LITMIR.BIZ

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it was the way his jet-black eyebrows arched above his cobalt-blue eyes, and the contrast of his thick, totally white hair, and the way his nostrils flared like he was desperate to take in air, or maybe it was that last face lift.

      “Cate, it’s not my fault,” Gina insisted. “The guy doesn’t listen to reason. He’s more stubborn than Dad. I told him not to get into the back seat.”

      “What are you talking about?”

      “He’s stuck, Cate, and can’t move. Our car ate his foot.”

      “Call cousin Charlie. He’s pushing three-hundred pounds. He’ll get your boyfriend out of the car.”

      “He’s not my boyfriend, Cate. He’s yours. And Charlie’s already out there.”

      Henry looked over at Cate. “You have a boyfriend?”

      “Why didn’t you say so?” Cate grabbed her coat and hurried out the front door ahead of Gina. Henry followed but stopped in the doorway, holding on to part of his floral centerpiece. “Wait,” he yelled. “Was it the roses? Women love roses. Don’t they?”

      As soon as Cate stepped out into the cold night air and took one look at the twisted man caught inside the classic, faded orange-colored VW Beetle, she knew he was in real trouble. Complete sympathy overtook her like a mud bath and swirled in thick waves of human compassion.

      Cate and Gina shared the car, but it was actually Cate’s, only she hardly drove it anymore. Most of the time she would grab a bus or a train to get where she was going. Gina had commandeered the Bug to get back and forth from school on a daily basis.

      Cate only caught a glimpse of Rudy’s tortured face as cousin Charlie pulled on Rudy’s arms, apparently attempting to rip them right off his body. It was the high-pitched yelp that gave the painful maneuver away.

      “Stop it,” Cate yelled as she stood in front of the car parked next to the curb. They were all there, most of the neighborhood, and most of her family, each trying to unwedge the unwedgeable from both sides of the car.

      In all the chaos, she noticed that Aunt Flo and her dad were actually holding hands…almost as if they were a couple. She immediately turned away and pushed her attention to Rudy. The thought of Aunt Flo and her dad as a couple was absolutely ridiculous, and she didn’t even want to consider it.

      When she looked again, they had stopped holding hands. Now they stood well apart from each other.

      That was better. She thought perhaps it had been a lighting thing, or maybe she hadn’t seen it at all? Convincing herself that it was just the confusion of the moment, she went on to more urgent issues.

      “You guys have to stop,” she told everyone. They instantly backed off.

      When Cate stuck her head in the car, Rudy smiled up at her like a helpless puppy. He sat in the back seat, sideways, with one leg stretched out along the seat and the other one hidden somewhere in front of him. His arms draped over the front seat as if they were no longer part of his body.

      “Hurt much?” she asked.

      “Only while I’m awake,” he said.

      “So, tell me, only kids and small animals fit in this back seat. Which did you think you were?”

      “I got hungry.”

      “Rosebuds delivers.”

      “Aunt Flo had other plans.”

      “Oh, so this is Aunt Flo’s fault. Then why isn’t she in the back seat?”

      “I was being a gentleman.”

      “Don’t say that too loud, I might hear you and get the wrong idea.”

      He smiled. “Look, Cate, I’ll do anything you want, just don’t let cousin Charlie near me.”

      She had to smile back. He looked too cute. “So tell me, Sir Gallant, aside from your general maladies, why can’t you get out of here?”

      “My foot is stuck under the front seat.”

      “Not quite as much room back there as your limo, huh?”

      “Do you ever stop?”

      Cate dropped her gaze for a moment and took a breath, and that’s when she remembered the problem with the front passenger seat. It had a bolt missing and a gaping hole in the slider thing. If you put anything near it or around it when someone slid the seat back, that anything would get gobbled up. She’d lost a new pair of shoes once and it had torn a pair of Gina’s best pants right off her leg just two weeks before.

      Both Gina and Cate had intended to have their dad fix it in his body shop, but neither of them had made the effort to get it over to him, and as long as no one sat in the back seat…so much for that theory.

      She looked up again, and was about to tell him the missing-bolt story, but he was staring at her. He had the most gorgeous eyes, with thick long eyelashes, and the way his hair fell across his forehead reminded her of the reason she had fallen in love with him in the first place. Rudy had the ability, with just one sweet look, to make a girl believe everything he said.

      It was that other Rudy, the evil-twin Rudy, who had been in her office earlier; aggravating her temper, causing irrational behavior in an otherwise completely rational person. He was the Rudy she knew.

      “You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry. So…you’re stuck.”

      “A temporary condition, I’m sure.” He twisted himself around to face the front.

      Aunt Flo stuck her head in the car. “Your dad says we’re gonna have to call the fire department. Vinney McCally is on tonight. He knows how to work them Jaws of Life.”

      “That might be a little extreme and I’ve got…” Cate said, but before she could finish her sentence the sound of sirens echoed through the neighborhood.

      “Oops, too late,” Aunt Flo declared and pulled herself out of the car to look down the street. Cate stepped out, as well.

      “Ya know, it’s times like these that I don’t blame Rudy for leaving this place,” Cate told her aunt.

      Rudy rolled down the back window. “Tell me there’s an actual fire somewhere and that sound isn’t for me,” he said with genuine concern in his voice.

      Cate smiled down at him, then turned away as the hook-and-ladder pulled up alongside the tiny car and three burly firemen jumped out, Vinney McCally being one of them.

      “It’s for you,” she told Rudy.

      Rudy sat back and sighed.

      Vinney walked over to Cate, dressed in complete catastrophe gear. “Cate, is it the old man? Don’t worry about a thing. I’m here now. Where is he, Cate? It’s gonna be all right.”

      Vinney McCally was one of those short but powerful kind of guys. The gymnast type who worked out more than he should and had to buy his clothes three sizes too big just to fit across his double-wide chest.

      Cate had dated him for a little while until he started talking marriage. That’s when a tree fell on him one Sunday afternoon in Lincoln Park while he walked his mother’s schnauzer.

      The schnauzer got away without a scratch, but Vinney was pinned under a limb for two hours. When it was all over and he was lying on a table in the emergency room with a fractured pelvis and a broken arm, Vinney whispered into Cate’s ear, “I’m breaking up with you. Please go home and take your curse with you.”

      It was during that time, while he lay there in a broken heap, that he decided to become a Chicago fireman. He told everyone that if he could survive dating Cate Falco, he could certainly survive fires and dangerous accidents.

      “It’s not my father. It’s Rudy Bellafini. He’s trapped in the back seat,” she explained.

      “Get out!” Vinney said as he hunkered down

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