worried the frayed collar of his aloha shirt. On a yellow rayon background, men lolled on a beach, watching hourglass-shaped hula girls dressed in red grass skirts and orange coconut shells. "Do we know each other?" he asked.
"Yes."
"I thought so." He nodded, then handed over the blueprints. "Johnny was going to bring these by himself, but he was unexpectedly called back to Las Vegas."
Tea will be sorry to hear that."
'Tea..." he seemed to be searching his memory, then he cupped his hands in a double wave. "Curvy woman, right?"
Perhaps she should have been jealous, but there wasn't a leer in the gesture or in his eyes, though he must possess
X-ray vision to detect Tea's measurements beneath the usual tailored body armor she wore. "Yep."
He nodded again, then reached into his back pocket to pull out a business card and hand it over. "Give her this too, will you? She can reach me on my cell if she needs anything."
Rachele looked down. Calvin Kazarsky. "Nice to meet you, Calvin. I'm Rachele Cirigliano."
"It's Cal," he corrected, and if he thought the introduction strange after her assurance that they knew each other, he didn't comment upon it. There was a long pause, in which she could have sworn her pulse synced with his.
"Now what?" he finally asked.
Tea came to stand in the doorway of her office. "Now what, what? Hey, is that you, Cal?"
"Affirmative."
Affirmative? Was that the cutest or what?
"Johnny had to dash back to Vegas," Cal continued. "He said to tell you he'll be in touch very soon."
"Oh." A strange expression - disappointment? - flitted across the boss's face. "I understand."
Cal gestured toward Rachele's desk. "I brought by the original house plans and also those of the previous renovations. Johnny thought you could use them."
Rachele's father shadowed Tea in the doorway. "Who is this Johnny?" Then his gaze lasered in on the younger man and his voice went Papa Bear deep. "And who is this?"
Rachele didn't allow herself a hesitation. "Calvin Kazarsky, my father, Guiseppe Cirigliano. Papa, this is a client of ours."
Her father bustled out of Tea's office to stand between the other man and the two young women. He was shorter than Cal, and his chest only looked more like a barrel in comparison to the younger man's lean body. But his handshake was a white-knuckler, and Rachele was impressed that Cal didn't cry out. Instead, he hung in there, his gaze never leaving her father's. When their grips broke, she let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding.
"Beppe, come over here. You'll enjoy seeing these." Tea's voice was excited as she spread the blueprints Cal had brought on the long table at the far end of the reception area.
With a suspicious backward glance, he strode away, leaving Cal and Rachele gazing at each other. The younger man adjusted the strap of the laptop case over his shoulder. "Well
Panic fluttered in her belly. That was a good-bye well. A have-a-nice-life well. A go back to laundry, antipasto, and nothing-more-than-the-occasional-swear-word-for-Father-Mike-to-hear-in-the-confessional well.
Well, noway!
Over her dead body was she going to let Cal run off. Then, thinking of her father's strangling handshake, her stomach dipped, hoping it wouldn't be someone else's dead body that got between them.
But if she wasn't willing to let Cal out of her life so fast, how the heck to make a play with her father sharing the same carpet space? He wouldn't be happy to hear his "nice girl" doing her best to lasso a near-stranger.
Thinking quickly, she dug in her backpack for her cell phone, and quickly dialed the number on the business card, shielding the screen beneath the desktop.
She heard a low buzz, then Cal started and reached under the tails of his shirt for the phone he must have clipped to his belt. He frowned down at the phone's screen.
She knew what he saw.
IT'S ME
Looking up, she made a point to catch his eye and nod. He frowned again, then looked back at the screen.
She rubbed the spot of that wound right over her heart, then took a first step toward living her own grown-up life by sending another text message to him. cu @ cob?
Translation: See you at close of business? He glanced up at her, then glanced back down. f2f? appeared on her screen. Face-to-face?
YES Y MSG?
Wasn't it obvious why she was text-messaging him? She considered how to signal "Overprotective Italian papa bent on protecting only daughter's virginity until menopause is standing six feet away."
She settled for pos, Parent Over Shoulder.
OIC,