Love Around the Corner Read online

  The last thing Gemma Romano needs right now is her first love coming back home. She’s trying to keep her family’s bar from being bought up and developed into some glass eyesore, just like all the other family businesses in her beloved Brooklyn neighborhood.

  Like it or not, she’s in charge of the Romano legacy, and she can’t afford to risk it—or her heart—on Brendan Flaherty. Not now and not ever again.

  Brendan’s old neighborhood is changing fast, but some things are still the same. Gemma’s as devoted to her family, her neighbors and the bar as she’s always been. And she’s still the one woman he can’t seem to forget.

  Gemma’s determined to steer clear of Brendan at first. Not only did he break her teenage heart, but now he’s grown up to be a property developer—he’s the enemy. Staying away from him would be a lot easier if she didn’t find him so infuriatingly attractive. Their chemistry still burns as bright as it ever did. But their painful past is still there, too, and Gemma’s not sure she’s ready to risk her dreams, her business or her heart on Brendan a second time.

  This book is approximately 82,000 words

  One-click with confidence. This title is part of the Carina Press Romance Promise: all the romance you’re looking for with an HEA/HFN. It’s a promise!

  Also available from Amanda Weaver

  and Carina Press

  A Duchess in Name

  A Common Scandal

  A Reluctant Betrothal

  The One I Love to Hate

  Love and the Laws of Motion

  Also available from Amanda Weaver

  This Book Will Change Your Life

  Always

  Sky High

  The Notorious Lady Grantham:

  A Grantham Girls Companion Novella

  Love Around the Corner

  Amanda Weaver

  This is dedicated to the millions of immigrants

  who, for the past four centuries, have come to

  New York seeking a better life and have made this

  the best city on earth.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  One of Gemma Romano’s earliest memories was of her mother perching her on a bar stool at Romano’s Bar. She must have been really little, because it was before Livie or Jess had been born. A patron had just given her his police badge to keep her busy while her parents handled a small rush of customers, and she remembered turning it back and forth, watching the red and yellow lights from the neon Michelob sign in the window dance across the shiny surface.

  Twenty-five years later and not a damned thing in Romano’s had changed. Sure, she had two grown sisters now, and their mother had been gone for more than a decade. But Romano’s carried on, the same Michelob sign in the window, the same cracked leather bar stools, even the same cop, although Frank was retired now, that shiny badge gathering dust in a drawer somewhere.

  She loved Romano’s. Every nick in the wooden bar, every chipped floor tile, was as familiar to her as her own face. She loved the light glinting off the liquor bottles, reflected in the big wall-size mirror with Romano’s Bar in flaking gold paint. She loved the feel of the taps in her hand. She loved their regulars, a handful of cops and firefighters—now almost all retired—who’d been hanging out at Romano’s so long they were nearly family.

  But on sleepy Tuesday nights like this one—when there were so few customers to wait on she had time to get inventory done and wash an entire rack of glasses, when she was here alone while her two younger sisters were living their new adult lives, both happy and in love, when even her father was off on a date—it was hard not to feel—just a teensy bit—like life was passing her by.

  “Can I get a refill, Gemma?”

  Gemma jolted out of her daydream. “Sure thing, Frank. Dennis, you good?”

  “You can top me up, too, hon.” Dennis and Frank spent so much time parked side by side that those bar stools bore permanent imprints of their butts.

  The problem, she decided as she refilled Frank and Dennis’s glasses, was that she spent all her time surrounded by a bunch of men old enough to be her grandfather. Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn had gentrified enormously in the past decade or two, filling up with well-off families and hip young people. But Romano’s was a holdover from the neighborhood’s working-class Italian roots. None of the people frequenting those fancy restaurants and wine bars a few blocks up Court Street ever found their way to Romano’s. In here, time stood still. Nothing much had changed since her great-grandfather, Angelo Romano, had opened the place in 1934.

  And Gemma liked it that way. Really, she did. But it was an undeniable fact that some handsome, age-appropriate stranger was never going to wander into Romano’s and fall in love with her across the brass rail.

  “You’re pretty quiet tonight, Gemma,” Frank said.

  “Just realizing all the Prince Charmings seem to have moved out of Brooklyn, Frank.”

  “A pretty girl like you should be beating them off with a stick,” Dennis said.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t see a line forming outside, do you?”

  “You should do the online dating thing,” Frank said. “You’d be surprised how many people there are out there. Your sister helped me with my profile. Maybe she could do yours, too.”

  “Been there, done that, Frank, and it wasn’t pretty.”

  Her attempts at online dating in the past had been nothing but a litany of disasters. There had been the guy who spent their entire date reading her the text exchange he’d just had with his ex-girlfriend and asking her what he should say to win her back. Then there was the guy who asked her, over appetizers, if she was into threesomes. Then there was the guy who still lived at home—which wasn’t a problem...this was New York, rents were crazy. Gemma still lived at home, too. Except that he brought his mother on their date. And that didn’t cover all the guys she never even went on dates with after enduring bizarre, creepy, or downright disgusting text exchanges.

  Yeah, the modern dating pool was grim, and Gemma was in no hurry to jump back in.<
br />
  Turning away, she dumped some dirty glasses into a plastic bin behind the bar and examined herself in the big mirror. Okay, so maybe her look—messy ponytail, minimal makeup, a tank top, and jeans—was a little uninspired. But there hardly seemed any point in dressing up every day just to stand behind the bar and pour refills for Dennis and Frank.

  “Maybe I need to step up my game,” she mused out loud, turning to the side to examine her profile. Her boobs still looked as good as they always had, and her ass was still pretty perky. “I mean, I am thirty.”

  “You’re thirty?” Dennis exclaimed. “How is that possible?”

  “I remember her when she was no higher than my knee,” Frank said with a wistful smile. “Where do the years go?”

  “Exactly,” Gemma muttered under her breath. “But I’m holding up pretty well, right guys?”

  “You haven’t changed a bit.”

  But that wasn’t Dennis or Frank, or any of the other old-timers in the bar. That was a much younger and hotter voice, one that set off an avalanche of memories and emotions. Her eyes sought out the front door in the mirror.

  No. This could not be real. That was not him, in her bar, after all these years.

  She spun around to look at him face-to-face. He hadn’t changed either. No, that wasn’t true. He’d filled out some since high school, with broader shoulders than she remembered. And his face had lost every inch of boyish softness. Now he was all hard edges and chiseled hotness and oh my god Brendan Flaherty was back.

  Chapter Two

  Brendan walked across the bar and Gemma was catapulted back in time to Sacred Heart Catholic High School. The school uniform of Brendan’s teenage years had been replaced by a suit—a sharp gray spendy-looking one. His once-unruly head full of golden ginger waves was shorter, darker. Money looked good on him.

  His eyes were focused on her with a fierce intensity as he advanced on her. She couldn’t believe this was happening. After all these years, he just showed up in her bar? Bold of him to assume she’d be okay with that. She’d just squared her shoulders and lifted her chin in preparation to toss him out when Dennis and Frank swiveled around and caught sight of him.

  “Brendan Flaherty? Is that you, son?”

  Brendan’s eyes slid away from Gemma as he turned to face Dennis and Frank. “Yes, it’s me. How are you, Dennis?”

  “Ah, fine. Same old, same old around here.”

  Did he have to make it sound so dreary? Good ol’ Romano’s Bar, slowly crumbling into the ground, along with everyone in it.

  “Frank.” Dennis clapped his buddy on the shoulder. “You remember Brendan? Mike Flaherty’s kid, God rest his soul.”

  “Sure, I remember you! Look at you all grown up. It’s been...what?”

  “Fourteen years.” Three sets of eyes turned to look at her. “It’s been fourteen years,” she repeated, then cleared her throat. “What brings you back to these parts, Flaherty? Slumming it for old times’ sake?”

  His gaze shifted back to her, sending an unexpected shock of electricity down her spine. He’d changed a lot, but those eyes were just the same. The color of melted milk chocolate, and just as beautiful as the rest of him. It had been a long time since she’d been on the receiving end of that look of his. Like he was irritated and impressed by her all at once. How dare he come in here flashing that look at her like it would still work after all these years? After what he’d done?

  “Actually, Gemma, I came to see how you were doing.”

  Bracing her hands far apart on the bar, she leaned forward and smiled. “Here I am, right where you left me.”

  Because that’s what he’d done fourteen years ago. He’d left and never looked back. And there was no way she was going to make his sudden return easy for him by pretending everything was fine, pretending they were just old friends catching up. Because they weren’t.

  Dennis and Frank might be delighted to see him again, but she intended to make this as unpleasant as possible for him. He’d earned it.

  Something flickered in his eyes and his smiled faded slightly.

  “Can I—”

  “Walk out the way you came in? Sure. There’s the door.”

  “Get a drink,” he finished after a beat, staring her down.

  “Sure, sure!” Frank answered for him, absolutely oblivious to Gemma’s simmering antipathy. He pointed to the empty bar stool next to him. “Sit down and have a drink. Tell us what you’ve been up to.”

  “Brendan’s been busy making his millions.” She flashed him another bright, false smile. “Isn’t that right, Brendan?”

  “Ahh... I’ve been working in building construction.”

  That was an interesting way to put it. Because she knew, from ill-advised Google searches guiltily done in the middle of the night, that he’d been working for his uncle since he left, developing multimillion-dollar luxury high-rises all over Chicago and the Midwest. Building construction was a laughably quaint way to describe it.

  “Well, let me and Dennis buy you a drink and you can tell us all about it. What’ll you have?”

  Damn. There went her plan to kick him out as quickly as he’d come in.

  He glanced back at her. “I’m not too sure Gemma wants me hanging around, guys.”

  Oh, of all the transparent, manipulative ploys. He knew Dennis and Frank were going to back him up. And sure enough, Frank charged in to do so.

  “Oh, sure she does. You kids went to high school together, didn’t you?”

  Gemma let out a snort of laughter. Sure, she’d gone to high school with Brendan. She’d spent months following him around like a lovesick fool, sneaking kisses in every corner and stairwell in Brooklyn, spinning ridiculous fantasies about true love and happily ever afters. Oh, yeah, she also lost her virginity to him. And then...he left.

  But Dennis and Frank didn’t know all that backstory. Almost nobody did. And she knew when she’d been beat.

  “Fine,” she exhaled, rolling her eyes. “Stay and have a drink.”

  Brendan smiled at her. She didn’t return it, staring him down until he turned his attention to the taps instead. “I thought you might have—”

  “Moved to Paris? Become an astronaut? Married Gavin Rossdale? Nope, just a bartender in Brooklyn, thanks for asking.”

  His eyebrows hiked. “I thought you might have more beers on tap.”

  “Just Michelob, Bud, and Bud Light. Works just fine for the regulars around here. We’ve got Sam Adams in bottles, if you’re too fancy for that now.”

  Brendan gave her another one of those tight exasperated-turned-on smiles, which she knew must have been fake because there was no way Brendan Flaherty was turned on by her. Not anymore.

  “Bud Light,” he said at last.

  “You got it.”

  “So what you been up to, kid?”

  Brendan sat on the stool next to Frank, folding his hands together on the bar. God, did she remember those hands. During the intervening years, she’d been disappointed to discover not every man was as talented or creative in using theirs as Brendan had been. It sucked that her first had been some sort of freaking sex prodigy. No man since had ever measured up, and she still hated him for that.

  “Oh, you know. Nose to the grindstone and all that,” he said with a dismissive shrug.

  “You work for your uncle, right?”

  Gemma set his beer down in front of him just as he said, “Not anymore.” His eyes flashed up to hers and she started. He left his uncle’s company? That was surprising. Last she’d heard they’d been conquering the world together.

  “Did you get a better job offer?” Frank asked.

  “No, I went into business for myself.”

  Dennis whistled in appreciation. “I bet you’ll outdo your uncle, huh?”

  “Well, we’ll see,” Brendan said modestly. Gemma suppressed the urge
to roll her eyes. “It’s new. We’re just getting our feet under us. But I hope it does well. How are things around here?”

  “Oh, well, you know, Antonelli’s closed—”

  “And Lou Bertoni died last winter—”

  “They sold the old First Federal building. Turning it into condos—”

  “John Romano’s got a girlfriend now—”

  Gemma tuned out Frank and Dennis’s recital of Carroll Gardens minutia, watching Brendan as he smiled politely and nodded at all the appropriate places. What the hell was he doing here? From the look of the suit and that seriously expensive titanium watch he was wearing, he’d found all the money and success he was chasing when he left Carroll Gardens. And here he was, back again, and sitting in Romano’s. Why?

  If he was just back visiting old friends, then the last place he’d have wandered into was Romano’s. Because the way they’d left things, they definitely weren’t friends anymore.

  Was he just there to take a victory lap through the neighborhood? Flash his cash at everyone who hadn’t made it out like him? If so, then coming to wave his success in her face was particularly vicious. But somehow she didn’t get the feeling that was it. Frank and Dennis had given him plenty of openings to brag and he had shut them down, deflecting their questions.

  His sudden reappearance was a total mystery, and even more mysterious was the fact that she was standing there trying to puzzle him out. Why should she care why he came back? Brendan Flaherty was most decidedly not her problem. He didn’t deserve to take up real estate in her brain. That had all been over and done fourteen years ago.

  He hadn’t spared a thought for her as he sailed off into a glorious future she couldn’t begin to imagine. Now he was back, transformed and hotter than he’d ever been. And she was still there, right where he left her, and exactly the same.

  Suddenly the timeless atmosphere of Romano’s felt a little bit like a tomb.

  “Hey, Gemma,” Frank said. “Can we get another round? On me.”

  “Sorry, Frank, it’s closing time.”

  Brendan eyed her skeptically. “It’s barely eleven.”