Caroselli's Baby Chase. Michelle Celmer

dad before he joined the army. The fact that Tony Sr. married her shortly after he left had been a minor source of friction among the three of them over the years. Certainly, it was nothing they would come to blows over now, unless the dynamics of those relationships had changed… .

      “Tony, you don’t think that your mom and my dad…”

      “Honestly, Rob, I don’t know what to think anymore. But things have seemed off with my parents, as well. I went to a New Year’s party with them and they seemed…I don’t know, out of sync, if that makes sense. They’re typically very physically affectionate with each other, and I barely saw them touch.”

      “Maybe my dad can help them figure it out,” Nick said.

      “Is your dad still sleeping with your mom?” Rob asked him.

      Nick made a face. “Yeah. It’s bad enough knowing about it, but to actually see them…you know…” He shuddered involuntarily. “Talk about scarring a person for life.”

      “That’ll teach you to barge into your mom’s house without knocking,” Tony told him.

      “I think it’s pretty cool that after being divorced for so long, they reconnected,” Rob said.

      “They do seem happy,” Tony told Nick. “Maybe I shouldn’t mention this, but they were at the New Year’s party, too. They couldn’t keep their hands off each other, and they disappeared long before the ball dropped.”

      “Regardless,” Nick said, “I’ll never get how two people who despised each other, and had a messy and uncivilized divorce that scarred all three of their children, could suddenly change their minds and hop in the sack.”

      “I’m sure that if they’d had a choice, they would have preferred to be happy the first time around,” Tony said.

      Nick shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. So long as I don’t have to see my dad’s bare ass again, they can be ‘happy’ all they want.”

      “So, breakfast?” Tony said.

      They said goodbye to Sheila as they passed the reception desk, then rode the elevator down to the lobby. Dennis, the security guard, nodded as they walked past.

      “Who are you betting on in the playoffs?” Nick asked him, walking backward to the door.

      “Steelers-Lions,” Dennis said. “And the Lions will take it.”

      “No way! The Lions haven’t won a championship since what, the fifties?”

      “Fifty-seven,” Dennis said. “But this is the year.”

      Nick laughed. “Dream on. I say Steelers-Chargers, and the Steelers will take the championship.”

      Dennis grinned and shook his head. “Keep dreaming, boss.”

      Nick laughed as they walked out the door into the bitter wind. Parking was a bitch downtown, so they pulled up their collars and walked the three blocks to the restaurant. The pavement was slick, so it was slow-going, and by the time they got to the diner it was already filling up with the lunch crowd. Every seat was taken and there was a line of people ahead of them.

      “Feel like waiting?” Tony asked.

      Rob shrugged. “Could be a while.”

      “I say we wait,” Nick said. “It’s too damn cold to go back out there.”

      “Hey, Caroselli!” someone called. Rob followed the voice, cursing under his breath when he realized whom it belonged to.

      Four

      “Is that Carrie?” Nick asked.

      “That’s her,” Rob said. She sat alone in a booth near the back, and she was waving them over. She was still wearing the ugly suit, but she’d lost the shapeless jacket. She’d let her hair down so it fell in soft waves over the shoulder of a rose-colored shirt made of some sort of stretchy nylon that clung to her curves.

      Tony’s mouth dropped open. “Holy hell. No wonder you picked her up. Look at her.”

      “Yeah,” Nick said. “Her body is…wow.”

      Yes, it was, and as much as he didn’t want to, Rob couldn’t help but look. Just as he couldn’t help it the other night either. In her clothes she was smokin’ hot, but out of them she was a goddess. A work of art.

      But that was where the attraction ended.

      “Looks like she wants to share her table,” Nick said.

      “I’d rather wait for a table,” Rob told him. She had ruined enough of his day.

      “Stop being a baby and go,” Tony said, giving him a shove from behind. “You’re going to have to get used to being around her.”

      But not outside of a work scenario, Rob thought, grumbling to himself all the way to her booth. And while he could have turned and walked out, he refused to show defeat, to let her win. To drive him from a restaurant he’d eaten in weekly for the past ten years.

      She smiled up at them as they approached. “Hello, gentlemen. I saw you walk up and thought rather than wait, you might like to share. I stood in line about twenty minutes myself.”

      “We’d love to join you,” Nick said, flashing her his “Charming Nick” smile. He and Tony slid into the empty side of the booth, leaving Rob no choice but to slide in beside Carrie, which earned each of them a malevolent look.

      The booths weren’t exactly spacious, and with her briefcase on the seat next to the window, there was no hope of putting any real space between them. She was so close he could feel her body heat, and every time either of them moved, their shoulders or arms bumped.

      This day was going from bad to worse.

      He refused to acknowledge the scent of her perfume, or shampoo, or whatever it was that had driven him mad the other night, or the lusty urges he was feeling as her leg brushed against his. The desire to run his hand up the inside of her thigh again, until he reached the garter holding up her stockings, had him shifting restlessly in his seat.

      “Are we a little antsy?” Carrie asked him, but thankfully, before he had to come up with a viable excuse, the waitress appeared.

      “Hey, boys,” she said, stopping at the table with a pot of coffee and four beat-up plastic cups of iced water. What the place lacked in class, it made up for in good food and quality service. “What can I getcha?”

      Without even looking at the menu, they all ordered their usual breakfast, and after reviewing the menu, Carrie ordered the special, which was a lot of food for a woman her size.

      “I take it you gentlemen come here often,” Carrie said, reaching across the table for a coffee creamer, her shoulder bumping against Rob’s.

      “Best greasy spoon in the greater Chicago area,” Tony said. “How did you stumble across it?”

      “On my way out I asked Dennis where I could get a decent breakfast.” She added a packet of artificial sweetener to her cup. “He told me to come here.”

      If Dennis wasn’t such an exemplary employee, Rob might have considered that grounds for termination.

      “So what do you think of Chicago?” Nick asked her.

      “It’s very cold. And windy.”

      “They call it the Windy City for a reason,” Tony said.

      “I’ll bet you can’t wait to get back to the West Coast,” Rob said, and she shot him a sideways glance, as if to say, Don’t you wish.

      “I think I’ll like it here,” she said. “Though probably more when it warms up a little.”

      “Do you know where you’ll be staying?” Nick asked.

      “Not yet. I’m hoping to