Chapter 3
SARA
The ice cream shop that Romeo takes me to is the best. Hands down, point blank. I’ve been here before, and the mango sorbet is out of this world.
We find a table in the window. Even sitting, he towers over me, and his shoulders are so wide that I can’t see anyone at the tables behind him.
He’s still wearing the black T-shirt, and when he removes the leather jacket, I’m too busy admiring his biceps to pay much attention to the way he folds it neatly over the back of his seat.
He studies the menu like he’ll be tested on the flavors when the server comes over, avoiding eye contact.
I don’t mind. It gives me a chance to check him out unobserved.
His green eyes are framed by thick black lashes that any woman would pay good money for.
His olive skin is smooth and flawless. He has a tiny mole in the left corner of his mouth.
A beauty spot. A gift from the angels when they realized what they’d created.
After all the studying, he orders a strawberry gelato, no toppings. I realize that I’m practically drooling, and not over the ice cream display in the freezers under the counter.
“Mango sorbet please.” My voice cracks. I need to get a grip.
Romeo stacks the menus in the little wooden stand on the table, making sure they’re precisely aligned. Then he faces me, and it’s like watching a little kid figuring out if he should speak up or keep quiet.
“How long have you—” we both start at the same time.
“You go first.” He watches me so closely, I swear he can see right through to my soul.
Heaven help me if he knew what I was thinking when I was looking at his muscles.
“How long have you worked for the Rossis?” I ask.
I steeple my fingers and rest my chin on them. It keeps my gaze focused on his face instead of anything lower than his neck. He smells good. Clean, woody, with a hint of citrus that I could lick from his skin…
Jeez! I smile and hang off his every word, praying that I don’t drool in front of him.
Romeo could have any girl he wanted. He’s probably dated fashion models and actresses.
Gia Rossi probably warned him that he was slumming it when he asked me out.
So, I need to keep my shit together so that I don’t scare him off before our desserts arrive.
“Two years.” He swallows hard. “They’re good bosses.”
I nod. I want to listen to him talk while I soak up everything about him and remind myself that he asked me out. Me. And he’s still here.
I haven’t been on a date in a while. That’s an understatement.
I haven’t been on a date in years. I never get asked out by the right kind of men, and I don’t have the patience for being messed around by assholes.
I saw it happen too many times to my mom when I was growing up.
Even now that my mom is in her mid-40s, she’s still kissing her way through a whole heap of frogs while she waits for the right man to come along.
Because she still believes in love and ‘happy ever after’.
Hans Christian Andersen has a lot to answer for.
“I was in the Marines for five years.”
He’s warming up to the conversation now that our desserts have arrived.
“That explains the jacket.” I gesture to the neatly folded garment over the back of the seat with my long-handled spoon.
He follows my gaze and smiles, and my tummy goes all gooey inside. “It’s a tough habit to break. I liked it, you know. The regimented routine, no room for error.”
It makes him sound like a fish floundering in the wrong part of the ocean when left to his own devices, and my heart reaches out to him.
I can imagine Elio Rossi finding him in the street, dragging him back to his place, giving him a list of chores, and Romeo carrying them out while whistling a happy tune.
Even the spoon seems to disappear inside his huge fist.
“Why did you quit?”
“I didn’t.” He swallows a mouthful of gelato, and I can see the pleasure all over his face. “I got injured.”
There’s a long pause, and I wonder if he’s debating how much to tell me. All kinds of things cross my mind. Maybe he was paralyzed for a while. Maybe he has metal plates holding his spine together which means that he isn’t flexible in bed anymore. Maybe he can’t have kids.
I mean, it’s shocking how far a girl’s imagination can run over a mango sorbet with the hottest giant in town.
“Hazing ritual.”
I blink. What the fuck is a hazing ritual?
“A couple of seniors dragged some newbies out of bed in their boxer shorts and made them race across the Rockies on motorcycles. One of them… Well, let’s just say that one of them might not have survived if I hadn’t stepped in and saved him.”
“What is that? Some kind of prank?”
He nods, his expression serious. “Something like that.”
“That’s horrific.”
He smiles at me from across the table, playing down his role in saving someone’s life during a ritual that should never have been allowed to happen.
“So, you saved them, got injured, and then got discharged? Dismissed? Fired?”
He shrugs. “At least I can sleep at night.”
I resist the urge to find his hand and entwine my fingers with his.
Too soon! I don’t want to scare him off when he’s just getting comfortable.
Then my mango-sorbet-sweetened brain cells jump to a mental image of me getting comfortable in his lap, because I clearly can’t spend any time in his company without imagining our bodies touching.
Heat floods my cheeks, and I keep my eyes on the dish in front of me.
“What about your family?” I ask.
“My mom lives in Queens. Never knew my dad.”
Sounds a lot like my family. We’re more alike than either of us realized.
He leans across the table, grabs a paper napkin, and blots my chin. He’s so gentle, I nuzzle his hand with my cheek without even realizing until his eyes widen and he pulls his hand away.
“Sorry.” I can’t believe I did that.
He’s going to think I’m some crazy psycho who obsesses over every man who takes her on a date. I mean, sure, I’ve already pictured myself in his lap stroking his abs, but that doesn’t make me a psycho. Does it?
“It’s okay.” His eyes lock onto mine. “I liked it.”
The butterflies stir, and I try telling myself that it’s just the sugar rush. I can still pull this back if I get a grip. Right fucking now.
“I’ve talked too much.” He wrinkles his nose as if any more of his history might send me to sleep.
Chance would be a fine thing. And there I go again thinking about sleeping next to him in a super-king-sized bed, naked, our bodies pressed up against one another…
“Tell me about you, Sara.” He jolts me back to the present.
“I was good at math in school.” Passion-killer right there, Sara! Way to go. “I wanted to go to college but…” I spoon some sorbet into my mouth.
“But?”
“But I didn’t get a scholarship and my mom… Let’s just say that my mom never got around to donating to my college fund. It’s okay though,” I quickly add. “I like my job.”
I don’t want to do it forever, but I like the people I work with, and I get to design nail art every day. Could be a whole lot worse jobs to fall into.
“What do you want to do with your life, Sara?”
The seriousness of the question takes me by surprise. But there’s no point lying to him. “I wanted to be an accountant.”
“Wanted?” His eyebrows become zigzags. It’s endearing and cute and distracting.
“Want.” I smile even though it’s never going to happen any time soon. “I want to open my own practice, and crunch numbers all day, and take vacations in exotic places around the world when I start seeing numbers in my sleep.”
He ponders my response. “Okay. Where would you go first? If money was no object?”
That’s easy. “Hawaii.” I watched a documentary about the islands once, and it was my idea of paradise.
Romeo slides his dish away from him. Without a word, he settles the bill, pulls his jacket back on, and offers me his hand.
And I take it. Because when I step outside with his hand smothering mine, it feels like the safest place in the world to be.
His fingers are so big, covered in more ink that curls gracefully from underneath the jacket sleeve, and in that moment, nothing matters more than finding out how much of him is tattooed.
I take a deep breath as we walk along the sidewalk. The sky is a delicate shade of lilac as the sun starts to sink, and the vibe is ‘a casual stroll along the boardwalk’ kind of evening.
“So,” I say before I can talk myself out of it. “You have tattoos on your neck. In your hair. On your hands.”
He cringes slightly, and I feel him start to pull his hand away. I squeeze, holding him there.
He sighs. “Sorry. I just… I know I’m big and rough and nothing like the kind of guy you would normally date.”
I suck on my top lip and suppress a grin. “The kind of guy I would normally date? What kind do you think that would be?”
I swear he deflates slightly. “Smart. No ink. Probably works in Wall Street.”
I can’t help chuckling but try to be serious when I realize that he isn’t laughing. The last thing I want to do is make him feel stupid. The absolute last thing in the world. Because Romeo is a million miles from my definition of stupid.
I stop walking and face him. Or rather, I face his chest and peer up at him. “You’re wrong, Romeo. The last guy I dated worked on the Hudson ferry.” Too much information. Again. “What I’m trying to say is: I haven’t dated anyone in a long while because I’m picky.”
When Romeo is uncomfortable, he wrinkles his nose, and it’s the most charming thing I’ve ever seen. If I thought it wouldn’t give off stalker vibes, I’d whip my phone out of my pocket and take a picture of it. But even I realize that it would be crossing a line. So, I don’t.
“What does that mean?” he asks.
“It means that you’re the only person I’ve said yes to in a long while.”
It must be the right thing to say because his eyes gleam like emeralds, and his smile…
“Why me?”