Call Me Crazy (Bellamy Creek #3) - Melanie Harlow Page 0,3
hell could anyone live like that? What was the appeal?
“Hey you. This seat taken?”
As if tonight couldn’t have gotten worse, I looked up to see Bianca DeRossi—just about my least favorite person on Earth—standing next to the table, glass of wine in her hand.
“Doesn’t look like it,” I snapped.
She smiled and slid in across from me. “Thanks, I’d love to join you.”
Frowning, I finished what was left in my glass and poured myself the rest. Normally I’d never be so rude to a woman, but Bianca wasn’t a regular woman. I’d known her since we were kids—our families were friends—but she’d always been a snotty little bookworm who thought she was too smart for me. Any time I tried talking to her, she clammed up and walked away. My parents forced me to take her to a dance at her all-girls Catholic high school once—didn’t surprise me she couldn’t get her own date—and she brought a fucking paperback book in her purse and kept her nose in it the entire time. So I amused myself by asking other girls to dance. How the hell was I supposed to know it would make her mad enough to tell her friends I had a small dick? She’d never gotten anywhere near it!
I only realized what she’d done a few years later when I hooked up with one of her classmates, who professed pleasant surprise at the generous size of my package. When I asked her why she’d thought I might be anything less than well-endowed, she told me what Bianca had said.
I was still mad about it.
Bianca had been living in Chicago since college, but a couple years ago she’d moved back to Bellamy Creek and had picked up aggravating me right where she’d left off. She was an interior designer and liked to buy and flip houses on the side just like I did, and somehow she managed to outbid me on every listing we competed for, all while acting sweet as pie, like we were old pals.
We weren’t. I couldn’t stand her. She wasn’t a snotty little bookworm anymore, but she still knew exactly how to get under my skin.
Even more annoying?
She was fucking hot.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
“My family was here having dinner for my dad’s birthday. But our family functions are short and sweet because Grandma Vinnie is ninety-six. She starts to fall asleep after an hour or so.”
“Wow. Ninety-six.” I took a break from being annoyed to appreciate a long life.
“Yes. And hitched when she was twenty-one, had five kids before she was thirty, and was married to my Grandpa Jack for seventy years before he died. Which she loves to tell me every single time I see her, right before she asks why I’m still single.” Bianca took a sip of her wine.
“I’ve got some ideas on that.”
Beneath the table, she nudged my foot with hers. “So what’s with you? I thought I saw you with a date earlier. Either that or you were babysitting.”
I glared at her. “Funny.”
She grinned. “So who was she? Your girlfriend?”
“No. We broke up.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh. Sorry to hear that.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Enzo, this might come as a surprise to you, but I am not your enemy. I don’t even dislike you—much.”
“Oh yeah? Since when?”
She shrugged. “Since we’re not immature and awkward kids anymore, who didn’t know how to be friends with someone of the opposite sex?”
“Speak for yourself. I had plenty of friends who were girls.”
Her blue eyes gleamed in the candlelight. “True. You always were a ladies’ man.”
I rolled my eyes. “Whatever. I’m here alone, aren’t I?”
“Wait, are you expecting me to feel sorry for you? Like you couldn’t walk right out of here and pick up the next girl you see? There’s not a woman alive who can resist your charms, Enzo. Those dark eyes? That wavy hair? The Moretti swagger?”
“Apparently, I’ve lost my touch,” I muttered, pouring the rest of Reina’s Barolo in my glass.
She tipped her head to one side. “Eh, I doubt that. You weren’t really into that girl, anyway, were you?”
I shrugged. “She was okay.”
“You can do better.”
“Better isn’t the issue.”
“What’s the issue?”
“Fast.”
“Why?” She laughed. “Are you going to turn into a pumpkin at midnight?”
“No, I’m going to lose Moretti & Sons to my brother Pietro if I don’t get married before I’m thirty-five.”
Her jaw dropped. “Seriously?”
Instead of answering, I polished off the last few sips of Barolo and set down the glass with a clunk. “I need another drink. Something stronger.”