Ben tapped Pauli on the shoulder.  “Pauli, shirts at the table, what would Nonna say?”  Getting no response, Ben slapped the back of his right hand hard into his left.  “Pauli, camicie a tavola!”

Pauli almost came out of his skin as he jumped up.  Jess snickered as Pauli looked at Ben in obvious confusion.  Jess hadn’t told anyone, but she’d ordered Italian from Rosetta Stone just after she’d gone to UCLA, and now understood every word the Bellinis and Lucianos said to each other.

“Ben, Lane how long have you been standing here?”

“Pauli, why don’t you go change into a swim suit?  If you didn’t bring one you can use one of mine.  I could use help manning the grill.”

Jess stood.  Slowly peeling out of Pauli’s shirt, she threw it toward him.  “Hey, Parrot Boy, don’t forget your shirt.”  Then she picked up her glass, turned and walked out the patio door toward the pool.

Ben told Pauli to find a guest room to crash in, not knowing which two rooms the Parker kids had taken as changing rooms.  Pauli dumped his bag in an empty guest room, went into Ben’s room and grabbed a spare pair of swim trunks.  He used the master bath to change.  What the heck had just happened? He walked back into the kitchen.

“So you said something about help manning the grill?  What do you need?”

Chapter 9

Cat and Mouse

Growing up in the restaurant business had made Ben a great cook.  In fact, all of the Bellini brothers knew their way around a kitchen.  But, Pauli was likely to set the house on fire for all of the attention he was paying to what he was doing.

Pauli had a hard time concentrating on the grill with Jess sunning herself 15 feet away. Pauli was in his second year of residency at University of St. Louis Medical.  He’d spent four years in medical school and knew human anatomy like he knew his own name.  He knew there was no reason that Jess’s anatomy should be so distracting.  Hell, he’d seen naked women, a lot of naked women in a professional capacity… his not theirs, and others in a personal capacity long before he’d gotten the MD tacked on his name.

Of course, now that he was a doctor, there were women coming out of the woodwork hoping to snag a doctor.  He didn’t have time.  That’s the excuse he always used.  He was far too busy with his residency to do anything more than just hook up.  Most women fell over themselves to get next to him.  He was a Bellini, all movie star good looks and Kennedy charisma, and he was a doctor.  What more did a woman need?  Hell, what more did that woman need?  She paid no attention to him at all.

Jess lay on her stomach on the chaise near the shallow end of the pool.  She had her head turned away from the Baby Bellini, but she could feel his eyes on her.  He was a good looking guy.  He was a doctor, so obviously he wasn’t an idiot, but he had an ego bigger than the state of Texas.  “Dr. Paolo Raffaele Bellini” like he couldn’t have just said, “I’m Paul Bellini” or, “I’m Ben’s brother Paul.”  As if the fact that he was a doctor was supposed to impress her. Besides, she’d seen the way he looked at her mother and Parrot Boy should be on his knees thanking God that Ben hadn’t seen it.  She could only imagine the new Italian words she could have learned.  Rosetta Stone isn’t big on curse words.  Maybe she could use this to her advantage.  A girl could always use a new pair of shoes, maybe Dr. Bellini would be willing to bribe her for her silence.

She rolled over onto her back and glanced toward the grill.  She smiled as she stood up and walked toward him.  Oh, this was going to be fun.  She stepped up so close to him that he could feel the heat from the sun coming off of her skin. “I like my steak medium rare, Pauli.”  She drug his name out.  “Time to turn it over.”

Jess was five feet four inches tall, a full foot shorter than Pauli’s six feet four inch height.  She lifted her sun glasses to her forehead and looked up into his eyes.  “Does Ben know you have a crush on my Mother” she asked, as she pushed her sun glasses back in place and turned to go into the house.

He hadn’t said a word.  It was like the cat had his tongue.  Jess laughed.  She did love a good game of cat and mouse.  She stepped into the kitchen and asked Ben if he wanted her to set the patio table.  He handed her the plates and silverware.  “By the way, you are going to put something on over that swim suit while we eat, aren’t you?”

She smiled as she pushed the door open with her butt.  “If you insist, but I do wonder where the fun would be in that?”

Ben laughed.  He was ten years older than his brother.  He’d gone away to college when Pauli was eight; and when Ben had come home, seven years later, Pauli had grown into a teenager.  But Pauli would always be the baby of the family and Ben would always feel the need to look out for him.

Jess was just a little bit of a thing, five feet four inches tall and maybe 110 pounds soaking wet.  She had big blue eyes and long blonde hair and for some reason, some men were just stupid enough to think that she should swoon all over them.  But Jessica Anne Parker didn’t swoon… ever.  Unless it was written that way in a script.  She had a tendency to play cat and mouse with unsuspecting guys.  Well… unsuspecting egomaniacal guys.  She seemed to have honed the skill since she’d been in L.A.  Ben had to admit that the men he’d seen play the role of the mouse in the little game had deserved everything they’d gotten.  And he was afraid that Dr. Paolo Raffaele Bellini just might be the next unsuspecting egomaniacal man in her sights, the poor guy.  If this played out, maybe Ben could get some relief on the shoe buying front.

Jess knew her mother would insist that she put a shirt on over her bikini anyway.  There had been a rule at the Parker table Jess’s whole life: shirts on, hats off.  No one dared to argue.  She walked back into the house and helped Ben carry out the baked potatoes, steamed asparagus and a bottle of wine.

Jake and Jamie had seen Jess set the table and had gone into the house to get their shirts. Lane had put on her gauzy cover-up.  Jess went in and got her own completely see through cover-up and brought out Pauli’s scrub shirt and handed it to him.  She leaned closer than she needed to and said, “Mom doesn’t allow bare chested men at her dining table.”  She smiled.  “Guess my Mom’s a lot like your Nonna.”

During dinner, Lane and Ben related the purpose of Lila’s search warrant. Pauli listened, open mouthed, as Ben told the Kids about Lane directing Hunter to the receipt in the console of the Escalade.

“Pauli, that’s not even the best part. The best part was when Lane told Lila that there’s photographic evidence because Jess had taken pictures of them making all of the purchases.  You should have seen the look on Lila’s face as Lane told her not to worry if the evidence had disappeared from her laptop because Jess had already put it on Facebook.”

Jake looked at Jess.  “You put Mom’s garage sale shopping on Facebook now?”

Jess pulled out her cell phone and after a few clicks she looked at him and said, “Yes, as a matter of fact, I did.”

After dinner, Jess orchestrated the movement of the golf clubs from Jake’s truck to the trunk of Dr. Bellini’s car.  She knew her mother was innocent, and that the golf clubs had been purchased well after the murder, but what if one of those clubs really was the murder weapon?  She wasn’t taking any chances.  So while Jamie was clearing the table, she got Pauli’s keys from the hook next to the garage and gave them to Jake.  Then she distracted Pauli while Jake made the switch and hung the keys back on the hook.

Chapter 10

Past Present and Future

Jake left shortly after that, saying he had some things to do.  Everyone knew that it was code meaning he wanted to get home and call Meg Kelly.  Meg was Lane’s administrative assistant, and Jake had met her a couple of months earlier at the surprise birthday party the siblings had thrown for their mom.  Jess, in normal Jess fashion, had sent Jake to occupy Meg because she thought Meg was “all up in the Parkers’ business.”  While Jake had done as his sister told him, he was surprised to have enjoyed the task so much.  He and Meg had really hit it off and had been seeing each other for the last month.