LITMIR.BIZ

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him?

      Maybe she was wrong, she thought, stalling panic as her gaze raced across his face. Maybe she hadn’t just made a fool of herself in front of a man who, a few months ago, the Boston Globe Magazine had billed as “Boston’s Own Sexy-as-Sin Daredevil Millionaire.”

      Yeah, and maybe the light sheen of perspiration that had broken out on her forehead made her look delicate instead of desperate.

      “Daniel Barone?” she squeaked, like the mouse she truly was. “The Daniel Barone?”

      When he merely crossed his arms over his chest and grinned, she pressed the flat of her palm to her forehead.

      “The Boston Globe’s Daniel Barone? The Baronessa Gelati Barone?”

      Unless you lived under a rock, you knew about the Boston Barones. The colorful Italian family’s ice cream dynasty was legend, not just on the East Coast but worldwide. The original gelateria still flourished in the North End of Boston, and the delicious gelato had made Baronessa a household word and made multimillionaires out of anyone bearing the Barone name.

      He shrugged, looking a little sheepish, which only added to his appeal. “I’m getting the impression that you may not consider this a good thing.”

      “Oh, no. No, it’s just—”

      “It’s just a name,” he preempted to make his point. “And I’m just a guy who wants to make sure you get home okay. Okay?”

      In spite of it all, she was helpless not to return his smile. She’d given up resisting it. Just as she’d given up on the idea of doing the smart thing and begging off on his offer of a ride.

      When he extended his hand, she hesitated for only a moment before taking it.

      Just a name. Just a hand. And he’s just being polite, she told herself. Yet she felt as if she was walking in a dream as she let him lead her to his car.

      Wasn’t she entitled, just this once, to have a fantasy fulfilled? One real-life fantasy involving one of the richest, sexiest men alive?

      When he opened the door for her she went with it. She sank into the plush, supple leather of the bucket seat and pretended that she belonged there. She let the classical music flowing from the stereo system wrap around her, and entered another world. His world.

      Phoebe Richards, welcome to the world of the rich and famous. All she needed to complete the scene was Robin Leach with his phony accent prattling away in the background.

      She sighed and regained enough of her wits to remind herself that she really didn’t belong in that world. Just like she didn’t belong with a man like him.

      Yet here she was.

      She was in a car, in the dark of night, with the man of her dreams—hers and any other woman with a beating heart.

      Daniel Barone was a true-life knight in shining armor who had literally saved her. Surely the shiny silver Porsche qualified as armor. Surely he was as much of a knight as Guinevere’s Lancelot.

      And in the name of fair play, surely, just once in her life, Phoebe Richards was entitled to a fairy-tale ending, even if, like Cinderella’s coach, she’d turn into a pumpkin at the stroke of midnight.

      Okay. So she was mixing her fairy tales and her metaphors. She didn’t care. For this brief moment in time she indulged. She let herself forget about pumpkins and different worlds when he turned to her.

      His blue eyes were thoughtful and interested as they met hers over the tanned arm that gripped the gearshift. The streetlight cast stunning shadows and shading across his incredible face. He smiled that devastating smile. “All set?”

      “To the castle,” she murmured and settled back as his soft, warm chuckle enveloped her.

      Three

      Phoebe’s euphoria didn’t last past the first intersection. The adrenaline rush that had kicked into full stride during the ugly scene with Jason wore off quickly. Plus, she was far too grounded to let herself drift on this little dream cloud for long. Grounded or not, though, without the adrenaline to shore her up she was a wreck by the time Daniel had deftly followed her directions and pulled onto her street.

      Daniel Barone. She still couldn’t quite grasp it. And he, well, if he found her neighborhood lacking compared to the pricey Beacon Hill residence where he’d grown up and the circle of wealth in which he ran, he was too polite or too polished to let it show.

      He was also the picture of the perfect gentleman. Except that he drove too fast. She hadn’t needed to read the Boston Globe article about him to know that it was part of his MO. The speed. The thrills. The daring to do what most mortals feared. His exploits were legend. She supposed it should be exciting, racing through the night in this shining bullet of a car, but her slight case of the shakes was prompted more by apprehension than any spirit of adventure.

      She was hopeless. And he was so wrong about her name. Mouse suited her perfectly. She had the backbone of a snail. In fact, she was pretty sure she’d been the victim of one of those hit and run urban legends—like the one where some unsuspecting soul fell asleep in a motel room and woke up in a bathtub full of ice and missing their kidneys. Only in her case, it was her spine that had been surgically removed.

      She sighed heavily. She didn’t belong in this silver Porsche. She didn’t belong in either dream or reality with this man, no matter how hard he tried to put her at ease. And bless him he did try. To her utter mortification, however, their conversation on the half-hour drive to her house consisted mostly of her stuttering apologies for putting him out and his teasing her about her white-knuckled grip on the console.

      Out of her league.

      She should have felt relief when he finally swung the car into her driveway and cut the engine. Instead, an unsettling mix of remorse and regret swamped her.

      She smoothed her hand lovingly along the melting soft leather seat, heaved another resigned sigh and reached for the door handle.

      And so ended her romance with romance.

      “Wait,” he said. “I’ll get that.”

      Because she wasn’t as resigned to the end as she’d thought, she waited while he got out of the car, walked around the hood and opened the door for her with all the gallantry of a medieval knight.

      The castle, Daniel noted, turned out to be a modest ranch, white trimmed in black, circa 1960. It was set in the middle of the block in a quiet and fairly well-kept neighborhood of Boston proper. Lamplight glowed from inside the house where a huge, fat tabby lounged in the bay window and regarded them through the glass with golden eyes and a superior attitude as they approached.

      He was a detail man and noticed that the parched grass was mowed and twin rows of sunburned flowers struggled to brighten the sidewalk leading to the front porch. The porch was actually little more than a concrete stoop covered by a shingled overhang that boasted a hanging basket of deep-purple petunias and peeling posts.

      He wasn’t sure what affected him more: the fact that she was a woman who planted flowers, that she probably mowed her own lawn, or the peeling paint that said she was either pressed for money or time.

      In the end it was none of those things. It was the sight of an ugly, fist-size plaster frog squatting on the stoop. He didn’t have a clue why it got to him.

      “Well,” she said as he watched her avoid his eyes by tucking her chin and staring at the center of his chest. She tugged on her hair, something she seemed to do a lot when she was nervous—which she obviously was around him. “Thank you. Again. Really. And you didn’t have to walk me to the door.”

      As she’d been doing since about midway through the drive across town, he could see her gearing up for another apology for putting him out.

      “Don’t you dare say it,” he warned her before she wound up for a good start. “We reached an agreement, remember? You aren’t going to apologize anymore.”

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