Finder's Keeper (12 page)

“Which one is he?” she hissed in Mia’s ear during the Lord’s Prayer.

“Shut up. I’m praying.”

“Oh please. You barely know the words.”

“Then I’d better learn them if I’m going to be your daughter’s religious compass. Be quiet and concentrate on Marley’s immortal soul.”

“I’d rather concentrate on the guy who might be able to help my sister get laid some time in the next decade.”

The priest slanted them a look, but didn’t even lose his rhythm. You had to respect that in a clergyman.

“Which one is he?”

“Oh for Chri—crying out loud.” Mia pretended to search the congregation. As if she hadn’t locked eyes on Chase the second she walked in the room. “There in front. Between Nonna and Zia Anna.”

A combination which inspired no small amount of dread. The pair of them had long since used up their lifetime allotment of shame, achieving the age when they could do or say just about anything with impunity. Nonna caught Mia looking their direction and gave a hearty thumbs up, which quickly turned into a suggestive hand gesture she would have preferred not to know her grandmother even knew, let alone could perform with such enthusiasm.

“
That’s
your date?” Gina yelped—thankfully at a whisper. “Is he a gigolo?”

“Gina
.
”
Insulting as it was, she couldn’t really blame her sister for the question. She’d known from the start that no one in her family would believe she could land a guy like Chase. “He’s a friend doing me a favor. That’s all,” she said, giving up the idea of conning Gina. She could never have pulled it off.

“Since when do you have friends like
that
?”

“I didn’t pay him, Gina.”

Silence. Then, “Nonna looks like she’s in love. Are you sure it was smart to bring a prize stallion for Show and Tell?”

“I know it was stupid, but he wanted to come and…” Mia gave an exasperated huff. “He can talk me into things, Gina. One second I’m making a rational argument and the next thing I know he’s getting his way. It’s uncanny.” Chase flashed her a grin from the first pew. “And annoying.”

“You’re kidding.” Her sister’s gaze pinged back and forth between Chase and Mia. “Can he really talk you out of reason?”

“Don’t get too excited. He’s a friend. Just a friend.” She elbowed her sister. “Focus on the baptism. Enjoy the moment. This is a crucial day for your daughter’s immortal soul and all that crap.”

“Huh,” Gina muttered, continuing to stare at Chase.

Mia held out as long as she could before curiosity overrode good sense. “What
huh
?”

“Does he know he’s just a friend? Cuz the way he’s looking at you…”

“He isn’t looking at me. He’s watching the ceremony. Something you might want to consider participating in.”

“He’s looking at you,” Gina said with absolute conviction. “Are you wearing the watch?”

Mia ignored the question, grateful it was her turn to step forward and hold Marley over the basin of holy water.

Just a couple more hours. They’d slip out immediately after dinner with the family. Chase would have a read on the watch because she had
never
wanted the damn thing as much as she did right now. She’d have it back by this evening and everything could go back to normal. She just had to maintain damage control for a few more hours.

As she watched, Nonna slipped her own engagement ring off one gnarled finger and pressed it into Chase’s palm, launching into what could only be explicit instructions on how to properly execute a proposal.

Mia cringed, wondering what a girl had to do to get struck down by lightning.

Chapter Twelve

Commando Courtship

Chase couldn’t remember the last time he’d had this much fun in church. Of course, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in a church so that might have something to do with it, but his dim memory of religious experiences wasn’t nearly this entertaining.

Mia’s family members were all cheerfully insane.

The octogenarian sybarites seated on either side of him had pinched his ass so many times before they sat down it probably looked polka-dotted. Mia’s brothers and cousins had alternated between laughing suggestions that he make an honest woman of her and if-you-lay-one-finger-on-her death threats that made contract killers look warm and cuddly. And adding to the entertainment factor was Mia, standing at the front of the church, arguing in whispers with her sister during the ceremony and shooting him desperate looks.

Chase’s finely honed sense of the ridiculous was lapping up every second of it.

The ceremony ended abruptly. Mia handed off the baby and descended to his side at light speed. She helped her grandmother and great-aunt to their feet, foisted them off on a loitering relative and marched him toward the door before he could do more than wink at the sweet biddies. Her arm wrapped tight around his, dragging him along. She nodded at family members who called out to her or just ogled the pair of them, never breaking stride as she hauled him up the aisle.

“Change of plans,” she muttered hurriedly. “We’re friends. Just friends. Did you say anything to anyone to contradict that?”

“No one asked, actually. They were all too busy issuing death threats and coaching me on the best way to propose.”

She groaned. “What we lack in subtlety, we make up for in enthusiasm.”

Chase laughed. “So what happened? Why have I been relegated to the Friend Zone?”

“You have to ask? Did you not notice my grandmother slipping you her engagement ring?”

“I gave it back to her. She just thought it would look great on your finger.”

“Mary, Mother of God.”

“For someone who isn’t religious, you sure swear like a Catholic.”

“It’s environmental. You try growing up Corregianni and not appealing to the holy mother for mercy.”

“How did your ex-boyfriends escape unscathed? Or are they buried in a basement somewhere for breaking your heart?”

“They aren’t usually this aggressive. It’s the wa—” She grabbed the bare skin of his wrist, latching on with surprising strength. “Here, try to find the watch now. I’m motivated.”

There was a wealth of meaning in that last word, but Chase didn’t bother trying to pick through it. Instead, he opened the door to his gift—and was nearly knocked on his ass by the flood of intangibles that pushed through on a fizzy mimosa tide.

Get them to back off, accept me, stop trying to force Chase, let him want me on his own terms, if he could ever want me…

He jerked back, rubbing a hand across his face. “Sorry.” His voice sounded choked, raw. It felt like the worst kind of violation, being inside her desires—especially when he had somehow become a part of them. She was so restrained, so reserved—more inclined to lean away from him than into his touch. From the outside he would never suspect her interest or the powerful vulnerability attached to it.

He couldn’t keep invading her wishes. He felt dirty for sneaking inside her thoughts, even as an inescapable satisfaction churned in his gut at the knowledge that she was attracted to him.

Mia cursed. “What am I doing wrong?”

“You—” He broke off, not sure he could answer that question. “It’s too tied up in your emotions, I think.”

She shook her head. “That doesn’t make any sense. I’m the least emotional person you’ll ever meet.”

“Not about this, you aren’t.”

She swore again, yanking him toward the car as the parking lot filled with chattering Corregiannis. “When we get to my parents’ house, we stick together. Got it? Don’t let them separate us. And no proposals. Just friends.”

“If I had a nickel for every time a girl had to give me that speech…”

“I’m sorry about all this.” Her face screwed up in a remarkably expressive picture of contrition for a woman who believed she was unemotional. “Bet you’re wishing you’d made a different bargain right about now.”

“Are you kidding? I can’t remember the last time an eighty-year-old woman groped me. And now two in one day? Classic.”

“I hope you still feel that way after you’ve been stuffed with cannelloni.”

Chase snorted. “I think that’s one of the threats your brothers gave me. No, I think it was
skin you, stuff you and serve you as cannelloni if you hurt her
.”

“Oh God. They’re really very sweet. I swear.”

“The big one—Joey?—looks like he can bench press a truck. I’m pretty sure he can take me.”

“He’s a pussy cat. Cries like a baby at chick flicks.”

“I think in the interest of not being beaten to a bloody pulp, I will pretend I don’t know that.”

“The ones to watch out for are the women. Sure, they look all sweet and innocent, but don’t let that fool you. The women wear the pants.”

Chase seriously considered making a crack about letting Mia wear the pants as long as he could get into them whenever he wanted, but the rigid line of her spine shut him up. She didn’t look like she could handle a joke right now without snapping in two.

They reached her car and he opened the door for her just as someone called out her name from the church steps. Mia waved once and dove into the car, escaping from the loving bosom of her family with an air of desperation. By the time he slipped into the passenger seat, she had the engine running and in gear. He barely had the door closed before the car started rolling. And he thought he’d been joking about the getaway car…

Mia was tense in the driver’s seat, gripping the wheel firmly at ten and two, her spine so straight it didn’t brush the seatback. She looked ruthlessly composed—as long as he didn’t notice the way her mouth pressed in on itself in an unrelenting line.

“You seemed to enjoy yourself,” she grumbled.

“I did,” he admitted, surprising himself with the depth of truth in that statement.

He hadn’t known he had expectations, but now, looking back, he realized he had almost planned on being uncomfortable. Miserable, but hiding it behind his usual obfuscations. It wasn’t until the reality of his enjoyment startled him that he realized he’d scheduled awkward discomfort into his emotional palate for the day.

Family gatherings, they were supposed to be painful, right? He was supposed to be unable to see anyone happy and in love without remembering the day a senseless accident had taken everything he loved—his parents, his brother, his brother’s pregnant wife and his own fiancé in one fell swoop.

But Mia’s family was a force of nature. He couldn’t compare them to his own—and the fact that they didn’t know about his tragedy made all the difference. They didn’t look at him as if they were checking to see if he was all right. And so he was all right.

Their ignorance was his bliss.

Mia slowed and pointed to a house as they passed. “That’s it. My folks’ place.”

“Nice.” A sprawling two-story stucco, it looked like an Italian villa that had been picked up and dropped into an American suburb. At least from what he managed to see before Mia zipped around the corner. “We aren’t going in?”

“If we park in the driveway, we’ll be blocked in until midnight.” She pulled the car to the curb directly in front of a Craftsman cottage with a prominently displayed
No Parking
sign. “The Shumakers have known me since I was five. They never have us towed,” Mia said when he arched a brow at the signage. She turned off the engine, but showed no inclination to exit the vehicle.

“Mia?”

“They’re going to try something. I don’t know what, but there will be some trick when we’re least expecting it.”

“Mia honey. It’s dinner. I think we’ll survive.”

“Just try not to commit to anything.” She opened the car door.

He followed her out to the sidewalk. “Sweetheart, I’ve been avoiding commitment for six years. I’m a pro.”

Mia looked dubious, but didn’t have a chance to vocalize her doubt before a late-model Mercedes pulled up to the curb behind her car. “Crap. That’s Teresa, my older sister, and her husband Martin.”

“Ah, the one who was supposed to be godmother instead of you. Tell me, did you feel slighted?”

“One hour and you already know all the family gossip.”

“Your grandmother is a font of information.”

“My grandmother is a menace.”

“Sweet little Nonna?”

Her sister climbing out of the Mercedes forestalled whatever she would have said. According to the family gossip, Teresa was only two years older than Mia, but she looked at least a decade older. She was curvy—Mia was the only rail-thin one he’d seen so far on her family tree. They had the same eyes, but Teresa had a rounded sweetness like the younger sister Gina, rather than Mia’s sharp angles and lines.

“Teresa! Have you met my
friend
Chase?”

And so it began.

Over the next half hour, they ran the gauntlet of formalities there hadn’t been a chance for at the church. Chase met aunts, uncles, cousins and siblings—and with each introduction, Mia grew more emphatic in her
just friends
disclaimer, until she was practically composing odes to their sexual incompatibility.

After his tenth “Oh, God, no, I’d never date it was starting to get annoying.
Chase
,”

He’d never been in the Friend Zone before. Not that he was a bad friend, but most women took one look at him and saw an irresponsible good time, not a bosom buddy. As Mia tugged him from room to room, fielding more family members than most people had in five generations, he was discovering he didn’t like the Friend Zone. It was galling to hear Mia professing that she would never think of him
that way
. Especially when he knew for a fact she was lying and he was damn glad she was since he’d been thinking of her
that way
since the second he laid eyes on her.

But he’d agreed to be friendly today, so he just smiled as she waxed eloquent on their lack of chemistry until she finally ran out of relatives to introduce him to and he managed to corner her for a semi-quiet moment in the kitchen.

The room wasn’t empty—he doubted any room in the house was with the masses of family members swarming—but with the elder Corregianni ladies crowded around the stove, arguing loudly over the marinara, he and Mia had about as much privacy as they were going to get.