Beauty & the Blue Angel

“Close your hole,” Mike told him.

Alex glanced around at the men gathered at the table. Men he’d known for years. Like him, they were navy pilots, guys he’d trained with, studied with and flown with. There was a bond between them that even family couldn’t match.

And yet…right now, he wished them all to the Antarctic.

Stupid, but he wanted their waitress to himself.

When she set their check on the edge of the table, Alex picked it up quickly, his fingertips brushing hers. She drew back fast, almost as if she’d felt the same snap of electricity he had. Which was kind of weird. She was pregnant, for Pete’s sake. Very pregnant. It should have put her off-limits.

“So, are you guys shipping out now?” Daisy asked, trying to keep her gaze from drifting toward the man sitting so close to her.

His friends were easier to deal with. They were friendly, charming, casually flirtatious, like most of the navy men she’d waited on at Antonio’s. And she’d treated them as she did all of her customers—with polite friendliness and nothing more.

Since the day Jeff had called her a mantrap and walked out the door, leaving behind not only her but his unborn child, Daisy hadn’t given any man a second look. Until tonight. This one—Alex, with the ebony hair and dark brown eyes and sharp-as-a-razor cheekbones—was different. She’d known it the minute he looked at her. And the feeling had only grown over the last hour and a half.

She’d felt his gaze on her most of the night, and didn’t even want to think about the feelings that dark, steady stare engendered.

Hormones.

That had to be the reason.

Her hormones were out of whack because of the baby.

“No,” Alex said, and she steeled herself to meet that gaze head-on. “We’re on leave, actually.”

“Are you from Boston?” she asked and told herself she was only being friendly, just as she would with any other customer. But even she didn’t believe it.

There was just something about this man…

“I was raised here,” he was saying.

One of the other men spoke up, but his voice was like a buzz in her ears. All she heard, all she could see was this man watching her through the darkest, warmest eyes she’d ever seen.

“You have family here?”

A slow, wicked smile curved one side of his mouth, and her stomach jittered. “Yeah, I come from a big family. I’m the fifth of eight kids.”

She dropped one hand to the mound of her belly. “Eight. That must be nice.”

“Not when I was a kid,” he admitted. “Too many people fighting over the TV and cookies.”

Daisy smiled at the mental image of a houseful of children, laughing, happy. Then, sadly, she let it go. It was something she’d never known, and now her baby, too, would grow up alone.

No. Not alone. Her baby would always have her.

Alex’s friends eased out of the booth and headed for the front of the restaurant. He watched them go, nodded, then reached into his wallet for a few bills. He handed her the money and the check and said, “Keep the change.”

“Thanks. I mean—” He was leaving. Probably just as well, she told herself. And yet she felt oddly reluctant to let him walk away.

“What are you doing in my restaurant?”

Daisy spun around to watch in amazement as Salvatore Conti, her boss, came rushing out of the kitchen, flapping a pristine white dish towel like some crazed matador looking for a bull.

Two

“Damn it.” Alex stiffened and braced for a confrontation. He’d hoped to make it out of Antonio’s without incident. But it looked as if Sal had other plans.

The older man hurried toward him, still shouting, mindless of the other customers or his employees’ fascinated attention. Sal Conti was sixty-two, but he was still pretty spry. About five feet eleven inches tall, he was a little shorter than Alex, and slender. His brown eyes were flashing and his cheeks were filled with furious color.

“What are you doing here?” Sal demanded. “Spying? This is what the Barones have come to now?”

Okay, fine. Alex hadn’t wanted a scene, but he’d be damned if he’d stand here and let his family be insulted.

“Spying?” he retorted, standing his ground. “Are all of you Contis paranoid? Or is it just you?”

“Paranoid?” Sal waved that towel furiously, shaking his other fist in the air. “You can talk of paranoid? After what your family’s done to mine?”

“What we’ve done? You know damn well it was the Contis behind that gelato fiasco.”

“Ridiculous,” Sal snapped.

“And as long as we’re at it,” Alex added, meeting the older man’s narrowed gaze with a glare of his own, “I still think your family was behind the arson.”

Sal huffed in a breath until his narrow chest swelled. “Slander.” He shot a quick look around at his customers and waved that towel again. “You all heard him. That’s slander. The Contis were cleared by the police. That’s a vicious lie the Barones toss around to make us look bad.”

Alex snorted in laughter. “Believe it or not, we don’t sit around thinking about the Contis. Besides, you do a great job of looking bad all on your own.”

“The Contis have done nothing. We don’t need to bring bad fortune onto the Barones.” He waved a hand toward the ceiling and the night sky beyond. “It’s in the stars. You’re all ill-fated.”

Ill-fated. Bad fortune. This whole Italian curse thing had been rattling around between their two families for years, and Alex, for one, was tired of it.

“No such thing as fate,” he said.

“Sal…” Daisy moved toward her boss. Taking his arm, she gave it a tug, as if she was used to dealing with the older man’s flash temper. Which, Alex thought, she probably was.

But Sal shook her off, and Daisy sighed.

“Stay out of this, Daisy,” Alex muttered, and took her arm to pull her back beside him.

Sal noticed the move and his features darkened with fury. “You leave her alone. She’s a nice girl and she doesn’t need a Barone in her life.”

“You’re nuts, you know that?” Alex retorted. Hell, for that matter, so was he. He was standing here having a shouting match with a man more than twice his age. Swiping one hand across his face, he got a grip and swallowed back the rest of the anger churning inside him.

Damn it, this was one of the reasons he’d joined the military. No one in the navy cared who his family was. No one was impressed that he came from wealth. He’d joined the service right out of college, with one thought in mind: to get away from Boston and the never-ending feud between the Barones and the Contis. It had been going on for years and showed no sign of ending. If anything, the troubles between the families had picked up recently. What with the fire and the disaster involving the new flavor gelato, the Barones were on red alert at all times and looking for Contis under every rock.

Alex was tired of the potshots and anger. But he was also a Barone and he owed the family his loyalty, even though he thought the adults on both sides were idiots.

Now what he had to do was find a way out of here, fast. He shot a quick glance around the restaurant. Curious stares pinned him in place, but his friends were nowhere to be seen. They’d already gone outside by the time Sal Conti had lost his mind. Alex glanced at Daisy, saw her confusion and wished he could explain all of this to her. But who’d believe him?