Baby by Design: Designing Love Book One (Crimson Romance) (3 page)

Trish held in a whimper and distracted herself with Angie and Tony’s bickering. She’d known them long enough to know it was all in fun. Sure, they grated on each other’s nerves, but when it came down to it, they loved each other, because they were made of the same parts. She suspected love like that felt different than any love she’d ever known.

“Watch your step, Ange. Slow and easy,” Tony called.

As they maneuvered down the ramp, Trish tried to focus on the black plastic covering the furniture, hoping for a peek at what was underneath. But as Tony passed, she noticed what was underneath his shirt sleeve instead.

Tattooed Italian words circled his lean, chiseled bicep. Each letter rode the swell of muscles as he hoisted the chair. She wondered what the words meant, and she stared harder, trying to pronounce them in her head, only to find herself wondering what it would feel like to have those muscles contracting beneath her hand.

“The door,” Angie yelled.

Crap
. “Yep.” Trish scrambled ahead of them to open the front door.

Angie brushed by first. Then Tony, and as he did, he looked at Trish and smiled. “You’re gonna like what you see.”

Trish watched him walk down the hall, his blue jeans slinging low across his hips. Yeah, she liked what she saw—a lot more than she should. Talk about a waste of time. The man was nowhere near father material. If she wanted to have fun and forget about her little lists and ticking biological clock, then Tony was her man, but…

“Are you waiting for a big reveal?” Angie called from the other room. “Get in here.”

Trish blinked, realizing she was still standing in the foyer, door open wide along with her mouth. “I’m coming,” she said, rushing down the hall, shaking her head.

She’d always been hyper-focused on her goals and single-minded when it came to achieving them, but this recent uptick in time spent dwelling on children was taking its toll. She didn’t need to be worried about babies and baby daddies. She needed to be worried about finishing the Jorgen’s home before they returned from Sweden, and finding a replacement date for her cousin’s wedding. She could be happy without a baby. She
was
happy without a baby.

Get a grip
, she thought as she turned the corner and walked into the living room. But any chance of that evaporated when she saw Tony sitting cross-legged in the wingchair.

“So?” He grinned, propping his elbows on the shimmering, striped fabric, showing off the large star and vines tattooed on the underside of his forearm. “You like?”

God, she smiled, because there was something about the man that made her giddy. Aside from the beautiful face and delicious body, there was this aura that drew her in and wrapped her up in a blanket of happiness she wished she could take with her wherever she went.

The chair was nice, too.

“Hurry up. Let’s get the other one.” Angie clomped out of the room.

Tony stood, still smiling, and turned to the chair. “Personally, I think it’s some of my best work.”

“Me too.” Trish stood beside him, breathing in warm air with a hint of woodsy cologne. She imagined sweat from the labor diluted the scent, and she wondered what he smelled like the night of Nonna’s party, when he was impeccably dressed. She snapped her head to look at him, imagining him in that suit again. “Would you…?” But her mouth slammed shut before the rest of the stupid idea escaped.

“Would I what?” One eyebrow raised in her direction.

Now she’d done it. The scattered matter she called a brain had finally made a fatal mistake. Taking Tony Corcarelli—no matter how good he looked in a suit—to her cousin’s wedding was not a practical idea. And yet, as he stood there, smiling down at her with a gleam of mischief in his eye, she couldn’t help but think he was just what she needed, a break from this exhausting pursuit of pregnancy. She deserved that once in a while. Didn’t she?

“Holy hell!” Angie’s voice echoed through the house. “A little help out here.”

Trish shook away the heady thoughts and turned, walking toward the door. “Never mind, let’s help her before she blows. I can’t have her blowing. We have twenty eight-panel doors to hang over at Meyer’s.”

• • •

Tony followed Trish into the hallway, watching her dirty blonde hair swoosh between her shoulder blades. The minute his brain registered the dirty in blonde, his gaze dropped to her ass, swinging against the fabric of her mid-thigh sweater. Her uptight posture and coordinated clothing made him smile, because over the last two years he’d learned he had a knack for flustering her. If she were anyone other than his sister’s best friend and the woman who contracted his upholstery work, he’d have flustered her good and hard a long time ago.

“Tony, you’re screwing with my schedule.” Angie stood on the tailgate, one hand on her hip, the other hand wrapped around her phone. “And now you’re going to have to wait fifty-three seconds.”

“For what?”

“Sh.” Angie raised the phone to her face. “No way. Mother f…” Her fingers flew across the screen. “Come on. Come on. Come on.” She tapped her foot so hard against the bottom of the truck, the metal rattled. “Nope.” Her fingers raced again. “Ha! Yes. Yes. Yes! Ten, nine, eight. Crap.” Again with the typing until finally, with a fist pump, she leaped off the tailgate and landed in the driveway. “I won!”

“What?” Trish asked.

“You’re looking at the proud owner of a 1948 Cadillac convertible.”

“Sweet.” If there was one thing Tony and Angie agreed upon, it was the value of a sick set of wheels.

“I’m glad you think so, because you’re going to need to help with the upholstery. This one is red and according to the picture Mom gave me, we need white.” She walked back up the ramp and into the truck.

Tony followed. “Why do
we
need white? It’s your car.”

Angie bent over at the waist and hooked her hand beneath the chair. “Let’s go. Lift. Nonna and Nonno had their first date in a black Caddy convertible, but with white upholstery. This is my contribution to her wish list.”

Damn.
Tony lifted the chair into his arms and walked backward down the ramp, all the while thinking he was once again the slacker of the bunch. “I can help with the seats.”

“Good.” Angie smiled. “She’s going to flip.”

“I can’t believe you guys are doing this. How cool.” Trish held open the front door.

Tony tossed her a
thank you
with a nod of his head. The wish list was cool, and he wanted to be a part of the coolness, but how cool was it if his only contribution was being the upholstery boy to Angie’s big idea?

Nobody appreciated the upholstery boy.

“Tony, this stuff is unbelievable. You are a rock star.” Trish was standing next to the first wingchair, having bypassed Tony and Angie to enter the living room through the dining room instead of the hall. She stood there beaming at the chair, and then at him like he’d hung the moon.

Okay, so nobody appreciated the upholstery boy except Trish DeVign. He could do a lot worse. Still, that wasn’t going to impress Nonna.

“Done.” Angie swiped her hands as she walked toward the hall. “I’ll be in the truck, Tone. Give me a few minutes so I can call this guy about paying for the car and getting it delivered.”

“Thank you,” Trish called. “I’ll see you at Meyer’s.”

Tony turned back to the chairs and Trish, who had removed the plastic covering and settled onto the cushion, crossing her long legs and bouncing one barefoot with red-painted toes in his direction. As she sat, she rubbed her palms over the arms of the chair and breathed deeply enough that he risked hypnosis by the rise and fall of her breasts. Not the sort of thing he wanted to notice about a woman he couldn’t pursue.

“You really do great work.”

He smiled and stepped closer, because he was a gentleman who’d just been complimented. “Thank you.” He squatted and ran his hand along the nailhead trim, grazing her covered calf muscle, because he was a guy who liked the way her face flushed whenever he stood too close. “I’m glad you like it. When you’re in need of my skills again, you know where to find me.” And then he stood, taking two steps back toward the hall, because even a screw-up like him knew where to draw the line.

She sat ramrod straight, gripping the arms of the chair. “Tony, I need a favor.”

He stopped. “What’s up?”

“I need a…guest for my cousin’s wedding on Saturday. Would you happen to be interested?”

“I take it the good doctor wasn’t so good.”

A nervous chuckle escaped her lips. “Not good at all. And I RSVP’d for two with the hope that he’d still be around, and now my mother is driving me crazy, saying I can’t embarrass myself and her by cancelling this late in the game. I’m stuck.”

It was Tony’s turn to chuckle. “So you want me to unstick you?”

She shrugged, managing cute, coy, and sexy with one pouty-mouthed look. “Would you?”

If he was sane and sensible, no, he wouldn’t. “Absolutely. What time should I pick you up?”

“Thank you,” she breathed on a noisy exhale. “We should leave at three, but I’ll drive.”

“You don’t trust my driving?”

“It’s a wedding, Tony, and I’m wearing a dress. You should wear a suit, like the one you wore to Nonna’s party.” He liked the way she pulled her bottom lip between her teeth when she paused for a breath. “Dress clothes can’t be worn on the back of a motorcycle.”

An image of her creamy leg stretching out from beneath a short skirt and hanging alongside the chrome of his bike made his skin itch. He grinned to cover the not-so-innocent thought. “No bike. Got it. I’ll pick you up at three.” And before she could protest, he turned around and walked away.

He’d never been the kind of guy to let a woman down, and that was a blessing and curse. Now he needed a car worthy of escorting Trish DeVign to a family wedding, in addition to a grand gesture for Nonna’s wish list.

Talk about pressure.

Tony parked his bike in a spot marked
Reserved for Joyce Richards
. Of course he wasn’t Joyce Richards, but he knew his cousin’s executive assistant wouldn’t need the spot until she returned from vacation. Hitching his right leg behind him, he swung his boot over the seat and nodded at a well-dressed businessman who eyed him suspiciously. No doubt the stuffed suit thought Tony was associated with one of Vin’s criminal clients.

Just for fun, Tony picked up his pace, riding the guy all the way to the elevators, and then, at the last possible second, Tony darted right and took the stairs. He was still chuckling when he pushed against the plaque that read
Vincent Spada Law Offices, State and Federal Criminal Defense
.

One foot inside the cushy office and the receptionist’s blue eyes peered over a high-back desk. “Hiya, Tony.”

He propped elbows on the shiny wood and smiled. “Hey, Mavis. You’re looking beautiful today.”

She rolled back her chair and smoothed a palm over her giant ball of a belly. “I feel like a beached whale. Swear to God.”

“It’ll be worth it.”

“How would you know?”

“Big family, remember? And that’s what all my aunts say.”

She grimaced. “I hope so.” And then with a sigh, she pointed over her head to the hallway behind her. “Vinnie’s in the boardroom alone. Go ahead and go back, but be careful. He’s in a mood.”

Which could only mean one thing. Vin lost a case, and Vin, a former marine, hated to lose.

The boardroom door was opened a crack, so Tony nudged it wider to see Vin holding a flimsy-looking putter between two gorilla-like hands and aiming for a tipped-over plastic cup.

“You lose one?” Tony asked as he entered the room and closed the door behind him.

“Yep.” Vin dropped the putter and kicked the golf ball, which missed the cup and collided with the baseboard on the far side of the room. “I hate to lose.”

“It happens to the best of us.”

“Right. I suppose you understand what it feels like to watch a man be locked away for a crime he didn’t commit. It’s probably like screwing up the vinyl on a kitchen chair.” He slapped a palm to his forehead and groaned. “I’m sorry. That was lousy. Even for me.”

“Don’t worry about it. You’re upset.” The words stung, but they gave Tony something to use as leverage.

Vin grabbed his suit coat off the back of a chair before he sat, taking a few audible inhales and exhales, like he was trying to clear his mind. “So what’s up? Any changes with Nonna?”

Tony sat, too. “Nope. Not that I know of. I saw Angie an hour ago and she didn’t say anything.”

“Good.”

“Yep.”

Vin whipped out his phone and tapped his fingers on the screen. “I tracked down those Italian tenors she loves through a colleague, and I’m trying to book a private performance.”

Damn.
More wish list talk. The family was determined to send Nonna out in style. Tony nodded at Vin, despite the knot in his gut.

“Have you figured out what you’re going to do?”

“Working on it,” Tony said, avoiding eye contact so as not to see the telltale stare. Vin, more than anyone else in the family, wanted to see Tony get his act together. A marine wasn’t happy until the rest of the world towed the line.

“Why don’t ya put some of that money to good use and buy her a newly discovered solar system. Name it Corcarelli? Ya know? Preserve the last name for posterity.”

Tony glanced at Vin who leaned back in his chair, staring at the overhead florescent lights, resting huge hands across his belly. By the blank expression on his face, Tony knew he was serious.

It wasn’t the first time someone rode him about his familial duty to have a son and preserve the Corcarelli name. Tony’s father had been the only Corcarelli male, and it seemed legendary that he fathered the only son. Every once in a while, someone reminded Tony that if he didn’t have a son too, he’d take the Corcarelli name to the grave. Nice thought, huh? But a star seemed corny, not to mention insulting. He couldn’t imagine Nonna calling it an even trade.

“Thanks for the idea, but I have a few of my own,” Tony lied. “You’ll be the first to know when I decide which one to go with.”

Vin sniffed loudly, calling bull on Tony’s diversion tactic.