An Offer He Cant Refuse - By Christie Ridgway Page 0,91

her.

"How could you do that to your face?" he asked.

Her father was really seeing her. But he still hadn't heard a word she'd said. Rachele felt a wild urge to laugh.

Because it was too late for him to finally open his eyes.

It was too late to keep her from Cal.

It was too late to keep her from falling in love.

And, she thought, looking at the father who was, she realized, the true stranger in her life, it was too late to keep her heart from breaking.

He'd already done the job.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
"I'm Confessin'" Kay Starr Rockin'with Kay (1958)

Tea sat at a table on the patio outside of the Kona Kai Spa's small bar, a glass of wine in front of her as she waited for Johnny to arrive. It should have been a peaceful place to wait, because a mid-October late afternoon in Palm Springs meant the air was a perfect 75 degrees. Palm fronds created spiky shade across the pebble-paved patio, and twenty feet away, a swimming pool refreshed the eyes. The scent of blooming gardenias in a nearby terra-cotta pot wafted by in the slight breeze. Behind her, water trickled from a wall-mounted fountain into a clam-shaped bowl.

But though Tea appreciated her environs, they didn't bring her a measure of peace. Ten days had passed since she and Johnny had decided to become each other's "distraction."

Ten days that had felt so right she was now convinced that something was about to go very, very wrong.

Her growing dread had only been exacerbated by the cer-tainty that eyes were watching her every move. With her stubborn refusals, she'd managed to discourage the mobsters roaming around town from hanging about her office, but when she was driving the streets and particularly when she was with Johnny, she sensed a stranger's scrutiny. It had to be someone sent by her grandfather.

She refused to think anyone guessed she possessed the Loanshark book. The watcher was Cosimo sending her a message, she insisted to herself, staring at the straw-colored liquid in her glass. He was sending a signal just as clear as the one that had come with the apricot roses. He wanted her back in the family fold.

Footsteps sounded behind her, paused. Not Johnny, she would feel him in the air, but this presence set the hair rising on her arms in an entirely different way. She didn't look up, even when olive-skinned fingers gripped the back of the chair beside hers. Coarse black hairs curled between scarred knuckles.

"I've been looking for you. I have a message."

She hadn't spoken to him in years, yet she recognized his voice. "Is that right, Nino?" Nino Farelle. She glanced up. He was in his thirties now, but he was still as darkly handsome as he'd been when Eve had fancied herself in love with him eight years ago. Before he'd given her the black eye and the split lip.

Tea met his gaze. "I couldn't have been that hard to find since you've been following me all over town for more than a week." At least now she knew who the watcher was, and that her instincts had been right. Nino worked for her grandfather.

His expression didn't flicker. "Sorry, sweet cheeks. But it hasn't been me on your tail until about thirty minutes back."

Sweet cheeks. Tea tried hard not to let that old nickname he used get under her skin. Eight years before, she'd tried to tolerate him for Eve's sake, though his snide "sweet cheeks" had only made her feel more fat and undesirable. "Nino, I

know you, or some other of Cosimo's minions, have been watching me for days."

His face flushed ruddy. "I'm no minion anymore. I've moved up in the ranks. Way up. And nobody's been clocking you, sweet cheeks. Your grandfather ordered the kid gloves..." his voice took on a threatening tone, "until today."

"Oh wow, Nino. Now I'm scared." But she was. If it was true and her grandfather had been keeping his distance, then who had been stalking her and Johnny?

Johnny. She took a quick glance around. She didn't want him, or anyone else for that matter, to see her with a man as nasty as Nino Farelle. It was the kind of association that wouldn't do her business any good and it only served to remind her of all the things she wished to forget. "What is it you want, Nino? Spit it out quick."

He smiled, and that felt threatening too, even as he slid his hands in the pockets of his ash-colored