That's Amore by Erin McCarthy Read Free Book Online

hand, causing the baby to give a squeal of delight.
    This was dangerous to feel this way. Like a hot air balloon had gone up in her chest.
    Jeff prompted Justin by waving his own hand. “Tell Auntie Paige see you later. We’re going for a bath, big guy.”
    Justin flapped his hand in an interpretive wave.
    Paige struggled to produce a smile. The words Auntie Paige had just reached into her chest and ripped her heart out.
    She was in love with Jeff. She always had been. Since she was thirteen years old and he had rescued her from Sam and Sal’s taunting.
    There had been a time when she would have married Jeff in a New York minute. She could have really been Justin’s aunt. But Jeff had never even come close to asking her to marry him. He hadn’t lasted beyond one night.
    She was falling to pieces here. Impatience ripped through her. How could she be falling for him like this?
    God, a couple of nice gestures and some smoldering looks and she was ready to cook him pasta and have his babies.
    The pudding cups went into the garbage and she scoured the table with a sponge and far more vigor than was needed.
    This is exactly what had happened last time. Only she had been a lot more naïve then.
    It had started by accident. She had just graduated from college and was living at home for a few weeks looking for her own apartment. Away from college friends, and isolated from Gina by her relationship with Frank, Paige had found herself with time on her hands.
    She had taken to strolling out along Mayfield Road every night to get out from under her mother’s somewhat smothering love and attention.
    One night she had seen Jeff in the bakery. They had walked together and had talked a little.
    The next night they had met again.
    And the next and the next.
    Neither of them claimed they were anything more than accidents, just two strollers who bumped into each other, but it was intentional on both their parts, she was sure. Some nights they had gone to dinner or a movie and sometimes they just walked or got pastries from the bakery and shared them.
    After awhile, Jeff had even started saying, “See you tomorrow, Paige.”
    It had been wonderful, a blissful two weeks of friendship and something else that was growing and changing.
    Then one night they had gotten caught in a summer thunderstorm. They had run to Jeff’s apartment, which was right down the street, and had stumbled in, drenched and laughing. When he had kissed her, it had seemed like the logical next step for them to take.
    And when she had surrendered her virginity to him, she had done so eagerly, with love and the knowledge that she could trust Jeff to respect her and care for her.
    Only to wake the next morning, in his apartment, completely alone with a note from him saying he had to go to work and that he would call her.
    Well, three years later he still hadn’t called.
    And here she had almost gone and made the exact same mistake. That pudding kiss wouldn’t have stopped there and she knew it.
    Which made Jeff a creep, plain and simple, out for one thing only. The S word.
    Paige stopped trying to wipe the pudding off of the suede pillow Justin had been sitting on, and tucked her hair behind her ear.
    Her mother had warned her about the Benedetto boys, and she had been right. Bad boys took advantage of good girls like Paige. Chocolate. Vanilla.
    Ugh. She threw the last dirty towel in the trash and wandered into the living room.
    The shower was running. Paige cocked her ear. The shower? Didn’t Jeff know better than to put a baby in the shower? When he had said bath, she thought he understood you were supposed to plug the tub and fill it with water.
    Already annoyed with him, herself, and the whole situation, Paige stomped into the bedroom to set him straight. She knocked on the bathroom door.
    There was no answer. She opened the door and got hit in the face by a vaporous cloud of steam. The room was empty.
    Panic set in. Had Jeff been ignorant enough to put the baby in