She's Up to No Good(27)
Not that Tony had proposed. There had been hints, but no outright declaration of intentions. Yet that part didn’t worry Evelyn. She knew how she felt and didn’t worry for a moment that he felt anything but the same.
College was another obstacle though. If she eloped and then didn’t get her education, Joseph really might not forgive her and certainly wouldn’t forgive Tony. But if she attended college as a married woman . . . Pembroke College, where she planned to go, would definitely be too far away; she would have to go someplace closer. But that would work.
“What’s going on in that head of yours?” he asked warily. She quickly wiped her face free of machinations. “I don’t want to know, do I?”
Evelyn stuck out her tongue. “So serious. Does your family even know about me? Other than Lipe?”
“Yes,” Tony said, opening the car door for Evelyn. She climbed inside, and he shut the door behind her. “That’s where we’re going tonight. My mother wants to meet you.”
“Your mother?” He nodded, putting the car in drive. “You let me out of this car right now.” She reached for the door handle.
He turned to look at her, amused. “Why, Evelyn Bergman. Are you afraid of my m?e?”
She squared her shoulders. “I’m not afraid of anything, but I’m also not walking into your”—she hesitated—“m?e’s house empty handed.” She butchered the pronunciation—it sounded like the month instead of the Portuguese word for mother—but he smiled at the attempt.
“No, that wouldn’t do, would it?” He reached into the back seat and pulled out a bouquet of flowers. “You’ll give her these. And if you really want to impress her, you’ll say, ‘Prazer em conhecê-lo.’”
“Won’t ‘nice to meet you’ suffice?”
He chuckled. “That is ‘nice to meet you.’ Say it with me now. Prazer.”
“Praz-eh.”
“No Massachusetts accents now. You’re going to have to say an ‘r.’”
“Not like you talk any better!”
“I do in Portuguese. Come on. Prazer.”
“Praz-ER,” she said exaggeratedly, rolling her eyes.
“Good. Em conhecê-lo.”
“Em cone-ye-se-lo.”
“All together now. Prazer em conhecê-lo.” She repeated it. “She’ll love you.”
“And if I accidentally say something that means ‘I neck with your son in his car down by the jetty most nights’?”
“She probably won’t love you as much, although she has her suspicions. You did leave a mark last week.”
Evelyn grinned. “Might have gotten a little carried away. Someone always says we have to be good.”
He looked over at her again. “Be good tonight, huh? I want my family to like you.”
She leaned back against the car door and put her legs, bare in the summer heat, up on the dash near the steering wheel, her dress riding up to show sun-bronzed thighs. “They’ll love me, darling.”
“I hope so,” he said, not daring to look at her. “Because I do.”
“Pull over.” She sat up suddenly, removing her legs from the dash.
“What?”
“Pull over right now!”
He pulled the car to the side of the road, still two miles from town, glancing at her nervously. But as the car rolled to a stop, she climbed on top of him, straddling his lap, the steering wheel digging into her back.
“Say that again.”
“What?”
“What you just said. Say it properly.”
He looked into her eyes, lost forever and never wanting to be found. “I love you.”
Her lips spread into a slow, sultry grin, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, leaning in to kiss him deeply. His hands came up around her waist as he forgot that he and Evelyn had plans.
But Evelyn pulled away, kissed him once more lightly on the lips, then climbed back into the passenger seat, where she pulled a compact out of her bag to check her reflection. “I’d really better be on my good behavior now.”
He swallowed. She hadn’t said it back. “Why’s that?”
She looked at him, then reached over and wiped at the lipstick on his mouth. “Isn’t it obvious? I love you too.” She handed him a handkerchief. “Wipe that off well. You just raised the stakes. Let’s go. I don’t want to be late.”
Tony scrubbed at his mouth with the square of cloth while Evelyn reapplied lipstick, looking in her compact mirror. Then he pulled the car into gear and continued toward town.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Grandma?” I called, entering the cottage. I heard clattering in the kitchen and headed in that direction.
“Good morning, sweetheart. How was your run?”
“I ran into Joe,” I said, pulling out a kitchen chair.
“Well, of course you did.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I texted him when I saw your note.”
“What do you mean you texted him? Since when do you know how to text?”
“I know how to do a lot of things.” She was at the stove, French toast simmering in a frying pan, the smell of my childhood wafting toward the table.