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NICK’S BURGERS, A greasy diner housed in a streetcar, which Nick Papadopoulos decided to rescue from the scrap yard teemed with the usual Saturday crowd looking for a great, greasy burger. Lively swing music pumped from the speakers hanging off the awning hemmed in colorful lights.
“How about this table?” At Francesca nod, Tommy held her hand as she maneuvered herself over the seat board of the picnic table. “I’ll go place our order.”
“You mean there are no servers.” Francesca laughed when Tommy’s brow winged high. “Jesus ease up, Scott.”
“Sure, okay. I’ll be right back,” Tommy said, and Francesca followed his tight butt, which looked even better tonight in freshly pressed jeans, to the order window.
Francesca’s eyes never leaving Tommy, she watched him place the order and push away from the counter to wait for his number to be called. She smiled when his eyes skirted the two strawberry-blonde haired beauties prancing their assets for his attention to her. Looking past them, Tommy gave Francesca a wink as he plucked a cigarette, and touched flared lighter to its tip.
Female satisfaction came over Francesca at seeing the many female roving eyes on Tommy and knowing he was there with her. She found the feeling oddly empowering.
“Looks tasty and heart-clogging.” Francesca eyed the meal Tommy spread before them.
“It is, and it will. It’s why it’s so good.” Setting the tray aside, Tommy took his seat across from her. “By the way, you look great tonight.” Tommy’s gaze swept over the cotton sundress as bright as sunshine. He liked the way the chestnut waves spilled around the unpainted face. She was way out of his league, Tommy thought. What a rich, well-bred, educated girl who had the pick of any boy was doing with someone like him, eating a burger at a dive like Nick’s perplexed him?
“And you look just as good in a dry T-shirt as you do in a sweat-drenched one.” Francesca flashed a dimpled grin that gut-punched Tommy and he couldn’t take his eyes off her.
“You should see me in my Italian silks.” Tommy watched Francesca replace half of his onion rings with French fries.
“Gucci or Fendi?” At his cocked brow, Francesca said, “I know you’re screwing with me, and I told you I like to eat. Also, you’re sharing your chocolate milkshake unless you want to exchange it for my soda.”
“I’ll get you a milkshake and your own onion rings.” Tommy was halfway out of his seat when Francesca gestured him back down.
“We can share. Next time ask me what I want to eat. Okay?”
Tommy mulled the words “next time” with an inward smile. “All right.”
With the scent of grilled meat, and the buzz of loud chatter from the packed patio, Francesca and Tommy talked like friends who’d known each other for a lifetime.
The fact they were from opposite sides of the track couldn’t have been more obvious as Tommy told her about his wild and reckless past, and Francesca told him about her orderly life. The one thing Tommy and Francesca had in common was that their fathers raised them. Their mother’s taken from them at a young age, Tommy and Francesca, knew the feeling of loss. Understanding what their mother’s death had ripped out of them, Tommy and Francesca shared a bond children affected by the loss of a mother could.
“I was only twelve when she died. It took me a while to get over it, but you have to, don’t you?” Francesca absently dipped an onion ring into ketchup.
Tommy nodded. “My mom used to say life is full of interruptions and complications, but the determined never give up.” Tommy picked up a curl of her hair, pulled it out straight then let it go. The gesture sent an unexpected tingle skittering up and down Francesca’s spine. “Would you like dessert?”
“Tempting, but I’m stuffed.”
“All right, then let’s go.”
“Where to?”
“It’s a surprise.”
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TOMMY DROVE TO THE VACANT FIELD adjacent to Scott’s Garden Center. Parking on grass, Tommy left the truck radio swelling with the melody of Dream a Little Dream of Me and helped Francesca onto the truck’s hood. Then, climbing up next to her, Tommy handed Francesca a bottle of beer.
The night air carried the pungent aroma of earth and fertilizer from the garden center, and the land rolled under a gray sheen like a thin layer of fog. Fireflies floated, speckling the darkness, an owl’s hoot echoed from the trees as crickets burst in song.
“From me to you, the stars and the moon.” Tommy pointed to the sky where a round moon floated white in a dark sky sprinkled with stars.
No one had said more perfect words or reached her as deeply as Tommy did just then. “It’s the best present anyone has given me. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Tommy sipped beer. “My father owns a piece of this land. Someday, I want to fill it with greenhouses. Lots of greenhouses. I want to grow everything we sell and market it under Scott’s Garden. I want to grow the business into a franchise. Picture it, Scott’s Garden Centers all across North America.” His words tumbled out of him in excitement.
An admirable smile played across Francesca’s face. “Ambitious dream.”
“Until a year ago, I wanted no part of the business. I wanted nothing to do with it.”
“What changed your mind?” Francesca took a sip of beer, cringed at the taste.
“Not a beer fan?”
“No, and it’s not because this little-rich-girl is used to drinking Kristal as that tiny brain of yours is thinking. I just don’t like the taste. Never have.” Francesca shot back with a flash of irritation.
“What’s Kristal?” Tommy asked with a playful smirk.
“Now you’re teasing me.”
Tommy shook his head. “Well, maybe a little.”
“Anyone tell you, you could be infuriating.”
“It’s one of the qualities you like about me. Anyway, to answer your earlier question of what changed my mind,” he jumped in when Francesca started to speak and told her about his short incarceration, which smartened him up. “The experience opened my eyes, and my life suddenly didn’t seem as shadowed or pitted, and I thought my dad deserved better.”
“That jail stint led you to find your path and purpose. We end up where we are meant to be.”
“Profound. Who said that?”
“Francesca Thompson.”
“You’re not a seventy-year-old woman in the body of a seventeen-year-old?” Smiling, Tommy stared at her. Her eyes were as brown as topaz. “You don’t mind hanging out with a felon? I mean, you are the daughter of the top criminal lawyer in Canada, and appearance is everything.”
“That depends.” Francesca liked the way the strands of hair curled around his face.
“On?”
“The reason you were taken in.”
“A fight. I used to be a beacon for them.”
Francesca watched Tommy light the cigarette. “Does it mean you’re not anymore?”
“I told you I’m a changed man.”
“Well, then, that settles it. Besides, I think you were acting out in response to your mom’s death. There was anger and emptiness in you, and you expressed those feeling with your fists. It’s a guy thing. Girls cry themselves dry. We’re smarter.” Francesca watched Tommy mull her psychological analysis over. From the expression on his face, until then, it hadn’t dawned on him. “It’s why, in my opinion, boys and men should try to be more emotional. A good cry can solve the world’s problems. It can prevent wars. The bottom line is I have nothing to worry about except for your smoking.”
At that, Tommy inhaled deeply and flicked the cigarette onto grass, watched it bounce and sputter. “Satisfied?”
“Yes.” Francesca felt the cool balm of a soft breeze, and she wrapped her arms around her body for warmth.
“What are you going to do now you’ve graduated?” Tommy shrugged out of his jacket and set it on Francesca’s shoulders. It smelled, of Old Spice, of him and a pleasant, exhilarating shock of arousal shot through Francesca’s system. She’d never felt anything like it before. She liked it.
“I’m waiting to hear from a few universities. I’m planning to study criminal law like my father,” Francesca said as Virginia Bruce’s breathy voice flowed from the radio, claiming she had him under her skin. Francesca smiled, thinking how those words suddenly made sense to her. Tommy Scott had slid under Francesca’s skin, and she wanted him to stay there.
She imagined how her father would react to Tommy, and the thought rattled her. Peter Thompson was a staunch live-by-the-rules authoritarian. He wouldn’t be as understanding as she was about Tommy’s reckless past. Peter would forbid her to see Tommy, and if Francesca refused, he’d ground her until she was thirty.
If their relationship progressed past tonight, Francesca decided she’d keep Tommy her secret. What Peter Thompson didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. Francesca decided she’d keep Tommy from Mrs. O’Sullivan too.
“So you’ll one day take over your father’s practice,” Tommy said simply although her father’s firm was anything but simple.
Peter Thompson ran one of the most prestigious and well-respected legal firms in Canada. Thompson and Associates was one of the largest with the best legal minds—or so he’d read in the newspapers. Peter Thompson had made a name for himself for defending celebrities, politicians, and the innocent presumed guilty in the public eye before their day in court.
“Something like that.” Francesca rested her chin on her knees. Like it or not, a career in law was mapped in her future since the day she took in her first breath, and Francesca didn’t dare defy her father.
“Are you going away to study?” Tommy’s blue eyes were sober at the question.
Francesca inched her head back, looked him in the eye. “Maybe. Why do you ask?”
“Just wondering.” Tommy swilled back the rest of his beer and took her bottle when she offered it.
“I’d rather not leave, but I’ll have to see which university accepts me. My dad wants me to study at Stanford—his alma mater. My dad’s brother is a professor there, and I can stay with him while I go to school.”
A soft breeze whiffled, and the sweet smell of Francesca’s perfume, the kind that crept into a man’s senses and lingered there forever, slid into Tommy. All he wanted to do was kiss her. “I hope they reject you.”
Francesca’s mouth twisted into a grimace. “Tommy Scott, that’s not a very nice thing to say.”
Tommy needed a good pull of his beer before he spoke what was on his mind. “I don’t want you to go.”
The words arrowed into Francesca’s heart and, with emotion mirrored in her eyes, said, “I don’t want to either. Not anymore.”
Tommy gently tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “I’d like to get to know you better.”
Putting on a smile, Francesca shifted to face Tommy. “Me too,” she said, falling into the circle of his arms. “There goes a falling star. Make a wish.”
“Already did.” Tommy tightened his arms around Francesca as he willed it to come true.
