Free Summer Desserts by Nora Roberts

the way of friend for friend, disappointed him. “You should try candlelight and wine and soft music, Summer. Let yourself experience it. It won’t hurt you.”
    She gave him a strange sidelong smile as they walked. “Won’t it?”
    “You can trust Carlo like you trust no one else.”
    “Oh, I do.” Laughing again, she swung an arm around his shoulders. “I trust no one else, Franconi.”
    That too, was the unvarnished truth. Carlo sighed again but spoke with equal lightness. “Then trust yourself, cara. Be guided by your own instincts.”
    “But I do trust myself.”
    “Do you?” This time it was Carlo who slanted a look at her. “I think you don’t trust yourself to be alone with the American.”
    “With Blake?” He could feel her stiffen with outrage under the arm he still held around her waist. “That’s absurd.”
    “Then why are you so upset about the idea of having a simple dinner with him?”
    “Your English is suffering, Carlo. Upset’s the wrong word. I’m annoyed.” She made herself relax under his arm again, then tilted her chin. “I’m annoyed because he assumed I’d have dinner with him, then continued to assume I would even after I’d refused. It’s a normal reaction.”
    “I believe your reaction to him is very normal. One might say even—ah—basic.” He took out his dark glasses and adjusted them meticulously. Perhaps squint lines added character to a face, but he wanted none on his. “I saw what was in your eyes as well that day in the kitchen.”
    Summer scowled at him, then lifted her chin a bit higher. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “I’m a gourmet,” Carlo corrected with a sweep of his free arm. “Of food, yes, but also of love.”
    “Just stick to your pasta, Franconi.”
    He only grinned and patted her flank. “ Carissima, my pasta never sticks.”
    She uttered a single French word in the most dulcet tones. It was one most commonly seen scrawled in Parisian alleyways. In tune with each other, they walked on, but both were speculating about what would happen that evening at eight.
     
    It was quite deliberate, well thought out and very satisfying. Summer put on her shabbiest jeans and a faded T-shirt that was unraveled at the hem on one sleeve. She didn’t bother with even a pretense of makeup. After seeing Carlo off at the airport, she’d gone through the drive-in window at a local fast-food restaurant and had picked up a cardboard container of fried chicken, complete with French fries and a tiny plastic bowl of coleslaw.
    She opened a can of diet soda and flicked the television on to a syndicated rerun of a situation comedy.
    Picking up a drumstick, Summer began to nibble. She’d considered dressing to kill, then breezing by him when he came to the door with the careless comment that she had a date. Very self-satisfying. But this way, Summer decided as she propped up her feet, she could be comfortable and insult him at the same time. After a day spent walking around the city while Carlo ogled and flirted with every female between six and sixty, comfort was every bit as important as the insult.
    Satisfied with her strategy, Summer settled back and waited for the knock. It wouldn’t be long, she mused. If she was any judge of character, she’d peg Blake as a man who was obsessively prompt. And fastidious, she added, taking a pleased survey of her cluttered, comfortably disorganized apartment.
    Let’s not forget smug, she reminded herself as she polished off the drumstick. He’d arrive in a sleek, tailored suit with the shirt crisp and monogrammed on the cuffs. There wouldn’t be a smudge on the Italian leather of his shoes. Not a hair out of place. Pleased, she glanced down at the tattered hem on her oldest jeans. A pity they didn’t have a few good holes in them.
    Grinning gleefully, she reached for her soda. Holes or not, she certainly didn’t look like a woman waiting anxiously to impress a man. And that, Summer concluded, was