Birthday Wishes - The List: Book 1 (2 page)

“Mom, I’d like you to meet Luca. Luca
, my mother, Carmen Zapata, along with every other member of my family.” I gestured to the room at large. This was not ideal circumstance for his introduction to the family. Of course, until Ricky got involved, the only thing I’d planned to introduce Luca to was my pussy.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Zapata.” Luca released me and took my mother’s hand in his. Rather than a traditional handshake, he stepped in and kissed the back of her hand.

My fifty-six year old mother giggled and I just about puked on my shoes. I didn’t want to watch Luca charm my mom. The only woman at that party he needed to be concerned with charming was me, and my underwear was ready to slide off without the extra effort.

I grabbed hold of the top edge of Luca’s belt and pulled him away from my mom. I raised up on my tiptoes to growl in his ear. “Watch it, buddy.”

He laughed and smoothly rearranged our bodies until we were joined like ballroom dancers and he spun me away from the cake table. “Dance with me.”

He
led me around the dance floor in a perfect box step waltz, navigating around other couples with ease, and I relaxed into him. Inhaling his spicy musk, I could almost forget what a cluster-fuck his showing up here really was. Almost.

“You shouldn’t have come here.” I wasn’t looking forward to the questions I would have to answer about him later, but I wasn’t an idiot
, either. A ridiculously hot man asked me to dance, and it turned out he could do it without stomping my toes to oblivion, I was going to take full advantage. “I planned to meet you later.”

He
pressed his mouth, open and hot, against the side of my head, his lips against my hair as he said, “I know, but I really,
really
wanted to see you sooner. God, what I wouldn’t give to get you alone right now.“

“Jesus. You cannot say things like that when my mother is watching us dance.” I groaned in protest. I was totally up for abandoning the party, but he seemed content to circle the dance floor and torture me with his words. Frankly, I didn’t think my panties could get any wetter. A couple more laps and I’d pull him into the ladies room to help me remove them.

“Mmm. How about we wait for her to go home, then we take care of number three?”

F
antasy number three that we’d shared when we met online on an adult website was sex in a public place. Not something I wanted to explore with my entire family in the room.

He
dug his fingers into my side and my dress hitched up in the gather of his hand. “This qualifies as public.”

I took a step back. I couldn’t have that conversation surrounded by people who had changed my diaper as a baby. “Not here.”

Luca smiled that charming smile that made me wonder why I still had clothes on. “Sorry. I’ve been thinking about you all week, and--but you’re right. This isn’t the right place.”

I looked around the large
room.

"
It could be the right place, but it’s definitely not the right group of people.”

Luca held his arms open to me. “Come on. Don’t leave me hanging on the dance floor.”

If I had my way, he wouldn’t be hanging at all. I respected the effort Luca was making to cool things down, so I didn’t share my thoughts. Or grab his package, an impulse I’d been stifling since he pulled me into our dance.

“It really is your birthday,” he said, a question in his tone, but not the words.

“Yes. Thirty as of eight this morning.” I refused to be one of those women who lied about her age. I may not like getting older, but I wouldn’t let it turn me into a harpy clinging to long gone youth. I was thirty. I’d worked hard to make it through those years, and I wasn’t going to deny a single one of them.

“When you said you wanted to work on your birthday wish list, I thought you meant it metaphorically, not literally.” He led me smoothly through a song change. He was so comfortable on his feet I couldn’t help but wonder what it would take to unravel him just a bit.

“Nope, no metaphors here.”

“Had I known, I would have wrapped the package a little better.”

I looked at his crotch reflexively and pictured his cock with a ribbon and bow tied around it. “It’s not too late, you know.”

He
placed a finger under my chin and tipped my head up. “Your mom is watching us.” He was totally laughing at me. Busted checking out my date’s goods by my mom. Unfortunately, my eyes needed to stay above the waist for the rest of the evening.

“Fabulous. One more thing for her to ask about.”

“I created family problems by coming here?”

“Problem is too strong
a word, but since my divorce. . .” I let the sentence hang. How could I explain my mom’s interest without making her look like a pushy nut job? In fairness, she was a little bit of a nut job, but I think that was just my biological clock ticking. I couldn’t hear it yet, but somehow it’d tapped into my mom’s system instead of mine. Children were not high on my list of concerns, but grandchildren topped hers.

“Until your brother explained, I thought you were the one who gave me the address.”

“I figured. Ricky likes to play. He didn’t mean any harm.” I gave my baby brother a raft of shit at any available opportunity, but just like any older sister, I’d be damned if I let someone else judge him harshly. It was my job to defend.

“He cares about you.”

“Mmm.” What else could I say? Admitting we liked one another is not something Ricky and I would ever do willingly. “You should tell me something about yourself,” I said, “like what you do for a living.” My mom was going to ask and I couldn’t just say
I don’t know, Mom. I want to fuck him, not marry him
.

“I’m an actuary.” He smiled like I wouldn’t know what that meant. I didn’t.

“What the hell is that?”

“Half mathematician, half fortune-teller.” He shrugged.

His answer told me nothing, but I nodded like I understood. It sounded boring and I was certain the details would make it worse.

“I’m a caterer.” I didn’t clarify. Everyone knows what a caterer is. No mysteries there.

“Did you cater your own party?”

“Looks like it.” The chairs had Zapata and Carelli stamped on the back of them. It didn’t take much of a leap to conclude everything else came from our warehouse. “Rachel, the one cutting the cake earlier, is my partner.”

“Tell me where we met. Someone is bound to ask.”

He
was right, my mom would want to know. I didn’t have the wherewithal to remember a created history, so I opted for the truth. “We met online.” We could clean up the details. She didn’t need to know
everything
.

He
pulled me close and pressed his lips to my ear. “Heads up. Here comes your mom.” He turned until our positions were reversed and I could see her approach over his shoulder.

“Oh, hell. Are you ready? She’s coming for you, not me.” What better place to interrogate Luca than on the dance floor where he was a captive audience of one.

As predicted, my mom smiled like a shark and tapped me on the shoulder. “May I cut in?”

“Um.” I didn’t want to sacrifice Luca, even if he did deserve it for coming here in the first place. Actually, no, in that equation, I wanted to sacrifice Ricky for inviting him.

“I’d be delighted.” Luca released me with a wink and kiss to my cheek, then swept my mom up into his arms and away into the dancing crowd. I missed his heat instantly.

Rachel was on me the second I stepped off the dance floor. “So, dish.”

I sighed. At this point, my dirty little secret was public knowledge, there was no point holding back. Rachel had an annoying habit of getting what she wanted from me regardless of how much I resisted. It was time for disclosure. “I met him online.”

“Really?” If we’d been talking on the phone, I would have sworn there was drool dripping from
her mouth, but I was looking right at her. Drool free zone. “I thought all the guys on the Internet were creeps who wear beer-stained wife beaters and have giant bellies.”

She was
quoting me word for word. That was the reason I’d given her a few months ago for not trying an online dating service with her. The real reason I’d resisted was currently twirling my mother around the dance floor.

I shrugged, but didn’t respond. I was busted. There was no graceful way out.

“He’s gorgeous. When did you start dating and why didn’t you tell me about it?”

“We’re not, um, dating exactly.”

“Then what
exactly
are you doing?”

That was the magic question and the answer made me blush when I even thought about it. How in the world was I supposed to explain our arrangement to my best friend? I could already feel the heat rising in my cheeks. “We have a
. . .mutual agreement.”

“Come on, Mari. Stop hedging and tell me what’s going on.”

“We made a list and we’re going to. . .work through it together.” I could barely get the words out. When Luca and I were discussing the details online, it seemed like the perfect solution. I wanted, no
needed
to get laid, but had absolutely no desire to enter into another relationship. My life was too busy and my divorce had been too unpleasant. In the past few months, Dillon and I had figured out how to be friends again, but we were truly ugly to one another when our marriage ended. I didn’t want to ever go through that again if I could help it. Still, as logical as my agreement with Luca seemed when I was sitting at home, alone with my computer and a picture that may or may not have been the real Luca (it was!), it seemed downright sordid when I tried to explain it to Rachel.

She
folded her arms over her chest and raised an eyebrow, a move that I had never been able to successfully replicate. “A list of
what
?”

“Jesus, Rachel, don’t make me say it. You know what I’m talking about.”

“So you met this guy, a perfect stranger, online and made a freaky booty call list? And now you’re going to act it out together?” Her smile grew with each word until all I could see was teeth. It scared me how much she was enjoying this conversation.

“When you put it like that it sounds so—
”

“Accurate?” She laughed louder than I thought necessary.

I shot her a shut-the-fuck-up look and said, “Dirty. You make it sound dirty.”

She kept right on laughing. “That’s because it
is
dirty. And wonderful! Good for you.”

“Fuck off.” I tried to sound angry. Here was my best friend laughing at my very practical solution to a very real problem. Bitch. Except I wasn’t angry. I was relieved. If she could laugh, then later we’d be able to talk about it without blushing and giggling. And I was in uncharted territory. I wanted
her advice, twisted though it may be.

“Ah, don’t be mad.”
She pulled me into a brief hug, but quickly released me in favor of more laughing. “And now your mom has her claws in him. Oh, God, it just gets better.”

“I know. So could you stop laughing and
help
me?”

“I don’t know what you
’re worried about. He looks like he’s holding his own.”

I looked to where
she gestured and saw Luca guiding my mom off the dance floor and in our general direction. She was laughing and looked more relaxed than I’d seen her in a while.

“Mari, Luca tells me he has big plans for you tonight. Why don’t you kids get out of here?” My mom spoke with sincerity, but all I heard was double entendre. I knew she didn’t mean it the way it sounded, but I couldn’t help but blush even harder.

He held out his hand. “Shall we?”

I took his hand, waved goodbye to my friends and family, and followed Luca out into the night.

The downside of meeting my online hookup and discovering that he’s hot enough to melt my panties off was that his hotness wasn’t enough to override my basic safety training. I wanted to be alone with him
right now!
, but I wasn’t willing to leave my car behind and ride with him. Nothing took the punch out of a storming out like having to crawl back in and ask the bad date for a lift.

I followed
his tail lights illegally close from the party to the hotel. Granted, I’d already programmed the location of our rendezvous—The Heathman Hotel in downtown Portland—but for some reason it seemed critical that I stay within sight. I didn’t want him to be a dream and disappear.

We left our cars with the street
-side valet and walked through the main entrance hand in hand. Nothing like adding a legitimate air to an illicit affair. He’d previously checked in, so we bypassed the front desk and went directly to the elevator.

When the doors slid shut,
he said, “Your family seems nice.”

I shrugged.
Personally, I’d rather we skipped the small talk and got straight to the fucking. He seemed like a nice guy and I was sure he could chat me up as well as anyone, but why bother? We didn’t meet online for dating and time with the family
.
I smiled and leaned in to take advantage of the otherwise empty elevator. I’d wanted to kiss him all night, so why not?