Ringing in Love (10 page)

“Now we've made it into downtown embarrassing.”

“Then I have nothing to lose by saying this: I want you. I've wanted you since the day I first saw you. But I'm in no hurry. And I won't put pressure on you.”

“I'm not sure what to say.”

“Say you're still interested in having dinner with me on Friday. And you agree to let this attraction between us develop along its natural course.”

“Dinner, I'm fine with. But for the other—I'm so out of practice, I have no idea how to go about it.”

After thinking about what she said for a moment or two, he replied, “Pick a code word.”

“A code word? For what?” She seemed both curious and baffled.

“Some word you can say to me when you decide you're ready to take the next step.”

“Like a reverse safe word?”

He pursed his mouth and frowned. “What the hell do you know about safe words?”

“I may have been off the market for a while, but I read widely.” She was positively indignant.

“Okay, yes, like a reverse safe word. What do you think?”

“Well, it'll have to be a word I wouldn't ordinarily use. And I think it should be Italian.”

“I meant what do you think about the idea, but I agree, it would have to be a word we wouldn't use in normal conversation. But why Italian?”

“It seems … appropriate, I guess. It might take me a while, though, to think of a word. Sadly, I never learned the language. Except for swearing. I'm good at swearing in several languages, Italian included. But I use those words. So I'll have to think of something else.”

Dominic signaled for the check, and after he let her win the argument to split it, they paid and left.

They were back in their office building when Catherine abruptly turned to him and said, “Tiramisu.”

What did a dessert have to do with anything they'd been discussing? “Pardon?”

“The code word. Tiramisu.”

“Okay. It's not what I would have predicted, but it'll work. Why'd you pick it?”

“It's Italian. It's not something I say every day. And it's in one of my favorite movie scenes. In
Sleepless in Seattle
, Tom Hanks's friend lets him think tiramisu is a new sex move.”

People turned around in the lobby to see what was so funny as Dominic let loose with a belly laugh. “Maybe tiramisu isn't as inappropriate as I thought it was. But this means Italian restaurants are definitely out for a while.”

“I'll get it, Mom,” Noah yelled from the kitchen.

Catherine had heard the doorbell, too, and was already in the entryway. “I'm here. It's Dominic, I imagine.” She could hear the snort from two rooms away. Although she'd been preparing for this all day—hell, all week—she was nervous about how it would play out.

“No roses; I remembered,” Dominic said after he kissed her on the forehead. He handed her a bud vase with several sprays of small, delicate dendrobium orchids in it.

She gave him the smile she knew he was aiming for. “They're beautiful. Thank you.” Catherine carried the vase into the living room and put it on the table in front of the love seat. “I really did enjoy the roses. Sort of. Although I hear your staff enjoyed them more.”

He followed her. “They did. They enjoyed them so much, I may consider doing it again in place of bonuses.”

“I wasn't so lucky. Melody almost led an angry mob up to your floor to retrieve some of them when she heard I'd left the whole cart full in your office.” She saw Noah standing in the door of the living room. “Come, join us,” she said, motioning to him. Noah didn't budge.

“Hi,” Dominic said, extending his hand and taking a few steps toward her son. “You must be Noah. I'm Dominic Russo.”

“Yeah, I figured.”

To Catherine's embarrassment, Noah didn't shake hands. She spoke quickly to cover his rudeness. “We're about to leave, Noah. Your dinner's in the oven. If you go to Rudy's house afterward, text me so I know, please.”

“You going to some Italian place for dinner?” he asked, directing the question to his mother, not Dominic.

Catherine tried not to look at her date, but she couldn't ignore him when she heard his stifled laugh. She giggled.

“What's so funny?” Noah asked. “It's not a hard question.”

“Private joke, Noah. Sorry, didn't mean to be rude,” Dominic said. “We're going to a French restaurant downtown.”

“The French eat snails and frog legs,” Noah said. “Who'd eat that?”

“Me. I like snails and frog legs.” Catherine put her arm around her pouting son and kissed his cheek. He predictably pulled away. “I'll be home in a few hours,” she said.

“It doesn't take a few hours to eat dinner.” He finally looked at Dominic. “What else do you have planned for tonight? Or are you just going to spring it on her?”

Softly, but with a serious tone to his voice, Dominic responded. “Noah, you don't know much about me yet, but let's establish one thing. I have enormous respect for your mother, and I assume you do, too. So I'm going to suggest—I'm going to insist—we not talk like that about or around her.”

Noah stormed off in the direction of the steps to the second floor.

Catherine closed her eyes and wondered if she'd made a mistake trying to have a personal life before her son went to college. Or to juvenile detention. Whichever came first.

• • •

After the rocky start, the evening with Dominic had nowhere to go but up. And it definitely did. Dinner was delicious, the company wonderful. But then, Catherine was only too aware how good every hour she spent with him was. Gradually, with his attention and his sense of humor, not to mention the way his kisses made her feel, he was chipping away at her reluctance to have more than a simple, safe, lobby-and-elevator relationship with him, For the first time since her husband had left her, she was beginning to wonder if she could trust a man—this man—with her feelings. Her biggest worry now seemed to be how he related to Noah. From Dominic's side, it had gone okay, although she still had work to do with her son.

Maybe after Noah got accustomed to seeing her dating, he'd be better about it. Until then, she could feel relieved Dominic had taken in stride her son's attempts to insult him. At least, he still seemed interested in her. He'd asked her to go with him to the black tie benefit for Opera Philadelphia in mid-September. It was a performance of
Aida
, starring a rising, young, Italian tenor. She'd actually toyed with the idea of buying a ticket and going solo before she'd discovered it was sold-out, so she enthusiastically accepted.

On the strength of that invitation, she asked him to have dinner at her house the following weekend. And in the course of their conversation in the restaurant, they discovered they were both intrigued by the same movie and made a tentative date to see it. Their relationship was coming out of the elevator big time.

As they waited for Jack to pick them up at the restaurant, Dominic asked, “How about I take you to one of my favorite places in the city for a walk before I take you home?”

Jack drove them to the sculpture garden in Fairmount Park. The night was clear. The Schuylkill River was calm. The air was pleasant with a hint of the approach of fall. It was the perfect end to the evening. They walked through the garden, their arms around each other, comparing opinions on the pieces of art. Then Dominic stopped in front of The Poet statue. He didn't say anything, merely turned to face her, put one arm around her waist, and, with the other hand, drew her face to his. His mouth touched hers and the world disappeared around her. Nothing existed except the two of them.

Without his insisting, she parted her lips and his tongue responded, warm and gentle. At first. Then the kiss became more demanding as he deepened it, exploring every inch of her mouth. She circled his neck with her arms; he slipped both hands down to her hips, pulling them tight against his. The evidence of his arousal pushed against her. The evidence of her own curled around in her belly.

The kiss went on and on and on. He nibbled on her lips, bathed them with his tongue, took possession of them again. The breath in her lungs seemed to disappear into his, becoming the very air he inhaled. Every inch of her demanded to be part of him as she pressed against him. Her breasts ached for his touch. She longed to feel her hands on his hot skin.

His hands moved to the sides of her breasts, his mouth kissed down her jawline to the pulse at the base of her throat. A pulse she knew was beating as hard and as fast as the wings of a hummingbird. All she could feel was Dominic. All she wanted was Dominic.

If he could make her feel this way with a kiss, what would it feel like to make love with him? And what was she waiting for? She'd told Melody she wanted a fling, and here was a man who could obviously give her one. Maybe she should scream “tiramisu” at the top of her lungs and run for the Escalade and his apartment. She broke from the kiss, he touched his forehead to hers, and she started to say the word. What came out was …

“Catherine! Catherine!”

No, that wasn't right.
She
was Catherine. Had the kiss confused her so much she was calling Dominic by her own name? But that wasn't right either. She hadn't said anything yet.

“Catherine! Dominic!”

They both turned to see Jack running toward them.

“Your phone keeps ringing, Catherine.” He handed it to her. “I was worried it might be an emergency.”

“What the hell did you think you were doing?” Catherine asked. She'd barely gotten Noah into the entryway of their home and the door closed behind her before her frustration boiled over. “Don't bother answering—you weren't thinking. If you'd had half a sensible thought in your head, you'd have known walking out of that store with a six-pack of beer under your shirt was not only illegal but stupid.”

“Sorry,” Noah muttered.

“Sorry doesn't begin to cover it. What were you doing in that neighborhood anyway? I thought you were going to Rudy's. He doesn't live anywhere near there.”

“He didn't want to go out. I was with some other guys.”

“You mean the guys who ran away when you got caught stealing beer for them?” She had to dig her nails into the palms of her hands to keep from grabbing his shoulders and shaking him, something she'd never done once in his thirteen years. “Damn it, Noah, if the cop hadn't recognized you as Tony's nephew, if he hadn't known to call your Nonna … do you know how upset she is?”

“Nonna only had to get involved because you were too busy with that guy to answer your phone. It took you forever to get to the store.” The disdain in Noah's voice cut her to the bone.

“No, I didn't get there sooner because you wouldn't give them the phone number they wanted. They had to call Nonna to track me down. Do you think by doing something stupid, I'll stop seeing Dominic? Is that what's behind this?”

“No matter what I do, you're going to see him again. Because he's more important.”

“Than I am” was unspoken but implied.

By this time she was pacing the floor in front of a defiant-looking Noah. “Fortunately, the owner knew Tony when he was a rookie cop, so he isn't going to press charges. Thanks to your uncle's good reputation you got off easy.” She stopped in front of him, trying hard to keep her voice controlled and calm. “But just because you got a pass from the police and the storeowner doesn't mean you get one from me.” She started pacing again, not sure she could keep her cool when staring directly into the angry and resentful eyes of her son. “You don't even know how fortunate you are.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know. I'm the fucking luckiest kid in town.”

“Watch your mouth, Noah. The jury in this house is still out on what's to be done about you, and using bad language doesn't help your case. I have to think about it. And I have to talk to Tony. I imagine your uncle will have a few things to say on the subject when I tell him what happened.”

“Why do you have to tell everyone in the family?” Noah asked. “Are you trying to look like the perfect mother or just make me look bad?”

Ignoring the insults, she said, “Of course I'm going to tell Tony. If I don't, he might hear it from his buddy and be hurt I hadn't told him first.” She stopped, almost dizzy from hyperventilating and pacing.

“For right now, you're grounded. I haven't decided for how long. While I'm home, consider yourself in my custody. When I'm out, since you can't be trusted on your own, I'll arrange for a babysitter. On school breaks, you'll come to work with me.”

For the first time since they'd gotten to the house, Noah's sullen defiance was gone, replaced by outrage. “You can't treat me like that. I'm not a baby,” he yelled.

“When you do things like you pulled tonight, you are clearly not mature enough to leave home alone.”

“I hate you. I want to live with Dad. He's always around when I go visit him. He doesn't go out on dates.”

Right. Because he married the woman he was having an affair with when we were married. And it's easy to be around on the one weekend a month he decides it's convenient to see his son.
“I called him while the officer was talking to you and the storeowner. Your father agrees with me. You're stuck here twenty-four seven with me and confined to his condo when you're with him. No soccer. No hanging out with your friends. Nothing but school when it starts and something I'll figure out as community service to make up for the trouble you caused.”

“No soccer! That's not fair. Fall practice begins next week. The team needs me.”

“You should have thought of the team before you pulled the stunt you did tonight. Now, go to your room.”

He stomped away, leaving Catherine helplessly wondering, not for the first time, why parents didn't get operating instructions when their kids became teenagers. Or at the very least a warning.