That's Amore (2 page)

The door flung open. The Brawny Guy turned, gun pointed. Paige stood in the doorway, Jeff’s nephew Justin in her arms.

A scream ripped from her as she caught sight of what was facing her.

Jeff didn’t know what she was doing here, or why she had Justin, but he wasn’t about to let anything happen to either one of them. He jumped up, knocked the fat guy’s hand up into the air and elbowed him in his ample gut.

The gun clattered to the ground.

Jeff yelled, “Run, Paige.”

A meaty arm came around his neck and he side stepped quickly, giving a shove to his opponent with his shoulder. The guy hit the wall hard and clipped his arm on the shelf holding Jeff’s dusty boxes of office paperwork.

The sound of tearing fabric filled the trailer. “Hey!” the guy yelled, enraged. “My shirt ripped. This is silk.”

“No great loss,” Jeff said, eyeing the shirt that made the guy look like a pimp from a grade B movie.

Then he noticed Paige was still standing in the doorway, frozen, Justin playing with her earrings. It had been three years since he had seen Paige, and despite the situation he couldn’t help but take a nice long look at her.

Gorgeous. Sensual. Frightened senseless.

Her eyes widened as she noticed his stare. She said, “Look out!”

Three hundred pounds of cholesterol landed on his back as the guy gave him a shove from behind. The force sent him staggering towards the door, where Paige was backing up, tottering down the wooden steps in her high heels.

He got a nice view of shapely leg as he lost all pretense of balance and headed down the stairs after her head first.

This was going to make a good impression.

He slid to a stop in the dirt at her feet and found himself staring up her skirt. Maybe the day wasn’t so bad after all.

She was wearing black lace panties.
Mamma mia
.

HERE HAD BEEN A TIME when Paige had wanted Jeff Benedetto down on his knees in front of her.

This wasn’t what she’d had in mind.

Yet despite the fact that her heart did a funny little seizure in her chest at the sight of Jeff, she couldn’t squelch the feeling that this was a bad situation.

A man had pointed a gun at her, she had a baby in her arms, and she strongly suspected Jeff was looking up her skirt.

And it didn’t look like she was going to make that nine o’clock appointment.

The guy with the gun was still rustling around in the trailer, probably looking for his weapon so he could finish what he had started. Shaking off the vague feeling that she knew him from somewhere, she stepped back away from Jeff.

“Jeff, the guy…”

Jeff was on his feet in an instant, towering over her, his black hair sticking up. He wiped his hands on his black T-shirt and dusted the seat of his jeans. “I told you to run.”

She stumbled as he grabbed her hand and pulled her in the direction of her car. She tried to defend her lack of action. “I froze, I’m sorry. You never know how you’re going to react in a dangerous situation until you’re confronted with one.”

Jeff opened the driver’s side door of her car, giving no appearance of hearing her. When he got in, she stopped in confusion, then slid into the passenger seat with Justin, afraid of being left behind.

“Give me the keys,” he demanded.

Jeff’s attacker loomed in the doorway of the trailer, wearing his ripped shirt and a look of vengeance.

She gave the keys to Jeff without hesitation, yelling, “Hurry up!”

“Don’t worry about it.” He threw the car in reverse and raced out of the parking lot, spewing gravel behind them.

A dozen construction workers looked up from their various tasks at hand building an office high rise. Paige grabbed the door and hung on, Justin bouncing up and down in her lap. He wasn’t even buckled in a car seat. Sheesh. She had the kid for an hour and a half and she was already doing it wrong.

“Slow down!” she yelled.

Jeff shot her a look that made her pulse race in a manner that had nothing to do with fear. “First you want me to hurry up, then you want me to slow down. Which is it?”

She glanced over her shoulder and noticed a black Ford was hot on their tail. “Okay, hurry up.” Then she realized where she knew that guy from. “That’s Johnny Romano! He was a wrestler in high school at St. Ed’s. What is he doing waving a gun at you?”

“He’s looking for Frank.” He took the corner at fifty miles an hour and Paige’s stomach dropped to the floor where her hunter green umbrella was resting.

She had the feeling that she was going to regret showing up at Benedetto Construction. For multiple reasons.

“That’s funny. Frank’s missing too? I’m looking for Gina.”

“Good old Johnny back there says he’s got Gina, and he’s holding her until he hears from Frank. Seems they’ve got some unfinished business.”

“
What?
” She clung tighter to Justin. “Are you telling me Gina’s been kidnapped? Why?”

“I don’t know why.” Jeff took another corner, ran a red light and said with satisfaction, “I’ve lost him.”

“This is crazy.”

“Tell me about it. I didn’t even get to finish my bagel.” He slowed her Honda Accord down and cruised to a stop at the intersection. “Hey, did Gina ever mention anything about Frank working with Vinnie Cucuzza?”

“No.” She was staring at him. She couldn’t help herself. The whole thing was insane.

Yesterday she had been living her life, childless and happy, working her way up the corporate ladder and planning how to spend her first big bonus check due to arrive in a month. Today she was sitting in a speeding getaway car, running from an ex-wrestler with a silk shirt, bouncing a baby on her lap, and talking about her best friend’s kidnapping with Jeff Benedetto.

The
Jeff Benedetto.

Who looked even better than he had three years ago when she had lost all common sense and spent one passionate night with him.

Only to find him gone before the sheets had cooled.

His black hair was shorter, and his face had more angles, but the difference was subtle. He looked mature now, deadly handsome as opposed to boyishly charming. Either way it didn’t matter.

She had developed a crush on him when she was thirteen and he had rescued her from the merciless teasing of Sal and Sam, the other Benedetto boys. Then nearly ten years later she had given her heart and body to him only to have him toss it back at her without a backward glance.

“What?” he asked, catching her staring.

“Nothing.” Only that she hated his guts and still wanted him, all at the same time.

“We need to find someplace to hide out where Johnny can’t find us, you know. He saw that you had Justin. He might try to kidnap him.”

Paige gasped, and held Justin tighter. She might not know how to take care of him, but she wasn’t about to let that walking fashion disaster have him either.

Jeff went on. “We can’t go to my place or yours, those are the first places he’ll look. Same with my mom, and Gina’s. This is mob business, you know.”

“Mob business?” she squeaked. “There’s no mob in Cleveland.”

As Jeff cruised her Accord past a brick wall painted red, green, and white in a faded mural of the Italian flag, he glanced at her in disbelief. “No mob? Where have you been all your life?”

“I know the Cucuzzas,” she insisted. “Vinnie and my father golfed together for years. He’s like an uncle to me.”

Jeff snorted. “Well, you know, I always figured your father to be one of the big bosses.”

“My father?” Nothing could be more impossible for her to imagine than her quiet father laundering money and calling hits on rivals. “My father is the most laid back, non-threatening man I’ve ever met.”

Dismissing his preposterous idea, she added, “By the way, my parents moved to Florida but my father still has an apartment here. We could go there while we figure out where Frank is. It’s right here on Mayfield just past the church.”

He gave her a long look across the seat that furthered her annoyance.

“What?”

“Your father keeps a spare apartment in town and you don’t think he’s in the mob?”

“Of course not! They use it when they come back and visit. It’s convenient. My mother doesn’t like the sheets in hotels.” Her mother didn’t like a lot of things, including Jeff Benedetto. Every time Paige had wanted to spend the night at the Benedettos’ her mother had always suggested Gina stay at their house instead, convinced one of those boys was going to corrupt her daughter.

Paige had spent the last three years wishing she had listened to her mother.

“You ever ask yourself how a guy like your father had all that money? You were the richest kid in the neighborhood.”

“Being well-off is criminal?” she asked in a huff. “His restaurant was very successful. He did a damn good chicken parmesan.”

Jeff laughed. “I don’t remember you being this out-spoken, Paige. You were always a quiet kid.”

“I’m not a kid anymore.”

His laughter cut off, and his brown eyes darkened. She had the feeling he was thinking about the exact same thing that she was.

That night in his apartment, soaked to the skin from a summer thunderstorm, when he had peeled off her sopping clothes and had shown her what it was to be a woman.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, it was hot in her car. Why hadn’t he turned the air conditioning on against the August heat?

Jeff was paralyzed by the image playing in his mind of Paige on his bed, her blond hair spread out around her, gazing up at him with trust and longing. He had tasted and touched every inch of her naked body that night. He had nipped at her ribs and ran his tongue along…

The car hit the curb and the steering wheel jumped in his hand. He slammed on the brakes. He took a deep breath.

“We’re here,” Paige said, her voice husky. She pointed up to the windows above a trendy art gallery. “Third floor. I have a spare key.”

He couldn’t help but stare at Paige and wonder why he wasn’t more concerned for his sister. But his gut told him Gina was okay, and he had more pressing concerns right now.

Like a massive hard-on.

He had always wanted Paige. As long as he could remember he had been fascinated by his little sister’s shy friend with the golden hair. He had first noticed her when she was thirteen and he was sixteen, and she was crying because his brother Sam had locked her out of the house in her nightgown.

It had been a little satin thing, with a matching robe covering her, and he had been aware that his feelings weren’t as altruistic as they should have been. Horrified at himself and how young she was, he had spent a couple of years working hard on avoiding her.

Only he had always been aware of her. Aware that she had grown taller, thinner, and had developed curves. Curves that had kept him up at night knowing she was sleeping ten feet away in his sister’s room every other week it seemed like.

Curves that were hugging the blouse she wore right now.

He thought about reaching out for her. Kissing her. He was leaning forward a little, going with instinct, guided by the irresistible urge to taste her again.

Justin kicked him in the gut with a well placed tiny gym shoe. “Watch it, kid,” he told his nephew.

Justin gurgled, a big bubble forming on his lip.

Paige got out of the car and he followed her across the sidewalk and up the stairs. He said, “So how did you end up with Justin?”

“I woke up this morning and there he was, just sitting there in his stroller. The note from Gina said she had an emergency and she needed me to keep him for a couple of days.”

Distracted by the sight of Paige’s round behind sashaying up the stairs in front of him, Jeff barely heard her answer. It took a second to filter through his sex starved brain. “Wait a minute. If Gina was kidnapped, how would she know in advance to drop Justin off with you?”

“Maybe she suspected she was in danger.”

It didn’t ring right, but he didn’t know what else could have happened. He figured his best bet right now was to keep his eye on Paige and Justin, and make sure they were safe. He’d send his brothers out to look for Gina and Johnny Romano.

The apartment was ultra-modern, with expensive black leather furniture and chrome tables. Art that didn’t look like it had come from the framing shop lined the walls. The view out of the windows was of downtown skyscrapers. The air conditioning had been left running on full blast and the room was a chilly sixty degrees.

He knew Paige’s old man was mob. This apartment just cemented his opinion. There wasn’t enough chicken in northern Ohio to pay for all this.

Paige set Justin down on the hardwood floors and collapsed on the sofa. “I think Justin needs his diaper changed.”

Jeff failed to see how that mattered to him. “So why are you telling me?” He started towards the kitchen, wondering if there could be any food still hanging around in the cupboards. He hadn’t gotten to finish his bagel and he was starving.

“Because I don’t know how to change a diaper. And he’s your nephew. You should change him.”

Nephew or not, he wasn’t touching a dirty diaper. “How come you don’t know how to change a diaper? I thought every girl knew how to do that.”