Love Around the Corner Read online

  “Gemma...”

  “Yes?” she murmured, before she lowered her head and took him fully into her mouth. He hissed and arched underneath her, one hand coming to tangle in her hair.

  She didn’t linger there long. He was too close to coming and it wasn’t happening that way. Releasing him from her mouth, she went to work rolling the condom on as Brendan gasped for air underneath her.

  “I can’t go slow,” he warned her as she finished and sat back.

  “I don’t want you to,” she said, as he flipped her onto her back and loomed over her. Then he was there, shoving his way between her thighs, spreading her wide. The incredible pressure eased in and filled her.

  “Oh,” she gasped, when he’d fully seated himself.

  “Good?” he ground out.

  “Fuck me, Flaherty.”

  Her words were the last leash holding him back. He drove into her, hard, relentlessly, over and over, dragging her leg up over his shoulder when he wanted more. She let go, gave herself over to it. This...this was what she wanted, what she needed. A raw, primal fuck with him, to banish all that emotional shit from the past. It was over and done with. All they had now was this.

  Except she couldn’t quite forget high school, because it was rapidly becoming clear that despite how hot they’d been together then, how good he’d been, he was better now. Because they’d been horny teenagers sneaking around, most of their earlier sex had been, out of necessity, fast. Adult Brendan was a liar, because he was taking his damned time. He spent forever moving one way, then angling another way, paying attention to every sound she made and every hitch in her breathing, figuring out what she liked and what drove her wild.

  It was effective, because her body was responding to him in ways it never had to anyone before. There should be no way she could come now, helpless on her back, pinned under him as he drove himself into her. But it was happening, a tightening that she couldn’t hold back. This time was different, a deeper, darker release, a molten pleasure that didn’t explode so much as flood her, slowly, thoroughly, endlessly. It reached parts of her that had nothing to do with skin and nerve endings, parts that felt tender and satisfied and scared all at once. Stupid pheromones.

  She lost all sense of time and place as she crested endlessly on a dark wave of bliss, focusing on the sensation and blocking out every single other thing. Then she felt his hand on her face, his thumb rubbing across the top of her cheekbone. She knew that touch. He always touched her face that way when he was close to coming. When she was sixteen, it had made her feel so wanted, so cherished. Now she wrenched her head away, looking to the side as his breathing grew ragged. His hand slid into her hair instead, fisting tight as he pounded into her. Then he heaved, cried out, held still, and his orgasm took him under, too.

  Afterward, she lay sated under the sweaty weight of his body. “Damn, Flaherty, I think you killed me.”

  “You okay? Did I hurt you?” His hand came up to stroke her cheek again. She wiggled out from underneath him.

  “I’m fine. I just meant that you kind of fucked me to death just now.”

  He rolled to his side, propping himself on his elbow. “I’m going to take that as a compliment.”

  Gemma sat up, sweeping her hair over one shoulder. “You should. You’ve picked up a few tricks since the last time we did this.”

  He reached out, running a finger down the length of her spine. “One or two.”

  She bent over, pulling away from his touch, reaching for a T-shirt he’d abandoned on the floor. “Lucky me.”

  Outside, the rain had started, a hard downpour that muffled all the sounds of the streets below. Gemma surged to her feet. “I better get going.”

  Brendan paused for a moment before responding. “It’s pouring outside. Why don’t you just stay?”

  Yeah, not a chance. She flashed a tight, forced smile over her shoulder. “You know the deal.”

  When she made to leave, he leaned forward, grasping her wrist and pulling her backwards until she tumbled back on the bed. “Brendan—”

  In a flash, he had her pinned under the length of his body again. “Yeah, I know the deal. The deal is just sex. And I said I was going to take all night with that.”

  “Just sex means no sleepovers. I’m not staying.”

  Brendan considered that for a moment, even as his hand was sliding up the inside of her thigh. “What if I made it worth your while?”

  She should get up out of this bed, put her clothes on, and leave. This was only going to work if she kept that line drawn firmly between them. But oh, then he touched her and it made her shudder and arch underneath him.

  “You have one hour to make us both come again,” she said. “And then I’m leaving.”

  He lowered his head and kissed the side of her neck. “Deal.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  She did eventually go home. After the storm had blown through, after Brendan had made her come three more times. He’d still pressed her to stay the night again, but she held firm, wiggling back into her clothes and slipping away into the quiet darkness to walk home alone.

  She had let him put his number into her phone before she left. He’d said in case she wanted another go, and at the time, that sounded like an excellent idea. Except he’d already texted her once this morning, just a brief message wanting to know if she’d made it home okay. It felt a little too familiar, like she’d let him get too close, so she purposely didn’t respond. And she still wasn’t sure if she was going to take him up on his offer of a Round Two. It was undoubtedly a bad idea, but it was hard to say no to more of that sex.

  She looked up from her grandmother’s recipe book, where she’d been pretending to look for recipes for Carlos’s dinner instead of replaying last night’s sex marathon in her head. Tony Santini had just come back down from inspecting Mr. Mosco’s apartment to give them the verdict.

  “Well?” Dad asked.

  Tony rubbed the back of his meaty neck. “You can probably get away with keeping most of the wiring. Just replace the outlets and ground ’em, so that’ll save you busting into the walls. But we gotta rewire the kitchen, and that means opening everything up. You plug a microwave in up there and you’ll blow a fuse for sure.”

  Dad sighed. “Do what you gotta do, Tony.”

  “I got a guy who does drywall. Want me to include him in my estimate or you want to get your own guy?”

  “Your guy’s fine.”

  Tony took a pen from the pocket of his work shirt and finished writing up his estimate before sliding it across the bar to Dad. Gemma watched him for a reaction, but Dad was as poker-faced as they came.

  He nodded and Tony left, heading up to Mr. Mosco’s apartment to make a few more notes.

  Gemma waited until he was gone to ask, “What’s it going to cost us?”

  Dad slid the estimate down the bar to her. She flinched. Even with the extra money from Carlos’s dinner, that was going to hurt. But they had to do it, or they’d never be able to rent the place.

  “Where are we going to come up with that?”

  “Richie said he’d loan us the cash if we need it.” Dad laughed in disbelief. “Can you believe it? Richie’s loaning me money now.”

  “It’s good he’s doing so well.”

  “Yeah, but I hate to lean on him like this.”

  Gemma laid a hand on his shoulder. “Dad, he leaned on you when he needed it. He wouldn’t have his business without you.”

  Dad nodded, looking around Romano’s. “But maybe we wouldn’t be in this bind if I hadn’t bought out Richie and Marianne.”

  “Richie needed it, and so did Aunt Marianne, in her way.”

  A few years after 9/11, Aunt Marianne, their Uncle Vincent’s widow, decided she wanted to move away with her kids and get a fresh start. Brooklyn held too many memories. Still being tied to her dead husband’s
share of a house in Brooklyn and a business she wasn’t there to participate in was a burden she didn’t want or need, so Dad had bought her out.

  “It seemed like a smart thing to do at the time,” Dad said. “Getting sole ownership. I thought it would be better to pass it on to you girls in one piece, rather than having to split it up with a bunch of cousins. That’s how family feuds start.”

  “You did the right thing, Dad. Now I don’t have to put Cousin Paul into a headlock every time we need to pay the tax bill. Romano’s is all ours.”

  Dad gave her a small, half smile. “For better or for worse.”

  “Well, I’ve got this cooking job coming up, so that’ll help some.”

  “You’re already working full time here. You shouldn’t have to work a second job just to keep us afloat.”

  “You do it.”

  He looked at her in surprise and she rolled her eyes. “Come on, Dad. You think I don’t know that Uncle Richie is paying you to help him on the boats whenever you go out there for the weekend?”

  He looked embarrassed that she’d caught him. “Richie needed an extra pair of hands.”

  “And we needed the extra money. There’s no shame in that, Dad. I don’t mind doing my share, too. I just hope I don’t make a fool of myself trying.”

  “Not a chance, Gem.” Sliding an arm around her shoulders, he kissed the top of her head. “What would I do without you, kid?”

  “Starve, probably.”

  “What’s this?” He indicated her recipe book.

  She sighed and pushed it away. “It’s Grandma Romano’s recipe book. I was looking for something I could adapt for this dinner party, but I don’t know.”

  “I didn’t know you used this.”

  “How do you think I taught myself to cook, Dad?”

  “I just figured it was all those cooking shows you watch on TV.”

  “Those are for inspiration. This is for knowledge.”

  Whipping his bar towel off his shoulder, he started wiping down the bar in preparation for opening. “Well, at least someone’s getting some use out of it. Your mother couldn’t be bothered.”

  “This was Mom’s?”

  He nodded. “My mother gave it to her as a wedding present.”

  “Really? But Mom couldn’t cook.” Mom had raised them on boxed macaroni and cheese and hot dogs. She barely knew how to turn on the stove. Angela Romano had been charismatic, outgoing, fun, and warm-hearted, but one thing she had not been was domestic.

  A memory of her mother flared up in Gemma’s mind—the clatter of a pot as Mom dropped it into the sink, the hiss as she turned the tap on and water hit the hot pot, the acrid smell of burning food, the air in the kitchen hazed with smoke. Mom had thrown her hands up in the air, muttering angrily to herself about “answering one little phone call and the dinner went to hell.” Gemma had come in, taken one look at the blackened disaster in the pot, and asked her mother how on earth she’d managed to burn pasta when the pot was mostly water. In an instant, Mom’s anger fled, replaced with laughter, and soon, Gemma was laughing, too. Mom’s temper was quick to catch, but it burned out fast. The laughter, though—she was always laughing. It was what Gemma regretted most about losing her when they did. She’d just gotten old enough to know her mother as a person, to begin developing a new kind of relationship with her. They liked going shopping together and obsessing over American Idol. Jess and Livie had missed all that, and they’d never get it back.

  “Your mother wasn’t interested in stepping foot in the kitchen,” Dad said. “A bunch of recipes from the old country were the last thing she wanted.”

  “But these are the best!” Gemma ran her fingers lovingly over her grandmother’s recipe for Pasta e Fagioli. Okay, maybe Grandma didn’t use enough salt, and Gemma’s was definitely better for the addition of caramelized leeks, but the bones of the recipe...those were impeccable. It was a classic.

  “Your grandma thought so, too. I’ll tell you...” Dad broke off, then laughed and shook his head. “It caused a bit of a stir, that cookbook.”

  “Why?”

  “Your grandma didn’t use written recipes. Everything she knew, she’d been taught by my grandmother. It was all up here.” He tapped his temple. “But Ma...she took the time to sit down and figure them all out. She knew a modern girl like your mom wasn’t going to spend her life in the kitchen, memorizing her mother-in-law’s recipes, so she made her a recipe book to follow. What she didn’t realize was that your mom wasn’t interested in the kitchen at all, recipes or no recipes. They fought like a couple of wet cats about it. Not sure Ma ever really forgave her for not learning to cook.”

  Usually when Dad shared a memory of their mother, his expression turned unbearably sad, like he was experiencing the tragedy of her loss all over again. But today, he looked almost...amused. He’d also never told her a story before that painted their mother in a less-than-saintly light. Maybe that meant he was finally getting over her, putting Angela Romano in her place in his past and leaving her there. And while that was bittersweet for Gemma, it was good for her father.

  “Well, Mom didn’t know what she was missing in here. Grandma’s recipes are amazing.”

  “I’m glad you found it, Gem. Your grandma would be, too.”

  Smiling to herself, she pulled the worn notebook back to her, thumbing lovingly through the pages. It fell open to the recipe for brasato al Barolo, beef slow cooked in red wine. It was a Northern Italian dish, not from the Central Region, where the Romanos hailed from. She’d always supposed the Italian immigrants from all regions cross-pollinated each other once they were all in one neighborhood.

  She’d made the Brasato before, with a tough chuck roast and a cheap red wine. But what if she classed it up? Individual portions of a good quality beef, full of marbling to add flavor? She could talk to Leo at Vinelli’s about doing the cuts of meat custom for her. Then slow cook them all day in a great Brasato wine. And instead of dumping it on polenta, which is what she’d done when she’d made it for the family, she could do something nicer... Oh, whipped potatoes in individual ramekins, maybe, and piped in so they looked fancy, and then use the kitchen torch to brown the edges. Delicious comfort food, but with a modern take and elegantly presented. Maybe it wasn’t flavored sea foam and slivers of things placed with tweezers, but it felt like her, for better or for worse. She could only hope that was good enough.

  Fishing a notepad out from under the counter, she started a shopping list. It would be too late to shop for it tonight, but maybe tomorrow first thing. Excitement buzzed through her veins at the possibility. She couldn’t wait to see how it turned out.

  “Here comes your sister,” Dad said, glancing out the front window. “And she looks like she’s on fire.”

  Gemma glanced up to catch a glimpse of Jess hurrying down the sidewalk, her hair whipping behind her. The next moment, she came charging into the bar.

  “Mariel said yes,” she announced.

  “What, to Dan? They’re really getting married?” Mariel was secretly a hopeless romantic. Who’d have guessed?

  Jess nodded as she came to take a seat on a bar stool, wiggling her way up the same way she’d been doing since she was twelve, because she’d never gotten any taller.

  “Yep.”

  “Well, that’s great news,” Dad said. “I like Dan. He’s alright.”

  It amused Gemma no end that because of Jess’s relationship with Alex, the billionaire media mogul Dan Drake had actually been a guest in the Romano house, and that he and her father were now friendly. Dad could probably call up Dan today and Dan would write him a check to cover the bar’s debts, but Dad was as proud as Jess about those things. A loan from Richie was one thing. He was family, and he owed her father. But Dan’s money—Dad would die before asking, and Gemma didn’t blame him.

  “Here’s the best part, though,” Jess said. “Mar
iel was all for having a small ceremony with a Justice of the Peace or something and a little dinner afterward. She even wanted to ask you to cater it.”

  “Me?”

  “Well, that was before Dan got involved. Because he doesn’t want some quickie ceremony with a couple dozen friends and family. Dan wants a freaking blowout wedding.”

  “Dan wants a big wedding?”

  “He’s such a big sentimental softie when you get underneath the suits and the swagger. He pulled in a few favors and got the Plaza Hotel next month.”

  “They’re throwing together a big society wedding in a month?”

  “Yep. For three hundred guests. When you’ve got Dan’s money, anything is possible.”

  “Well, I guess I’m not catering that one for her.”

  “You couldn’t cater it anyway, because you’re going.”

  “What?”

  “She’s inviting you. She’s inviting all of us.”

  “She’s inviting our whole family?”

  “Well,” Jess said. “We’re kind of her family too, don’t you think?”

  “You’re right, Jess.” He flipped his bar towel back over his shoulder. “There’s always room for more in the Romano family.”

  Gemma folded Tony Santini’s estimate into ever smaller squares. Seemed like a big family welcome was about all the Romanos could offer anyone these days.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Kendra burst through the swinging door of Carlos’s kitchen. “We have an emergency.”

  Gemma stopped, her hands frozen over the entrees she was furiously plating. “Oh, God. Someone’s throwing up. I knew it. I knew I shouldn’t have gone with the tuna carpaccio.”

  “No.” Kendra waved her hands in annoyance. “They’re practically licking their plates out there. One woman moaned. Like, legit sex noises.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s good.” She didn’t tell Kendra the same thing had happened to Brendan when he’d tried it. Because she wasn’t thinking about him, or the fact that she’d shown up at his place two more times this week after closing the bar. She wasn’t thinking about all the mind-blowing sex they’d had, and she definitely wasn’t trying to figure out when they could do it again.