Free When Love Finds a Home by Megan Carter Page B

the dishes
washed and put away, they continued to stand in the kitchen and talk about
their kids.
    "They'll be there all
night," Anna mumbled at Rona's shoulder.
    "We do seem to be out of
the loop," Rona admitted.
    "I'm going to show Rona
the rest of the house," Anna called out. Gina smiled and gave a slight
wave; the rest continued discussing the woes of childbirth.
    As they left the kitchen, Anna
turned to her. "Do you really want to see the rest of the house?"
    She shook her head. "Not
really."
    "Do you play pool?"
    "A little." Rona
smiled and rubbed her hands together.
    Anna stopped and glanced back
at her. "Why do I feel like I'm about to be hustled?"
    "I can't imagine what you
mean."
    Anna led her to a huge game
room. Besides a regulation-size pool table, there was a lengthy bar running
along the side. A pin-ball machine sat in one corner, and what she thought was
an air hockey table sat across from it. In addition, there were four card
tables with chairs in the area between.
    Anna began to rack the balls.
Four pool cues were in a stand in the corner. Rona hefted each of them and
chose the heaviest one.
    "I saw that," Anna
called from the table.
    Rona shrugged. "I just
wanted to see if they were all the same."
    "Yeah. Sure."
    "To prove to you that I
play fair, I'll let you break," she offered.
    Anna eyed her. "That
doesn't make me feel any better."
    She stood back from the table
as Anna leaned down to break. She was so busy admiring the way the jeans
stretched over Anna's rear that she was caught off guard when Anna stood
suddenly and turned around.
    "Your turn."
    She had to look at the table
before she realized Anna had already
broken the racked balls. At least, she had made an attempt. The cue ball was
caught up in the center of the cluster created by the horrible break. Rona had
spent much of her teenage years sneaking over to play pool in a small
family-oriented cafe and sports bar. It was one of few things that her father
had never discovered and put an end to. "You didn't leave me much."
After walking around the table to review possible shots, she quickly sank the
two, four and five balls in three consecutive shots.
    "I knew it," Anna
said. "I knew you were hustling me."
    "It's only hustling if we
place a wager on the game."
    "You have a point there.
Isn't that what you were leading up to?"
    Before she could reply, Julian
came in, followed by his father and Pietro.
    "Annie Bella, shame on
you. I don't believe you were trying to hustle our guest," Julian called
out.
    "To think I raised a
daughter who hustles pool," Mr. Pagonis said as he seated himself on a
barstool.
    Rona turned and found Anna
looking a little shamed-faced. "You were hustling me?" Rona asked,
dumbfounded.
    Julian patted Rona's shoulder.
"My sister put herself through college hustling pool."
    "I did not," Anna
protested. "Dad, tell them."
    Mr. Pagonis looked at Rona and
shrugged. "All right, I won't say my daughter is a pool shark; however, I
gave all my children the same amount of money to go to college. Anna must have
been very good at budgeting her money. With her two-hundred-dollar monthly
allowance, she was able to buy a stereo, a car and a small house."
    "Dad!" Anna
exclaimed. "You're being horrible. I never did any such thing."
    "Exactly how good are
you?" Rona asked.
    Anna looked at her and smiled
before proceeding to clear the table.
    Chapter Ten
    Rona and Mr. Pagonis were in
the middle of an extremely close pool game. Ever the diplomat, Julian was
cheering on both players. Anna walked to the bar and took a bottle of water
from the small refrigerator. Pietro was leaning against the end of the bar.
    "Dad, can I get you
something?" Anna called as she took the stool at the end of the bar.
"A bottle of water, a beer, pool lessons maybe," she teased.
    "You keep laughing,"
he called back. "Any moment now, I'm going to stop showing her
mercy."
    "In that case," Rona
called over to him as she sank the seven ball. "I'd better start playing
with my