Crush on You Read Free Page A

halting. “You can’t leave me like this,” she told the man.
    The atmosphere instantly changed. Where minutes before it had been charged with the rioting atoms of Wedding Dress Girl’s fit of pique, now it was a different emotion coloring the air.
    Bemused, Penn crossed his arms over his chest and leaned on the Range Rover again to take in the little show. Alessandra’s small face tilted up and she turned those velvety brown eyes—was that a sheen of tears?—on the construction worker. “Please, Newton. You can’t leave me like this,” she repeated.
    Newton appeared on the verge of crying himself. “Allie . . .” he whimpered. From the other side of the truck, Penn heard the two guys muttering to each other in Spanish. Idiot! he heard one say to the other. He’s looking her in the eyes. Everyone knows not to look her in the eyes.
    Who did they think she was, Medusa?
    “Newton . . .” Wedding Dress Girl implored again, one perfect tear dangling at the end of one perfect bottom lash.
    Surely the guy wouldn’t fall for this. Penn glanced around, ready to share a laugh at her so-obvious ploy, but was astonished to see everyone else frozen, their stricken gazes glued to the little drama queen. How come they were so taken in? Had four seasons of assisting histrionic pre-teens select bedroom decor given him a special bullshit detector? Nah, it wasn’t the tweenies who had honed his sense of the over-dramatic, it was the woman who’d walked away with a wheelbarrow full of his cash and, well, his wheelbarrow, among other things, that had done that.
    So, fine, maybe he was a tad more cynical than most.
    Newton whimpered again. “Okay, Allie. All right. All right, I’ll stay.”
    Sunshine didn’t come brighter than her sudden smile. She rushed the contractor for an exuberant hug, and then gave one to each of his workers, too. Giuliana came next, then Stevie, and even Liam managed to take her embrace without his stiff spine breaking in half.
    Penn should have seen it coming, but he was stupefied when she turned and flew toward him, her next victim. But before contact could be made, she scuttled back and let out an embarrassed laugh.
    “I’m sorry,” she said, an adorable dimple that she was certainly supremely aware of winking beside the corner of her adorable mouth. “We haven’t even met. You must be one of the Bennett bas . . .” Her adorable dimple disappeared to make way for an adorable blush.
    What a player! “I’m Penn,” he said, voice matter-of-fact.
    “Penn.” She beamed him a ray of that practiced sunshine. “Nice to meet you.”
    Despite how much he despised manipulative women, it didn’t change the way her bright smile and plump breasts thickened the blood chugging through his veins. He plucked at his shirt to force a breeze past his now hot skin.
    For a guy still smarting over the last female who’d sailed past his common sense, his reaction to Alessandra Baci was completely unwelcome and only served to piss him off. Little Wedding Dress Girl was sexy as all get-out, but obviously she was damn spoiled, too.
    “And congratulations to you,” he said, not disguising the edge to his voice.
    Her gaze narrowed, a quick contraction of her eyelids before her expression turned guileless again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    He leaned closer, and spoke in a near whisper. “They don’t know what hit ’em.”
    “What?”
    She had the innocent thing down pat, and he hardened himself against it. “That little break in your voice,” he said. “The single tear—brilliant. We’ll have to see about a booking on Inside the Actors Studio .”
    The Kate Winslet wanna-be didn’t answer. With a little flounce, and another spit of gravel, she turned and headed back up the lane, her sisters once again following. As Newton and company started pulling equipment from the bed of the Ford, he and Liam were left looking after the three Baci women.
    “Good God,” Penn said, shaking his