Charmingly Yours (A Morning Glory #1) by Liz Talley Read Free Book Online Page A

Weingarten to do but climb inside and accept defeat. Rosemary closed the door and gave the older man a cheerful wave as the cab pulled away from the curb. She squeaked as another car roared into the spot, nearly falling back over the curb. Sal clasped her elbows, preventing her from stumbling any farther.
    “Whoops,” she said, regaining her balance.
    He didn’t want to pull away. He’d been dying to touch her again, but he dropped his hands from her smooth skin because she’d spent the past few minutes dodging the advances of an old dude. No need to creep her out.
    Rosemary brushed her bangs out of her face.
    “Good?” he asked.
    “Yeah,” she said, moving back toward the restaurant. Twilight softened the garishness of Mulberry Street, making Little Italy look softer in the glow of the moon. Rosemary turned to him and gave him a crooked grin that made his insides gelatinous. “You totally knew he was going to feel me up.”
    “Yeah, he’s all hands,” Sal said, opening the door for her, proving that southern dudes didn’t have anything on a guy from Brooklyn. “But I was going to make sure it didn’t get out of control.”
    “A knight in shining armor?”
    “Only if I were still wearing my apron and carrying a spatula. You don’t want to know how I can mess a guy up with a spatula.”
    Rosemary laughed and he reveled in those gray eyes shining with delight. Sal had accomplished the first of the things he wanted to see in her eyes. But there were more . . . and something compelled him to say, “Let’s go dancing.”
    Rosemary’s eyes widened. “Dancing?”
    “I know this place on a rooftop where you can dance to Sinatra and Bennett. Let’s go tonight.”
    “Together?” she asked, her face puzzled.
    Asking her out had been simmering on the back burner of his mind all evening. And why not? He might never lay eyes on Rosemary again. So he couldn’t let her go on her way without spending a little more time with her. “We could go separately and meet there, but we might as well walk over together.”
    “You know what I mean. You want to go with me? Dancing?”
    “I’d be willing to bet you my grandma’s Italian gravy recipe you’re the perfect girl to take dancing.”
    She looked at him as if he were deranged.
    Part of him wanted to rewind and snatch the offer off the table, because it was crazy, but something stronger inside pushed him toward this girl who’d come back to try the meatballs, this girl who’d wryly admitted to having sweaty hands, this girl who knew how to sidestep an old lecher’s hands while still smiling sweetly. Hell, maybe he was crazy. Or maybe it was the way she twisted the pearls at her neck. Most probably it was those blessed eyes that showed her every thought.
    He could get lost in those eyes while dancing at the Morey Hotel beneath the twinkling sky.
    “But I don’t know you,” she said, looking skittish. “Not really. My mo—” She snapped her mouth shut.
    “You know me. I’m Sal. You’re Rosemary. And I’m asking you to dance with me. Nothing more.”
    Her gaze shifted, softening, and it was as if she slipped somewhere else in her thoughts. Swallowing, she looked back at him. Determined. “Dancing sounds like a great way to meet New York City. Am I dressed nice enough for it?”
    “You’re dressed perfectly.” He waved her inside the restaurant he worked in nearly every day of every week, the family business he was expected to expand like his brother had in Brooklyn. “Now you go try my grandmother’s meatballs and gravy while I finish up. Can’t leave my pops shorthanded.”
    Wait.
    Maybe he was doing this as a sort of slap in the face to his parents. For some reason he couldn’t seem to fall in line with what was reasonable. Maybe he should give in and plod down the path cleared for him, even if it meant an Italian wedding, a mortgage, and, if his mother had her way, Angelina sporting a layer of cold cream lying beside him every night. Didn’t