Blue Smoke

up the stairs.
    He glanced at the door, back at Reena and grinned. “So how many times did she say ‘Vince thinks’?”
    “I lost count. He’s pretty crazy about her.”
    “Good thing, otherwise by now he’d have been driven crazy by her. I know one thing, I’ll be glad when it’s over.”
    She walked to him. He’d edged over her in height, so she bounced up on her toes to kiss his cheek. “You’ll miss her when she isn’t in the next room.”
    “I guess I will.”
    “You got plans tonight?”
    “On your first night home? What kind of brother am I?”
    “My favorite kind.”
    S he waited until Bella was out to her fancy dinner and the rest of the family was around the dining room table sharing steak Florentine in honor of Reena’s return from college.
    “I have some news,” she began. “John told me today, and I asked him to let me tell everyone else. Pastorelli’s out. He was released a week ago.”
    “Son of a bitch.”
    “Not at the table, Xander,” Bianca said automatically. “Do they know where he is, where he went?”
    “He served his time, Mama.” She’d had time to reconcile to that, and to sound calm about it. “John doesn’t think we need to worry, and I agree. He doesn’t have any ties to the neighborhood, no reason to come back here. What happened was long ago.”
    “And yesterday,” Gib said. “Seems like yesterday. But I think we have to accept this. What else can we do? He was punished for what he did. It’s done, and he’s out of our lives.”
    “Yes, but it wouldn’t hurt to be a little watchful, at least for a while.”Bianca drew a long breath. “And it’s probably best not to say anything to Bella until after the wedding. She’ll just have hysterics.”
    “She can have hysterics over a chipped nail,” Xander put in.
    “My point exactly. So we know, and we’ll be a little more careful. But we’ll believe as John does that there’s nothing to worry about. So . . .” Bianca lifted her hands. “Eat, before the food gets cold.”

6
    Bo wasn’t a hundred percent regarding the plans for the day, but he was usually willing to go along. His pal Brad was now officially one half of the Brad and Cammie show. And since that show was in its first act, everybody was happy. To spread the joy, the new couple arranged for a double date, and that was fine. The all-day and into the evening term of the date was a little worrying.
    A big commitment, to Bo’s way of thinking.
    What if he and this friend of Cammie’s took an instant dislike to each other? It happened. She was supposed to be pretty, but that was Cammie’s opinion. And you just couldn’t trust the opinion of a girlfriend.
    Even if she looked like Claudia Schiffer, she might talk all the time, or giggle. He really hated gigglers. Or she might be one of those humorless types. He’d rather take the giggling over the super-serious, I’ve-got-to-save-the-world-from-itself-and-so-do-you sort.
    On top of that he was still hung up on a girl whose face he’d seen for about ten seconds, and whose name he didn’t know.
    Stupid, but what could you do?
    This was, he knew, one of Brad’s methods of getting him back to the real world. A pretty girl—at least that was the billing—a day out with a convivial group at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. Do the aquarium, hangout, catch some music, eat some seafood. Have a few laughs. He ordered himself to get into the spirit of it as he followed Cammie’s directions.
    She and Brad took the backseat of his car, mostly, in his opinion, so they could make out.
    He pulled into the lot, waited while his passengers completed their latest lip-lock.
    “We’ll all go in.” Cammie unwrapped herself from Brad, grabbed her purse. “This is going to be fun! It’s a totally awesome day.”
    She had him there, Bo thought. Blue sky, puffy clouds, steaming sunshine. Better to be out and about than sitting home brooding about some fantasy girl or even fooling around in his foreman’s workshop.
    What he was aiming for was a workshop of his own. Once he had enough money to rent a house—or, more fantasy, actually buy one—he was going to have a shop of his own. A nice little shed he’d outfit with worktables and power tools. Maybe get his own side business going.
    He walked into the apartment building, which looked exactly like every other off-campus apartment building to him. And was just the sort of place he wanted to say good-bye to. What he needed to do was talk Brad into