"You're a horrible man!"
Joe grinned. "Sticks and stones, Blondie. They don't mean a thing."
"No?" Lucinda was almost sputtering with rage. "Well, then, try this. As soon as we get back from your precious nonna's, I'm packing my things and quitting!"
"No, honey, you're not." ..,
"Of course I am. If you think I'd stay on in this house with you-"
"You can't quit. You've already been fired." "Been what?"
"Fired. You know, as in 'terminated.' As in, 'most definitely unemployed.' " . .
"You're worse than horrible," she said, her voice trembling. Joe laughed. She fought back the urge to .slug him again.
Instead, she rushed from the kitchen and hurried up the stairs with the sound of his laughter following after her.
Quitting was one thing, but fired? Fired, by the most arrogant, super-macho stud that had ever walked the planet? He was still laughing, as if what had happened were amusing .Instead of awful. He was, in fact, guffawing. She could hear him, all the way up here.
"Chauvinistic rat," she muttered, and slammed the bedroom door after her.
Lucinda took off her sensible shoes and put them, neatly, beside the bed. She took off her chef's whites, folded them and laid them over the back of a chair.
"Fired," she said. "That hideous man fired me!"
She stood in the center of the room, heart racing. Then she sped around, snatched up the white jacket and tried to rip it in half. Panting, she threw it into a corner, flung the pants after It, and kicked the shoes, those damned sensible shoes against the wall. '
"Fired," she whispered, and sank down on the edge of the bed. What now? She had an empty bank account and nowhere to go ...
Bang!
Lucinda leaped to her feet and spun towards the door. It shuddered under the pound of Romano's fist.
"One more minute," he yelled, "or I come in and get you." He would, too. What an awful man Joe Romano was! To think she'd tolerated his kisses ...
Tolerated? She'd climbed allover him, just as he'd said. Oh, the embarrassment of it! But it was his fault. The man was a practiced seducer. He'd taken advantage of her at a weak moment...
"Thirty seconds!"
Lucinda pulled on a blouse and skirt, hissing when the zipper Jammed. Romano pounded again, just as she stuffed her feet into a pair of loafers.
"Dammit!" She wrenched the door open and glared.
"There's no need to break down the door. Of course, I shouldn't expect you to know that. You aren't civilized and you're certainly not the gentleman your poor, deluded grandmother thinks you to be. You probably knock down doors for a hobby."
Joe glared right back. His tight-lipped, tight-mannered, lying, cheating excuse-for-a-cook was a mess. Hanks of blond hair hung in her face. Her blouse was buttoned wrong and hung two inches shorter on the right side than the left. A piece of the tail was stuck in the teeth of the zipper.
She'd probably never looked so disheveled in her life except, of course, when she was wearing nothing but sequins and a smile and popping out of cakes.
"I, on the other hand," she continued coldly, "am a person of dignity and delicacy. And it's a good thing for you, Mr. Romano, that our relationship has ended, or I would tell you precisely what I think of you, your temper, and your unruly disposition.' ,
It was quite a speech, delivered in rounded tones that spoke of good schools and good breeding. Joe figured he'd probably have fallen for the act, if he hadn't known what Blondie really was.
But he did know, and that changed everything.
"Are you finished making speeches?" he said politely.
"It was a comment, not a speech, but yes, I'm finished, for the moment."
"Actually, you're finished for ... " Joe glanced at his watch.
"For twenty moments." He looked at her, his face expressionless. "Or thirty. It all depends on traffic."
"I beg your pardon?"
"It's simple. I don't want to hear another word out of you until we get to my grandmother's. Got that?"
Color arched swept along her cheekbones. Those high, elegant cheekbones... .
Stop it, Joe told himself tightly, and set off down the stairs.
She ignored what he'd said.
He'd suspected she would. Joe doubted if Miss Lucinda Barry had ever done what she'd been told to do in her entire life. So it was no surprise when, halfway to Nonna's, she gave him a look he figured was supposed to turn him to stone.
"Must you drive this thing so fast?" .
"It isn't a thing, it's a Ferrari. And no, I don't have to drive it this fast. I could drive it a hell of a lot faster, if there weren't so much damned traffic."
"There's no need to prove your masculinity to me," she said coldly. "If you say you aren't-what your grandmother said you were-then you aren't."
"Is that what you think I'm doing?" Joe barked out a laugh.
"Talk. about being egocentric ... I don't want to shock you, Blondie, but I drive fast all the time. I like to drive fast. I love to drive fast. You got that?"
"Certainly," she said in a smug little voice that made him want to pull over to the curb and haul her into his arms again.
Stupid thought, Romano, Joe told himself coldly, and made no response at all.
Ahead, the light went from amber to red. He cursed under his breath, brought the car to a squealing halt and sat tapping his fingers on the steering wheel.
"And," she said, "my name is not Blondie." "Excuse me?"
"You keep calling me that, and it isn't my name." Joe's jaw tightened. "Anything else?"
"Only that you needn't take out your anger on me. I'm the innocent party in this sordid affair."
He shot her a sideways look. "Are you, now?"
"What's that supposed to mean? A little old lady planned this. Do I look like a little old lady to you?"
What she looked like was a disaster. Her hair was still a mess, her buttons were still closed wrong, but she'd crossed her legs and her skirt had risen up and up, until it lay high above her knee, exposing a length of slender, tanned thigh. She probably knew it, too. The prim and proper act was just that. It was as phony as a three dollar bill, and only a fool would respond to it.
But oh, that was an interesting bit of skin. He knew what it felt like, too. Silky. Warm. No, not warm. Hot...
The light changed. He jammed his foot down on the gas pedal and the car shot away hard enough to leave rubber behind.
"I know what you're thinking, Romano."
Joe looked at her. "You only wish," he said coldly. "Wish what?"
"That I'm thinking what you think I'm thinking. What you hope I'm thinking." Hell, he sounded daft. A muscle knotted in his cheek. "You're wasting your charms on me," he growled. "You might as well get that through your head."
Lucinda frowned. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"The hell you don't."
"If what you're thinking is that I had something to do with this charade, you're wrong."
"I am, huh?" "Yes, you are."
Lucinda recrossed her legs. The sound of nylon whispering against nylon made the hair rise on the back of Joe's neck.
"I know exactly what happened," she said. "Things are starting to make sense."
'Sense, " he said, and forced himself to concentrate on the road. "Sense, how?"
"Your grandmother was confused."
Joe gave a short, unpleasant laugh. "And you had nothing to do with that, right?"
"As much as you choose not to believe it, that's correct.
She wanted a live-in cook. I wanted a job, and I needed a place to live. The situation seemed ideal."
"Oh, yeah." Joe's words were rimmed in icy sarcasm. "I'll just bet it did."
"Mrs. Romano phoned me," Lucinda said primly. "And we set up an appointment.'ยท
"And when you got to her place, she told you she had a grandson who needed a cook."
"Exactly. "
"Or maybe," he said, his tone hardening, "may
be what she told you was that she had this rich, single grandson, and you thought, 'Bingo!'"
"What I thought:' Lucinda said, ignoring the remark, "and what I said, was that if he were single and lived alone, I couldn't possibly accept the position."
Joe braked for another light. "Why not?"
"Because. "
"Oh, that's an excellent answer, Blondie. So definitive. So informative. So full of-"
"Because," she said sharply, "it would be improper." "Improper" wasn't even on the list of possible answers that had flipped through Joe's head.
"Improper?'
"Exactly. "
He looked over at her again. She was staring straight ahead, her face flushed, her hands knotted in her lap.
"Improper, because I wouldn't be comfortable living in the same house with someone of the opposite sex. I told that to your grandmother. It wasn't easy because-well, you know this, of course--her English isn't very good."
Joe flashed Lucinda a sharp look. "It isn't, huh?"