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“I’d have liked to see him. I used to catch toads all the time when I was a kid.” Tony stuck out a hand to the boy. “Is it okay if I call you Joe? You look more like a Joe than a Joey.”
“Sure.” The boy beamed at him, displaying twin dimples that made him look like an imp. He placed his small hand in Tony’s and shook with surprising firmness. Then he grinned at his mom. “Hey, Mom, he’s cool.”
Tony transferred his gaze to the Connie. Her features were even more intriguing up close. Her nose was long with a little bump on the bridge, her cheekbones high, her lips full, her front two teeth separated by a very slight gap. Her lashes weren’t particularly long but they were thick and as dark as her finely arched brows.
His eyes dipped to the bare ring finger of her left hand. When they returned to her face, her midnight-dark eyes narrowed.
He got the distinct impression she didn’t agree with her son’s assessment of his coolness. Tough. She should understand straight off the bat that she couldn’t con him.
“Let’s not waste time,” he said. “Tell me your story.”
“Who are you?” she asked.
“He already told you, Mom,” the boy interjected helpfully. “He’s Tony.”
“I thought Mr. Nunzio’s first name was Frankie.”
“It is,” Tony said, wondering where she was going with this.
“If you’re not the restaurant owner, are you the manager?”
“No. Why—” he began.
“Then are you hitting on me?” She looked him straight in the eyes.
So much for presenting a can’t-con-me front. He thought he’d disguised that first visceral reaction, but she’d recognized it and called him on it. Damn.
“He’s not hitting you, Mom,” Joe said. “If he did, I’d hit him back.”
“Thank you, Joe-Joe.” She sent a grateful look at her son before casting a decidedly cooler one at Tony. “Look, I’m flattered. Really I am. And I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t have time for this. I’m here about a job that I really need.”
“Whoa.” He put up a hand. “I’m not hitting on you.”
“He’s not, Mom,” Joe agreed.
“We talked on the phone. I’m the guy you were supposed to…” His voice trailed off as a possibility occurred to him. “You’re not one of the Connies, are you?”
Delicate frown lines appeared on her brow. “Excuse me?”
He rephrased the question. “Is your name Connie?”
She shook her head, her dark hair rustling. “It’s Kaylee. Kaylee Carter.”
“And I’m Joey… I mean Joe Carter,” her son piped up.
Tony closed his eyes, winced and put a hand to his brow even as relief swept through him. “I owe you an apology. I thought you were someone else.”
He started to tell her he’d been weeding through letters with his lottery-winning stepmother to decide which of the Connies could be legitimate before setting up a meet. But it suddenly seemed like too much information.
The cell phone clipped to his pocket vibrated, interrupting his train of thought. He unhooked it, checked the number and recognized it as belonging to the Connie.
“Excuse me. I’ve got to take this.” He got up and walked to an empty booth nearby.
He felt Kaylee’s eyes on him as he listened to the Connie say she’d changed her mind and didn’t want to reschedule. No surprise there, considering he’d made it clear she had to get past him before she could get to Sofia.
He hung up, reclipped the phone and walked back to the booth. Kaylee watched him warily.
“I’m really sorry for the misunderstanding.” He didn’t sit down this time. “Let me make it up to you. Let me…”
He clamped down on his teeth before he could finish the sentence…let me take you to dinner. Yeah, like that would convince her he hadn’t been hitting on her.
“…put in a good word for you with the owner.”
“You know the owner?” She sounded hopeful.
“I grew up here in McIntosh so there aren’t many people I don’t know.”
“I’m waiting to talk to him. If you could put in a good word, I’d appreciate it very much. Joey and I, we just moved here and I really need a job.” She lifted her chin. “Not that I can’t get one myself but a good word can’t hurt.”
He nodded, ready to promise her anything. Her combination of bravado and susceptibility touched a familiar chord inside him. He’d once left everything he knew behind to go off to live in a strange city. He understood what it was like to feel vulnerable.
The swinging door at the back of the restaurant banged open, and Frankie Nunzio emerged. He scanned the restaurant, spotted Tony and grinned.
A small, wiry man on the down side of fifty who moved with the energy of someone half his age, Frankie reached Tony in seconds and vigorously pumped his hand. “Hey, Tony. What? You coming in here every day now?”
“Can’t stay away, but you’ll be glad I came in today because I found a waitress for you.” He nodded toward Kaylee. “Frankie, this is Kaylee Carter and her son, Joe. Kaylee and Joe, Frankie Nunzio.”
Frankie shook Kaylee’s hand every bit as enthusiastically as he had Tony’s. “You’re the woman waiting to see me?”
“Yes.”
“Have you waitressed before?”
“I have six years of experience.”
“Then I’ll give you a try. I need somebody from ten to two six days a week. We’re closed Sundays. Let’s see. It’s Friday. Can you start Monday?”
“You mean I’m hired? Just like that?”
“Think of next week as your trial run. But, hey, if you’re a friend of Tony’s, I’m sure you’ll do fine. What do you say?”
Something wasn’t right. Tony could see it in the set of Kaylee’s shoulders, the slight tightening of her mouth.
“Don’t you have anything full-time?” she asked.
“Not right now,” Frankie said. “But the restaurant business is fluid. Something could come up. So are we on for Monday?”
She hesitated, then affixed a smile. “Yes. Provided I can find somebody to take care of my son.”
“Try Anne Gudzinski,” Frankie advised. “She runs a day care a couple blocks from here. After I get some papers for you to fill out, Tony can walk you over there and introduce you. Right, Tony?”
“Be happy to,” he said, noting that her smile of thanks seemed distracted.
He kept her son occupied with a game of paper football while she filled out the paperwork. Tony taught Joe how to flick the “football” across the table with his fingertips.
The little boy screamed, “Score!” whenever the paper football sailed off the table and into Tony’s lap, not grasping that touchdowns only counted if it barely hung over the side.
When Kaylee was finally ready to walk to Anne’s day-care center, Tony could tell that something was still bothering her.
She was tall, he’d guess at least five foot nine. Her height helped her project an air of independence but again he sensed vulnerability. And damn if he didn’t already like her.
An image of Ellen flashed through his mind, but he dismissed his guilt. He owed Kaylee Carter for mistaking her for someone else and acting like a jerk. He couldn’t deny that he found her attractive, but his association with her was purely innocent.
Somebody grabbed his hand, but it wasn’t Kaylee. Firmly holding onto his mother with his other hand, Joe launched himself in the air.
“Let’s go,” Joe said.
Some of the strain left Kaylee’s face as she gazed down at her son. She lifted her eyes to exchange an amused look with Tony over Joe’s head.
Nothing about the moment was suggestive, but Tony again experienced that unexpected pull of desire. Normal enough. He was a healthy male, and she was an attractive woman.
It didn’t mean he intended to do anything about it.
ANNE GUDZINSKI’S day-care center turned out to be a large white Victorian house with black awnings on the windows and a wide, inviting porch.
If not for the color, Kaylee thought it would have looked like a gingerbread house transported to real life.
Nothing was fanciful about how much Anne charged for child care. Anne, a pretty woman with short blond hair and so much pep she’d probably led cheers in high school, explained the cost accounted for a low ratio of children to day-care workers.
Kaylee approved of the rationale, but her wallet didn’t. She’d mentally crunched numbers and worried that she couldn’t survive in McIntosh on a part-timer’s salary.
“Hey, Tony. Hey, Mom.” Joey’s excited voice broke into her thoughts. He’d chattered nonstop during the short walk to the day-care center and it appeared as though he might keep on talking all the way back to her car. “Watch this.”
Holding tightly to both of their hands, her son launched himself into the air. “I’m not a bird. I’m not a plane. I’m Super Joe.”
At the apex of his jump, he let go and went airborne for a split second before landing on the ground and running ahead of them.
Tony’s deep laugh shot out of him. Despite her worries, Kaylee found that she enjoyed the sound.
“Look,” Joey yelled, pointing at something on the sidewalk. “A grasshopper!”
He lunged at it, missed, lunged again, missed again. There went Tony’s laugh, so low and full-bodied it was capable of making a grown woman shiver.
With his height, thick black hair that sprang back from a wide forehead with heavy brows and hint of a shadow darkening his jaw, Tony had the look of a dark and dangerous man. But she already had a strong sense that impression was an illusion.
He laughed too easily and got along with Joey too well. His clothes, khakis and a navy rib-knit pullover, were casual but expensively cut.
Unlike some of the male customers who used to try to make time with her in Fort Lauderdale, he knew when to back off. He’d been about to ask her to dinner earlier, but held off.
She habitually turned down the men who asked her out and would have refused him, too. The last time she’d been on a date had been six months ago when Dawn had overheard a customer ask her out and engineered it so she could go. The man had been nice enough, but not worth the time away from Joey.
Kaylee sensed a date with Tony would be different. He was self-confident, polished and probably successful. He also possessed the most prized quality of all: he liked Joey.
It figured she’d meet him now when her life was in disarray. She had more important things to accomplish in McIntosh than indulge herself with the first hot guy who came along.
But this wasn’t just any guy, she reminded herself. This was the guy who’d helped her get a job and line up day care.
“Thank you for today,” she said. “I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”
“Don’t mention it,” he said, then picked up a thread of conversation Joey had interrupted earlier when he’d spotted a squirrel scampering up a utility pole. “You told me you grew up in Houston and moved to Fort Lauderdale. But you never did say how you ended up in McIntosh.”
She tried not to tense up at what was an innocent question. He couldn’t possibly know she was both running away from and toward something. Nobody did.
Why not tell him?
The thought popped into her head and stuck. It would be wonderful to have a confidante. To talk over the threat Rusty Collier presented with somebody who was enough of a stranger that she didn’t even know his full name. To confess that she was afraid to confront Sofia Donatelli with her crazy hope. To make her feel like she wasn’t alone.
Her lips parted, but then she clamped them shut. She hadn’t shared her hopes and fears with Dawn, who was closer to her than a sister. She couldn’t air them to a man who was still a stranger.
“We needed a change,” Kaylee said.
“Do you have friends here? Family?”
A startlingly clear image of Sofia Donatelli came to mind, and Kaylee bit the inside of her lip. “I just like it here,” she said vaguely.
“What’s to like?”
“Are you kidding?” She swept her hand to indicate the blossoming trees, the blue skies and the wide, quiet street, then breathed deeply of the clean air scented with fragrant blossoms. “It’s like a little slice of heaven.”
“That’s what my father used to say,” he muttered, not sounding pleased.
She cut her eyes at him. “And you don’t agree?”
He shrugged. “I suppose it’s pretty enough, but a small town like this doesn’t have a lot to offer for someone who wants to make a success of themselves.”
She thought that depended on your definition of success, but asked, “Then why do you live here?”
“I don’t. I live in Seattle. I’m here for an extended visit.”
A bird sang, and the driver of a passing car waved in greeting. She waved back, although she’d never seen the person before in her life.
“I just got here but I already know I don’t want to leave,” she said. “I think I could find everything I need right here to make me happy.”
She mentally amended her statement. If she could make enough money to support herself and Joey. Her worry came back in force. She already had doubts about her ability to stay afloat and she had yet to figure housing costs into the equation.
“Hurry up, Mom,” Joey called. He’d given up on the grasshopper and stood beside the car, waiting for them to catch up. “I want to play with Attila and Genghis.”
Tony raised a questioning eyebrow as Kaylee took her key chain from her pocket and remotely unlocked the car.
