Summer Kisses (174 page)

Cole shifted, a slight grin tugging at his lips. “It’s good to know that it wasn’t my lovemaking that sent you running.”

She shook her head. How could he even think that? “Not at all. I just needed some time away to think. Time to convince myself that it really was safe to let you into my heart. That you’d never hurt me the way Kyle had.”

He heaved a long, tired sigh. “How many times do I have to tell you that I’d never treat you the way your ex did before you believe me?”

“I do believe you, but...”

“But you didn’t trust me enough to stick around and find out.”

She met his gaze. “I do trust you, Cole. It’s myself I have trouble trusting sometimes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about the book?”

“Writing OPERATION: DATE ESCAPE was my own personal form of therapy. It helped me take control back of my life after my divorce.”

“Dating idiots, myself excluded, helped you? How?”

“I never realized there were so many bad apples out there until my mother and Nanci started on their fix-Kelsie-up-with-blind-dates kick. That’s when I began making notes of ways to get out of those bad date situations. The notes I made ended up becoming chapters in a book.”

“Operation: Date Escape.”

She nodded. “I wanted to help other women. To give them ways to get out of bad dates. There’s even a chapter on not settling for the wrong man. Like I did with Kyle.”

“You ran from me. Does that make me a bad apple?”

“Far from,” she told him. “All apples should be like you.”

“Thanks,” he said with a slight grin. “I think.”

“I know you might find this hard to believe, but I’m crazy about you.”

He snorted. “So much so you left town to get away from me?”

Cole had put a wall, a very thick wall, up around his heart. One she was going to have to work very hard to break through. “I know my leaving town the way I did hurt you and I’m so very sorry for that.”

“Don’t lose any sleep over it. I’ll survive.”

Unshed tears blurred her vision. “It wasn’t until I met you that I realized good guys did exist and you were definitely one of them.”

He arched a dark brow. “You sure have a funny way of showing a guy he’s a good catch.”

“You came along,” she continued, “everything a girl could ever want in a man. Kind. Tender. Patient. Passionate. Whenever I was with you the world felt right. I knew my heart was in trouble. Then you said you were falling for me.”

“I meant it,” he said.

“I know. That’s why I had to get away. I needed to make sure what it was I felt for you was real. That it wasn’t just the really great sexual chemistry we have together drawing me to you.”

“And what did your time away tell you?”

“That what we have together is definitely real.”

“Was,” he corrected.

She looked up at him questioningly.

“What we had together
was
real,” he explained. “You and I both know you can’t have a relationship without trust and I’m not sure I can trust you not to run out on me again.”

Kelsie’s muffled cry tore at Cole’s heart. He hated like hell to hurt her, no matter what she’d put him through. But until she could get past her fears there would be no real future for them. As much as it killed him to admit that to himself.

“I understand,” she said with a tearful sniffle. “I know I screwed things up between us. I would give anything to make it right again, but I can’t change what’s happened.”

“Guess not. What’s done is done,” he said, trying to be strong.

She lifted her chin and offered him a quivering smile. “I really hope you find the happiness you deserve. I’ll never forget you.” She turned and walked away, taking his heart with her.

Cole closed his eyes, listening to the sound of her high-heeled sandals clicking on the sidewalk as she moved further away. She was walking out of his life again, this time for good, but not because she’d wanted to. This time he’d made the decision for her.

He opened his eyes once more, unable to take his eyes off her departing form. Her slender shoulders shuddered as she sobbed quietly. Tears he’d caused.

Damn.

What was he doing? He was a ‘good apple’ and ‘good apples’ didn’t let the woman they loved walk out of their life. He took a step forward, calling out to her, “You can still change things, you know.”

She stopped and turned to him, her cheeks damp with tears. “W...what?”

He started toward her with renewed determination. “I said you
can
change things.”

“How?”

“You can stop running away and give real love a chance,” he told her as he reached out to wipe a tear from her cheek.

She nodded. “I’m done running, Cole. I swear. And if it’ll make you happy, I’ll turn down the offer on my book. All I want is to spend the rest of my life proving to you just how much I love you.”

“I don’t want you to turn the offer down.” He drew her into his arms. “But you should have told me about the book.”

“I know that now.”

“Another thing you should know is that I’m not about to let the only woman I’ve ever loved
escape
from my life again. If I have to, I’ll write my own book on how to get a beautiful, green eyed China doll to the altar and keep her there until the preacher pronounces them husband and wife.”

She gasped. “Cole...”

“Yes?” he said with a grin.

“Are you proposing?”

Her question was followed up by eleven very male voices hollering at him in unison from the two open firehouse windows above, “Get down on your knee!”

He laughed and nodded toward the faces pressed against the window screens. “I believe you’ve already met my family.”

She laughed softly and then gasped, her hand flying to her mouth, as he dropped down onto one knee in front of her.

He looked up into her eyes, the tenderness she remembered so well back in his. “Kelsie Collins, you make me crazy.”

“I know,” she said with a soft sniffle.

“But it’s the kind of crazy I can’t seem to live without.” He reached for her hand. “I have the ‘perfect’ solution for all those bad dates you’ve been going out on. A surefire way to never have to suffer through one ever again.”

“And that would be?” she asked with a smile.

“Marry me, Cupcake.”

“Cole, be serious,” she pleaded.

“I’ve never been more serious. I love you, Kelsie Collins. I want you in my life. To make me crazy. To make me smile. To keep me on my toes.”

“And on his back!” Joe hollered.

“That, too,” Cole agreed with a grin. “Say you’ll marry me.”

“Marry him!” His crew bellowed from above.

“I’d love nothing more,” she said, her words taut with emotion. “Yes, Cole, I’ll marry you.”

He stood and pulled her into his arms. “I love you, doll.” He brushed his lips over hers lightly a first and then cupping the back of her head he deepened the kiss.

When the kiss finally ended, she looked up at him. “You know, Cole, for a ‘good apple’ you really know how to kiss.”

He gave a husky chuckle and then bent to whisper against her ear, “You haven’t seen anything yet.”

“What’d she say?” Stubby called down amidst the hoots and hollers of the other men.

Cole looked up at them with a wide grin, “Would I be kissing her if she’d said no?”

“I don’t know, Cole,” Joe said. “With a girl that looks like that I think I’d be kissing her whether she agreed to marry me or not.”

“Back off, Joe,” he warned playfully. “You’ve already got a girl.”

“Hey, Kelsie,” Nate chimed in. “Forget about Cole. I’m a much better catch.”

“Sorry, Nate,” she told him with a smile. “It seems I’m officially off the market now.”

“You sure?”

She nodded happily. “Absolutely. I’ve finally found the ‘perfect’ man for me.”

“Some guys have all the luck,” he muttered.

“Don’t we though,” Cole said as he drew his beautiful fiancée to him again for another kiss, one that promised a lifetime filled with love and laughter and, according to Kelsie, some really great sexual chemistry.

Romance author Lindsey Brookes is a four-time RWA Golden Heart finalist. She is also a past American Title III finalist as well as the winner of Harlequin’s Great American Romance Novel contest. She’s written for Kensington Publishing, Amazon Publishing, has indie-pubbed, and recently sold to Harlequin Publishing.

Contact Information:

[email protected]

Websites:

www.lindseybrookes.com

www.possumposse.com

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https://www.facebook.com/lindsey.brookes.9

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https://twitter.com/Lindsey_Brookes

(Vista Security Origins)

BY

DIANA LAYNE

Most good daughters would say they owe their fathers everything.

Marisa Peruzzo, mafia princess, would.

She owed him for killing her fiancé.

She owed him for destroying her mother.

She owed him for chaining her to the ‘family business’.

And she owed him for taking away her lifelong friend.

Payback’s a bitch.

Naples, Italy

Hurry!
Dai, andiamo!

Marisa Peruzzo slammed on the Audi’s horn, the blaring sound having little effect in the din and congestion. The tangled morning traffic crawled, and the cobblestone streets crammed with cars and lined with historic buildings, were too narrow for her to pass. Trapped.

No! Her brother had too much of a head start for her to be trapped.

“
Merda
.” She hit the redial button on her cell phone. She had called the number ten times in as many minutes.

“Come on, Paolo, answer,” she muttered.

His voicemail clicked on again. She screamed, raised her arm to hurl the phone, and just managed to stop herself before she smashed it on the dashboard. It would be of no use if it were shattered. And maybe, just maybe, Paolo would get her earlier frantic message and call.

“Be safe, be safe, be safe.” Her chants alternated with curses at her father and brother.

What she’d overheard—the casual way her father had told her brother to ‘deal with them’ and her brother’s sinister laugh in response had her dashing out the door the first moment she could escape.

What did Massimo have planned to ‘deal with them’?
Them being Paolo and his father Giuseppe. It couldn’t be good.

Her brother, capable of many atrocities, took a special delight in torture, breaking legs, crushing hands. Once he’d castrated a man for making a pass at his girlfriend.

Marisa’s stomach clambered up high to her throat.

Don’t think about it. Concentrate on reaching Paolo
. If only she hadn’t been delayed by her father trying to initiate trivial early morning chitchat. At least he hadn’t caught her eavesdropping, hadn’t learned her secret, that she’d been the one feeding information to the
Guardia de Finanza,
Italy’s anti-Mafia force, in an attempt to stop him and his dealings. He would have had his ever-present bodyguards take her hostage if that had happened.

Carlo Peruzzo had that kind of power. After what he had done to her mother, Marisa wouldn’t put anything past him. When she learned the truth that his actions had robbed her of a sane, cognizant mother, it only made Marisa more determined to bring her father down. Her life had been hell with no one to protect her from her father’s machinations.

No, that she was still free to come and go was proof she hadn’t been the reason for his order, and she grasped hold of the slender tendril of hope that he said ‘deal with them’ and not ‘kill them’.

Paolo Zambrotta, a policeman dedicated to ending organized crime in Italy, was her chance to get out of the family crime business, her chance to make a new life for herself. Her chance for love, something she had never planned until she met him. Recently, she had even allowed herself to entertain visions of holding her and Paolo’s child in her arms.

She couldn’t let that chance be ruined!

Carlo had tried one warning already. He had ordered the Zambrotta family restaurant burned. Only Paolo’s father Giuseppe had witnessed the crime and was willing to testify. Paolo now held hope of getting at least some
La Cosa Nostra
, if not her father, locked away.

It had to be the upcoming trial. Carlo must be worried about a conviction. Giuseppe had been sequestered and untouchable. Perhaps Poppa thought to send another message to the older man by going after Paolo this time.

“Oh, hurry!” Marisa punched the horn again.

As if in an answer to her prayers, the snarl untangled just enough so that—

At the unexpected opportunity, she stomped the accelerator, bullying her Audi V8 through a small opening in the traffic, somehow managing not to crash into another car.

Springing free of the congestion, she sent her thanks heavenwards and floored the gas pedal, working the gearshift like a pro to race up the steep hill to Giuseppe’s house. Paolo was due to pick up his father from protective custody for the first court date—she glanced at her watch—oh, no! Her heart thudded. He would have to pick Giuseppe up in mere moments to arrive at court in time.