A LITTLE BIT OF SUGAR Read Free Page A

day of kindergarten. Mia and Alisa already knew each other having grown up next door to one another. They were the perfect pair. Mia’s outgoing personality balancing out Alisa’s tendency toward shying away from social situations. In fact, it was Mia who put our little group together that first day of school, asking me and Carlina if we wanted to be their friends. I’d never regretted saying yes that day.
     
    “Well, well, if it isn’t the rest of the spaghetti slingers,” Anthony called out to my girls as they moved toward us.
     
    My friends had been my accomplices in the spaghetti-tossing incident Anthony was punishing me for. None of them liked Lucia. She treated other girls like they were nothing more than a pile of dog doo waiting to stick to the bottom of her four inch ‘ho’ heels. So when we looked out my bedroom window and saw Anthony cozying up to the town bimbo on his mom’s lawn swing, we decided he needed rescued. That’s when the four of us ambushed them with heaping handfuls of wet, stringy spaghetti that had been left over from dinner that night.
     
    “Hey, Tiger,” Carlina replied.
     
    Tiger was the nickname Anthony’s friends had given him when they were kids and into Frosted Flakes. The name stuck. And Tiger seemed to fit him perfectly, but for far different reasons now than it had when he was younger.
     
    “Almost didn’t recognize you without the spaghetti,” Mia taunted with a grin.
     
    Alisa simply averted her gaze to the sausage float beside us, muffling her laughter.
     
    Anthony arched a dark brow in warning. “Watch it, Mia. You know what they say about paybacks.”
     
    I know I did. I’d just been the recipient of Anthony’s kind of payback. My gaze slid back to the ‘weenie float’ that would be forever associated with my name and another saying came to mind – ‘What goes around, comes around’.
     
    “You look so sexy when you do that thing with your brow,” Mia said with a grin, not the least bit phased by Anthony’s warning. She was a lot like Anthony, a natural born flirt through and through.
     
    He grinned right back at her. “I know. It drives Gina crazy. So much so she can barely keep her hands off me when I do it.”
     
    I swung my gaze back to him with a gasp. “ You are such a liar, Anthony Carboni.”
     
    “Okay,” he admitted with a shrug of his broad shoulders. “So she just thinks about putting her hands on me when I do that.”
     
    With a frustrated groan, I grabbed my purse from the backseat of his car and turned to my friends. “The shit’s getting deeper here by the minute. Let’s leave Anthony to his fantasies and go grab a bite to eat.”
     
    “Hey, what about our lunch date?” he called after me as I walked away with my friends.
     
    “When pigs fly,” I said with a wave as my friends and I walked away, Anthony’s husky laughter following us across the parking lot.
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER THREE
     
     
     
    Rescued by my friends. No wonder I loved them so much. A few more minutes with Anthony and I would have either killed him or... Once again, kissing him came to mind.
     
    What was wrong with me? I knew better. The last thing I wanted to do was join the ever-growing Anthony Carboni all-female fan club.
     
    “Okay, Gina,” Mia said as we moved along the sidewalk filled with parade goers, “out with it.”
     
    I turned to her. “Out with what?”
     
    She thumbed back in the direction of the parking lot we’d just left. “Anthony so has the hots for you and you keep blowing the guy off. What’s up with that?”
     
    “He just likes trying to get a reaction from me,” I argued as we weaved around the scattered tables. “You know, it’s kind of like a game we play with each other.”
     
    “What I wouldn’t give to have a guy as hot as Anthony playing games with me,” Carlina said with a sigh.
     
    “I think Mia’s right,” Alisa joined in. “Anthony’s got a thing for you.”
     
    “You