Caroselli's Accidental Heir. Michelle Celmer

the right thing by leaving, but it was wrong to keep this from me.”

      “I know. I didn’t think it through. I don’t blame you for being angry.”

      “I’m not angry. I’m...disappointed.”

      She bit her lip and tears welled in her eyes, but she held them back. “I know. I screwed up. And I’m so sorry. I feel so bad for your fiancée.”

      “Alice will be okay.” Tony had tried to convince himself that everyone was wrong about her, when deep down his gut was telling him that she would be a terrible wife, and an even worse parent. She was materialistic and demanding, and far too self-absorbed. She had a single favorite topic: Alice. She would go on for hours about the fashion industry and her fame as a runway model, and though he’d tried to feign interest, he often found himself tuning her out.

      She had good qualities, too. She was attractive, if not a bit exotic-looking, had a decent sense of humor, and the sex had been okay, but they never really connected. Not the way he and Lucy had. From the first kiss, he knew Lucy was special. And she was adamant that she wasn’t looking to settle down.

      He was sure the right man for Alice was out there. It just wasn’t him. They had a total lack of common interests. She liked the theater while he preferred a good shoot-’em-up action flick—the more action the better. She was a cat person and he was allergic. She was a vegan, he was a meat-and-potatoes man. She listened to New Age hippie music and he jammed on Classic Rock. The louder the better.

      Two people couldn’t have been less compatible.

      “Do you love her?” Lucy asked him.

      He barely knew her. “Our relationship is...was complex.”

      He would like to believe that he would have stopped things before they went too far. Like when the priest asked if there was anyone who opposed the marriage. Or had he been hoping his family would do it for him? They had yet to warm to Alice, if that was even possible, and were vehemently against the marriage. Even Nonno, who had been trying to marry him off for years, and had gone so far as to bribe him with a thirty-million-dollar inheritance, refused to attend the wedding in protest.

      “You should have trusted me,” he told Lucy. “You should have told me the truth, and we could have worked something out.”

      “Like I said, I screwed up. I made a mistake. But I’m here now and I want to make things right.”

      Did she? Or would he come home one day a year or so from now and find her gone again?

      Two

      Tony had so many questions, and so many things he wanted to say to Lucy, he didn’t know where to begin. It had been a shock to stop by her place all those months ago and be told by her roommate that Lucy had moved back to Florida with her mom. Lucy was such a private person, half the time he had no idea what had been going on in her head. Only now, sitting here beside her, did he appreciate how much he’d missed her, how much he had depended on their friendship. Since she’d left, he’d had no one to talk to. He’d long ago been labeled the strong silent type by his family. Serious, super-focused and private, but there was so much more to him that he didn’t let people see. With her he could let down his guard and be himself. She was the only one who really got him.

      Maybe that’s why her leaving had been such a hard-hitting blow. It had been unsettling. He’d spent the better part of that last thirty years avoiding emotional entanglements.

      Someone rapped on his window and Tony nearly jumped out of his skin. It was his cousin Nick. Christ. Couldn’t he have ten minutes without someone in his family accosting him. He was guessing that Christine and Elana, his younger sisters, weren’t far behind.

      Tony rolled his window down. “What?”

      Nick leaned down so he could see them both, resting his arms in the open window, looking first at Tony then Lucy. “Everything okay out here?”

      “Lucy, you remember my cousin Nick,” Tony said.

      “Hi, Lucy,” Nick said, shooting her a megawatt smile. “Let me be the first to congratulate you both.”

      Tony recognized the twinkle of curiosity in Nick’s eye, and knew exactly what he was thinking. He was wondering if Tony was still going to take advantage of Nonno’s offer. Both Nick and Rob had forfeited their cut of the thirty million to save their relationships with their wives. But Tony had no marriage to save. Although to get the money he would have to marry Lucy. Nonno’s game, Nonno’s rules. But, if he could talk Lucy into marrying him, which in itself could be difficult, it wouldn’t be a real marriage. She didn’t want that.

      “My wife is pregnant, too,” Nick told Lucy. “We’re due September twenty-first.”

      “Early June,” Lucy said, and Tony could see Nick doing the math in his head. The slight tilt of his head and peak of his brow said he had come to the same conclusion as Tony—Lucy had known about the baby for quite some time before she left for Florida.

      “I thought this was going to be a boring wedding,” Nick said with a grin. “But this was even better than my sister’s wedding, when my dad got into a fistfight with my mom’s date.”

      A distinction Tony would be happy to forget.

      “Is Alice all right?” he asked Nick, noting the pained look on Lucy’s face. She really did seem to feel bad for Alice.

      “She’s still upstairs with your mom. Carrie is going to drive her back to the condo. She sent me out here to tell you to be gone before they leave.”

      Carrie was their cousin Rob’s wife, and Alice’s best friend. She had introduced Tony to Alice, a move she was probably regretting about now.

      Alice being the polar opposite of Lucy had appealed to him. At first. In the end, it only worked against them. He often found himself wishing that she was Lucy, or at least a lot more like her. Those were two months of his life he would be happy to forget. Or erase completely. If it were within his power to go back in time and change things, he would have followed Lucy to Florida and convinced her to come back where he could take care of her. Where they could be a family, even if it wasn’t in the traditional sense.

      Hindsight was indeed twenty/twenty.

      “Carrie also wants to know if Alice left any of her things at your place,” Nick said.

      “I don’t think so, but I’ll take a look around.” Alice had only been to his town house a couple of times. Which made the fact that he was going to marry her all the crazier. Come to think of it, he wasn’t even sure how old she was. He’d asked, but he’d gotten a vague nonanswer.

      Dude, what the hell were you thinking?

      “Do it soon,” Nick said. “She’s already talking about going back to New York in a couple of days.”

      “Permanently?”

      “Far as I know.”

      Tony hadn’t intended to drive her out of Illinois, but on the bright side, he wouldn’t have to see her again. He could live with that.

      The front door of Nonno’s house opened and people started to file out onto the porch. Thankfully Alice wasn’t among them. Nor were his sisters.

      Tony turned to Lucy. “Why don’t we go back to my place?”

      She nodded, looking anxiously toward the front door.

      “I’ll talk to you later,” he told Nick, who straightened up and made a “call me” gesture with his thumb and pinkie. The Carosellis were known for two things: chocolate and a propensity for gossip. To be honest, Tony’d had enough of both. He wanted out from under the microscope. He wanted the freedom to live his life however he wanted, both personally and professionally. To be who he wanted to be. Not what was best for the family, but what was best for him. It was what he’d wanted for a long time now. That thirty million dollars had been his ticket out. He could