“Morning,” he said by way of greeting, trying to look as nonchalant as any man who was hanging out on the sidewalk long before the sun came up over Manhattan. “How you doing?”
“I’ve been up since three baking, that’s how I’m doing.”
Even when she was grousing, Iris’s melodious, accented voice caused a thrill in the center of Mario’s belly. Suddenly, sleeping in his cramped backseat didn’t seem so bad.
“You smell great,” he said, inhaling the sugary scent of the fresh baked goods clinging to her worn pink sweater, the one she wore every morning until the sun came up, when she’d toss it over the back of the stool she kept near the cash register.
“I smell like lard.” She smoothed a hand over her thick, bunned black hair as she moved in the direction of her stand.
“More like fresh-baked dough sizzling with creamy butter and a dusting of cinnamon.”
She stopped, the rolling cooler she tugged behind her knocking against her heels.
“That was almost…
He knew little Spanish, but he got her point. Besides, he was fluent in Italian and the languages weren’t so different. Just like the cultures. Just like the people.
“I can wax with the best of them when it comes to food. Can I help you set up?”
She resumed her walk, and like the dog he was, he followed. The minute they reached the front of Rachel’s building, she immediately started unlocking the door with the impressive collection of keys she extracted from inside her blouse.
Oh, to be those keys.
He cleared his throat and looked away, suddenly feeling more like sixteen than sixty. He glanced up at what he thought was Rachel’s window. The lights were off. Or perhaps, on in the adjacent room only.
“Where’s your cab?” she asked, once she had the coffee brewing and had tossed him a roll of paper towels and some Windex to clean the front of her display case.
“Around the corner. I didn’t want any fares this morning.”
“You still on the clock?”
“Nah, it was my night off.”
She eyed him suspiciously but didn’t ask any more questions until she had her stand nearly ready for operation. He’d helped her set up once before, about three months ago when she’d sprained her wrist. She hadn’t accepted assistance easily, but Mario could be fairly stubborn when he wanted to be.
He could remember the first day he saw Iris again, the fateful morning three years ago when he’d picked Rachel Marlowe up outside a real estate agent’s office. She’d promised him a big tip if he drove her around so she could find a new place, but the twenty she’d slipped him that day in addition to her fare had been nothing compared to what she’d really started. The first question out of her mouth had been, “Where can a girl get a decent cup of real Cuban coffee around here?”
The answer had brought him to Iris, a woman he hadn’t seen in years.
The whole scenario-his attraction to Iris, his friendship with Rachel, his inability to keep his half-crooked Italian nose out of other people’s business-had led him right here after getting little sleep the night before, his adrenaline buzz spawned by an attraction he didn’t know if he could ignore much longer. And then there was his cockamamie plan to find out if Roman Brach was who he said he was.
Which Mario doubted. His cop instincts wailed that Brach wasn’t just some liar leading on his latest squeeze, or a married dude who wanted Rachel on the side. He’d had a friend at the precinct run the plates on the car that had picked Roman up yesterday and got nothing but one of the million car services available throughout town. And a quick search of the guy’s name scored nothing by way of priors. What little he’d told Rachel checked out.
Still, Mario had a strong feeling that this guy wasn’t on the up-and-up. And if the man turned out to be the worst kind of con, Mario would be there. He owed Rachel, since she’d been entirely responsible for Iris coming back into his life.
“If you’re off duty, why are you here?” Iris finally asked.
He put on his best, most appealing grin. “My morning’s shot if I don’t see your smiling face first thing.”
She rolled her eyes, but her tiny grin revealed the effectiveness of his compliment. “You’re full of it, Mario Capelli.”
“Full of what? Infatuation for you? Full of an irresistible need to maybe-” he took a deep breath “-sometime soon, see you somewhere other than on this street corner?”
He waited a full minute, watching Iris’s dark eyes narrow as she considered what he’d said. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of someone coming out of Rachel’s building. On instinct, he grabbed Iris’s elbow and tugged her down so they were both concealed by the cart.
“What are you doing?”
He glanced around the side of the cart. Roman quickly surveyed the street, probably looking for Mario’s perennially parked-at-the-end-of-the-block cab, then took off toward Avenue of the Americas, right to the corner where he’d positioned his co-conspirator, Sam.
Mario leaned forward and without giving himself a moment to think, kissed Iris soundly. Knowing he had only a few moments before Rachel came down looking for him, he forced himself to break the lip-lock and ignore the fire surging through his veins. “I’m asking you to dinner.”
She stuttered. “W-when?”
“Tonight. Five o’clock?”
Good enough time as any, especially since he knew that Iris went to bed early so she could open her stand before dawn.
“Where?”
Mario stood and, as gentlemanly as he could, helped Iris back to her feet. “You pick!”
He started down the block to his cab. With traffic light, he’d be able to spin around the nearby side street and reach Rachel before they lost sight of Roman’s ride.
RACHEL SLID INTO MARIO’S waiting cab, out of breath and unable to speak. Luckily, she didn’t have to say “follow that car.” Mario had torn away from the curb before she could grab the door handle and yank it shut.
“You’re flushed,” Mario said.
She gulped in air, forcing the oxygen into her lungs. “I ran down the backstairs and out through the alley. I didn’t want to run into him in the lobby.”
Closing her eyes, Rachel counted backward from one hundred, her heartbeat slowly calming to as close to normal as she was going to get until this was over. For a split second, she wondered why she had come up with such a sneaky plan. Why couldn’t she just ask the man what, if anything, he was hiding?
“There!” Mario shouted, his finger jabbing his windshield. “There’s Sam.”
“Wasn’t it dark when Roman went out? Are you sure he got in with your friend?”
Mario glanced at her sideways. He picked up his radio and, after contacting the dispatcher, was patched in to Sam’s car. He asked some questions in Italian. Rachel understood, and she’d bet big bucks Roman would, too. But the conversation was innocuous enough that unless he was suspicious of his driver, he’d never realize he’d been scammed.
“Satisfied?”
Rachel smirked. “You’re awfully good at all this covert stuff. Why is that?”
Mario turned his attention back on driving. “Natural talent.”
They headed toward the Upper East Side, where Mario had dropped Roman off before. Did he have a home there? A wife or lover or family she knew nothing about? His nomadic lifestyle appealed to her own sense of wanderlust so much at the beginning, she’d never questioned how a man could go from place to place with no real home. In fact, she’d envied him. He seemed to feed on the spontaneity of his job, just the way he seemed to revel in the unpredictability of their so-called relationship.
Hadn’t she been attracted to the same life? Her spontaneous trips fulfilled her desire to travel and her career as
