Dear Reader,

When I was seventeen, I fell in love with a rogue. You know the type of guy I mean, all sweet talk but little commitment. Somewhere during my senior year in high school my rogue asked me to marry him. Unable to see the inevitable future, I said yes, and after months of hot-and-heavy, he said, “I need to go out into the world and find myself…without you.” Devastated, I vowed never to date again. Then I fell for another rogue, then another and another, until I thought for sure I was incurable.

Which brings us to Rudy Bellafini—the rogue poster boy. Although he’s totally fiction, he’s totally real to me and with my slightly quirky Italian heritage, it’s no wonder there’s a curse involved.

I’m not attracted to rogues anymore, just like I’m not attracted to expensive clothes and chocolate truffles.

Yeah, right!

Best,

Mary Leo

P.S. Please come visit me on my Web site at www.maryleo.net. We’ll talk some more.

Cate looked sinful, but also elegant in her backless halter-style wedding gown

Her sister Gina had picked out the semi-designer creation and Mrs. Crocetti had discounted the dress for good luck. All was good.

“Let’s take a second and hit the highlights.” Gina’s words made Cate stop before she left the room. “You’re doing this revenge wedding because—”

“Because I don’t want anything bad to happen to any other guy I may be interested in.”

“And?”

“And this is the only way to break the curse. He jilted me ten years ago.”

“And?”

“And because my last fiancé nearly choked to death on a cannoli.”

“Makes perfect sense to me, but are you happy?”

“No.”

“Great. Everything’s as it should be.”

Aunt Flo burst into the room. “What’s the holdup, dolls? We got over a hundred people down there waiting for the bride. So are you going to walk down those stairs or are you going to jilt him now?”

For Better or Cursed
Mary Leo

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

For Better or Cursed is Mary Leo’s follow-up novel to Stick Shift. She’s had careers as a salesgirl in Chicago, a cocktail waitress and keno runner in Las Vegas, a bartender in Silicon Valley and a production assistant in Hollywood. She has recently given up her career as an IC layout engineer to pursue her constant passion: writing romance.

Mary now lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and new puppy.

To: Janet Wellington, for her endless energy;

Maureen Child, because she keeps me sane;

Cheryl Howe and Crystal Green, for their continued

encouragement; Holly Jacobs, who answers all

my lame questions; Rick, because he’s rational

when I’m not; and most of all to Kathryn Lye,

the best editor a girl could have.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Epilogue

Prologue

There’s a belief on Taylor Street in Chicago’s Little Italy that if a man jilts a woman after a proposal of marriage, then her love life is forever cursed…unless, of course, the man returns so the woman can have her revenge.

RUDY BELLAFINI COULDN’T MOVE , at least not without agonizing pain, but as he lay in the snow, his skis pointing straight up in the air, a person stood over him snapping his picture.

“What the…?” Rudy said as he spit snow and debris out of his mouth, angry over the amateur paparazzo with the disposable camera.

“Don’t worry about a thing, Mr. Bellafini.” Click… “The ambulance is on its way.” Click…click…click.

Rudy couldn’t believe this chick. Did she have no shame?

“Come on. I’m a mess here. Could you stop with the pictures?” Rudy pleaded, and held up a hand to block the camera’s focus.

Click… “Sorry, honey, but I thought guys like you loved this kind of stuff. Besides, it’s an even trade. I called the ambulance. You owe me,” she purred.

“I owe you? I’m lying here next to death and I owe you for calling an ambulance?”

“It’s about giving something back.”

“That would mean that I took something from you, which I didn’t because I don’t know you. Do I?”

Click…

“Stop taking—” Rudy mumbled, but the chick wouldn’t give it up.

As Rudy dropped back in the snow, completely defeated, a curious memory drifted into his consciousness. A memory he thought he had successfully tucked away forever.

“Stop taking my picture,” Rudy chided.

“I want to remember this when you’re rich and famous,” Cate said as she snapped several pictures of Rudy’s face. They leaned up against the far wall in the back of his father’s closed restaurant, teasing each other with kisses and laughter as a snowstorm howled right outside their door.

“You make me crazy,” he said right before he kissed her gently on her full, wet lips.

“We came here for food,” she taunted. “You told me that your dad left us a couple sandwiches.”

“You are my food,” he whispered between playful kisses.

She snapped another picture.

“I’m the one who’s hungry. Not you. You ate like a pig today,” she told him.

“I’m hungry for you,” he said, not believing the words that came tripping out of his own mouth. All he knew at that exact moment was that he wanted her, right then, right there, and nothing could stop him. Her hair smelled like the rain, her skin tasted as sweet as sugar and her full breasts were softer than he had ever imagined. He had unbuttoned her sweater, and slipped her camisole off one shoulder to reveal her breast and now he couldn’t keep his hands or his mouth away from her body.

“I thought you were in so much pain you couldn’t move,” she told him.

“I was, until you gave me that back and shoulder massage. I thought I wouldn’t be able to ski again for the rest of the season. Then you came along. Did anybody ever tell you that you have the magic touch?”

“You’re the first,” she said, smiling.

“We should get married,” he said after a deep kiss that sent a thrill through his entire body. He could feel her heat as she pressed up against him, leg twisted around his, arms surrounding his neck, his shirt undone so he could feel her breasts tickling his chest.

She pushed him back. “Are you asking me to marry you?”

He looked into her glistening brown eyes, saw that loving look on her sweet young face and answered a resounding, “Sure. Marry me, Cate Falco. Be mine forever. I’ll give you all the gold and diamonds in the world.”

“I don’t want all the gold and diamonds in the world. A single strand of white gold and diamonds would do just fine. But we’ve only been dating for three months.”

“Since when did dating-time have anything to do with marriage?”

“I don’t know. Isn’t it a rule or something? Aren’t we supposed to get to really know each other first? I mean, we haven’t even spent a whole night together, or had one decent argument. Aren’t those the two main ingredients of happy marriages?”

“So that’s it…sex and arguments? That’s what makes a happy marriage?”

“I think so, and maybe a few thousand other things, but you obviously don’t have time for the list. At least we should know…”

He kissed her again, then pulled back to continue on his quest.

“What’s to know? You’re the girl with the magical touch, and I’m the guy who needs a little magic in his life. Sounds like the perfect match to me.”

“You’re the one who’s crazy. You know that?”

“You could be right, but let’s get married, anyway.”

She stared into his eyes as if she were searching for the right answer, then pulled him in tight and rested her head on his shoulder.

He hugged her even tighter, hoping for the right answer.

“So,” she whispered.

He waited while she tickled his ear with her tongue, sending shivers right through him. He pulled his head away and looked at her, hoping, praying even, for a yes.

“So?”

Cate beamed with a smile that lit up her whole face. “So, yes. Of course I’ll marry you. How could I not?”

He picked her up and twirled her around shouting, “Yes. Yes. Yes,” as she snapped another picture of his smiling face.

“Yes, Cate, yes,” he said out loud.

Two burly men from a rescue team picked Rudy up from the snow. “That’s some dream you’re having, Mr. Bellafini. But you need to relax now. You’re going to be fine.”

“Sure,” Rudy said. “Relax. Like it’s easy with your foot pointing in the wrong direction. Look at that. You should be on this stretcher, dude, trying to relax.”

A woman from the same team, with black satin hair and pure brown eyes, a Latin angel, told him to breathe normally through the tubes poking into his nostrils. Rudy smiled and shut up long enough to finally lose all consciousness.

1

“IT’S NOT YOU . It’s me,” Cate Falco said while sitting across from Joey Delano in the trendy dinner house on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. She watched as he tried to cut his rare steak with a blue cast wrapped around two of his fingers and halfway up his right arm.

“Come on. That’s such a line,” he said trying to get a grip on the knife.

“I know, but it’s true. It really is me.”

He put his flatware down and looked at her. “You’re breaking up with me?”

“Yes,” she answered in a cool, calm voice.

“But why? I thought we had a good thing going.”

She thought this would go easier, but he looked seriously confused. “I’m thinking that since you met me, you’ve broken two fingers, fallen down a flight of stairs, got stuck in an elevator for five hours, sprained your wrist and got hit in the balls with some kid’s baseball. I can’t date you anymore. I’m a hazard to your health.”

Cate sat back in her chair, getting a little weepy-eyed. She really liked this guy. He was funny, cute and got her weird sense of humor, but she just couldn’t let it go on any longer.

“But they were all accidents. You weren’t even there.”

“I know, but believe me, this is for your own good.”

“I don’t get it.”

“You know how everybody in Chicago believes the Cubs are cursed? Well, it can happen to people, too. I’m love-cursed and you’re just experiencing the results.”

“You expect me to believe this?”

Cate looked into his sweet brown eyes and said, “Yes.”

“This is bullshit,” he said.

It was at that exact moment that the waitress tripped while walking by, nearly dropping her tray of drinks in his lap.

“No, this is real. You’re the last in a long line,” Cate said. “I’m giving it up.”

“What? You’re not going to date anymore?”

“That’s absolutely right. I’m embracing celibacy. I hear it’s quite calming.”

He stared at her for a long moment, then stood up, pulled some cash out of his pocket, slipped it under his plate and left.

Cate let out a heavy sigh.

THE NEXT MORNING Cate and her father, Ted, sat in their kitchen eating breakfast and reading the Chicago Sun Times. Ted ate soft-boiled eggs out of the shells, really-bad-for-you bacon, and vitaminless white toast, while Cate crunched on her completely-good-for-you bowl of organic Optimum power breakfast cereal with flaxseed, soy fiber, dried blueberries and 500 mg of OMEGA-3’s.

They at least agreed on the coffee—Starbucks house blend, strong and black.

“Will ya get a load of this?” Ted announced with a flourish, tossing part of the paper across the table.

“What?” Cate asked as she picked up the sports section.

“Look whose mug is on the front page,” he said while tightening the belt on his plaid robe. It was chilly in the large kitchen and her father not only wore a wool robe over flannel pajamas, but he liked to wear a white stocking cap on his balding head…to keep the heat in.

Cate took the paper, and there, spread across three columns was Rudy Bellafini, lying prone in the snow, looking absolutely awful. Aside from the fact that his body was the shape of a pretzel, his hair was way too long—shaggy and over his eyes, with a little curly flip just under his right ear—Cate wondered if the slight mustache and almost beard was due to a lack of shaving or if he had done it on purpose, for that scruffy-Hollywood effect.

She caught herself lingering over the picture a little too long. Cate purposely didn’t react. A reaction would send her father into some lecture on “the guy who jilted you,” and Cate didn’t want to get into it, especially after last night.

“He never did like to get his hair cut,” she said as she tossed the paper back to her father.

“That’s all you got to say?”

“No. I’m sorry he’s hurt.” She took a big bite of her cereal. The crunching muffled her father’s voice, but unfortunately, she could still make out what he was saying.

“He ain’t just hurt. It says there that some girl named Allison might’a pushed him off one of them ski chairs.”

“What does that have to do with me?”

“Because of him, you’re thirty years old with no husband.”

“I’m twenty-nine and I don’t want a husband. I’ve got a good life just the way it is.”

“You ain’t got such a good life. He’s got a good life. Winnin’ all them gold medals, and for what? Slidin’ down some bumpy hill. Who with a sane mind is gonna do that? Nobody, that’s who.”

“Those bumpy hills are called moguls, and it’s an Olympic sport. You know that. You were glued to the TV every day during the games.”

“Yeah, well it don’t look like no sport to me. Skiing down a mountain like Alberto Tomba does is a sport. He’s a champion. But them bumpy hills, that’s no sport. It’s just dumb.”

She pushed herself up from the table. “No. This argument is dumb. I have to get to work. I’m booked all day.”

But once her father started, there was no stopping him. “And what about them restaurants of his? He’s made a million bucks on them bad Italian restaurants. What have you got? Sore hands.”

“I like what I do. I’m a great therapist. I make a good living.”

Cate leaned on the table ready to go at it with her father.

“Well, it ain’t right for a single woman to be rubbing on some guy’s hairy back all day. Only perverts and them weird sex people who like ropes and chains do that kind of stuff.”

“Here we go!” She sat back down in her chair. “We’ve locked up all our ropes and chains. They leave marks.”

“It wasn’t so bad when you was going to school and working out in California. I don’t know those people, but now that you got your own business right here in the neighborhood, I don’t like it. I gotta see these people every day.”

“Then don’t go out.”

“See what I mean? You don’t care about the shame I gotta live under. It ain’t right. You should be married to Rudy Bellafini and have a million bucks.”

Cate grabbed her bowl and cup and put them in the sink. She hadn’t really let herself think about Rudy in years, and now he was back, like lint in her dryer. “I have to go to work,” she said, and kissed her father on the cheek.

“And tell that sister of yours it’s time to get up. She does this every morning. Always late, that one.”

Cate obeyed her father and knocked on Gina’s door, but that was all she would do. She wanted to get out of there quickly and had no time to coax her sleepy sister awake. Not this morning. Not with Rudy Bellafini on the front page of the sports section.

As soon as Cate stepped out of the house, she walked straight to the newsstand on the next corner, bought her own copy of the paper and sat down on a cold, worn-out bench at the bus stop to read all about Rudy Bellafini, the man she never could shake. The man who had single-handedly cursed her entire adult love life. The putz.

The story read like it should have been inside a tabloid rather than a reputable newspaper. The focus of the piece was Allison Devine, Rudy’s latest squeeze. According to insider sources, Allison had a temper that most of Hollywood tried to avoid. They listed her many outbursts: she had thrown a chair across a movie set; trashed several dressing rooms; assaulted an unnamed costar; and backed her BMW right into her last boyfriend’s Ferrari. The article went on to say it was highly unlikely that Rudy had fallen without some assistance from the “Shrew of Hollywood.”

As if anybody cares!

Cate threw the paper into the overflowing trashcan next to her and proceeded to walk to work. Part of her thought he deserved Allison Devine. She was perfect for him. Maybe they’d get married and live miserably ever after.

She could only hope.

But the other part of her wished he’d come back to Chicago, just once, so she could somehow expunge this curse thing and be done with Rudy Bellafini once and for all.

2

FORTUNATELY FOR RUDY nothing was actually broken, but the two-hundred-pound amazon therapist who currently pulled on his very sore legs only made matters worse. He had been in therapy for almost a week. Granted, he was older now, thirty-one, and it took longer for him to heal. His knees were shot, so he didn’t expect much healing to go on there, but she really didn’t know what she was doing.

“Dude, this is crazy. Do we really have to do this now?” Rudy asked in between bouts of shooting pain. He was on the floor lying across a very thin mat.

“It’s good for the spine,” she said, smiling at his agony.

“I’ve got a great spine. A perfect spine. It’s my hip that’s hurting.”

“That’s why I’m pulling on your leg.”

“But it’s my other hip.”

“Oh,” she said, and dropped his leg, then picked up the other one. The heel of his foot hit the mat with such force that it took all that was in him not to howl in pain.

“Look,” he said trying to yank his leg away. “Could we do this some other time, like when you’re at home and somebody else with more experience is on duty? I’m too tired for all this pulling and hurting right now.”

“Nope. We have to do it now. Can’t let that hip lock up. I’ve got a whole routine planned for you. Once I finish with your leg, I move up to your neck.”

“Look,” he glanced at her name tag, “Linda. You seem like a nice enough girl, a little rough around the edges maybe, and it could be, a lot unprepared, but, hey, there’s a whole group of guys who like rough, incompetent girls. Gives them a mission in life. Unfortunately, I’m not one of them. Let’s get this straight. There’s nothing wrong with my neck. It’s my shoulder.”

She stopped pulling and looked at the clipboard she had carried in. “That’s not what it says on my chart.”

“Well, your chart’s wrong.”

She flushed, then looked from left to right. “I’m sorry, Mr. Bellafini, but I’m not really a therapist. I work in the front lobby, but when I heard you were recovering here, I thought I could get the real story on how you fell off that lift. I mean, like, I don’t want to be a receptionist forever. I’m studying to be a journalist. I go to night school. You’re this week’s assignment. So, tell me, Mr. Bellafini, did your girlfriend really push you off that lift?”

“No. It was an accident.” But he wasn’t so sure about that himself. Rudy tried to remain calm, tried to move away from her and ring for a nurse, but the red emergency alarm was in the middle of the wall, well out of his reach. “All I want is some rest. Can’t a guy get some rest?”

“Sure, if you’ll just answer a few of my questions. I’m your biggest fan. I was rooting for you when you won your first gold medal. By the way, when you hang all three medals around your neck, are they heavy?”

“Where’s the nurse? Who let you in here?”

“Mr. Bellafini, please don’t get upset. Just one little question.” The woman straightened up, cleared her throat and said, “Is it true that you were caught messing around with some other Hollywood actress and that’s why your girlfriend, Allison Devine, pushed you off the lift?”

She smiled at him and waited for her answer, as if he would actually give her one. Rudy stared at her, trying to imagine what kind of insanity ran through this woman’s mind. When she opened her mouth to begin her next question, Rudy lost it. “Nurse,” he yelled. “Help! Nurse!”

The journalist-in-training got scared and stood up, turned on her heels and quickly walked out of the rehabilitation room, carrying the chart but leaving Rudy sprawled across the mat, entirely unable to move.

IT HAD BEEN a little over a week since Cate had seen Rudy’s picture in the paper, and so far she’d been unable to think of anything else. She blamed it on her new vow of celibacy. She was positive once she fell into the rhythm of this self-imposed, sex-depravation thing, all men would completely vanish from her thoughts, and she’d become as saintly as her aunt Flo, her mother’s fifty-eight-year-old, silver-haired sister.

“I heard Joey’s left nut blew up to the size of a melon,” Aunt Flo said while she lay on her stomach on a table at Cate’s Wellness Center.

Cate stopped the massage. “I’m not going to treat you if you keep this up.”

Cate had been working on Aunt Flo’s neck and shoulder every other day for the past month, but she still wasn’t getting any better. Cate didn’t know if the kink was real, or if Aunt Flo just wanted the attention. Cate was hoping for a little of both. She didn’t want to believe that all her hard work wasn’t helping.

“What?”

“Can we talk about something other than my love life?”

“Sure, doll. Anything you want.”

Cate continued with the massage. “How about the weather? That’s a neutral subject.”

“What’s to talk about? It’s winter. There’s not much conversation about ice and snow. And speaking of ice, at least you still got Henry O’Toole. He took care of Rocky pretty good. And come to think of it, you probably never would have met him if poor Rocky hadn’t croaked on your wedding day.”

“Rocky passed on, Aunt Flo. He didn’t croak.”

Cate speeded up her treatment. She wanted to get Aunt Flo out of there.

“You’re right, but them undertakers sure do make good money, and he’s Irish. The curse won’t take him. And even if Henry is old enough to be your father, sometimes that’s what a girl needs…another father.”

“Henry’s just a friend.”

“They were all your friends, but you didn’t love any of ’em but Rudy, that’s your problem.”

“My only problem is everybody telling me about Rudy Bellafini. He’s gone and out of my life, and that’s the way it is. Forever.”

“So, we won’t talk about him. Who is he, anyway? Just some boy who hurt my beautiful niece, that’s all. Just the boy who stood her up at the altar, like that devil Pinky did to me thirty years ago. And now you and me both gotta carry the curse.”

Cate refused to admit to anyone in her family that she actually believed in the curse. It just gave them more fuel.

“Rudy and I never made it to the altar. We set a date, that’s all. He never even gave me a ring.”

“I guess you’re right.” She paused for a moment, sighed and went on. “I mean, it don’t matter that your first fiancé was in a hospital for three weeks when he got run over by the flower truck on your wedding day. Or that your second fiancé, may he rest in peace, Rocky Dilantano, the prizefighter, collapsed right there in church while you was walking up the aisle on your dear father’s arm. It’s a good thing your sweet mother isn’t here to see all this, may she rest in peace, or she’d be worried sick, like me.”

“Rocky had a bad heart, and stop worrying. I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”

“You’re right. Nothing to do with our curse. But, still and all, it’s good to see that Rudy is getting what he deserves for jilting you.”

Cate stopped and looked at her aunt. “I didn’t get jilted.”

“What do you call it, then?”

“Over,” Cate said while gently tugging on Aunt Flo’s arm.

“Excuse me,” Gina Falco said as she leaned against the doorjamb of the private therapy room. Gina helped out at Cate’s Wellness Center three days a week while she worked on her degree in sports medicine. Gina took after their mom, tall, slim, dark blue eyes and silky red hair that touched her tiny waist. The only thing she and Cate had in common was their height, everything else was completely different. Cate’s eyes were amber, her hair short and brown with some blond highlights. She worked out a lot, so her figure was good, but she hated her big fat butt, and her too-small breasts, 34-B. And to top it all off, she had pulled out her first gray hair that very morning. Cate felt certain that soon she and Aunt Flo would look more like sisters rather than aunt and niece.

Cate turned to face Gina as she walked over and whispered in Cate’s ear, “Rudy Bellafini just limped into the front office.”

Cate pulled on Aunt Flo’s arm with such force that the poor woman let out a glass-shattering yell, “Eeyow!”

“Aunt Flo, I’m sorry,” Cate said. “Are you all right?”

“What’s the matter with you? Are you trying to kill me?” She scooted herself up and fluffed out her hairdo.

Gina said, “It’s…it’s our new method for getting rid of those really stubborn kinks. We learned it at the APTA conference last summer. No pain, no gain.”

Cate rolled her eyes at her sister, knowing that Aunt Flo loved anything that sounded even remotely hip.

Aunt Flo rotated her shoulders, getting into a slow rhythm. Then she lifted her arms and said, “Well, why the heck didn’t you try it sooner, doll. You know I play bunco at the church hall this afternoon with the ladies of Saint Mary’s. They’re probably waiting for me right now.”

“He totally wants to see you, Cate,” Gina interrupted.

“Tell him I’m with a patient. Tell him to come back tomorrow or next month or next year,” Cate told her sister.

“You’re not with a patient anymore. I feel grrreat! Just like Tony the Tiger. Who is it that wants to see you so bad and you don’t want to see?”

“I thought you had a bunco game to get to.” There was no way Cate would tell Aunt Flo that Rudy Bellafini was in the building. It would be all over the neighborhood in the time it took for Cate to exhale, which she had forgotten to do.

Gina broke in, “I put him in room three, Cate. The guy can barely walk. Maybe you should at least talk to him.”

“It’s bad luck to turn a potential patient away, especially somebody who can’t walk. Anything could happen. Your sister herself could be struck down.”

“All right, already! I’ll talk to him,” Cate said, trying desperately to hold on to her composure. She turned to her aunt. “The ladies of Saint Mary’s are waiting.”

“Heck, they sure are. Oh, well, I’ll get the skinny from your father tonight at dinner. Now go. You don’t want to keep the poor man waiting,” she said as she shooed Cate away.

As Cate walked down the narrow hallway to room three, her stomach felt a little queasy and her knees didn’t want to bend the way they were supposed to. Her palms were sticky, and suddenly her whole body broke out in a cold sweat.

When she reached the dreaded door number three, she paused in front of it to regain her composure and fix her hair. And what about her makeup? It had to be a mess by now. And the sweater she threw on earlier, it had holes in the right sleeve.

She rushed back to her office, thinking that she needed a complete makeover before she could see him. That she required a new do from Rose Marie at The Hairs End, or a new outfit from Gloria’s Dress Boutique, or maybe a couple sessions with Frank Nudo, the shrink at the end of the block, before she could say one word to Rudy Bellafini. Or Father Joe, he would know how to handle the situation. Or Henry…no, not Henry, he was only good with dead people.

She wished she could talk to Gina, but Gina was busy at the front desk…that in itself was possibly a good thing. She didn’t need Gina knowing that she was in a pathetic panic to suddenly re-create herself.

As if…

She picked up the phone, ready to call her father—of all people—just as Rudy Bellafini appeared in her open doorway. He looked completely helpless and miserable while leaning on his crutches. He crumpled himself into the black chair next to the door and sat down, letting out a long, pathetic moan.

3

“YOU LOOK BEAUTIFUL , Cate. Time’s been on your side, dude.” He gave her the once-over, like he was sizing her up for some TV reality show and he was the latest bachelor. “I don’t see a ring on your finger. I thought for sure you’d be married with five kids.”

Cate raised an eyebrow. “And I thought for sure you’d be on your fifth wife.”

“Not likely.”

They stared at each other for a moment. This was not a good beginning, Cate thought.

Rudy continued, “Okay. We should get started right away. You’ll need to cancel all your appointments for the next few weeks. Maybe longer. I need you to concentrate on me. I’m in pretty bad shape, here, and I can’t afford to be down for too much longer. I’ll pay whatever you want, just so I know that I’ll have your undivided attention. Whatever you need in the way of equipment, you got it. Just let me know what it is. This whole thing has to be kept a secret or, believe me, your life will turn into a nightmare, as well as mine. Here are my medical records, dude.” With some effort he tossed the large manila envelope on her desk.

She was a dude now? Cate didn’t know how to respond to dude.

He continued, “I think that about covers it. Dude, I’m really hurting, but that room I was in is way too small.” He took a breath and pushed himself up from his chair with an obvious grimace of pain on his face. “You have anything bigger?”

Cate was actually dumbstruck by the burst of orders that he’d flung in her direction. She couldn’t react properly to the magnitude of his arrogance. She didn’t quite know how to respond to her new charter, so she sat back in her chair and watched as he hobbled out of the office apparently expecting her to follow, but she didn’t.

She waited for the shock of him to wear off. Perhaps then she would actually be able to think.

“Hel-lo. Anybody in there? Which door do I go through?”

Her brain finally came around as he reappeared in the doorway. “The front door, dude. And don’t let it hit you on the way out,” she said, flashing a sarcastic grin.

For a brief moment she had considered shuffling him off to one of the other therapists who worked for her, but she couldn’t justify dumping his snotty self on anybody.

“Don’t kid around, Cate. I’m in a lot of pain here. The sooner we get started the sooner I can get my life back.”

“You can get back to your life right now,” she said. “Don’t let me get in your way.”

“What’s wrong with you? Didn’t you hear my offer?”

“I heard it, but I’m not for sale.”

“I’m not buying you. I’m buying your services.”

“I am my services, and as long as these two hands are attached to my two arms, I’m not for sale.”

Rudy hobbled back into the office and sat down again, gently. His breathing had increased, and he looked unsettled, but his arrogance had defined the moment. If she could physically kick him out of her office and onto the street and watch him hit the pavement with a thud, she would at least feel as though they were once and for all even.

But she couldn’t.

He was taller than she had remembered, and maturity had thickened his body. Not that he was fat, he had merely turned into a man, with deep-brown eyes, darker than she remembered, and thick black hair, blacker than she remembered. It’s not that she hadn’t seen him on TV and on magazine covers, or cereal boxes over the years, but to see him up close again was just different. He actually looked even more handsome in person, and that bad-boy arrogance she thought was just for the media was actually real.

Too bad.

“Look, I know I’m vulnerable right now, and you can hold out for any amount of money you want, but I have my limits.”

“I don’t want your money.”

He chuckled. “Of course you do. Everybody does, but I’ve gotten used to the greed factor.”

“I think you need to leave now.”

“Come on, Cate. It’s me, Rudy.” His determination didn’t waver. “What? You’re still mad about what happened seven years ago?”

“Ten. It was ten years ago. And do you honestly think I gave you a second thought?”

“Good, then why won’t you treat me? Isn’t there some kind of law about therapists and patients? Some kind of code you people live by? How can you turn me away?”

“I don’t know. How can I? I must have rocks for brains. Or maybe I just don’t like you and your full-of-yourself self.”

“Excuse me?”

“There is no excuse. Please leave, which is something you’re good at.”

He didn’t say anything. He just stared at her with a look of confusion on his face.

She stood up.

He stood, albeit slowly.

“I’m sorry you feel this way, Cate. I could have used your magic touch.”

His words brought back the memory of the night he proposed, which only made her more angry.

“What a crock! That line’s stale. Don’t you have a new one?”

“I never should have come back here. I knew you’d be like this. You never could just accept things.”

“Accept things! So, I should have just accepted the fact that you walked out on me?” She crossed her arms over her chest.

“Like I had a choice? It was my once-in-a-lifetime chance. You wouldn’t have come with me.”

Her anger welled up with his words. “You never asked.”

“Asked you to do what? Give up your scholarship to UCLA and come follow me around to some training camp? Yeah, that would’ve worked out. Not likely.” His face softened and he took a step toward her. “Cate, I—”

“Just go,” she said, her voice shaking. “This debate is far too stressful, and I’ve been working on calm. I’m sure you can get all the therapy you need back in Rudyworld.”

“Yeah. Well, if you change your mind, I’ll be over at my parents’ old brownstone. I’m going to hang around for a while. Get it fixed up. Feel free to drop by anytime.”

He hobbled out of her office while she stood waiting to hear the front door on the Wellness Center close so she could sit down and scream.

THE BROWNSTONE where Rudy had spent his teenage years with his mom and dad had all but been deserted. His parents, Betty and Sam, now lived in Florida, complements of Rudy, and journeyed back to Chicago only when they had to, which in the past five years had been only once, when old man Barcio died. Tony Barcio had been their landlord and good friend. Rudy had bought the place as soon as it came on the market. He really didn’t know why he bought it, but at the time it had seemed like the right thing to do for his mom and dad, or maybe just for himself.

Now as he sat alone in the empty house, he wondered what the hell he was doing. Why had he persisted in returning to his old neighborhood?

There were some pictures hanging on the walls. Pictures of his mom and dad in Florida, a couple aunts and uncles, a picture of himself wearing his gold medals, but there was one picture that really threw him a curve ball. It was a picture of his cousin, Pete.

Rudy had always admired Pete because he actually knew what he wanted to be from the time he was a little boy, a wooden-furniture craftsman. Rudy only knew one thing—escape—and he would do whatever it took to achieve it. Marrying Cate had meant putting down roots and building a life together. When that reality had finally taken hold, he’d freaked and run to the nearest exit.

His excellent freestyle skiing ability bought him a ticket with one of the best moguls coaches in the country. After he achieved what he wanted there, he went into the restaurant business. Lately his restaurants were starting to bore him. He could never stay in one place, or with one thing, for too long. Even his house in Malibu had lost its appeal, but he didn’t know where to escape to this time, or to what, exactly.

Pete had stayed right where he grew up, a small town in Wisconsin, had four kids, his own business and according to the picture on the wall, a pretty little wife.

Rudy had his own business, three gold Olympic medals, enough money to last him his entire lifetime and a silver-framed picture of Allison Devine, Hollywood’s latest ingenue, on his desk. The woman who had, in fact, pushed him right out of that lift.

Pete was happy.

Rudy was happy…yeah, right.

Now, as he sat in his dad’s green recliner in the living room waiting for the house to get to a more livable temperature, he pondered whether it had been a smart move to let his driver leave. After the cold shoulder he had received from Cate, which he certainly deserved, he hadn’t been able to think straight. And to make matters worse, he was freezing and hungry, and his cell phone had gone completely dead, but he hurt too much to get up to try to find the charger.

The brownstone was a dusty, spider-infested, cold, dark mess and unless there was some major work on it ASAP it was totally uninhabitable. All the furniture, what there was of it, was covered in sheets that had long ago lost their protective power. Cobwebs hung in every corner. What wasn’t covered had a thick blanket of dust and grime. The walls were a lovely shade of soot.

At least the heat worked and the place had electricity, two things that Rudy had kept on.

The doorbell rang.

“Come in,” he yelled. “It’s open.”

“Hellooo,” a high-pitched, female voice echoed throughout the house as the front door creaked open. “Betty? Sam? Is that you?” the voice asked.

He couldn’t see who it was because the front door was on the other side of the wall in the hallway, but the voice was familiar.

“I’m in here,” he yelled, anxious to see his visitor, hoping against all hope it was Cate.

Okay, so yeah, he had been somewhat rude, but those eyes of hers, those big, dark, wonderful eyes were even more fantastic than he had remembered. He had searched for some compassion in them, but there wasn’t any, so he simply lashed out. Probably not his best move, given the circumstances.

And the way her bottom lip curled when she got angry. Perfect.

He sat up straight, ready to apologize, ready to bear his soul, to discuss the past in a more reasonable tone, when some other woman turned the corner into his living room.

“What a dump!”

At first Rudy didn’t recognize the round, middle-aged woman in the bright-red coat and matching red scarf. Then, as his memory spun back several years, ten to be exact, he knew precisely who was standing in front of him.

“Hello Aunt Flo,” he quipped. Everyone in the neighborhood knew Florence Adriana Lucille Del-Veccio as Aunt Flo, and Rudy was no exception.

“Little Rudy Bellafini, as I live and breathe. You, of all people. I never thought I’d see your face in this part of town again. What on earth are you doing here?” she asked while holding on to her Marilyn Monroe beaded handbag. Aunt Flo’s nose and cheeks matched the color of her outfit, bright red, causing Rudy to grin despite her somewhat rude remark.

“Hey, Aunt Flo, it’s good to see you.” He shifted his weight to his other hip, wincing as a shooting pain went from his shoulder to his right big toe. He could actually feel pain in his big toe. He wanted to rip off his shoe and rub it, but thought better of it as he stared at Aunt Flo’s contorted face, obviously already disgusted by the condition of the house. “I’d get up, but as you can see, I’m somewhat indisposed at the moment.”

“I don’t know about the disposal part, but you’re a mess. For all your money, and I heard you got a bundle, what are you doing sitting all alone in this rat trap? Are you here to make things right with my niece?”

“Well, I…”

“You don’t gotta say any more. I can tell that you got other reasons.” She put her gloved hand over her mouth and drew in a loud breath, “Did that Allison clean you out and now all you got left is this dump?” She gasped.

“Aunt Flo, relax. I’ve got plenty of money.”

“Well, at least that’s something, but for a man who says he’s got plenty of money, you sure are peculiar. You look skinny. Pale. You should eat something, you’ll feel better.”

“Thanks, but…”

“Come on out with me. We can talk and you can buy me a nice hot meal with all this money you still got.” She started toward him.

Rudy wanted to join her. He tried to get up from the dilapidated chair, but with each movement the recliner seemed to engulf him.

“Tell you what, I got my mobile phone. My Cate got it for me last Christmas. She’s a wonderful girl, that Cate. You shoulda never done what you did, but we’ll talk about that later.” She smiled, but Rudy didn’t exactly like the look on her face. “She’s beautiful and generous and good-hearted, not like some of them loser women you run with. A good-looking boy like you shouldn’t…”

She dug through the Monroe purse. “Where the heck is it? I only use the thing for emergencies, all that talk about brain tumors and stuff. Your dad thought Betty caught a brain tumor from the mobile phone. Even took her to the Mayo Clinic because she was acting so mean all the time. Turned out she was going through the change, but still, you can’t be too careful these days.” She pulled a checkbook, a notebook and an industrial-size wine opener out of her purse, peeked in and shouted, “There it is, way on the bottom.”

She plucked out the shiny red phone and showed it to Rudy, cradling it in her hands as if she were presenting it for purchase. Aunt Flo had worked at Marshall Fields ever since she was sixteen years old, and probably still did. Back when Rudy knew her, she had always prided herself on her sales abilities. “An important man like you should get himself one of these. This is the Superturbo F720k. Great little phone, even takes pictures. I haven’t quite figured out how to use that feature yet, but a smart man like you could probably figure it out without the directions.”

She went on about some of the other features while Rudy thought about his aching big toe, the absurdity of the situation he found himself in, the pain in his hip, his leg and, most of all, his neck.

Then, sometime right before he was about to let out an earth-shattering moan, Aunt Flo sat down next to him on a rickety chair. “Don’t you worry about a thing,” she told him in a vanilla voice. “Let’s see now,” she said. “I know just the person to call to come get us out of this hell hole.”

4

“MARRY ME . Tonight. Make all my dreams come true.” Henry yelled from the dining room as he set the dark-walnut table for eight, something Cate did every night. She liked being prepared for inevitable company. “A woman who can cook, these days, is a rare find. Be mine and you can cook for me every night.”

How could a woman refuse such an offer?

Cate plunked the wooden spoon she held into the tomato sauce and wiped her hands on her apron. “No, thanks, Henry,” Cate yelled back from the kitchen. “I’m not ready to get married tonight. I have to wash my hair. But thanks for asking…again.”

It had been the third proposal that week. They were coming faster now. The only reason Cate could think of for the sudden surge was that Henry was turning fifty soon. Maybe he was on a self-imposed deadline to remarry, and she fit the job description:

Wanted: desperate female who can cook and likes to be around dead people all day. Will marry for food.

Just as Cate walked into the dining room carrying a plate of ricotta-filled canolli, Henry’s favorite dessert, and picturing the ad in the Sun Times personals, Gina burst into the house along with an amazingly strong gust of wind off the lake.

The wind toppled Henry’s towering floral centerpiece. Lilies, pink carnations and roses blew across the table, and the lovely pea-green vase that Henry had brought over from his funeral home the previous week cracked with the fall. Cate turned on her heel and went back into the kitchen for a dish towel.

“Hi, Henry,” Gina said. “Too many roses, Henry. Cate hates roses. Where is she? I think we broke her ex and we need her to get the pieces out of the car.”

“What’s the matter?” Cate asked, as she walked back out of the kitchen. She tossed the dish towel to Henry, who just stood there staring at the mess on the table. His face almost always had that startled look to it, as if he lived in a constant state of surprise. Perhaps it was the way his jet-black eyebrows arched above his cobalt-blue eyes, and the contrast of his thick, totally white hair, and the way his nostrils flared like he was desperate to take in air, or maybe it was that last face lift.

“Cate, it’s not my fault,” Gina insisted. “The guy doesn’t listen to reason. He’s more stubborn than Dad. I told him not to get into the back seat.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He’s stuck, Cate, and can’t move. Our car ate his foot.”

“Call cousin Charlie. He’s pushing three-hundred pounds. He’ll get your boyfriend out of the car.”

“He’s not my boyfriend, Cate. He’s yours. And Charlie’s already out there.”

Henry looked over at Cate. “You have a boyfriend?”

“Why didn’t you say so?” Cate grabbed her coat and hurried out the front door ahead of Gina. Henry followed but stopped in the doorway, holding on to part of his floral centerpiece. “Wait,” he yelled. “Was it the roses? Women love roses. Don’t they?”

As soon as Cate stepped out into the cold night air and took one look at the twisted man caught inside the classic, faded orange-colored VW Beetle, she knew he was in real trouble. Complete sympathy overtook her like a mud bath and swirled in thick waves of human compassion.

Cate and Gina shared the car, but it was actually Cate’s, only she hardly drove it anymore. Most of the time she would grab a bus or a train to get where she was going. Gina had commandeered the Bug to get back and forth from school on a daily basis.

Cate only caught a glimpse of Rudy’s tortured face as cousin Charlie pulled on Rudy’s arms, apparently attempting to rip them right off his body. It was the high-pitched yelp that gave the painful maneuver away.

“Stop it,” Cate yelled as she stood in front of the car parked next to the curb. They were all there, most of the neighborhood, and most of her family, each trying to unwedge the unwedgeable from both sides of the car.

In all the chaos, she noticed that Aunt Flo and her dad were actually holding hands…almost as if they were a couple. She immediately turned away and pushed her attention to Rudy. The thought of Aunt Flo and her dad as a couple was absolutely ridiculous, and she didn’t even want to consider it.

When she looked again, they had stopped holding hands. Now they stood well apart from each other.

That was better. She thought perhaps it had been a lighting thing, or maybe she hadn’t seen it at all? Convincing herself that it was just the confusion of the moment, she went on to more urgent issues.

“You guys have to stop,” she told everyone. They instantly backed off.

When Cate stuck her head in the car, Rudy smiled up at her like a helpless puppy. He sat in the back seat, sideways, with one leg stretched out along the seat and the other one hidden somewhere in front of him. His arms draped over the front seat as if they were no longer part of his body.

“Hurt much?” she asked.

“Only while I’m awake,” he said.

“So, tell me, only kids and small animals fit in this back seat. Which did you think you were?”

“I got hungry.”

“Rosebuds delivers.”

“Aunt Flo had other plans.”

“Oh, so this is Aunt Flo’s fault. Then why isn’t she in the back seat?”

“I was being a gentleman.”

“Don’t say that too loud, I might hear you and get the wrong idea.”

He smiled. “Look, Cate, I’ll do anything you want, just don’t let cousin Charlie near me.”

She had to smile back. He looked too cute. “So tell me, Sir Gallant, aside from your general maladies, why can’t you get out of here?”

“My foot is stuck under the front seat.”

“Not quite as much room back there as your limo, huh?”

“Do you ever stop?”

Cate dropped her gaze for a moment and took a breath, and that’s when she remembered the problem with the front passenger seat. It had a bolt missing and a gaping hole in the slider thing. If you put anything near it or around it when someone slid the seat back, that anything would get gobbled up. She’d lost a new pair of shoes once and it had torn a pair of Gina’s best pants right off her leg just two weeks before.

Both Gina and Cate had intended to have their dad fix it in his body shop, but neither of them had made the effort to get it over to him, and as long as no one sat in the back seat…so much for that theory.

She looked up again, and was about to tell him the missing-bolt story, but he was staring at her. He had the most gorgeous eyes, with thick long eyelashes, and the way his hair fell across his forehead reminded her of the reason she had fallen in love with him in the first place. Rudy had the ability, with just one sweet look, to make a girl believe everything he said.

It was that other Rudy, the evil-twin Rudy, who had been in her office earlier; aggravating her temper, causing irrational behavior in an otherwise completely rational person. He was the Rudy she knew.

“You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry. So…you’re stuck.”

“A temporary condition, I’m sure.” He twisted himself around to face the front.

Aunt Flo stuck her head in the car. “Your dad says we’re gonna have to call the fire department. Vinney McCally is on tonight. He knows how to work them Jaws of Life.”

“That might be a little extreme and I’ve got…” Cate said, but before she could finish her sentence the sound of sirens echoed through the neighborhood.

“Oops, too late,” Aunt Flo declared and pulled herself out of the car to look down the street. Cate stepped out, as well.

“Ya know, it’s times like these that I don’t blame Rudy for leaving this place,” Cate told her aunt.

Rudy rolled down the back window. “Tell me there’s an actual fire somewhere and that sound isn’t for me,” he said with genuine concern in his voice.

Cate smiled down at him, then turned away as the hook-and-ladder pulled up alongside the tiny car and three burly firemen jumped out, Vinney McCally being one of them.

“It’s for you,” she told Rudy.

Rudy sat back and sighed.

Vinney walked over to Cate, dressed in complete catastrophe gear. “Cate, is it the old man? Don’t worry about a thing. I’m here now. Where is he, Cate? It’s gonna be all right.”

Vinney McCally was one of those short but powerful kind of guys. The gymnast type who worked out more than he should and had to buy his clothes three sizes too big just to fit across his double-wide chest.

Cate had dated him for a little while until he started talking marriage. That’s when a tree fell on him one Sunday afternoon in Lincoln Park while he walked his mother’s schnauzer.

The schnauzer got away without a scratch, but Vinney was pinned under a limb for two hours. When it was all over and he was lying on a table in the emergency room with a fractured pelvis and a broken arm, Vinney whispered into Cate’s ear, “I’m breaking up with you. Please go home and take your curse with you.”

It was during that time, while he lay there in a broken heap, that he decided to become a Chicago fireman. He told everyone that if he could survive dating Cate Falco, he could certainly survive fires and dangerous accidents.

“It’s not my father. It’s Rudy Bellafini. He’s trapped in the back seat,” she explained.

“Get out!” Vinney said as he hunkered down to get a better look inside.

Rudy smiled and finger waved.

“What d’ya know. Now, that’s a guy I never thought I’d see in this part of town again. But what’s he doin’ in the back seat of your car?” Vinney asked and waved back at Rudy. “You got him trapped in there or somethin’? Trying to get your revenge?”

“No. He did it on his own. His foot is stuck.”

“Geez, Cate. That curse thing just don’t want to let you go, huh? He didn’t propose again, did he?”

Cate’s temper reared up and she lashed out.

“No, Vinney. There were no proposals. He’s just stuck. Can’t a guy get his foot stuck without it being related to some damn curse?”

“Hold on. Don’t have a coronary. I was only kiddin’.”

He leaned inside the open door on the driver’s side of the car. “Hey, man. How ya doin’? It’s been a while.” They shook hands.

“Been better,” Rudy said. “Can you get me out of here, dude?”

Cate had to smile watching laid-back Vinney deal with uptight Rudy.

“Oh, sure, man. Don’t worry about a thing. We’ll have you outta here in no time.”

“Can we do it before the press finds out?”

“They ain’t gonna find out if I don’t tell ’em, now are they?”

“Thanks, dude. I owe you one.”

“Just doing my job, man. Now let’s see what’s going on under there.” He turned around and yelled for one of the other firemen to get a light, and suddenly the whole street lit up like the sun had just come out.

FOR THE NEXT TWO HOURS, Vinney and his rescue team from the Loomis Street Station worked to set Rudy free.

In the end the front passenger seat had to be removed through the roof, which, of course, required a hole. Cate actually cried a little when she saw the roof come off and the seat come out in tiny pieces.

“Don’t worry about it,” Aunt Flo said, as chunks of Cate’s car hit the pavement with a sharp clank. “Rudy told me he’s still got plenty of loot. He’ll get you a brand-new one of them bug cars.”

The ’79 classic Beetle had more sentimental value than retail value, so the replacement idea had little impact. Cate had bought it secondhand when she was a teenager. She had worked a whole year in a hot bakery and saved every dime. She loved that car and had a hard time lending it to her sister…who had promised to take good care of it, which, until Rudy Bellafini came along, she had.

But it wasn’t her sister’s fault, it was Cate’s. She was sure of it now.

When Rudy finally came limping out of the car, using Vinney’s right arm for support, the group, which now consisted of the entire neighborhood plus a couple of lost tourists, cheered.

A male paramedic checked out Rudy’s foot. Cate could tell Rudy was anxious about something, which was good. The sooner she could get him into that ambulance, the better.

“Can you walk?” the paramedic asked.

“I think so. I just want to get inside somewhere.”

He started to take a step but he stumbled. Vinney grabbed Rudy under one arm for support, and the paramedic grabbed the other.

“Easy there, fella. Put your weight on me,” Vinney commanded, his tone official. That was something Cate wasn’t used to. It gave her a new sense of respect for her former boyfriend.

“I guess I’m in worse shape than I thought,” Rudy said with a slight edge to his voice.

“Maybe you should lie down. Take it easy. You might do better at the hospital,” Vinney told him.

“I’ve had enough of hospitals. They can kill ya. No telling who they let in there. I’ll call a cab and go back to my dad’s old house. I’ll be fine there,” he said, but then gazed over at Cate with his “save me” look that she never could refuse.

“Bring him inside,” she told Vinney, guilt oozing into her reasoning. She told herself it would just be for a few hours, just until he was steady on his feet.

“But—” Vinney started to say.

Cate broke in. “He’ll be fine. Nothing’s broken.”

“Whatever you say.” Vinney helped Rudy across the lawn and up the stairs. Gina led the way, opening doors and moving anything and anybody in their path.

“We’ll put him down in a chair in the living room for now,” Cate said, but the living room was crowded with neighbors admiring Henry’s indoor garden, and the dining room was filled with hungry relatives, so they took him to the one place in all the world where Cate thought she would never, ever see Rudy Bellafini again.

Vinney walked him up the stairs to Cate’s bedroom and put him right down in the center of her queen-size, antique, walnut bed.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.