An Offer He Cant Refuse - By Christie Ridgway Page 0,25

girlish and silly of her, she knew, her pulse thump-thumped-thumped in her ears as she used one fingernail to pry open the box's lid. It sprang free.

Cushioning white-and-glitter tissue paper. Glass bowl with an artful arrangement of a dozen apricot roses in water colored a matching hue. A clear plastic prong speared a white card bearing three simple words in distinctive, left-leaning handwriting. Ritorni, per favore.

Please come back.

Her fingers went boneless. The box slid out of her grasp.

Glass shattered against the pavement at the same moment that she heard her name called from somewhere behind her.

"Tea?" Johnny's voice. "Jesus Christ, you look like you saw a ghost. Are you all right?"

A hard hand grabbed her elbow and swung her around. She continued to stare down at the ruined box, the broken glass, the scattered roses. The colored water had splashed across her shiny cream-colored pumps and over her stockinged ankles. Orangish droplets dotted the knee-length hemline of her straight skirt.

Johnny took hold of her chin and jerked it up so he could study her face. "What the hell's the matter?"

She wondered why it was that he kept catching her at her worst. Was it mere coincidence or some unique superpower - meet Johnny Magee, MakeHerMessy Man - of his own that destroyed the calm and controlled exterior she presented to the rest of the world?

"Tea? The way you dropped those flowers, I thought they were about to bite. What's going on?"

She hoped she managed a half-smile. "That ghost you mentioned, I guess."

Frowning, he glanced down at her feet. "Who are those from? Is some old boyfriend bothering you?"

"No." But he was going to think she was nuts if she didn't elaborate. "My father used to bring home apricot roses."

From the start of their marriage, her father bought her mother a dozen apricot roses every Friday afternoon. Week-in, week-out. Month-in, month-out. Year-in, year-out. As far as Tea knew, he'd brought roses even during the time he'd kept the mistress he couldn't deny once he'd brought home something else - the daughter he'd had with her. And for as long as Tea could remember, her father would slip one of those Friday roses free of its cellophane wrapping to press the thornless stem into her own small plump hand.

"Una piccola ricompensa," he'd say. A little reward.

A little reward for her little crimes.

Johnny was still looking down at her as if she was unhinged, she realized, and supposed her explanation left something to be desired. "My father's dead," she offered.

The grip of his hand loosened, but didn't go away. "I'm sorry."

"The roses..." and those words in Italian, please come back - her grandfather's words, as it was he who had sent the flowers, just more of that emotional pressure he was exerting - had reminded her too much of the prayers she'd broadcast in a fever of grief after her father's disappearance. Prayers she'd never stopped sending until her father's crew and then the FBI had turned their house upside down in a fruitless search for the book. "The roses reminded me of him."

Johnny's expression only hardened, making her wonder if she'd struck a nerve. Without thinking, she voiced the question. "Johnny? Is your father okay?"

"My father?" He dropped her arm, stepped back. Beneath his heel, glass crunched, but he didn't seem to notice.

"Is there..." she hesitated, trying to come up with a way to put it. "Is there an older Mr. Magee?"

The tension drained from his body and the beginnings of a smile nudged at the corners of his mouth. "Phineas Magee, head of the Physics Department at Central Washington University, doesn't care to think of himself as 'older.'"

"I see," she said, bending down to tend to me ruined flower arrangement. Wouldn't you know that Johnny Magee's Nautica-model good looks would come by way of a brainy prof named Phineas? Some people got more than their fair share of that AU-American normalcy she'd wished for most of her life. "He sounds like quite the father."

"Yeah."

From the pavement, Tea plucked a couple of roses in one hand and a large shard of the broken vase in the other.

"And what about yours?" Johnny continued. "Was he quite the father as well? Do you miss him?"

Do you miss him? The question stabbed her and she sucked in a breath against the pain. Of course she missed him, she thought, her fingers tightening into a fist. Though Tea supposed every woman had a story about a man she'd loved and lost, it felt particularly devastating when