A LITTLE BIT OF SUGAR (2 page)

“You know full well what that was for. Just be glad it wasn’t your head I smacked instead!”

I yanked the gaudily-jeweled tiara from my hair. Hair that had taken the beautician my mother had dragged me to that morning nearly an hour to perfect. Auburn curls tumbled down over my spaghetti strap covered shoulders, a few strategically placed bobby pins still clinging to the corkscrewed strands.

“Has anyone ever told you how hot you are when you get pissed?”

Lucky for Anthony he had quick reflexes because my swing was meant to knock his block off. I missed.

“Come on, Gina, why don’t you stop fighting it and kiss me like you know you want to.”

“Ooh! You are the most irritating guy I’ve ever...”

My words faltered as he leaned toward me, his lips hovering just inches from mine.

My traitorous body shifted, closing the distance between us, drawn to those perfect male lips.

“Gina...Gina...Gina!” came my father’s nauseatingly fake Italian accent, one that had just saved me from making a fool of myself.

I pulled back with a soft gasp. How could I have allowed myself to come so close to giving in and locking lips with Anthony Carboni? Maybe I really was genetically destined to be crazy like the rest of my family.

CHAPTER TWO

“Hey, Dad,” I said, once again forcing a smile.

My father pulled me into one of those bear hugs that practically squeezed the life out of me. “You did me proud today, cara mia,” he said, slightly teary eyed, as he released me.

“I’m glad I could make you happy.” At least, one of us would be.

“You were perfect,” he said, pinching his thumb and forefinger together. Then he kissed the tips of them with a loud smack. “You did the whole family proud.”

Talk about a guilt trip. I hated every moment of my festival fame, but my being selected to wear the crown had made my family proud.

One glance at the happy expression on my father’s face and I knew I could never take that away from him. There was no way I was going to break his heart by telling him what being the Sausage Queen and representing the Casa di Pasta, my family’s restaurant, had done to me. I was just thanking my lucky stars that I had graduated from high school the month before, because I’d never have been able to show my face there again after this.

“Thanks, Dad.”

“Tony,” my father greeted with a nod and extended his hand to my pain in the ass neighbor.

“Mr. Stewart,” Anthony replied, shaking his hand.

“I can’t thank you enough for entering my ‘bellissima’ daughter in the competition for Little Florence’s Sausage Queen.” He gave Anthony a hearty slap on the shoulder. Not as hard as I wanted to slap Anthony at that moment, but with enough force to make him wince and me smile.

“How could I not?” Anthony said, glancing my way with a wide grin. “A restaurant with food as delicious as the Casa di Pasta serves should be given the recognition it deserves. And what better way to do that than to have one of your beautiful daughters represent your restaurant?”

Oh, it was getting
deep
in the streets of Little Florence. I should have worn my father’s work boots with my gown instead of the three-inch heels I had on.

“Grazie. Grazie,” my father bellowed happily. “You are such a smart young man, Anthony Carboni.”

Despite being one hundred percent Scottish with thinning red hair and fair skin, my father was determined to be every bit as Italian as the rest of Little Florence’s residents. He lived, breathed, ate, drank, and slept Italian. Obsessed didn’t even come close to describing it.

But it didn’t stop there. My father had my mother and my younger sister, Carla, convinced they were all Italian, too. Even his sister, my Aunt Lorna, who moved in with us two years ago after her husband was killed in an accident at the pickle plant, believed she was Italian. It was either that or the rest of my family had given up trying to be anything else.

I was beginning to think that I was the only one left in our family who remembered that we were of Scottish descent. You know as in the Highlands, plaid kilts, bagpipes, and let’s not forget the Loch Ness Monster.

“Everyone knows the Casa di Pasta has the best spaghetti in town,” Anthony told my father with another glance my direction. “It deserves to be recognized.”

Ha! As if he’d done it for my father’s benefit. Even if the publicity of having the Casa di Pasta’s entrant crowned Sausage Queen brought in more customers to the restaurant, I knew Anthony had put my name on the Sausage Queen ballet to get even with me for ruining his date with Lucia Manetti a few weeks before.

Honestly, I’d done it for his own good, not that Anthony believed that. But Lucia was a total skank, no matter how hot the guys think she is. She’s the kind of girl whose number is plastered on the wall of men’s bathrooms all over town. Not that I’d ever been in one to see for myself, but I had guy friends. I knew Lucia got around. Anthony could do a lot better than her.

“I should be getting back to the restaurant,” my father said, placing a quick peck to my brow. “Stop by before you go home today and get a bite to eat. You, too, Tony.”

“He can’t,” I blurted out.

Anthony looked at me questioningly. “I can’t?”

“No,” I said in warning and then turned back to my father. “He has to help his mother wash windows today.”

“I do?” He grinned. “Oh, right. Yeah, I forgot all about that.”

“Ah, you’re such a good boy, Tony,” my father said, tweaking the curled tips of his fiery red mustache. “Your momma is a lucky woman to have such a hardworking son.”

I knew my father wasn’t complaining about having daughters. He was simply giving credit where credit was due. Anthony was only thirteen when his father passed away, but he stepped right up to fill his father’s shoes, taking care of the yard, the garbage, even repairs around the house. That’s what led Anthony to start up a home repair business when he was seventeen. All his hard work paid off. His business grew and grew and now he had a bunch of guys working for him.

“Thanks,” Anthony replied and much to my surprise seemed almost embarrassed by the compliment.

I suppose it was because he had grown up without ever having the praise of a father. I couldn’t imagine not having my father around, even if he did drive me crazy more often than not.

“I’ll bet the restaurant is jam-packed with customers today,” I said, wanting to distract my father from any more thoughts of inviting Anthony to join us for lunch.

Let’s face it, I still hadn’t forgiven Anthony for nominating me, and didn’t intend to for a very long time. Maybe even for the rest of my life. Or at least until I could come up with some way to get back at him. ‘Friendly revenge’ was an ongoing thing between us.

“More customers than tables,” my father said, his face lighting up with the excitement of it all. “Now be sure and stop by.”

“We─”

I stabbed Anthony’s foot with the heel of my shoe, cutting him off. This time my smile was genuine. “I will, Dad.”

“Great. Oh, and Gina,” he said, looking my direction, “I meant what I said. You made me very proud today.”

I smiled. No matter how humiliating it had been to be paraded through town as the Sausage Queen, it really was worth any misery I had suffered to see my father beaming with happiness the way he was.

“Oh, and don’t forget to swing by the cook-off tent,” he added. “You can wish your momma luck before you go home.”

“I will.”

My mother had entered the Little Florence sausage cook-off with her secret sauce recipe. Not one passed down through generations, but one she’d discovered by accident. A few years ago, my father had knocked the spice rack off the back of the stove, spilling several of them into the sauce she was cooking that day. As it turned out, the combination of spilt spices made a sauce their restaurant clientele went nutso over.

“Tony...”

“Yes, sir?”

“Be sure to tell your mother we said hello. We haven’t seen much of her lately.”

Anthony nodded. “I will.”

“Back to work,” my father said and then walked away with a happy little skip, one my being crowned Sausage Queen had brought about. One thing I’d learned growing up in Little Florence was that Italian men were very proud men. Even in the case of my pseudo-Italian father.

That warm, fuzzy, I’ve done my father proud kind of feeling lasted for all of about three seconds. Then Anthony opened his big mouth.

“So what do you say we go grab a bite to eat and then you can go home and change into those cute little Daisy Dukes of yours and help me wash those windows?”

“Wouldn’t you just love that?” I replied as I looked up into his big, sexy grin. Okay, so maybe I could help him wash a few...

“There she is!” my best friend, Mia, squealed behind me, saving me from any more embarrassment.

I’d nearly caved to that Carboni grin - again. Heck, there weren’t even any windows that needed to be cleaned. I’d made all of that up.

Why couldn’t Anthony have stayed that scrawny, voice-hitching at odd moments, older kid that I adored while growing up? No, he had to go and turn into this guy with that I-got-in-too-late-the-night-before kind of voice. And chances were he had, knowing Anthony Carboni as I did.

His voice wasn’t the only thing that had changed
, I thought to myself as I took in those broad shoulders and muscular arms. Nope, there was nothing scrawny about Anthony Carboni anymore. The guy could wear a snug-fitting T-shirt and wear it well. Heck, any shirt for that matter.

Forcing my thoughts from Anthony’s bulging biceps, I turned to find Mia and my two other best friends, Carlina and Alisa, weaving their way toward us through the float-filled parking lot.

The four of us had been best friends ever since our first day of kindergarten. Mia and Alisa already knew each other having grown up next door to one another. They were the perfect pair. Mia’s outgoing personality balancing out Alisa’s tendency toward shying away from social situations. In fact, it was Mia who put our little group together that first day of school, asking me and Carlina if we wanted to be their friends. I’d never regretted saying yes that day.

“Well, well, if it isn’t the rest of the spaghetti slingers,” Anthony called out to my girls as they moved toward us.

My friends had been my accomplices in the spaghetti-tossing incident Anthony was punishing me for. None of them liked Lucia. She treated other girls like they were nothing more than a pile of dog doo waiting to stick to the bottom of her four inch ‘ho’ heels. So when we looked out my bedroom window and saw Anthony cozying up to the town bimbo on his mom’s lawn swing, we decided he needed rescued. That’s when the four of us ambushed them with heaping handfuls of wet, stringy spaghetti that had been left over from dinner that night.

“Hey, Tiger,” Carlina replied.

Tiger was the nickname Anthony’s friends had given him when they were kids and into Frosted Flakes. The name stuck. And Tiger seemed to fit him perfectly, but for far different reasons now than it had when he was younger.

“Almost didn’t recognize you without the spaghetti,” Mia taunted with a grin.

Alisa simply averted her gaze to the sausage float beside us, muffling her laughter.

Anthony arched a dark brow in warning. “Watch it, Mia. You know what they say about paybacks.”

I know I did. I’d just been the recipient of Anthony’s kind of payback. My gaze slid back to the ‘weenie float’ that would be forever associated with my name and another saying came to mind – ‘What goes around, comes around’.

“You look so sexy when you do that thing with your brow,” Mia said with a grin, not the least bit phased by Anthony’s warning. She was a lot like Anthony, a natural born flirt through and through.

He grinned right back at her. “I know. It drives Gina crazy. So much so she can barely keep her hands off me when I do it.”

I swung my gaze back to him with a gasp. “
You
are such a liar, Anthony Carboni.”

“Okay,” he admitted with a shrug of his broad shoulders. “So she just thinks about putting her hands on me when I do that.”

With a frustrated groan, I grabbed my purse from the backseat of his car and turned to my friends. “The shit’s getting deeper here by the minute. Let’s leave Anthony to his fantasies and go grab a bite to eat.”

“Hey, what about our lunch date?” he called after me as I walked away with my friends.

“When pigs fly,” I said with a wave as my friends and I walked away, Anthony’s husky laughter following us across the parking lot.

CHAPTER THREE

Rescued by my friends. No wonder I loved them so much. A few more minutes with Anthony and I would have either killed him or... Once again, kissing him came to mind.