“After all the trouble you caused last night, Tony Bertelli, I don’t have much to say to you.” She tried to shut the door in his face.
He jammed the heel of his hand against the frame, preventing her.
“Aw, come on, Rory, please. I ain’t here to fight with you anymore. I only want to tell you I am sorry.”
She hesitated, but she could see that he meant it. The hollows beneath his eyes told her that he’d had a bad night, Tony who always slept with the imperturbability of a granite boulder.
Not that he didn’t deserve to pass a sleepless night after what he had done. But how could she keep her heart steeled against him when he stood twisting his cap in his ungainly hands, looking at her so wistfully?
Grudgingly, she stepped back, allowing him to enter. He stepped inside the door, making no move to come any farther into her parlor, shuffling his feet as uncomfortably as anystranger not sure of his welcome—Tony, her friend, her brother, the kid from the next block, the boy whose heart she was breaking.
A small sigh escaped her. “Oh, stop acting like such a goose, Tony. I’m not going to bite you.”
“No? The look in your eyes when you opened the door reminded me of Miss Flanagan’s dog.” He tried to smile, but his joke fell flat. He took in a deep breath. “I am sorry about what happened last night. I shouldn’t have brought that woman here.”
“Indeed you shouldn’t have. You caused a great deal of upset.”
“You’re telling me!” Tony rolled his eyes. “That Miss Marceone cried all over my jacket the whole way home. She told me some more about how Morrison stopped her from marrying. Mother of God, that fool woman was going to run off with Marco Duracy.”
Apparently the name conveyed something to Tony, but Rory merely shot him a blank look.
“Marco Duracy? You never heard Angelo talk about him? Well, see, Angelo knew this fellow from down on the docks whose uncle’s third wife’s daughter?—”
“Oh, Tony, please.” Rory groaned. “It’s too early in the morning for this. Just make your point.”
“Anyway, this Marco Duracy was a real worthless piece of—” Tony broke off, with a cough. “He was a bounder, lazy, good-for-nothing. Mean tempered. I wouldn’t let any sister of mine get within a mile of him.”
“Then perhaps whatever Tessa might say, Zeke’s actions were justified.”
“Maybe. But it doesn’t make me like this Morrison guy any better. There are still some things about him that are real doubtful. But I didn’t come here to get you all riled, talking about him again.”
He crumpled his cap some more, staring down at the threadbare carpet. “What I really came to say is that I know I was acting beyond the limit. No matter how I feel about you, I got no business meddling. You have the right to love whoever you want to even if it isn’t me.”
“Oh, Tony.”
“No, I mean it, Rory. You should be free to choose for yourself, no matter what kind of bum you pick, no matter how rotten?—”
“Thank you, Tony,” she intervened sharply, before he went on to ruin the whole effect of his apology and make her angry all over again.
“I just wanted you to know that I’ll always be here if you need me. I understand I can never be anything more to you, but we have been friends for a long time. I still want that.”
“So do I.”
She wanted to fling her arms about him, give him a big hug, but the longing in his eyes was yet keen. She couldn’t risk it. Instead she gave him a poke on the arm, which he returned, the gestures awkward rather than playful. But it was a beginning.
Tony settled his cap back on his head, exhaling a deep breath of relief. “There! Now that we got that all cleared up, maybe we can be heading for the warehouse. Did you eat breakfast yet? We could?—”
His voice wavered as he noticed the rumpled coverlet on the floor by the sofa and Zeke’s coat lying over the chair. Tony swallowed, looking a little sick. “He’s still here?”
Rory shook her head.
Tony frowned. He appeared to be biting his tongue in an effort to keep from haranguing her any more about Zeke. It was a heroic struggle, but he won it.
“You better get dressed,” he said gruffly. “So we can get to work.”
Rory hesitated, feeling reluctant to leave the flat. There was always a chance that Zeke would come back here looking for her. And how long do you propose to wait, you fool? a voice jeered inside her. All of the morning, the day, the rest of her life perhaps? She was being idiotic, but she had never felt less like going to the warehouse, dealing with the problems of her floundering company.
“I don’t know if I’m feeling up to going in to work today,” she said.
