BLURB:
Nina
Chickalini has been waiting all her life to get out of Queens, but something
always holds her back. If it isn’t the four siblings she raised almost
single-handedly, it’s the neighborhood pizzeria she’s running so Pop can take
it easy. At last, she’s counting down mere months, instead of years, until
she’ll be free to embark on her grand adventure.
Leave it to
her best friend, good old reliable Joe Materi, to wait until now to make an
incredible request.
Have his
baby? The last thing Nina needs is another reason to feel tied down. But how
can she refuse the man who’s always been there for her? Getting in the family
way turns out to be easy, and suddenly she’s seeing her old pal in a whole new
light.
The clock is
ticking, her bags are packed, and Joe—muscular arms cradling a baby, sexy voice
crooning a lullaby—isn’t part of the plan. So why does Nina feel as though
she’s already embarked on the adventure of a lifetime?
An Avon
Romance
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Prologue:
Nina
Chickalini is no stranger to the tiny, windowless room just off the rectory of
Most Precious Mother church on Ditmars Boulevard in Queens.
It was
here that she made her first—and last—confession to Father Hugh. Make that, the
late Father Hugh. But that part—the late part—wasn’t her fault,
no matter what Joey Materi said then . . . and continues to say.
Until that
May weekday afternoon a decade ago, the parishioners of Most Precious Mother
made their confessions in the blessed anonymity of the closest-like
confessionals in the main church. But apparently, face-to-face confessions in a
casual setting had become all the diocesan rage, and Nina’s pre-confirmation
class was to be initiated into confessing their sins in the new-fangled way.
Ordinarily,
Danny Andonelli would have gone first. But he had caught a nasty throwing-up
kind of flu from his little brother—or so he said. Nina suspected he was loathe
to confess his failure to Keep Holy the Sabbath Day—he’d been caught throwing
water balloons at passing subway trains the previous Sunday afternoon.
Anyway,
Danny was absent that day, leaving Nina alphabetically next in line to make her
first confession.
She sat on
the folding wooden chair opposite the kindly old priest, took a deep breath and
forced herself to look him in the eye.
“Bless me,
Father, for I have sinned,” she began, as Sister Mary Agnes had taught them to
do in CCD.
He nodded
encouragingly.
But Nina
noticed that he seemed a bit pale and distracted as she launched into a
detailed account of her sins: cheating on a social studies test (but not
really, because she had glimpsed Andy O’Hara’s paper merely by accident);
taking the name of the Lord in vain (which she couldn’t really help doing because
she had dropped Grandma Valerio’s massive hardcover bible on her fragile pinky
toe); covering her friend Minnie Scaturro’s brand-new canopy bed—
Suddenly,
the priest keeled over, clutching his chest.
“Father
Hugh?”
He writhed
on the floor, gasping.
For a
moment, Nina thought he was kidding. After all, he had a pretty decent sense of
humor for someone who wore somber black from head to toe every day of his life.
It turned
out Father Hugh wasn’t kidding.
Nina ran
shrieking out into the rectory, where her pre-confirmation classmates were
waiting to make their first confessions.
Author
Bio:
New York Times bestseller Wendy Corsi Staub
(aka Wendy Markham) is the award-winning author of more than eighty novels.
Wendy now lives in the New York City suburbs with her husband and their two
sons. Learn more about Wendy at www.wendycorsistaub.com
Media
Links:
Website: http://www.wendycorsistaub.
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