The Baby beneath the Mistletoe

“It can’t be as bad as all that,” Shad commented.

A lot he knew, Tony thought darkly. Neither he nor Angelo had had any more to do with the feisty pain in the butt than exchange a few words at the initial meeting at city hall. They certainly hadn’t had to endure her incessant contradictions at every opportunity. Bad didn’t come anywhere near explaining the day-to-day work environment. He’d thought his association with the architect would begin and end with that brief meeting at city hall to accept the blueprints. He hadn’t realized the meeting would be only the beginning—the beginning of constant daily warfare in which his side appeared to be sustaining the most casualties. He never knew when she could come flying in through the trailer door with another bone to pick, another change to argue. He’d taken to locking it, just to claim a little peace of mind.

“It’s worse,” Tony snapped. Where the hell was that blueprint? The one of the second floor off the high school’s music-and-arts complex. He’d just had it. Tony shoved more papers aside. “She has an opinion on everything.”

“Most women do,” Shad deadpanned, trying to hide his grin behind his hand. This was looking very promising. When Tony had first arrived on his aunt Bridgette Marino’s doorstep a little over two months ago, he’d been a shell of the young man who had worked long summers beside them at one construction site after another. The light and laughter that had always been in his cousin’s green eyes had completely vanished.

Now at least there was something there. Granted, anger wasn’t the greatest emotion, but it was better than nothing. It meant he was coming alive again, beginning to react to things around him instead of just sleepwalking through each day.

Knocking over an oversize, red-bound book, Tony continued searching. “Not like this.”

Frustrated, he glanced up at the other two men. “She thinks she’s right—” Then Tony bit off a curse as another falling book narrowly missed his toe. He’d never been a very organized person, but in the past thirteen months he’d found himself facing nothing but chaos everywhere he turned. Which was just the way he felt inside.

“At the risk of repeating myself,” Angelo said amiably. “Most women do.”

Most women, but not Teri, Tony thought, the memory bringing with it the sharp, deep stab of pain. Teri, with her quiet, unassuming soul So quiet and unassuming that at times he’d all but had to coax responses out of her. She’d always been more than willing to bow to his wishes, uncontested.

He supposed in a way that had spoiled him. It certainly hadn’t prepared him to deal with a blue-eyed, sharp-tongued wrecking ball who was unshakably convinced that everything she said was etched in stone somewhere, residing on the same shelf as the Ten Commandments.

“Maybe,” Tony said. “But not like this.” Finding what he’d been searching for, shoved under the stained blotter, of all places, he pulled it out and made a futile attempt to smooth the long, curled paper out on top of his desk. “Have either of you taken a close look at these blueprints of hers?”

His patience in drastically short supply, Tony gave up trying to flatten out the paper on the cluttered surface and rounded his desk. Beckoning his cousins forward, Tony crouched down, placing the blueprint on the floor and spreading it out there.

Tony wasn’t sure just where to begin. Aesthetically pleasing, the proposed complex for the high school had more than one trouble spot. Several sections of the buildings appeared to, for all intents and purposes, simply defy the laws of physics. He stabbed a finger at what appeared to be the worst offense. He singled out the king post beneath the glass section of the roof.

“There, look at that. The woman actually thinks that’s possible.”

Shad and Angelo looked and saw the inherent flaw. Tony was right, at least to some extent. It would take a little compromising on both parts to work around the problem. But both men felt that Tony was up to it, given time. Relative or not, no matter how much their hearts went out to him in his time of emotional turmoil, neither Shad nor Angelo would have handed him the assignment if they hadn’t thought him equal to it. After all, he was a damned good civil engineer.

Since they had begun expanding their firm, merging with Conrad & Son when Angelo’s wife, Allison, came aboard, they’d had more new business than Salvator Marino could ever have conceived of when he’d originally started the small company. Then the company had been restricted to remodeling and upgrading bathrooms. Now there were no such restrictions on their expertise. More than one of the newer shopping malls in Southern California bore the stamp of their labor.

Nodding his head as if he were commiserating with Tony, Angelo looked at the man beside him and said, “Handle it.”

“I’ve been trying to handle it.” Tony knew he wasn’t the type to complain at the slightest provocation, but there was just something about this woman that seemed to set him off. Maybe it was how she looked at him—smug, determined, ready to cut him down to size. Or maybe it was just that he’d jumped in when he should have started out wading. Maybe this was too much of a project to take on, and he shouldn’t have agreed to do it.

He was tired, he told himself. Too tired to be reasonable tonight. Maybe things would look better on Monday.

“If I try to handle it anymore,” he said to his easygoing cousin, “my fingers will be wrapping around her throat.” Unconsciously he rubbed his thumbs along his forefingers. He had to admit the thought had some merit to it.

Angelo laughed. “I said handle it, not her.”

Tony’s frown deepened. “Handling it means handling her.”

Still squatting over the blueprints, Tony looked down at them again. Heading up an operation was nothing new to him. He’d been in charge of enough of them at his old company, and coming back to work for Marino, McClellan & Conrad was essentially like coming home again, at least for the most part. But he’d been at the top of his game before. Now he had trouble pulling his thoughts together for more than a few minutes at a time, trouble moving from the beginning of each day to the end of it.

It never seemed to get any better.

He’d returned to Bedford, to his roots, at the very insistent request of his aunt Bridgette. The rest of the family had been quick to throw in their support, each inviting him to stay with them. He’d agreed to come out because it had been an almost unconscious, lastditch attempt on his part to leave the land of the walking wounded and reenter the land of the living.

Turning down their offers, he’d leased an apartment for himself and tried to make a new start.

But it wasn’t working, not really. He didn’t belong here any more than he had back in Denver, his home for the past eight years.

He didn’t belong anywhere in this world, now that Teri and Justin weren’t in it.

Hopelessness began to spread long, icy fingers over him again, reclaiming him for its own. Freezing everything inside him.

He didn’t want to repay Angelo and Shad for their kindness by screwing up. It wasn’t right.

Tony sat back on his heels, talking to both of them, looking at neither. “Maybe you’d be better off if I just bowed out of this.” He sighed, feeling drained. “I have a feeling that I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.” He was almost sure of it. He turned toward Angelo. “Maybe you—”

Angelo hated seeing him like this. Tony had always been equal to every challenge. But death had a way of changing all that. “Sorry, I’ve got the Carmichael project on my hands.”

Tony looked to the other man. “Shad?”

Shad already had his hands up, warding off the request Tony was about to make. “I’m handling the Gaetti development over at the north end of the city.”

Tony thought of the third member of the company. Emotionally shut off, he hadn’t really taken the time to get to know Angelo’s wife, but he knew her name wouldn’t be on the logo if she wasn’t first class. Which was why he didn’t belong here.

Raising a brow, he looked toward Angelo again. “Allison?”

Angelo shook his head. “Besides handling the triplets,” he said, pride and respect evident in his voice, “she’s working on that next phase of the Winwood homes south of here.”

Tony had forgotten about that. If he’d been in form, he thought ruefully, he would have remembered. Remembered everything. Still...

“Is there anyone else you can give this to?”

“Sorry, buddy. Ma and Dottie don’t do construction and Frankie’s too busy taking classes at UCI in between fighting off girls,” Angelo said, mentioning Shad’s stepson. It had been a disappointment when he’d discovered that Frankie, though incredibly adept at the work, had absolutely no interest in joining the family firm when he finally graduated from college at the end of this spring. “So there’s nobody left to helm this thing, but you. There’s no time to go scouting around for a new member.”

Shad clamped a hand on Tony’s shoulder. “I’m afraid the family honor and reputation are both in your almost uncallused hands.”

A very decisive knock on the trailer door tabled any further discussion among them. Shad felt Tony stiffen beneath his hand, a fatigued soldier suddenly going on the alert because he’d heard what he assumed was the approach of the enemy just outside his foxhole.

Tony wasn’t kidding about the fireworks between them, Shad thought. But fireworks could be either destructive or celebratory, depending on the way circumstances arranged themselves. A little guidance was in order here.

Being closest to the door, Angelo rose to his feet to open it. The smile that came to his lips was automatic. He had always appreciated beauty, whether in the lines of a well-constructed edifice, the multi-hued rays of a sunrise, or a striking woman. Which was now the case.

At five-one and barely a hundred pounds, Michelle Rozanski lit up any space she occupied and, at least in Angelo’s opinion, looked like an unlikely candidate to be a driven architect. In his experience most architects were bespectacled, slightly hunched men who spent a good deal of their time leaning over elongated desks and squinting at tiny white lines inscribed on blue paper. The computer had only changed the angle at which they squinted.

Mikky, as everyone called her, looked as if she should have a beribboned, noisy tambourine in her hand, a wide, colorful skirt swirling about her slim hips and an ankle bracelet made of entwined, fresh-cut flowers resting just above her bare feet. Despite the short, elfinlike hairstyle she wore, the word gypsy, sprang instantly to his mind when he looked at her. Architect didn’t even remotely venture into the picture.

But she was a good one, if he were to believe her reputation. Certainly good enough to catch the eye and the fancy of most of the members of Bedford’s city council. It was Mikky’s lofty design for the new fifteenacre high school that had won out over more than seventy-five other bids from far more prestigious firms.

Of course, just because the design, with its five very different buildings surrounding a gardenlike center, was aesthetically appealing, it wasn’t necessarily doable, he thought. He’d learned that more than once. What Tony had just pointed out to them was evidence of that. But that was a bone he figured his cousin was just going to have to chew on himself. As far as Angelo was concerned, it would undoubtedly do Tony good.

He needed to feel his blood rushing in his veins again, not have it all but congeal there.

Mixed signals assaulted Mikky the moment she stepped into the trailer. From the partners of the company, she felt an aura of genial accord. That, she had to admit, was a fairly new sensation. Accustomed to having to wage what amounted, at times, to a fierce battle to win respect on every project she undertook, she was surprised and pleased at Angelo’s and Shad’s reactions to her. But then, she’d heard they were fair men who knew their stuff. It didn’t hurt that the third member of their firm was a woman, either.