"Oh, yeah. I forgot it. Good thing I remembered the stuff I needed to pick up, and the address, too."
"You're working a private party," Joe said slowly. "At the Blue Mountain Cafe."
"Uh-huh." She smiled. "The new Blue Mountain Cafe. Miss Robinson made that very clear."
"Miss Robinson," Joe repeated carefully.
"Yes. Oh, that's right, you never met her. Well, she's wonderful. She was a dancer when she was young. She's an old woman now, but she has more spirit and energy than..." Lucy laughed. "Let me just tell you the news. I called Miss Robinson a few days ago, just to see how she was doing, and she told me she'd bought this place-"
"An old lady bought the Blue Mountain?"
"Yes. Seems it had been closed for a while, that it had an awful reputation, but she bought it, renovated it, and turned it into a place that caters parties for children."
"For children," Joe repeated. It seemed all he was capable of doing.
"Exactly. And she asked if I were still working as a chef, for you she meant." A soft blush suffused Lucy's cheeks. "I said I wasn't, and she said she might have some work for me and that she'd call, if she ever did, and then, this morning, she phoned and said her desserts person had the flu and how was I at making... Joe, what is it?"
"Nobody needs this stuff for desserts," he said gruffly, snatching the list from her. "A bikini. Pasties. Pom-poms. Melted chocolate. Whipped cream."
"That's 'blini,' not 'bikini.' Well, of course, blini are usually for grown-ups but I thought of filling them with ice cream and..." Lucy's smile faded. She looked up, her eyes meeting his. "Oh, Joe," she said softly.
Joe cleared his throat. "Well, hell, what was I to think? Pasties."
"Pastries.''
"And pom-poms."
"A dessert I remembered from my own childhood. My mother didn't approve, but the cook took pity on me and made them once in a while. Chocolate cupcakes, frosted with white icing, then dusted with coconut..." Lucy stepped back. "You thought," she said, her voice trembling, "you thought I was here, entertaining men."
Joe looked at her. Her mouth was trembling even more than her words, her eyes were glassy with tears, but it was the look in those eyes, those beautiful eyes that sent a spear of panic into his heart.
"You thought that of me, Joe. That-that I would lie in your arms at night, and-and during the day, do the kinds of things that went on in the Blue Mountain Cafe before Miss Robinson bought it."
"Lucy. Honey, no. I didn't. I just-"
She jumped back as he reached for her. "Don't touch me!"
"Sweetheart. Lucinda, please-"
"I told you not to touch me!" Lucy's face was white, her eyes almost black. "What a fool I was, to let myself fall in love with you."
Her unexpected admission filled him with joy. "That's what I'm trying to tell you," Joe said. "I'm in love with you, too."
"No. You aren't." She jabbed a finger, hard, into the center of his chest. "It's that oversized ego of yours. It's all puffed up because you think I'm this-this cheap version of Salome all men seem to fantasize about."
"No," he said with hot indignation. "Dammit, I never-"
"You came here, expecting to see me leaping out of a cake. Or peeling off my G-string." She jabbed him again. "Isn't that right?"
"Yes. I mean, no. I mean, I thought that might be it. But-"
"You don't love me, Romano. You don't trust me. You don't even like me." Tears rolled down Lucy's face. "I'm just some kind of -of sexual toy to you. A trophy you figured you'd keep around for a while and then dump when things got dull."
Joe blinked. "Lucinda. You're distorting everything."
"I'm not," she said, and suddenly her shoulders sagged and her hands fell to her sides. "I'm not," she said, very softly, and brushed past him.
"Sir," an officious voice said, "I tried to tell you earlier, you cannot-"
Joe snarled, grabbed the clerk by the elbows, lifted him off his feet and set him aside, but it was too late.
Lucy had gone out the door and disappeared into the fog.
CHAPTER TWELVE
JOE stepped into the center of the sidewalk and peered up and down the street. The fog was getting denser, lending a surrealistic look to things. Swirls of it curled around people hurrying past him. Their faces seemed to float above disembodied torsos and legs.
None of those faces was Lucy's.
Fear twisted his belly with a steely grip. He crushed it down, ruthlessly, with a jolt of anger.
"Dammit," he said under his breath, and cut across the pavement to his car.
She was good at this, Ms. Lucinda-of-the-Boston-Barry's. Joe jammed the key into the ignition and started the engine.
The lady got ticked off at him, she walked out. Well, she wasn't getting away with it this time, anymore than she did the last. A woman couldn't just march out of a man's life because he said something that annoyed her. When you came down to it. what had he done, anyway, except tell her he was in love with her, and that only went to prove how crazy she'd made him.
He slowed the car to a crawl, ignored the honks of protest from the traffic behind him, and put down the window so he could check out faces he drove past.
Only a masochist would love a woman whose greatest joy, whose special skill, lay in knowing how to drive him up the wall. Lucy was beautiful. Okay. And she was bright. But he'd dated lots of bright, beautiful women, and not a one-
"Not a blessed one," he snarled, slapping his hand against the steering wheel.
Not one of those babes had done a number on his head the way this one had.
Plus, she had a quick temper. She didn't know the meaning of compromise. She didn't seem to know how to stroke a man's ego, or care about doing it. And that was only the start.
Lucy couldn't cook, not unless you thought desserts constituted "cooking," and not even he, with his cast-iron stomach, could live on chocolate and whipped cream forever.
She probably couldn't sew or knit, either. He'd bet anything she didn't know how to clean a house. She was probably lousy at any of those female things.
Joe stopped at a red light.
Okay, he'd taught her to play a mean game of eight ball.
He hadn't had to teach her to argue politics and world affairs; she could talk even him under the table with facts and figures, and that was saying a lot. For all he knew, she could hold her own in a discuss
ion of particle physics.
On top of all that, she had a great sense of humor and a wonderful laugh. She was sweet and good and kind. And yes, she was special, in bed ...
Joe blew out his breath. Okay. More than special. He felt something when they made love, felt it even afterwards, just holding her in his arms, something he'd never felt before.
So what? Was that enough to make a man tolerate her damn fool stubbornness? He'd told her he loved her, for God's sake. That he'd been wrong, in his judgment of her. What more did she want? Was he supposed to say he wanted her with him, always, that he wanted her to be his wife?
Because he did, dammit. He did.
His anger fled and the fear came back. He had to find her. Had to make her see that he didn't view her as a trophy, as the star of some juvenile fantasy. He loved her. Needed her. Wanted to share his life with her.
And, by God, if she didn't believe him, if she didn't admit that she felt the same way, he'd toss her over his shoulder and carry her off, the way he'd done before.
The light went from red to green. Joe wrenched the wheel and made a quick, hard, illegal U-turn.
A guy in the next lane shouted something.
"You don't understand, man," Joe yelled. "I'm in love." The guy rolled his eyes, made a face, and gave Joe a thumbs-up.
"Thanks," Joe said.
Something told him he was going to need it.
Lucy was running down the hilly pavement, one block over. The fog was getting worse.
Good, she thought grimly. Joe would never find her in this soup, even if he knew where to begin.
And he didn't. She was certain of it.
Right now, he was probably driving that testament testosterone that he called an automobile up and down the street where the cafe was located, searching for her.
She could picture it, picture him, getting angrier by the second. He'd never calm down long enough to stop and think logically. If he did, he might figure out that she'd run to the corner, watched him leave the Blue Mountain, then run right back inside, straight through the place and out the rear exit.