Excerpt #1...

I have important things to do. You are not one of them.

The non-verbal message vibing off the hard-ass brunette’s haughtily turned back was impossible for Bruno to misinterpret. But perverse, self-flagellating idiot that he was, it went straight to his dick.

She’d walked into Tony’s Diner at 3:45 AM, and he’d swear to God, he’d felt her coming before she even turned the corner and moved into the light under the awning outside. He was primed for her, after the last two nights of torture and titillation.

Fate had been kind. After hours of anticipation, finally the follicles on his skin tightened, lifting hairs on end in a breezy, ticklish rush of animal awareness. The bells over the doors jingled. Ta-da.

His hair follicles weren’t all that lifted and tightened. Good thing he wore an apron over his jeans. When the chick with the black pageboy sashayed into Tony’s Diner, no matter how blitzed from lack of sleep he was, his glands promptly pumped a substance into his body that made him want to break into an old time movie dance number. An incredible rush. A tingling sense of infinite possibility, combined with a mega-boner. A huge, awestruck “wow” from the depths of his being.

She’d chosen a table today, rather than the counter. Each seating option offered different viewpoints, with varying advantages and disadvantages. He hadn’t yet settled on his favorite. The back view was nice for legs, ass, the graceful nipped-in curve of her back, the nape of her slender, soft looking neck, and he could do a lot of easy, blatant ogling in while hustling around behind her back. When she took a table he got more frontal scoping action, but had to resort to old tricks from adolescence, developed before he’d discovered the ease and simplicity of mirrored sunglasses. Take it in, in one sweeping glance, and then pore over the gathered data in the privacy of his own dirty mind. He could never gulp enough of this girl in a single glance, though. He wanted to sit down across from her. Fix her with an unblinking, predatory stare.

Not that she’d notice, of course. She probably wouldn’t even look up. Her powers of concentration were world-class.

He kept trying to pin down what it was about her that got to him. It was a thorny problem, requiring detailed, up-close research and analysis, he decided, preferably conducted in bed. Maybe the sharp, up-tilted angles of cheekbone and eyebrows, maybe the big, mysterious green-gold eyes, set at an exotic slant, accentuated with bold eyeliner, heavy with mascara. She wore cat-eye glasses with fake gems in the corners that should’ve made her look grotesque, but they didn’t. They looked quirky, sassy, playful. They threw her beauty into sharp relief. She could wear anything and look great. Anything or nothing. Mmm.

And that mouth. She’d painted it a bright scarlet that was supposed to make her look super tuff, but it didn’t work. The fullness of the upper lip made her look vulnerable, almost childlike. And the severe jet black hair, all wrong for her luminous skin.
The look was Salvation Army sexpot. Shabby black stretch lace shirt, showcasing an enticing nipple hard-on. Frayed denim miniskirt, a little too tight for a luscious ass. Tiny bulge of snowy pale muffin top coming out the low-slung waistband where her shirt rode up, that made him want to grab and squeeze. Scuffed red fuck-me peep-toes with outrageous heels. Shapely legs in black stockings with so many rips and runs, it had to be on purpose. He was usually good at decoding what girls said with their clothes, but he couldn’t read this chick. She dressed like she wanted attention, and yet she stared into that netbook like her life depended on it, black-tipped finger-tapping in a ceaseless, buzz. Eyes frozen wide. Glasses reflecting the screen’s blue glow.

Denying Bruno’s very existence upon this earth by the massive force of her indifference, even while ordering food from him. Bad tipper, too. But the nipple hard-on made up for that sin, abundantly.

There was that other quality, too, that he barely knew how to articulate. An intangible glow you could only see if you weren’t looking at it. He’d grown sensitive to it hanging out with Kev. Who, mellow and as he was, always carried a disquieting aura of danger about him. A sense of things about to happen. Good things, bad things. Big things.

But whatever big things were about to happen to the brunette, a romantic encounter with Bruno Ranieri was unlikely to be one of them. She’d been there every night for three nights, and she’d ignored him completely. Maybe he was an arrogant putz, but he was accustomed to getting attention from women. This girl could give a flying fuck.

Amazing, that his glands were stirring at all, after covering the night shift for a month. Zia Rosa was AWOL, supervising the new McCloud kid’s first month of life. Bruno couldn’t remember which brother’s kid it was. He couldn’t keep any of Kev’s long lost McCloud brothers or their spawn straight, not for the life of him. Dirt blond hair, bright green eyes, everywhere you looked. And they bred like rats, so the problem was just going to get worse with time.

He’d tried to hire more staff, but one guy that he’d hired a couple weeks ago just got a call from an ex-girlfriend in Costa Rica and off he went, to follow his heart. Then Elsa ripped a tendon in her knee skateboarding. So here he was, swathed in an apron, eyes burning from lack of sleep. Flipping burgers, dipping fries, bussing table and baking pies. Just like old times. His current schedule involved a full day running his own outfit downtown, then an uneasy catnap, and working graveyard at the diner until dawn.

But hey, presto. Tonight’s outfit zinged him into perfect wakefulness. Those holes in her tights just made his palms sweat.

Maybe she played for the other team. He didn’t think so, though. He had lesbian friends, he knew the vibe. She didn’t have it.

One thing she did have was a sweet tooth. She’d been working steadily through the dessert menu, limited though it was with Zia gone. Bruno was a fine short order cook, and a good pastry chef when he put his mind to it, but Zia was the true pastry goddess, and she was off in Seattle, making beef broth for whichever McCloud wife had just reproduced. To promote lactation, like nonna in Brancaleone used to do.

Sure enough, the thought of lactation made his eyes fall to the pert, here-I-am! jut of the brunette’s nipples, at the exact, fateful moment that her gaze darted up without warning. Yikes. Busted.

Oh, man. Eye contact. It was too much. Her gaze cut straight into his brain, like a hot knife through butter. He practically yelped.

Eye-contact revealed fresh, fabulous details. Her eyes were hazel green, a hodge-podge yellow and brown and green. She smiled, a hard, knock you back on your ass smile. Not a come-on. A back-off smile.

She whipped the glasses off, laid them on the table. “Yes?”

He wanted to glance around himself, for the man trap with the spikes. “Um, ah . . .what can I get for you?” What, was he stammering?

Her chin rose. “What have you got?”

Highly inappropriate answers whirled through his mind, like a swarm of crazed bees. He bit down hard, forced himself to act professional. “The menu’s reduced right now, since Zia Rosa’s gone. Tonight, we’re down to rice pudding, banana cream pie, coconut cream pie, cheesecake, and brownie sundaes. But all of them are great.”

Her stare was unblinking. A gunslinger in a high-noon duel. “And this Zia Rosa has been gone for how long now?”

The question taxed his brain severely, since all his blood had pooled elsewhere. “Ah. Um, I don’t know. Five weeks?”

“That’s how old the desserts are? Or did she fill the freezer?”

He recoiled, in outrage. “Hell, no! The desserts are made fresh, all the time!”

Those big eyes got even bigger. “Ooh, cut you to the quick, did I?” she murmured. “Made fresh by who?”

His chest puffed out. “By me.”

Her eyes narrowed to glittering slits. “No way.”

He bristled. “Way! Why would I lie?”

She propped her chin on her hand, and gazed up. “To impress me?” she suggested. “To distinguish yourself from the anonymous, sweating, teeming masses?”

Bruno considered that. “I didn’t know I was competing with any anonymous teeming masses, sweaty or otherwise,” he said. “And I’ve never had to work that hard to hard to impress girls.”

“Hmm.” The eyelashes swept down as she pondered her next jab. “So you prefer to hang out with girls who are easy to please?”

Her attitude was starting to piss him off. “And why would it be a bad thing to be easily pleased?”

The eyes opened, wide and innocent. “Did I say it was bad?”

He closed his mouth. “Never mind,” he said. “I’m lost in the maze of this conversation, and I can’t find my way out, so I’m bailing. But if I actually were going to try to impress a girl, the first clever ploy that would come to my mind would not be lies about pastry making.”

“I see,” she said. “Well, that really begs the question. What clever ploy would be the first one to come to your mind? I’d love to hear it.”

He thought about it, shook his head. “I don’t step into holes in the ground that big,” he said. “Certainly not at four in the morning, after a long shift. I’ll pass.”

“Suit yourself.” Her X-Ray gaze bored into his head, so intently he practically started to blush. “I just can’t see a guy like you making grandma food like rice pudding or banana cream pie. Brownie sundaes, maybe, but . . . no. Not unless you’re gay, of course. Are you gay?”

He let out a slow breath, biting the insides of his cheeks to keep from smiling. “I’m an excellent pastry chef. My pie crust is better than my Zia Rosa’s. Come on back to the kitchen. I’ll make a chocolate cream pie before your very eyes. I’ll feed a piece of it to you by hand. And by the time I’m done, you’re not going to be asking me if I’m gay anymore.”

She cleared her throat, gaze darting down. “Is that so.”

It is,” he said. “On your feet. Come on back to the kitchen. I mean it. I’m dead serious. It’s pie time. And I am so ready for you.”

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Excerpt #2...

Bruno unlocked the door, and preceded her into an apartment as severe as a monk’s cell, but less attractive. Uncle Tony had been the ultimate minimalist. A bare overhead bulb. A crucifix on the wall. A color photo of Tony’s parents, aged and scowling. A faded old sepia toned photo of Tony’s grandparents, clad in dusty black, also scowling. A sagging plaid couch, a beat-up coffee table, an antique TV. An ashtray still full of Tony’s cigarette butts. That gave him a pang.

It smelled of dust, emptiness. It was frigidly cold, so he switched on the halogen space heater. The stench of burning dust fluff floated up to tease his nose as it flared eagerly to life. “Sorry,” he said.

She laid her bag down and went to the window. “What for?”

He tried to turn on the lamp next to the couch, but the bulb was burned out. The brutal overhead was the only light. It made his tired eyes water and sting. “That the place is so—“

“The place is fine. I am not fussy.” She lifted the corner of the blackout shades and peered out. Nothing to see. Dawn was long in coming. Lily came back to stand over the heater, rubbing her hands. She wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I could heat some water for tea,” he offered. “I could run down to the diner and get some—“

“No, I’m good.”

That left him speechless, at a loss. Nothing to do, nothing to say. He considered and abandoned several ways to make her laugh. What came out of his mouth surprised him. “Is your hair dyed?” he blurted.

Her eyes narrowed. “Why? Does it look wrong?”

“Oh, no, no,” he backpedaled. “It just seems, um, dark. For your skin. It’s pretty. Sexy. It’s just a really tough look. That’s all.”

Her chin went up. “I really am tough. Very tough.”

“Never doubted it for a second,” he said hastily.

She stared at him for a long moment. “It’s a wig,” she confessed.

Oh. A wig. Imagine that. “I see,” he murmured, and gazed at the fake coif for a long moment before taking his courage in both hands.

“Can I, uh, see your real hair?” he asked.

She looked like she was about to refuse. Then she dropped her mascara loaded eyelashes in a gummy black fan to hide her eyes, pulled off the cat-eye specs, and reached up pluck out the pins.

No moment of revelation had ever been as sexy as the moment she pulled it off, and faced him, her eyes defiant.

Her real hair was strawberry blond, curly wisps plastered fuzzily close to her head, like some retro, pin-curled twenties ‘do.

She’d been stunning as a brunette. She blew his mind as a red blonde. The harsh eye makeup and the violently red lipstick had made sense with the severe black bob, but their effect was different now. She looked vulnerable, delicate, lost. An innocent child who’d been all painted up. She’d lied about her age. He would swear to it.

She reached back, and unwound the coil of tangled hair. Fluffing it loose so fuzzy corkscrews unwound, dangling voluptuously over her shoulders. So pretty, he could hardly breathe. His fingers itched, to touch that flossy, soft mane. “Your real hair is beautiful,” he said.

She let out a sniff. Unimpressed with his compliments.

He felt that prickle again. The buzz of wrongness, danger. Something wrong with this picture. She’d declined to answer before, but he tried again, with different words, in a different tone.

“What do you want from me, Lily?” he asked softly.

She took off her coat, tossed it on the back of the couch, and shook her hair loose. “Turn off the light,” she said. “I’ll show you.”

He stared at her. This wasn’t like him. Why couldn’t he just take it at face value? A beautiful girl he hardly knew, hot for him and saying yes. It had happened before. ‘Yes’ was good. ‘Yes’ should not scare him to death. He played for time, lamely. “You mean, ah . . . you want . . .”

“You know exactly what I mean.”

The blood in his body rushed to his groin, leaving his brain dangerously undermanned. Lighten up, he lectured himself. She was just a girl. Not a cosmic love goddess, wielding the power of life or death, dangling his destiny carelessly in her hand. He cleared his throat. “Are you sure . . . I mean, wouldn’t it be better to wait until—“

“No,” she said.

“Look, I don’t want to come across like I don’t want this—“

“You don’t,” she said. “I know you want it.”

Her calm bothered him. So sure of herself, when he was a stammering mess. “Don’t confuse me,” he snapped. “I don’t know why I’m resisting, because my dick is about to explode. But this thing with you is important. I don’t want to start it off wrong.”

She glanced at her wrist, miming looking at a watch. “Looks like we’ll never start at all, if you have anything to say about it.”

He tried again, doggedly. “If we just do it, then it’s done. And we can’t ever undo it. We can’t ever do it over again.”

“We can’t?” She sucked in her lower lip, blinking. “Aw. How sad.”

“Don’t mock me,” he ground out. “You know exactly what I mean. The first time is a one time deal, and if we blow it—“

“Shut up, Bruno,” she said. “This is actually harder for me than it may seem, and I’m reaching the end of my nerve. When that happens, I’ll panic, and disappear in a puff of smoke. Bye bye. You get me?”

“Do not bully me,” he snapped. “Here I am, trying to do the decent thing for once in my life, and you’re giving me a hard time about it.”

She took a step towards him. “Stop trying so hard,” she said. “I didn’t ask you to be decent. I asked you to turn out the light.”

One last, flailing stab at caution. “It’s like, with cooking,” he blurted. “If you put too much salt in the stew, you can’t take it out.”

She considered that. “That’s true,” she said. “But you can put more food into the pot.”

A massive flush started from around the center of the earth, encompassing his body as it rose up. The reaction appalled him. He wasn’t like this with girls. He kept things light. He showed girls a great time, spent money on them, made them laugh, made them dream, made them come. Until the moment arrived when they were no longer content with matters as they stood. At which point, it ended flat. Full stop.

So what was he doing, being terrified to put out for this girl for fear she wouldn’t respect him in the morning. Afraid of giving her the milk for free. Afraid, in his gut, of giving her that much power over him.

Mamma and Rudy flashed through his mind, cramping his guts into knots. The man Mamma picked to father her son ran out on her before he was born. The last boyfriend she’d hooked up with had been a violent mafioso thug who had murdered her with his fists and his knife.

When it came to relationships, Bruno was genetically challenged.

Rudy hadn’t been fit to scrape dogshit off Mamma’s shoes. Bruno had known that, even at eleven. Rudy had been handsome, in a gold-chains-and-chest-hair sort of way, but that was all he had going for him. But Mamma had been beautiful, strong, smart.

Just not smart enough.

He didn’t get it. Not then, not now. And in his rare moments of self-analysis, he’d figured that was probably the reason that he kept his love affairs so light. A guy just couldn’t make mistakes that big if he kept things light enough. Feather light. Light as air. Because what person could ever really guess at the depths of his own idiocy? Mamma hadn’t had a clue about hers. And as for Bruno himself, well, hell. He certainly didn’t have any great claim to self-knowledge. He just bumbled along as best he could. Hoping not to fuck up too badly along the way.

He went to the light switch by the door, and flicked it off. When he turned, she glowed in the golden light from the space heater, and the shadow over her shoulders on the wall seemed a looming, black-cloaked figure. A ancient, mythical harbinger of doom and destruction.

He blinked. It turned into a pattern of blocked light again.

Jesus, what the hell was that about?

He was rattled, jittery, scared half to death. But he could no more say no to this girl than he could stop breathing.

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