Exploding: A Mafia Romance (The O'Keefe Family Collection #1) (12 page)

F
or six boxes
filled with crème puffs, Neapolitans and assorted pastries, the four men required to deliver them seemed excessive. When Killian went to the front of the truck to greet the driver, Declan took the place of being Fallyn’s guard, shielding his sister from the men who unloaded the boxes and picked up the ones from her bakery marked for delivery to them. “Hello, Tony,” she greeted as he passed her.

“Fallyn,” he nodded, setting the box down on the counter.

“How’s Angelo? Did he have any trouble with the cops?”

“He got released this morning.”

When Vince’s deeper cadence reached her, Fallyn’s heart stuttered and her cheeks heated. “Yes, thank you for not pressing charges. I trust you’re healing well?” Vince strolled into the kitchen with his shoulders back, as if there was not the possibility of war he was walking right into. He played the game well, diffusing the tension by setting an example of ease. It had been Fallyn’s strategy all along, but her brothers had ignored it and fussed over every little sniffle or gunshot wound.

“Bullet barely grazed me,” Fallyn lied, raising her chin to defy the reality that her arm was in worse shape than she was willing to let her brothers realize. “Hardly left a scratch. How’s Angelo?”

“Grateful he hit his target. There won’t be any more unpleasantness if you come out again. Though, I do think this is a better arrangement until things calm down.” Vince met her gaze, saying things through his cool blue eyes that she could not ignore. She felt naked under his scrutiny, but refused to squirm.

Nothing happened. We didn’t kiss. It was a crazy dream. Never happened in real life.

Killian held the door open for the last man as he walked out. “I think that’s everything. Same time tomorrow?”

Vince nodded. “I’ve got some questions and numbers to go over with whoever’s running the bakery. Is that you, Kill?”

Fallyn’s voice turned sharp. “It’s me. I’m the owner.” She held up her finger to Killian, who looked like he wanted to slip in an addendum that might undercut her authority. “Don’t you dare, Kill.” Killian backed down, but Fallyn could tell he was on the verge of speaking his mind. “We can talk in my office, Vince.”

Vince called over his shoulder, “Tony, take the boys and the truck back home. I’ll catch a cab after I settle things with Fallyn.”

It looked like Tony wanted to argue, but he obeyed, taking Vince’s backup with him and leaving. Killian saw Vince sending away his men and nodded in appreciation at the gesture. “Declan, Finn, I think you can head out, too. I can watch the place while Vince settles up with Fally.” Declan and Finn exchanged firm handshakes with Vince that held a thinly veiled threat before they exited. Killian sat in the chair by the backdoor with his arms crossed. “I’ll be right here if you need anything.”

Fallyn pointed to the dishes that had not all been washed. “When I come back out, some handsome leprechaun better have made decent progress on those dishes. Declan barely got halfway through.”

“Alright, alright.” Killian rolled up his sleeves and started to work, ensuring there was adequate noise to cover any conversation Fallyn and Vince would share.

F
allyn ushered
Vince into her small office and shut the door, locking it behind her and then taking the seat across from Vince behind her mildly disorderly desk. “How did my things sell at your restaurant yesterday? We only had one Neapolitan left, so I think we can up the order by twenty percent tomorrow, if you’re game.”

Vince crossed his ankle over his right knee, leaning back in his chair to size her up. He spoke slowly, his voice low with a note of playfulness to it Fallyn didn’t often witness. “Is that what you want to talk about? Food orders?”

Fallyn cleared her throat and started sifting through the papers on her desk to put them in a more manageable order, keeping her eyes down so as not to give away her nerves. “Of course. That’s why you came here, I imagine.”

“Do you think I need to go out on deliveries?” He raised an eyebrow at her. “Do you think I have nothing better to do than unload a truck of desserts?”

“I assume you came to make sure things were square with Killian. A show of peace.”

“Look at me.” Vince’s velvety cadence cut through her dodging with a sharpened silk she did not expect.

“No,” Fallyn whispered, her face firmly pointed toward her desk. “How did my things sell at your place?”

“We sold out. Twenty percent increase works for me.” He waited a few beats and then beckoned her again with a note of seduction in his voice. “Fallyn.”

“Don’t say my name like that,” she warned, pursing her lips together, her head still bent over her work.

“That you can’t look at me shows me you can’t shake what happened either. How was your date? Did he show?”

“Yes, he did. It was nice.”

“Are you seeing him again?”

Her voice came out in a guilty whisper. “Yes.”

Vince’s face broke out in a sly smile. “You don’t want to see him. You’re still trying to figure out why you can’t have with him what we have without even trying.”

“It’s because you spooked me, calling me like that just before the date started.”

“I haven’t been able to get you out of my head. That kiss…
Bella,
look at me.”

Her cheeks were hot and try as she might, she couldn’t keep a stoic expression when her eyes finally met his. “You’re a D’Amato. I’m an O’Keefe. It didn’t happen.”

Vince’s eyes steeled, the warm pools of blue mutating to ice at her words. “That’s all I am to you? I thought for sure you would’ve had a more open mind. I expect that kind of talk from your father or some of your brothers. I expected more from you.”

His shaming struck a chord. “You’re asking me to pretend the situation our families are in doesn’t exist, but it does. It doesn’t matter if I do or don’t care about the feud; it’s still there.” She lowered her voice and double-checked that the door was bolted shut. “It was a good kiss, Vince. But that’s all it can be. No matter what it felt like, we don’t have those kinds of choices.”

“You’re young yet. You think things like that happen every day – that passion’s easy to find. I’ve got news for you: it isn’t.”

“Please! I’ve seen you be all kinds of passionate with Maria. You don’t have to hide under a desk to kiss her.” It wasn’t a statement of jealousy, but a reminder of the situation. Dread swept over her at the admission she made aloud for the first time. “Oh! We kissed under your desk on the floor like animals!” She covered her face with her hands and groaned.

Vince stood, resting his fists on her desk and leaning over to close some of the gap between them. “I’ve had Maria every way you could imagine, but she’s never come apart in my arms the way you did. That was intimate.
That
was naked. I haven’t been that naked in a long time.”

Fallyn scowled and removed her hands to glare at him, reclaiming a bit of her personality. “Well, that’s the thing about virgins with zip experience. I would’ve fallen apart in anyone’s arms. It’s all hot and heavy for me because I’ve got hardly anything to compare it to! You don’t want me, Vince. Stop pretending you do!”

“Stop pretending you don’t!” he challenged, angry at her denial. “I meant what I said. I don’t regret what happened.”

“Then you’re a fool!” They glared at each other with their frustration and bottled up attraction. There was animosity, confusion and too much emotion to properly put into words.

And then there was kissing. Vince leaned over her desk from his towering stance and pressed a kiss to her scowl, melting it like chocolate that puddled in his hands. The moment her lips returned the affection, he brought his knees up to rest on her desk, afraid to break the kiss in case she decided to run further from it. From his kneeling perch atop the desk, he cupped her face, bringing her to stand from her chair to get closer, to feel more of whatever it was that made her body beg like it never had before.

Before she knew it, Vince climbed clear over the desk and set his feet down on her side, his strong hands reaching down and gripping the undersides of her thighs to lift her. It was on instinct that her legs knew the dance, wrapping around Vince’s waist as he took a few steps forward and pressed her back to the wall. The cold of the concrete added to the sensory overload and scrambled her brains. Her hand was in his hair, yanking the follicles and digging into his scalp to devour more, to be even closer. “Vince, we can’t!” she protested, but his lips were insistent that they could and they must.

So they did.

Vince pinched his way up the underside of her left thigh, using her gasps as a barometer of how far he was allowed to venture. When her whimpers were tainted with a note of panic, he stayed below that line, knowing she was not a thing to be taken and broken. “
Attraente
. You’re all I can think about. Tell me you feel it!”

“No!” she cried, sucking on his lower lip. “We can’t feel this.” The kisses were hard and bordered on messy with the frustration they hurled at each other in the middle of their passion.

“But you do feel it,
giovane tesoro
. Tell me you think of me.” He took his hand from her thigh and stuck his finger in her mouth again, groaning a deep, guttural sound as she sucked, her blue orbs locking in on his with need that betrayed her innocence. He reached down and traced a wet line from the underside of her knee up the back of her thigh, and swirled a pattern that inched dangerously closer to the swell he’d longed for. He anticipated her gasp and whimper, which he devoured with a kiss that took her breath away. “No one can make you feel like this,
Bella
. Only me. Only me.”

“Only you,” she murmured, wanton and greedy, panting as she turned her head to the side to breathe and clear away the dizziness that was clouding the protests she couldn’t hold onto anymore. All her reasons for pushing him away slipped through her fingers like water. “I lied,” she finally admitted. “I have a hard time thinking about anything else. I want you.”

Vince shook with anticipation, trying to keep her lifted and pinned to the wall as his finger danced on the edge of no return, seducing as he was seduced. “How,” he breathed in a demanding growl, gripping her thigh like he wanted to remove it and take it home. “Tell me how you want me.”

“I… I…”

“You can have me,
Bella
.”

When Killian’s firm knock on the door interrupted them, Fallyn’s eyes flew wide open. A tiny bleat of panic escaped her lips that yearned for more of his. “He’ll know!”

Vince deflated slowly, lowering her feet so they touched the floor. “No, he won’t. It’s okay,
prezioso
. Breathe.” He lowered her to her chair and brushed her hair over her shoulder so it didn’t look like she’d just been ravished. He moved to the door, smoothing his hair and rolling his shoulders back to feign ease. He cracked open the door to speak to Killian. “We’re almost finished. Just bickering over prices.”

Killian looked past Vince to his sister, whose head was bent over her papers, pen in hand. “Okay. Hurry it up.”

Vince shut the door and turned back to Fallyn, who was touching her lips in confusion. “How did… We just… But you can’t… How?”

Vince shed his mobster persona he needed to keep handy to ensure his people stayed loyal and protected. He turned her swivel chair sideways to face him and knelt before her, holding her hands and kissing the tips of her fingers as if they were too breakable for a full squeeze. “This is happening, so let’s not try to deny it next time, okay? I’ll find ways for us to be together in secret, so your brothers don’t have to get involved.”

Fallyn’s heart banged in her chest like an alarm warning her of the danger ahead. “That’s not possible. You know it’s not. Your family hates mine! Mine hates yours! One of your men held me at gunpoint just yesterday! You have a girlfriend you’re living with, Vince. Even if all those other things magically fell away, this isn’t right. I’m not the other woman, and you’re making me be that girl. The girl who kisses some other woman’s boyfriend. Don’t make me cheap. Don’t make me less.” She leaned forward and pressed her forehead to his. “You should like me because I’m more, and push me in that direction, even if it doesn’t get you what you want.” Her lips brushed against his once more, and she nearly lost her resolve. “Be a good man, Vince. I see you trying to be one by making peace with our families. Go the whole way. I want that for you.”

Vince kissed her in earnest, a pledge to do better. “I can be that man, Fally. I can be the one you’re proud of. I can be the man you deserve.”

Fallyn kissed Vince, slow and gentle, lacing all the things she knew he could be into each brush of her lips. “Do it for Papa D, not for me.”

Emotion welled up in Vince like a festering volcano just waiting for the right trigger to push forth an explosion. He choked a tearless sob into her mouth at mention of his deceased father. “I will,
dolcezza
. I will.” He kissed her again, holding her fingers tight, afraid to let go. “When can I see you again?”

Fallyn shook her head. “No. I like you too much. The deeper I get, the worse it’s going to hurt once everyone and everything tears us apart.”

Vince stood slowly, stroking the curve of her cheek and looking on her face with more longing than he’d come into the office with. “I’ll make you proud,
amore mio
. You’ll see.”

F
allyn meandered
through her day on rubbery legs, consumed by a whirlwind of emotions. She kept her pleasant smile firmly affixed, but inside she was replaying every detail of Vince’s declaration and each painfully glorious moment their lips made a beautiful mess of things. She left the store in the evening to attend the ritual of family dinner, which she was not looking forward to. She hated keeping things from her brothers, and after her last altercation with her father, all she wanted to do was run.

Hiding was not an option, so Fallyn strode into her childhood home with her chin level to the ground, a smile on her face and a box of cupcakes for dessert. She set them down on the counter she’d cooked many a meal in. “Good to see you, Daddy,” she pushed out when she saw the hesitance in her father’s eyes.

“I’m not yer daddy,” he corrected her with a grumpy expression. “I don’t have a daughter. Only boys. Seven boys.” He called over his shoulder for his wife, who had been dead for two years. “Sheila!”

Killian pushed past his brothers and placed a hand on his father’s shoulder. “Dad, this is Fallyn, your daughter.”

“I don’t have a daughter,” Patrick repeated. “Only boys.”

Fallyn hung her head, feeling like she’d been punched in the gut.

Declan wrapped his sister in a hug she tried not to need. “Don’t worry about it, kiddo.”

“I hate when he doesn’t know who I am. Why me? Why does he always forget me and not you guys?”

Declan hooked an arm around her and brought her into the living room that was always cluttered with too many knickknacks on the mantle. “He forgets Keenan, too, because he’s been in jail a few years. It’s because he had you later in life. He’s had an extra decade to burn us into his memory, but pretty soon he’ll slip on our names, too. It’s dementia, Fally. It’s no reflection on how much he loves you.”

“I know.” She bit her lip to keep the sting from becoming too visible. The expansive ranch-style home smelled of pine and Lysol from the overzealous maid. Fallyn tried not to focus on the breathing machine in the corner of the living room next to her father’s old brown recliner.

Her six brothers were arguing like children at the table, which brought a level of genuine joy to Fallyn’s broken heart. They greeted her with hugs and kisses as if they hadn’t seen her in years, though most of them she’d seen that very day. Her pleasant expression remained in place until Carrigan kissed her cheek, then it fell to disrepair in the next second. “Whoa. What’s wrong, Fally?”

Fallyn reassembled her smile when the eyes turned to examine her. “Nothing. Just business stuff. Could we go on a walk before dinner? I have a few shop talk questions.” She knew it was a bad lie. Carrigan was the cop, not the restaurant owner. He didn’t have many useful tips on the subject of running her store.

“Of course.” He shoved his brown shoes back on and opened the door for his sister, walking down the front stoop and out onto the street that was bedecked in greenery. Tall trees promised to conceal her secrets, but Fallyn knew there was no way to be sure her brothers couldn’t rattle the truth out of them. “What’s up?”

“Remember when Mama died, and we didn’t want to talk about it?”

Carrigan grew serious, scratching an itch on his chin as he spoke. “Yeah. We went for walks together instead while everyone else talked. Miles of silence. Helped more than most things. You sad about Mama?”

Fallyn shook her head. “Not today. I just have a lot going on and wanted to go for a walk and not talk about it.”

“Okay. Any hints?”

“I think I stepped in something I shouldn’t have. I’m worried I’m making bad decisions.” She bit her lower lip to keep from confessing anything more to the brother who had been her closest confidant growing up. She reached out and held Carrigan’s hand – a thing she did only when she was scared. She knew if she kept on this subject, she would confess her feelings for Vince to Carrigan. She switched to the second most upsetting matter that weighed on her. “It breaks my heart that Daddy doesn’t even know who I am sometimes. One day he’s yelling at me, and the next he doesn’t know me. Rough pill to swallow.”

Carrigan pulled her closer as they walked side by side. “I know. It breaks all of us to watch him go downhill this fast. He took a swing at Killian the other day for no reason at all.”

Fallyn buried her head in her brother’s shoulder, wishing there was only one horrible thing to dwell on. She was certain that if Carrigan knew the men she’d been making out with, he would never forgive her. A stranger to Carrigan was one thing, but Vince? She ruled the risk of Vince wasn’t worth it. It was an impossibility. James might be possible months from now if they were strong enough together to face her family. But it would take time, and she wasn’t sure how long she could keep the darker secrets of her family’s deeds away from him and still be able to call it dating. She closed her eyes, trusting Carrigan would lead her somewhere safe. “Will you always be my best friend?” she asked holding tight to his hand.

Carrigan kissed the top of her head. “Unless someone cooler comes along, yeah.”

She smiled – a real one this time, and she could feel particles of herself reassembling from where Vince had blown her senses clear apart. “What if I do something to make you mad? What if you find out I’m really this person who makes horrible choices? What then?”

Carrigan gripped her fingers. “I guess I’ll have to figure out a way to get past whatever it is. But it sounds like a big ol’ lecture’s coming your way when whatever it is surfaces. Maybe don’t do things you know are going to bite at you.”

“I think it’s about time for the ‘quiet’ part of our quiet walks.” She held onto her brother while they walked through the neighborhood they’d grown up in, the silence doing more to calm her than a lecture ever could.