He leaned down and put his face in hers, so close their breath mingled. “What do you think?”
“I-I don’t know what to think.”
His gaze dropped from her eyes to her pink lips. He could kiss her right now and settle it, but he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. “Maybe one of these days you’ll figure it out for yourself.”
“Maybe,” she whispered, and he wanted to kiss her so much it was all he could do to hold back. His eyes scanned her pretty face and sexy body and came back to rest on her dark blue eyes. Her nipples were hard little buttons poking at her knit shirt, and her cheeks were bright pink. She was excited and embarrassed at the same time.
Brushing his lips lightly over hers, he tasted hunger, but a brush was all she’d get. He knew she was attracted to him as she never could have been in high school. Jenna and her friends had ruined what little social life he had back then. They’d told everyone in school that he was gay, when he was just a shy, awkward kid.
He backed up slightly and she reached for a kiss. It was all he could do to leave her wanting. He walked back outside to finish the roof, whistling.
Jenna was left standing alone, her lips tingling from Al’s almost kiss. He was teasing her, taunting her, and she felt like crying. She and her friends had made his life miserable in high school, because they’d believed Brian when he said Al had hit on him in the showers. She’d stopped believing anything Brian told her a long time ago, but in high school, she’d wanted to be included so much, she believed anything he told her.
She’d been such a fool, and she was still a fool for living here with a man who wanted to punish her for the sins of the past. It wasn’t too late to put Aunt Mattie in a nursing home and get out of here, but where would she go? The job was gone and her apartment would soon be gone too, because she couldn’t pay the rent. She was stuck here, and she’d get blasted from two sides now – from Aunt Mattie, who thought she was trash because she’d had a baby without getting married first, and from Alessandro Donatelli, who wanted to get even for what she’d done to him in high school.
It had been so long since a man had touched her and kissed her. Brian drifted in and out of her life as though he had a right to be there, and he did, for Katie, but not for her. She’d purged herself of him years ago.
She couldn’t help but compare the two men. Al was better looking these days, he had a successful career, and there was an air of confidence about him that he didn’t have before. Brian didn’t finish college, he didn’t work much, and he thought the world owed him a living. But the biggest difference was that Brian had never grown up, and Alessandro Donatelli had. And he’d done a fine job of it, too. Boy, had he ever!
She’d been waiting her whole life to find a man like Alessandro Donatelli, and now that she had, she knew she didn’t stand a chance with him. He hated her.
And she didn’t blame him.
<>
Jenna brought Mattie home from the hospital that afternoon and Al walked out to meet them. He opened the car door and helped Mattie out. “Hey, Mattie, you’re looking good. Glad to have you home again.”
Jenna walked around the car. “Why did you sell the inn to him, Aunt Mattie? Uncle Charlie said it would belong to me someday.”
“What else was I supposed to do? I didn’t have the money for the taxes.”
“So you sold your share?”
“
My
share?”
“My parents owned half of the inn.”
“Nonsense. This place belonged to me and my family. It was never yours and it never belonged to your parents.”
“But what about—”
Aunt Mattie turned on her, her voice filled with rage. “Your parents put fifty thousand into this place, and we spent twice that much raising you and getting you through college, so don’t you go getting on your high horse, young lady. All that money we spent on you, and then you go out and get yourself pregnant. The least you could have done was marry Katie’s father. Or does he already have a wife?”
“I don’t date married men,” Jenna said through clenched teeth.
Al cleared his throat. “Have you ever met Katie’s father, Mattie?”
“No.”
“He’s not the kind of man I’d want my sister to marry.”
“If he was good enough to get her pregnant, he’s good enough for her to marry.” With that said, Mattie walked into the house. “What’s that smell?”
“Furniture polish,” said Jenna.
“Well, I don’t like it.”
Of course not. She didn’t like anything.
Jenna brought Katie inside, got her aunt settled, and went to the kitchen to look for something to fix for dinner. She had to go grocery shopping, but she didn’t have much money left. The mood Aunt Mattie was in, she didn’t dare ask for money now.
She looked over to see Al watching her rummage through the cabinets, looking for something to eat. He handed her a twenty dollar bill. “Order a pizza.”
“Thanks. Do they deliver out here now?”
“I think so. If they won’t deliver, I’ll go pick it up. Whatever kind you like.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
Now Al understood why Jenna hadn’t been around the inn lately. The old woman was brutal. Had he made a mistake in letting Mattie stay in the inn? Jenna looked beaten down already, and Mattie had just gotten home. What would it be like next week and next month? Would Jenna stay that long? Why would anyone hang around to be badgered and belittled?
Listening to Mattie rag at Jenna made him thankful for the way he’d grown up. He didn’t have a father, but his mother dished out love and encouragement like spaghetti. Instead of criticizing Jenna, Mattie should be thanking her. If not for Jenna, she’d probably be in a nursing home by now.
It was hard to look at Jenna without remembering high school. She was nice to everyone in the ninth grade, but halfway through the next year, she began to change. She dumped her friends and started hanging out with Brian and his crowd. She was probably just trying to fit in, but she went about it all wrong. Brian had always had a cruel streak, and he manipulated people into doing things he didn’t have the guts to do himself.
<>
A sexy, blue-eyed blonde beckoned to Al in his dreams that night, and he woke fully aroused. He lay wide awake for several minutes, listening to the night sounds and trying to get his mind off Jenna and her soft lips.
The old inn creaked and groaned in the wind. This building had been battered by the wind for over a hundred years, and if taken care of, it could last another hundred years. If someone else had bought this property, they might have torn it down, but this old inn had a lot of character, and there was enough land around it to ensure privacy. Maybe it would never be an inn again, but it could be a nice home for a big family someday. It wasn’t much bigger than Blade and Maria’s house, the last one Al had designed for the family.
Everyone in the family had a bedroom for his mother, and she made the rounds, staying with everyone for a few days, filling their freezers with Italian delicacies and spoiling her grandchildren. She’d taken care of them all after Al’s father was killed in a work-related accident, and now they took care of her. He didn’t remember his father, but he remembered how his mother held the family together on Social Security and baby-sitting. When Nick showed up one day, dirty and so skinny there wasn’t much there but bones and bravado, Ma took him in. He was the cousin from New York, the one who’d been beaten and neglected by his alcoholic mother, the kid who was scarred on the outside and the inside. The kid he loved like a brother.
Someday, if he could find the right woman, he wanted a family like his, with kids who’d fight the outside world to protect one of their own.
<>
Sophia Donatelli was in Nick’s office downtown when a distinguished older gentleman walked in.
“Sophia?” He took her hand. “I haven’t seen you in ages. How have you been?”
For a minute, she couldn’t place him, and then she knew. Phillip Collier. Gina dated his son before she married Will. Phillip’s hair had turned white and there were wrinkles around his eyes, but he was still an incredibly handsome man.
“Phillip, it’s nice to see you again. How’s the family?”
“I lost my wife three years ago. The kids are all married, and I have four beautiful grandchildren. What about you? Grandchildren?”
“Seventeen so far. I’m so sorry to hear about your wife, Phillip. I didn’t know she’d passed away. Are you retired now?”
“I tried it for a few months and then went back to my law practice. With Helen gone, it was too lonesome at home.”
Sophia knew all about lonesome, since her dear Vincent had been gone for more years than they’d been together, but with seven kids, she’d always managed to keep busy.
Phillip’s mustache curled on the ends when he smiled. Vincent had worn a mustache when they’d first married, and it tickled when he kissed her.
She watched and listened while Phillip talked with Nick about an older home he was thinking of buying and having remodeled. “George Smith said your company did that kind of work.”
“Sure we do,” said Nick. “Where is this house?”
“It’s at the end of Gig Harbor bay. My doctor tells me to get more exercise, and I thought if I lived there, I might walk more.”
“My doctor tells me the same thing,” Sophia told him, “but the kids won’t let me walk alone.”
“Why?”
Nick put his hand on Sophia’s shoulder. “She had a little stroke a few years ago.”
Sophia pushed the thought away with her hand. “It was minor. I take blood pressure medicine now.”
“I had a heart bypass the year Helen died,” said Phillip. “Why don’t we walk together, Sophia?”
“Well, I—”
“Great idea,” said Nick, and before Sophia knew what had happened, she’d agreed to meet Phillip at seven the next morning to walk around the harbor.
<>
After lunch the next day, Al left to get his computer, Katie napped with Callie, and Aunt Mattie snoozed in the chair in her bedroom in front of the television, when a shiny gold Cadillac pulled up outside. A minute later, Bruce and Louise Baxter walked toward the door. Brian was nowhere in sight, which was just as well. His parents were a handful all by themselves.
Jenna met them at the door. “Katie is taking her nap. I can bring her by later if—”
Bruce puffed on his cigar. “We came to see where my granddaughter is living.” He pushed his way into the foyer, his cigar clamped between his teeth. Jenna waved her hand and wrinkled her nose to give him a hint, but it was hopeless.
Funny how they’d never come to see the apartment in Seattle. Maybe they were hoping to catch Nick here. “Please don’t smoke in here. It makes Katie wheeze.”
“Nonsense,” said Louise. And that was the last word Jenna could get in. Louise walked around talking. The furniture was old and worn out, it was placed all wrong, the kitchen needed to be modernized, the living room drapes were faded and dusty, and who let a cat inside? In the meantime, Bruce’s cigar stunk up the place.
“Don’t smoke in here,” she said over Louise’s chattering.
“I’ll smoke anywhere I damn well please.”
A deep voice from the doorway said, “Not in here, you won’t.” Al set the box he carried on the table in the foyer and grabbed Bruce’s arm. “Outside with that.”
They were almost to the front door when Bruce yanked his arm away and stopped cold. Al snatched the cigar out of Bruce’s mouth and threw it out the door. It landed near the Cadillac.
“Who in the hell do you think you are?” Bruce yelled.
Jenna stepped up beside them. “Al, this is Bruce Baxter, Katie’s grandfather. Bruce, this is—”
“I don’t care who in the hell he is. Get your things and get out. Find another place to live. I’m buying this place, and I don’t want you here.”
Louise squealed. “
Buying?
But Bruce—”
Al pointed to the front door. “Get out of my house.”
Louise started, “Well, if you aren’t the rudest—”
Jenna yelled over Louise’s shrieking voice. “My aunt and my daughter can’t take the smoke.”
Bruce’s eyebrows came up. “The old lady is here? I’ll just—”
“You’ll just leave her alone. She’s trying to rest.” As if anyone could ‘rest’ with this racket.
Bruce looked Al up and down. “Are you the one who hit my son?”
“Yeah. He was interfering with the work.”
“Your name is Donatelli?”
Al propped his hands on his hips. “Yeah, what of it?”
“I told Brian he should sue you for assault.”
“Fine. Sue me. Now get the hell out of my house, and don’t come back.”
The two left muttering to themselves. Al turned to Jenna. “Didn’t you tell them who owned the inn?”
She waved her hand at the departing car. “They don’t give anyone else a chance to speak.”
Al walked around the living areas opening windows. It was a little cool outside, but he expected his family over this weekend, and he didn’t want the place smelling like a fire sale. “If they come back, don’t open the door. One of my sister’s kids has asthma and they’ll be here for Sunday dinner.”