn’t be the last.