Smoke (The Carelli Family Saga #1) - Eden Butler Page 0,36
continued to watch me, his mouth twitching, eyes steady, gaze moving up my body, and I slipped my attention to his face, hoping he saw everything I felt in the look I returned.
There was a risk I was willing to take and I was sure I saw something similar in his features—something that looked a lot like intent. Despite my worry and whatever kept him away, I was ready for it. I even took a step forward, but then his attention shifted to Paris as she stood next to him. Smoke gave her a smile, too warm, too friendly for my liking. She whispered something in his ear, touching his chest while she did it. I looked away, not able to stomach seeing them standing so close together.
He glanced back at me and I felt that stare in my peripheral. It was heated, intense, but I couldn’t return it.
“Come on, Maggie,” Dante said when the plates had been cleared from the table and Mateo had given up eating in exchange for snoring right in the middle of Mr. C’s chest.
“Come on what?” I asked when he stood, holding out his hand to me.
Otis Redding sang from Mr. Carelli’s massive jukebox in the center of the dining room’s largest bay window as the youngest Carelli threw his sweetest, most alarming smile down to me. It would work on almost any woman with a pulse. The man, like both his brothers, was very handsome. He had an olive complexion and broad shoulders, having worked the past five years on his uncle’s vineyard in Pistoia. He walked with a swagger that wasn’t forced and when he winked at me, hurrying along my indecision to take him up on his offer, I had to admit to myself that Dante Carelli would likely have no problem seducing any woman in this room that wasn’t blood related to him.
Reluctantly, I let Dante lead me away from the table, not missing how he nodded to his grinning mother as we moved to the makeshift dance floor or how Smoke leaned back against his chair, his arm outstretched, his posture relaxed. But his eyes were still sharp, attentive as Dante curled his large hand against my back and took my fingers as he led us into a slow, sweet one-two-step to that sultry ballad.
The dance worked to distract me.
It helped to stave my irritation at not having a single word exchange with Smoke.
The crowd monopolized him.
His father and mother held his ear all through dinner.
Then his brothers.
Then the line of men, though not the still-recovering Dino, that had been watching the town, his family and our building, one by one, stood at Smoke’s side subtly speaking in his direction as they glanced around the room, keeping their attention alert as he asked one question after another. Occasionally, Smoke would take a drink Paris offered him, then find me in the crowd, or across the table, his stare intense, open. Once, he even stood, excusing himself, and he made his way toward me, but Dario stopped him, nodding at Luca and the three of them moved to the patio for a half an hour conversation.
Then, Mateo got sick, and I had a mess to contend with that took me away from the table, and when I returned, Paris had put herself next to Smoke at the table, despite the frown he wore.
The mood was all wrong. Awkward.
Maybe we’d spent too much time away from each other.
Maybe the long, quiet conversations on the phone gave us too much distance, too much anonymity. Now we were here, staring at each other, letting the distractions of his family and the crowd keep us from each other.
Or maybe, I’d worked up this ridiculous scenario between us in my head.
“Now, see?” Dante started, pulling my thoughts back to the music and the sway of our bodies, his hands above my waist, his voice soft and lulling as he moved us to that raspy song. “It’s not so bad, is it? Letting loose a little.”
“If you say so.” I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t keep my attention away from the table, trying to find Smoke among the crowd, beyond the chatting dancers and townsfolk that congregated over the tables.
But he wasn’t there, pretending to relax against his chair. He wasn’t next to Mrs. Phillips, the diminutive woman who owned the B&B five blocks from the park or near her cute boarder with the wire-rimmed glasses who sat across from me during dinner.