Shimmy Bang Sparkle(38)

“Nick, I actually . . . I understand.” Say something honest, say something true. “I’m not . . . see. I . . . you know . . . So I am actually a dog sitter, but I’m also . . .”

“Stella,” he said, his voice firm and steady, with maybe a hint of a smile. “I know.”

I shifted my eyes toward the phone, toward his voice. “You . . . what?”

He cleared his throat. “I saw what you did at the jeweler’s, and then today? Three women? One of them wearing a Converse size nine? News flash: this isn’t my first rodeo.”

My knees became instantly wobbly. Once or twice, I’d imagined telling someone about this secret life of mine—but my secret wasn’t like most secrets. I wasn’t divulging that I liked to drink a little too much, or that I had been married four times, or something not-quite-kosher but generally acceptable. Being a jewel thief was bad. Bad-bad. Felony-bad. It was the dark side of my moon, the thing that no man had ever known about me.

I planted my hand on the doorframe for support. He knew. He knew who I was. He knew who we were.

How did I feel about that? Should I hang up? Should I bolt? Should I pretend?

I looked down at the box of berries. At the note. And thought about how all this made me feel. And when I really boiled it down, I was shocked, I was rattled, and I was also just . . . relieved. “And that’s OK?”

Nick blew out a breath. “I want you. It’s that fucking simple.”

I closed my eyes hard, pinching them shut. Was I dreaming? Was this reality? Was I losing my mind? “You know who we are?”

On the other end of the line I heard the unmistakable noise of him running his rugged and sexy palm over his equally rugged and sexy stubble. And then he said, “I can’t do this on the phone. I’m coming over.” In the background, I heard the jingle of keys. “Even being two miles from you right now is way the fuck too far away.”

As he said it, I looked down at myself. I was in exactly the same clothes he’d seen me in yesterday and this morning. My hair felt limp. My skin felt greasy. I’d dribbled coffee on my shirt. And I hadn’t put on makeup in nearly forty-eight hours. “Hang on. Hold your horses. I need to shower and get cleaned up.”

“Fuck that. I’m just going to get you dirty again,” he said, his voice dark and thick and greedy.

Welp. That was that. For all the things that had been swirling around me in the magenta mist, one thing was very clear: I now knew exactly where my loins were.

However, for whatever else I was, I was—first and foremost—a Peretti. And when the going got tough—or confusing or tiring or overwhelming—the Perettis did one thing: they cooked. And that was exactly what I was going to do. “Let me make you dinner.” I made a mental scan through the fridge and freezer contents. It wouldn’t be fancy, but at least it would be delicious. “What’s your feeling on lasagna?”

He cleared his throat. He laughed a little. And then he said the thing that every cook on the planet wants to hear. “It’s my favorite.”

“Then I’ll see you at seven thirty.”

He groaned a little. “For real. You’re making me lasagna?”

I froze with my key halfway into the lock. “Unless you prefer risotto. Or maybe a nice pesto linguine. Or mussels in white wine?”

“Jesus Christ,” he groaned. “Where have you been all my life?”





18

NICK

Here was the thing about Stella Peretti: she might’ve been a badass, she might’ve been my Kryptonite, but she also fucking melted me, because when I got off my motorcycle, stuffed my jacket into my helmet, and grabbed the wine from the compartment under the seat, I heard it. All the way from across the parking lot.

She was singing.

I don’t mean some half-assed, half-hearted, unsure-about-the-lyrics singing; I mean a full-on, top-of-her-lungs, shatter-the-wineglasses, bring-the-house-down karaoke wail. As I neared her place, I realized I knew the song. She was roaring along with Tom Petty about running down the dream.

It was out of tune, it was over the top, and it was absolutely fucking fantastic.

I stood in front of her door, with my hand in a fist, ready to knock, but she was so into it—even doing the guitar solo, “Da-dun-da-dun-da-dun-dun!”—that I decided to wait it out. She sang with such pure, unapologetic joy that I just could not wipe the grin off my face. From my left came an old lady walking a small, fluffy white dog with a red beard and dark streaks under its eyes. I gave her a nod and kept on listening.

“She does it all the time. All the time!” she said in an adoring way. “You should hear her sing to Johnny Cash. She’d make June Carter so proud!” She chuckled a little, beamed at Stella’s closed apartment door, and then shuffled off.

Now Stella was at the bridge, and she was letting it rip. “Ooooh-oooooo,” she hollered with the chorus. “Ooooh-oooooo!” Finally, she really upped the ante, with a throaty croon that made her sound like a gospel singer taking it home for the congregation. “OOOOOH-OOOOOOO.”

And silence. Staring at the brass 3A on her apartment door, I tried to pull myself together. I tried to wipe the smile off my face. I could not do it. It was a state of being, and I knew I had zero chance whatsoever of playing the tough guy through happiness like this. So I didn’t, and I gave the door three solid knocks. I was smiling when she opened the door, and smiling even harder when I saw her. She was in a red polka-dot dress, barefoot. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, and she was wearing a half apron that was printed to look like a hula skirt.