The Spia Family Presses On - By Mary Leo Page 0,85
was loose now, and strands curled around his face and down his neck. His white T-shirt clung to that incredible chest, and his muscled arms appeared to have enough strength to pick up several of our olive bins with one of those luscious arms tied behind his back. The vision was sufficient to make me want to run right for him and tell him to take me away from all of this madness.
Oh wait, Adonis was part of the problem. He was a suspect even though he said he didn’t whack Dickey. There was absolutely no evidence that I should believe this imported dude.
Pity, we could have had so much fun.
Adonis slowed as he came closer. I quickly pulled on my heavy gloves wanting it to appear as if I’d been working all morning. Why I wanted him to think this, I didn’t actually know, but I decided to go with it.
“Hi,” I said.
“Buon giorno. Sono Giuseppe Nardi,” he said with a little bow.
“Buon giorno,” I said in my best Italian. “Somehow I didn’t think I’d be seeing you this morning.”
“Ah, but I can no go home. Maybe I stay. Make my home, you know?” His eyes were the color of a Farga olive from Spain. A light green color when harvested early, but a sweeter oil when left on the tree to turn a dark purple which made the oil sweet and light with hints of almond. I wondered if he tasted like almonds.
Wait. Did he just say he was making this his home?
“Excuse me? But what did you just say?”
“That it is good to see you again.” He smiled and the earth moved. All right, maybe the earth didn’t move, but it should have. The man was a sexy menace to my otherwise unstable world.
“No. I mean about making this your home. Are you staying somewhere in Sonoma?”
“Yes. I stay in your mama’s house. She got a nice house, your mamma. Many rooms.”
This was not a good idea. This man, no matter how much I wanted him, was an active member of the mob and we didn’t allow active members to live on our land. It was the only thing that kept us from FBI scrutiny, and we had all agreed to this when we first settled here eight years ago. No way was Adonis— regardless of his spectacular smile or his Farga eyes or those incredible arms—going to change that. My mom was like a kid who took in stray animals, only these were stray thugs.
Possibly not the best idea.
“You could have one of the apartments over the shops. Two of them are available right now, but the apartment comes with certain restrictions. Uncle Ray will have to fill you in with the details. You may not like our rules,” I told him.
And there it went. My entire ship had just plummeted to the ocean floor pulling me down with it. I had asked an active mobster to give up his toughness and join the recovering “family.”
Yeah, like that was going to happen.
It was as though I had no control over my words, my thoughts or even my actions. It was almost as if I was drinking again, but I was stone sober. Not a good sign for my future.
“Ah, I go see Ray. This is good. Grazie.”
Deep inside, I knew how wrong this was, but I couldn’t help myself. The guy had some kind of magnetism that turned me into his slave. I grinned my approval.
Now that I had his attention, I thought I might as well ask a few questions. “By the way, last night, you said you had asked Dickey for something. What was that something that he refused to give you?”
“Why you want to think of such things? It is a beautiful day, yes?”
“Yes. It’s a beautiful day, but I was just wondering, that’s all.”
He threw me a wicked smile. “That is why I stay. I can not go back to my country without this thing. If I do—” He ran his index finger across his neck and made a slicing sound. “But maybe you know something you maybe want to tell me.”
“About Dickey?”
“Yes, about the something?”
“The something?”
“Yes.”
“No. Not a thing . . . about the something.”
I moved and the ring tickled my cleavage. It gave me a shiver. “I have work to do,” I told him.
“Ah, yes. The olives. I will help with this tree.”
He pulled on the gloves that were stuck in his belt behind his back. “I go up the