Page 9 of The Holiday Hate-Off
The thought instantly pisses me off, because I should know better. Nobody cares about mortal wishes, neither the ones we keep silent, nor the ones we shout to the skies. And the only person who can solve my family’s problems is me. It’s always been that way, from the day my mother left. Or maybe the day we realized she was never coming back.
The woman gives me a baffled look. “What are you doing here?”
The way she says it makes me bristle. The magic of the bridge fades away, and I’m so angry at myself for having momentarily believed in it that I snap. “This is my hometown. What areyoudoing here?”
There’s a hurt look on her face, and for a moment I feel guilty, until her features harden and she says, “You willingly left. I moved to Hideaway Harbor because I love it.”
“Do you also enjoy watching strangers have sex?”
Her eyes widen and she steps back, nearly colliding with the stone railing of the Wishing Bridge. It’s too low, and if she’s not careful, she could careen right off it.
Alarm sets my heart hammering within my ribs, and I grab her hand to pull her away from it. She bounces against me, her body molded to mine for half a second—long enough for me to smell her hair. Spicy and sweet, like one of those candles my sister left all around the apartment. I breathe it in deeply, the cold air stinging my nose.
The woman jerks away from me, her eyes ablaze.
“You nearly fell,” I say quickly.
“I did no such thing.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “Are you some kind of…” Her gaze darts around before she whispers, “pervert?”
For a second, I’m rendered speechless, both by the question and the way it was delivered. Then the injustice of the accusation registers. “First I don’t know how to please a woman, and now I’m a pervert? I can’t keep up.”
“The two things aren’t mutually exclusive.”
I wave toward the edge of the bridge. “There’s a couple down there having some fun. I was trying to save you from a peep show. Then again, maybe that’s whyyou’rehere. You and your boss obviously get off on messing with people’s love lives.”
It’s not a fair thing to say, but I wasn’t raised to fight fair. I was raised to win.
From the way she’s looking at me, though, she doesn’t see me as a winner, just as an asshole. Then her eyes focus on something behind me. I glance back to see a couple of twenty-somethings, now fully clothed, creeping up the other side ofthe bank, almost level with the bridge. The man’s smoking a cigarette.
She sneezes as the smoke reaches us and then starts coughing. She wheezes out “allergic” before asking in an undertone, “They were really doingthat?” There’s a hint of innocence in her response, which makes me feel a softness toward her I stifle.
“I tried to warn you,” I say. “It’s a known hookup spot.”
She arches her brow. “So what areyoudoing here? As a Hidie, you should have known.”
I shrug. I’d prefer for her to write me off as a pervert than to guess the truth—that I’m scared I’m going to fail my family, and I’m superstitious enough to have found myself here tonight.
“Maybe you were right, and I just wanted to take in the view,” I lie.
She shakes her head and looks at me like I’m an idiot. I’m familiar with that look: I’m on the receiving end often enough from Nonna.
“You expect me to explain myself to you,” I say, “and I don’t even know your name. Maybe we should start there.”
“I’m not telling you my name.”
I lift my eyebrows. “That hardly seems fair. You know my name.”
“Because you marched into the coffee shop like an arrogant jerk and announced it like it was supposed to mean something. I’d forget it if I could.”
I smile at her, somewhat enjoying myself. “But you can’t, can you? You clearly haven’t forgotten me at all, if you’ve been carrying around a grudge all these months.”
Her cheeks turn a pretty pink. She points a gloved finger at me. “You’re the one who had his grandmother ban me from her store. That’s low.”
“I don’t tell her what to do,” I say with a snort. It’s trueenough. Nonna Francesca doesn’t ask for permission, never has. By the time she issued her “ban,” I’d already returned to New York following my disastrous weekend visit in Hideaway. I didn’t even learn about it until Giovanni called to tell me he’d torn down the flyer our grandmother had posted outside of Hidden Italy. Apparently he’d done it while Nonna was getting her hair curled. But this woman doesn’t need to know all of that. “You really won’t tell me your name?”
“No.”
“Okay, fine. I’ll call you Devil Woman. It suits you.”
