“Come on,” he said and grabbed her hand and pulled her back to a rental office. “You’ll love it. I promise. And we won’t go on the advanced ramps. There are plenty of beginner ramps over there,” he said, pointing to a less dramatic area of the skateboard park. Darcy eyed the area with curiosity. There were several people learning how to skateboard and they seemed to be having fun.
“Okay,” she said, relieved that she wouldn’t be the only novice in the park. “But one scrape and I’m outta here,” she warned.
“Deal,” he agreed.
They rented skateboards and Michael showed her how to get started. Darcy picked it up easily and she was soon gliding down the asphalt along with several other beginners and loving it. Michael was right. The sport was too engaging to think about anything except where to aim the skateboard. They practiced all afternoon, stopping for hot dogs and a soda late in the day.
He brought her to his house that night and grilled them steaks on the patio while she made a salad. They played scrabble after dinner and she accused him of cheating on a word but refused to challenge him, he looked too confident.
“Good morning,” Michael said against her ear.
Darcy stretched and rolled over to face him. “Good morning,” she smiled.
“You’re voracious sexual appetite has made me miss church this morning.”
Darcy’s eyes widened but she rolled over in his arms, bracing her hands against his chest, her fingers tangling in the light mat of hair. “My appetite?” she asked and snuggled closer to his naked body. “I don’t remember things that way. I seem to remember a very hungry male who wouldn’t let me sleep until dawn. What was it, five times?” she asked, curling up and almost purring like a kitten.
“Well your penance is that you have to spend the rest of the day with me and not talk about work.”
“Deal,” she said, willing to spend any time she could with him despite the pressures of the deadline looming.
“And you have to come to lunch with me,” he demanded, his fingers sliding through her long, brown hair.
She yawned and pulled the rest of her hair out from underneath her shoulder. “I don’t see a problem in that.”
“With my family,” he said and stood up, pulling her along with him into the shower. He didn’t give her a chance to react, just kept pulling her towards the bathroom. Darcy pulled back but he wouldn’t release her hands. “I see a problem.”
“No you don’t. You’re just making up a problem where none exists. And you look incredibly sexy trying to fight with me naked, I might add.”
Darcy shook his hand loose and grabbed his shirt from the floor, grimacing as she tried to button it up but realized that the buttons were missing. “See? You were savage last night,” he said, indicating the loss of buttons since she had torn his shirt off him in the heat of their mutual passion.
Darcy blushed but moved to the next button. “I can’t have lunch with your family.”
“Why not?”
“Well, first of all, isn’t your oldest brother the chief executive officer of ATI?”
“Yes, but what does that have to do with lunch?”
“Won’t he be there?”
Michael shrugged, “We’ll be at his house.”
“I can’t go there,” she said flatly.
He pulled her close and kissed her forehead. “You don’t have to worry about Sal, I promise. He’ll be too busy chasing after his son Adam who will most likely be stealing toys from his cousins, Dennis and Josh, both of whom are two years old and fully embracing their ‘two-ness’,” he explained. “Besides, Sal’s not the mean one. That’s Thomas. If you’re going to be scared of any of my brothers, it should definitely be Thomas,” Michael teased.
Darcy argued against going to lunch with him for the next two hours. She was still arguing with him when he opened the door to Sal’s house and she was immediately immersed in chaos. Michael had told her he had five nieces and nephews but she knew he was lying. There were at least thirty children running and playing in this mansion Michael had grown up in. As soon as the door was opened, Michael introduced her to the family and a wriggling toddler was promptly dropped into her arms. Darcy stared at the handsome boy and he stared back at her. As soon as he realized she wasn’t going to bite, the boy broke into a toothy grin and reached up to touch her hair. “Pretty,” he said.
Darcy fell in love. His name was Max and he had curly, dark black hair and angelic blue eyes that twinkled when he laughed, which was often. As soon as his mother, a stunningly gorgeous woman with dark, curly black hair just like her son, sat down next to her, he dove onto her stomach, wrapping tiny, dimpled arms around her neck, then turning back to face Darcy.
“Pretty,” he repeated to his mother, Antonia, the youngest of the Attracelli clan and the only sister.
Antonia smiled at Darcy. “Yes, she is. Are you being nice to her?”
The little boy smiled and shook his head. Darcy laughed and the boy threw himself back into her arms and jumped up, “Go,” he said, pointing to the kitchen where he knew lunch was being made.
“Oh, no you don’t, young man. I know you want to eat potato chips and you’ll spoil your lunch if you do. Ignore him, Darcy. He’s not hungry, just charming,” she said and stood up to kiss his head and go in search of her four year old daughter Emma who had just started screaming bloody murder in some other part of the house.
Darcy shook her head. “You’re momma said no chips. Is there something else in the kitchen that you’d like?”
Max smiled and repeated, “Chips.”
Darcy laughed. “No chips,” she repeated.
Max looked around and spotted an ally. “Adam!” and he wriggled off Darcy’s lap in pursuit of his cousin who was the same age. Adam was Sal’s only child and just as darling as the others but with an air of authority about him even at the tender age of two. He must have inherited that trait since he was just like his father who was the head of the family and a major international company.
The first thing Max did was take the truck out of Adam’s hands which caused a tussle between the two boys. Darcy, alarmed, got up immediately and asked them nicely to stop fighting. The boys didn’t even glance her way. The only thing that stopped them was Adam’s father coming in to pick each of them up, carrying one boy under each of his arms, then carried them to two separate dining room chairs for a time-out.