When It Falls Apart (The D'Angelos, #1)(31)

“It’s not what you think.”

“If there’s a woman, it’s what I think,” Gio said.

Luca looked around his car. “I promise you’d be wrong. Just take over.”

“Pick up my favorite niece, fill her with gelato, and leave her high on sugar for when you get home.”

Luca cussed at him in Italian. “How about homework, a trip to the park, and a book before bed if I’m not home.”

“Who is she?”

Luca didn’t answer and assumed his request would be granted. “Thanks, brother.” He hung up.

For an hour, Luca shifted from one side of the driver’s seat to the other in debate.

He could only think of one time he’d been this indecisive before and that was in the sixth grade when he wanted to ask Becky Ahlstrom to dance but couldn’t work up the nerve until the last song. When she said yes, he realized he’d missed out on the whole night because he was too chicken to go for what he wanted.

And here he was doing it again.

Well, okay . . . not the same thing. Walking over to Brooke’s car and admitting that he’d seen her upset and then followed her to the parking lot and then sat there watching her for the last hour was more than a little strange.

Yet as every second ticked away, it was harder for him to explain why he was there.

“Fuck it.”

Luca pushed out of his car and strode up to Brooke’s with purpose. He walked to the passenger side and hesitated when he saw that she’d been crying. “Hey,” he said, breaking her concentration.

She didn’t exactly jump, but he could tell she was startled.

One look at him and she relaxed by a hair.

“What are you . . . Luca?”

Without asking, he reached for the passenger door, opened it, and slid inside.

He wanted to acknowledge her pain, the bright searing agony he saw in her expression. But instead, he closed the door and pushed the seat back to give his legs more room. “I figured since we’re both going to sit here and watch the nursing home we might as well do it together.”

“What?”

“That’s what you’re doing, right? Watching the home?”

“It’s an assisted living facility and what the hell are you doing here?”

He wanted to vomit more than he wanted to admit what he had to. “This is going to sound more stalkerish than it actually is.”

“I doubt it.”

Luca kept his eyes focused on the home and not her. Keenly aware of her eyes on him as he spoke. “I saw you from the terrace. First looking down on you in the parking lot, then closer when you ran out.” He lifted a hand. “You were on the phone yelling. I wanted to tell you I was there but then you were running away.” He placed both hands in the air now. “I don’t know . . . maybe it’s too many women in my life, but you looked pretty upset.”

His silence met with her silence.

The air in the car didn’t move.

“You followed me,” she said without emotion.

“I told you this would sound stalkerish.”

She twisted in her seat, looked out the back window. “I’ve been sitting here for almost an hour.”

“I thought it was only thirty minutes.”

“An hour, Luca.”

Damn it to hell . . . it sounded worse coming from her lips. “I know. I thought . . . maybe you needed to use the bathroom or were hungry. We could take turns watching the home. What are we watching for exactly?”

“My dad.”

Okay, it was her father. “Good. Okay.”

“Luca?”

“Yeah?”

“This is crazy.”

He turned to look at her. “Crazier than sitting across the street watching an old folks’ home for a man, who I have to assume belongs there, to somehow emerge and do what exactly?”

Brooke snapped her lips shut, nose flared as she sucked in a deep breath and slowly let it out. “It’s a home, not a prison. He can leave if he wants to.”

Luca nodded a few times, considered her words. “Does your dad have a car?”

“We’re sitting in it.”

“You’re driving your dad’s car?”

“That sounds like an accusation,” she shot at him.

“It was a statement.”

“It was a question . . . one with accusing tones.”

Luca closed his eyes. “I don’t have accusing tones.”

Brooke blew out an exaggerated breath. “Oh, please . . . your tones have accusation all over them.”

“They do not,” he defended himself.

“Accusation. Condemnation. All kinds of ‘ations.’ You’re as judgy as they come.”

She hardly knew him to have come up with such an opinion. Her assessment meant nothing and yet . . . “That’s not true.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” he said.

She twisted now, no longer looking across the street. All her focus and words . . . anger and emotion were squarely on him. And Luca felt as if he were in an interrogation room about to be cornered into a confession for a crime he didn’t commit.

“I ask a question and you say the first words that come to your mind. If you hesitate, I’ll know the words were judgy and this argument is over.”