The Next Best Thing (Gideon's Cove #2)(12)
“I gotta get going. Books to write.” She sighs dramatically.
Parker is the author of a successful children’s series—The Holy Rollers, child-angels who come down from heaven, don roller-skates and help mortal kids make good choices. Parker hates the Holy Rollers with a mighty passion and wrote the first one as a farce…stories so sticky-sweet that they made her teeth ache. However, her sarcasm was lost on an old Harvard chum who ran the children’s division of a huge publishing company, and The Holy Rollers are now published in fourteen languages.
“What’s this one about?” I ask, grinning.
She smiles. “The Holy Rollers and the Big Mean Bully, in which the God Squad descends to beat the shit out of Jason, the seventh-grade thug who steals lunch money.”
“Beat the shit out of Jason!” Nicky echoes, zipping his car along the window.
“Oops. Don’t tell Daddy I said that, okay?” Parker asks her son, who agrees amiably.
“Want me to keep an eye out?” Parker asks, scooping up Nicky’s little cars into her buttery leather pocketbook.
“For what?” I ask.
“For your new husband?”
“Oh. Sure. I guess,” I say.
“Now there’s a can-do attitude!” she says with a wink, then takes my nephew by the hand and breezes out, her blond hair fluttering in the wind.
CHAPTER FOUR
ETHAN WAS TWO YEARS BEHIND ME at Johnson & Wales. I didn’t know him until my junior year—while I’d grown up in Mackerly, the Mirabelli family had moved to town and opened Gianni’s my second year of college. They heralded from Federal Hill, the Italian section of Providence, and their restaurant was an instant success. I’d eaten there a time or two, but I hadn’t met any of the family until Ethan approached me one day as I was lounging on the grass at school, sketching out my final project for Advanced Cake Decorating.
“Aren’t you one of those bakery babes from Mackerly?” he asked. I grinned and affirmed that indeed I was.
“I’m Ethan Mirabelli,” he said. “My family owns Gianni’s. Do you know it?”
“I sure do,” I said. “Best food this side of Providence.” I shaded my eyes and took a better look at young Ethan Mirabelli. Fairly cute. Lively brown eyes, mischievous smile, the kind that curled up at the corners in a most adorable way. “Do you work there?”
“Not yet. My brother and dad are the chefs now, but maybe someday. What about you? Are you in the chef program, too?” he asked, sitting on the grass next to me.
“Pastry chef. I’m a sucker for dessert,” I answered.
“She loves sweet things,” Ethan murmured, lifting an eyebrow and giving me a sidelong glance. Flirt. I grinned again. “You’ll have to come in and try my mom’s tiramisu,” he said. “It’s the best in four states. Including New York.”
Ethan and I became instant pals. We hung out together, met for lunch a couple times a week, sat together on the old couches at the Cable Car theater and watched foreign movies, snickering inappropriately at the love scenes. “Sex in German,” Ethan murmured. “How awful.” The couple next to us glared, then muttered to each other—in German—sending us into gales of silent, wheezing laughter.
We didn’t date, but we were compadres. He was a sophomore, I was a senior, and we were at the age where that still sort of mattered…my almost twenty-two felt much older than his still nineteen. He couldn’t go out for a beer—not legally, anyway—and I was interviewing with hotels and restaurants while he was years away from graduation. And though he was pretty cute and very fun, it wasn’t, as we girls liked to say, that way. We never held hands or kissed or anything. We were just friends.
A few months after we met, Ethan and I shared the short ride home to Mackerly, and he brought me to Gianni’s.
“Hey, guys,” he called as we went into the kitchen.
“Hey, college boy, nice of you to drop by and visit the working class” came a voice, and Jimmy turned around, and that was that.
His eyes got me first…blue-green, ridiculously pretty. The rest of his face was awfully nice, too. Gorgeous cheekbones, generous lips, a little smile tugging at one corner. Time seemed to stop; I noticed everything…the golden hair on his muscular forearms, a healing burn on the inside of one wrist. The pulse in his neck, which was tan and smooth and seemed to urge me to bury my face there. Jimmy Mirabelli was tall and strong and smiling, and I didn’t realize I was staring at him—and he at me—until Ethan cleared his throat.
“This is my brother, Jimmy,” Ethan said. “Jim, this is Lucy Lang. Her family owns Bunny’s Bakery.”
Jimmy took a few steps over, and rather than offer me his hand, he just looked at me, and that little crooked grin grew into a slow smile that spread across his face. “Hi, Lucy Lang,” he murmured as I blushed. Ethan said something, but I didn’t hear. For the first time in my young life, I’d been hit hard with lust. Sure, I’d had a couple of boyfriends here and there, but this…this was indeed that way. A warm squeeze wrapped around my stomach, my mouth went dry, my cheeks burned. Then Jimmy Mirabelli did take my hand, and I almost swooned.
Hours after I left the restaurant, Jimmy called the bakery and asked me out. I said yes. Of course I did. And when Ethan and I drove back to school that Sunday night, I thanked him for introducing me to his brother. “He’s a great guy,” Ethan said mildly, then listened as I gushed some more.