Apples & Oranges (The This & That Series) Read online

  I gulped. “I’m fine?”

  Well that didn’t sound convincing at all.

  Demo’s thumb brushed the skin below one of my eyes, wiping away the remnant of one of my tears. The air between us was so electric it practically sparked. “It’s okay to let someone take care of you, you know.”

  For a second, I actually considered it. Toyed around with the idea of dropping my Miss Independence façade, and playing the part of the damsel in distress for once.

  But the sound of approaching heels clicking on the cement interrupted our moment.

  “Who the hell is that, Demo?”

  “Stacia.” Demo’s hands dropped, and he took a step away from me.

  Wiping my eyes, I turned around, finding myself face to face with a very ticked off looking blonde who was on the fast track to melanoma with her tanning bed bronzed skin. In her strapless salmon colored dress, this Stacia person was dressed for a party, or simply to impress Demo, who appeared half sheepish, half bored as he rocked back on his heels and shoved his hands in his pockets.

  She sneered at me. “Who is this whore?”

  My mouth dropped open. “I, uh, excuse me?” Okay, so Demo’s call from earlier wasn’t just a booty call. It’d been a booty call from his girlfriend. It was all coming together for me now. “Girlfriend?” I hissed at Demo.

  He shrugged. “It’s not like that.”

  “What are you telling her?” Stacia shrieked, her dangly earrings dancing around her face.

  Glaring at Demo over my shoulder, I put my hand out. “Hi. I’m Marisol Vargas.”

  “I don’t care who you are,” Stacia shoved past me, and thumped Demo on the chest. “Who is she? What are you doing with your arms around that tramp?”

  He just grit his teeth; the nice guy from just moments ago was apparently long gone. “You’re misunderstanding—”

  “Misunderstanding?” she bellowed.

  My face, still wet from tears, scalded. “Okay, I’m out of here.”

  “Marisol, wait.” Demo reached for my arm, but I moved too fast for him.

  I’d been grabbed by one too many men tonight. All I wanted now was to finish my work, collect my three hundred dollars, and go home. Sure, Cocinero expected me to sit and pet him while he ate, but at least he didn’t make me feel useless and completely stupid.

  Well, not much, anyway.

  “Goodnight, Demo.” I slammed the kitchen door behind me.

  Chapter Eight

  I didn’t hear a peep from Demo for a week, and hadn’t really expected to. After all, he was busy with his blonde girlfriend, who clearly had trust issues, and I wasn’t going to get the recipes—or a kiss—from Demo any time soon. Which was fine by me.

  Sort of.

  Okay, so I was kind of frustrated about it. I’d made two batches of baklava and one batch of dolmades that all turned out sub-par. I had no idea how to make authentic Greek delicacies, and not being capable of doing something never happened to me. Usually all it took was a test run and maybe some tweaking, and my food was good to go. But this time around? Argh. Not even close. Not for the amount of money these people were paying us.

  And, adding to my list of frustrations, not only would I not be getting those much-needed recipes, but there would be no smooch-smoochy—or more—with Demo. While I hated to admit it, there was something about the way it felt resting against his chest that night. Happy, warm, safe. I could only imagine what being full-on seduced by His Royal Crankiness would be like. If my imagination had anything to say about it, probably pretty damn good. Not that I would ever find out.

  Harrumph.

  And then… exactly seven days and eight hours after what Lexie and Candace were referring to as the incident, I got a very terse voicemail from none other than Demo:

  “Uh…yeah. This is Triple D’s calling. Your parts arrived, and I can fit the work in sometime this afternoon. I’ve got a pretty packed week, so if you don’t bring it in, you’ll wind up waiting another week or so, and I know how you feel about waiting. So… you know. Bring it on in.”

  That man seriously needed to brush up his phone skills, that was for sure. Demo couldn’t have sounded less interested in me, or my business, and I didn’t imagine he’d given our little “moment” in the dark another thought.

  Which is why I didn’t even bother to dress nicely when I took my Beemer to Triple D’s. I’d been frosting cupcakes to the soundtrack of Lexie’s fussy baby’s screams since six that morning, and was wearing old jeans and a tank top that was splattered in blue food coloring. I didn’t care whether I saw Demo or not. I just wanted to drop my car off and throw a wave in Yiayia’s direction.

  “Wait here,” I told Candace, who was waiting in her minivan to take me back to work. The sound of some Barbie DVD was playing in the backseat, and all of her kids—even her son—were staring at the screen hanging from the ceiling with slack jaws. “I don’t think your little ankle biters will mind.”

  “Where’s the hottie?” Candace leaned over the top of her steering wheel. “Can I meet him?”

  “You sure as hell cannot meet him,” I scolded. “Just wait here. I’ll be right back.”

  “Go jump him!” She laughed. “Have another incident, and make him forget all about the blonde.”

  “Whatever,” I hissed. “I’m going in, dropping my keys, and then we’re out of here. Be ready.”

  She stifled a giggle. “Got it.”

  As I approached the garage doors, Trey wiped his hands on a greasy rag and called, “Welcome back, Marisol!”

  “Thank goodness it’s you.” I stalked across the cracked parking lot to give him my keys. “Your uncle called me. You’ve some replacement parts for my car.”

  “Right-o.” Trey jerked his chin in the direction of some nearby boxes. “Came in this morning. You gonna wait for us to be finished? Yiayia’s in the office and loves company.”

  My heart tugged. My entire life I’d wondered what it was like to have a grandma, and now I was irrationally attached to some old lady I’d met once. But in my defense, Yiayia was really sweet. And that baklava was hella good. “Sorry, no. Not today, Trey. I’ve got to get back to work.”

  He flexed a wiry arm. “Don’t you want to see these guns in action?”

  “Nope. My ride is waiting.”

  He peered around my shoulder. “The blonde in the van? She’s hot.”

  I shook my head. “You think every woman’s hot.”

  “Fair enough.” He shrugged and looked at my shirt. “You been killing Smurfs, or something?”

  I brushed at the tank, but it did nothing. “No. I’ve got a sweet sixteen party to cater tonight, and the color scheme is blue, bluer, and bluest.”

  “And you didn’t bring us some?” Trey shook his head, a smile teasing his mouth. “Man, and my yiayia gave you baklava and everything.”

  “Sorry, kid.” I held out my keys. “I’ve got to get back, anyway.”

  “Your loss. She made kourabiethes, too.”

  I pressed my lips together. I’d had a weakness for the shortbread cookies covered in confectioners’ sugar and almonds since discovering them at an Orthodox Church bazaar a few years ago. I’d gained five pounds after sitting alone in my house with them for a weekend, and vowed never to indulge in kourabiethes again. Leave it to Yiayia’s cooking to knock me off the wagon.

  I chewed my lip. Surely one wouldn’t hurt. “Well, I—”

  “Well, if it isn’t her Highness.” Demo emerged from the office, polishing what looked to be a radiator cap—but really, what did I know—with a towel. “Decided to grace us with your presence?”

  Irritation stung like a bug bite, but the way Demo looked in his coveralls, open just enough to show some very manly looking chest hair and what appeared to be another tattoo, made up for it. Seriously. Had I known mechanics could look this good, I’d have bought a lemon years ago.

  “You left a message.” I wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly self-conscious. Girlfriend or not, I wasn’
t usually seen in public without a full face of makeup and a couture outfit on. Annalise taught me the value of a pretty lady long before she instilled values like honesty or chastity.

  Wait. She’d never gotten around to either of those. At least I’d developed one of them on my own.

  “’Bout time you showed up.” He set the cap down, and tossed the towel at Trey. “I don’t know if I can fit you in anymore.”

  “I couldn’t get away from work until now.” I threw my arms out. “What did you expect?”

  Seriously. Why in the world was I so attracted to such a colossal dickhead?

  Oh, right. Because he was so nice to look at. And underneath all of those whiskers and grease stains, he was kind of a nice guy. Though he kept that personality trait under tight wraps, didn’t he?

  “Lay off, Uncle Demo,” Trey called from under the hood of a Volkswagen. “She was working on cupcakes.”

  “Cupcakes? Sounds intense.” Demo held out his hand to me. “I need your keys.”

  “Keys, please.” I held out the keys, hovering them above his palm. “And yes, I was making cupcakes. Not all of us wind up with oil under their fingernails when they work.”

  He eyeballed my tank top, a smile tickling the corner of his lips. “Just frosting, Princess?”

  “Stop calling me that.” I snapped, putting my keys back in my pocket. “What is your problem?”

  Trey stood upright and leaned against the bumper of the Volkswagen. “Here we go again…”

  “Shut up, Trey.” Demo took a step closer to me. “By the way, Marisol, you’re welcome for rescuing your butt the other night.”

  I sucked in a sharp breath. If I had a nickel for how many times I’d replayed my encounter with Greg, I’d have had about a hundred dollars by now, and every time I thought about the moment he’d grabbed me, I shuddered.

  “Thank you,” I said quickly. I returned his annoyed expression with an equally aggravated glare. “I would have thanked you that night, but your girlfriend seemed pretty ticked off to see me.”

  “Who?” Demo frowned.

  Balling my fists at my sides, I stalked towards the garage doors. “I’ve got to go.”

  “She isn’t my girlfriend,” Demo called, stopping me in my tracks.

  I turned around. “Clearly she thinks differently.”

  “She is named Stacia,” he said. “And she thinks differently about lots of things.”

  “Seriously, do you speak in riddles all the time, or just do it to tick me off?” Storming back over to the Volkswagen, I slapped my hand down on the metal. “You know, you could have told me you had a girlfriend.”

  “For the second time, Stacia’s not my girlfriend.” Demo tugged on a wrench and grunted. “I mean, why that’s any of your business, I don’t know. But she’s not.”

  Trey caught my eye and snickered.

  “Get to work,” I hissed at him.

  “Hey.” Demo’s glare went from me to his nephew. “Get to work.”

  Trey scuttled off to the back of the shop, and I leaned in close to Demo. “If you’d told me you were seeing someone, or that someone thought she was seeing you, I wouldn’t have tried so hard to hit on you.”

  Demo chuckled. “You’ve been hitting on me all this time?”

  “Well, yeah.” I groaned. “I mean, when we weren’t fighting.”

  He smiled mildly. “We’re always fighting.”

  “That’s for damn sure.” I swatted at a hair that’d escaped from my ponytail. “What I’m trying to say is, had I known you were involved with someone—”

  “We’re not involved.”

  “I would have backed off,” I finished. “I wouldn’t have hugged you like that, you know?”

  Demo gave the wrench another yank. “And all this time I thought you were after me for my yiayia’s recipes.”

  My stomach clenched. He is way more perceptive than I gave him credit for.

  “So now that we’ve got that girlfriend garbage cleared up,” he looked at me, the faintest shadow of amusement on his whiskered face. “Are you going to try hitting on me again?”

  I met his smile with one of my own. “Try? Demo, if I hit on you, there’s no luck about it. You won’t know what hit you.”

  “That so?” He leaned on his elbows, bringing his face closer to mine. The same whirl in my chest that I felt that night at the inn returned. “Then I guess it’s a real bummer that it still won’t work.”

  My skin flushed. “Uh huh, and… wait, what?”

  Pushing himself off the Volkswagen, Demo stood upright, towering over me. “Too high maintenance.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I looked him dead in the eye. He didn’t intimidate me. I could slip back into bitch mode, just as easily as he could slip into arrogant tool mode. If he was going to pretend that there hadn’t been some sort of cosmic connection between the two of us that night, then that was fine by me. “What’s your type, then? Loose? Alcoholic? Chain smoker? Sorry I don’t fit the bill.”

  “You’re gorgeous and confident.” Demo scoffed. “Not to mention conceited, flashy, kinda pretentious, maybe even a little entitled.” He glanced up at me, and wrinkled his face. “I mean… no offense, or anything.”

  My head jerked backwards. His words stung like a smack. Not because I was insulted, but because I’d been called every single one of those things. More than once. Not that I would admit it to him. “Those are mighty big words for a guy like you.”

  His dark eyes narrowed. “This is exactly why I didn’t want to date you before, and I still don’t now.”

  “Has anybody told you that you’re a dick?” I asked him, my voice shaking.

  “A time or two, yes.” He grit his teeth together. “Has anybody told you that you’re an over-confident little show pony?”

  “You sure didn’t mind cuddling up with the show pony the other night.” I thumped Demo’s chest with my finger. “That is until your girlfriend showed up.”

  His face was starting to turn red. “She’s not my girlfriend.”

  The office door swung open and the matriarch of Triple D’s appeared in the doorway. “Demetrious Marcos Antonopolous. Are you abusing this young lady?”

  “Abusing? Really?” Demo closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “No, Yiaya.”

  She leaned over so she could see me around Demo’s shoulder. “Hello there, Marisol. How are you?”

  I waved at Yiayia, and my heart tugged. There was something about that old broad that made me want to put on fuzzy PJs and sit down with some cocoa to listen to her stories. “Hi, Yiayia. I’m fine, thank you. How are you?”

  “Just great, dear.” She smiled, her wrinkly face scrunching up. “Is my grandson giving you a hard time?”

  I looked up at Demo, who’d fixed his gaze on something across the shop. By the tense look on his face, he might’ve gone away to his “happy place,” and it only irritated me more. I wanted to cuss him out. I wanted to bring my knee up to collide it with his man parts with a satisfying whack. I wanted to leave Triple D’s in a blaze of melodramatic glory, then ride off in Candace’s minivan…

  Oh, crap. Candace was still waiting for me.

  “No, he and I were just talking,” I told Yiayia. “But I have to run now. My friend is waiting, and I have to get back to work.”

  “Back to the cupcakes?” Demo asked, his voice low enough that his grandmother couldn’t hear.

  “Shut up, grease monkey,” I whispered, my voice shaking.

  Demo shook his head. “I was just gonna say we like cupcakes around here. In case you made extra.”

  I whipped my hand up, poking him in the chest again. “You think I’m going to bring you treats when you’re acting like such a jerk?”

  Yiayia appeared between us. Man, she moved fast for an old lady. “You know what you both need?” Both Demo and I looked down at her, perplexed. “A date,” she said proudly.

  “Good luck with that, Yiayia,” Trey called from across the garage. “They can’t stand each other.
/>   “Can it, kid,” Demo groaned.

  Yiayia threw her head of white hair back and cackled. “That’s what they think.”

  I shook my head. “Actually, he’s right. We can’t even talk for five minutes without arguing, and—”

  She took hold of both of our chins at the same time. Her grip was alarming for a woman almost a hundred years old. “When I met my husband, he told me I was the last woman on earth he’d ever take to the altar.” Yiayia’s gaze landed on her grandson’s face. “We were married eleven weeks later.”

  Demo and I stepped back from each other in unison. “Don’t think it’s gonna happen,” he announced at the same time I said, “Thanks, but no thanks.”

  Her eyes, which were the same shade of dark chocolate as Demo’s, bored into mine with the intensity of a newly refurbished engine. “You’ll mark my words, Marisol. He’ll ask. I promise you that.”

  Digging in my pockets, I produced my keys. “Hey, Trey!”

  “Huh?” He poked his head around the far end of the Volkswagen.

  I looked at Demo, whose lips twitched in return. Tossing the keys at the lanky teenager, I headed for the doors. “Call me when the Beemer’s ready.”

  Chapter Nine

  Maybe it was the fact that I was on my second glass of pinot, or maybe it was just that I was home alone on a Friday night… but I was in a weird mood.

  Now, I didn’t want to brag at all, but I almost never went into a weekend without a date. For years, I attributed that to how lovely and desirable I was. But what really drove me to go out with someone—anyone—every weekend without fail, was really… my father.

  He’d only called five times in the three years since peeling out of the driveway. When he finally asked my mom to let me fly to Florida for a week to see him, I’d built up the visit in my head, expecting trips to the beach, evenings watching the circus, and maybe even a ride in a hot air balloon. He’d never done anything like that with me before, but I’d heard all sorts of exciting stories from friends with divorced parents and fully expected my own father to pull out the stops trying to buy my affections.

  But I was wrong.