Read Online The Casquette Girls by Alys Arden - Free Book Online Page B

view to the other side of the room, where Mr. Felix’s two workers were ripping the commercial freezers from the wall. Neither seemed to be breaking a sweat.
    Impressive.
    One had light-blond hair, and the other’s was nearly black, but there was something very similar about them. They must be brothers , I thought, watching them from betwee n jars of pepper jelly and dusty cans of New England clam chowder . Even their movements were synced; each carried out the manual labor with a strange amount of grace. Mr. Felix had said they were from the motherland; he must have meant Italy; their slickly styled hair seemed very Italian to me. Flashbacks to my European days suddenly made me feel very underdressed.
    The dark-haired guy was closest to me, but all I could see was the back of his head. He wore dark jeans and a black leather jacket, and even from behind, seemed more focused on the task at hand than the blond, who appeared bored, his thin lips in a near pout.
    The blond looked to be in his mid-twenties. The cuffs of his pale-blue denim jeans were turned up, and his suspenders hung lose at his sides. He had the most perfect skin I had ever seen, but his aquiline features combined with his lackadaisical demeanor made him come across as some kind of naughty prince.
    “How long do we have to do this, brother?” he asked.
    “Until we’ve acclimated. Or until everyone is reunited, I suppose.” His English had only a hint of foreign accent, while the blond’s was much thicker.
    “I assumed finding everyone would require some brute force, but this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,” the blond said as he jerked the refrigeration system from the wall.
    “Stop whining. Like you couldn’t do this in your sleep.”
    “Don’t mention sleep around me,” said the blond. His brother softly chuckled.
    My chest stung. The Storm had turned so many people into insomniacs. How could you sleep if you were missing loved ones?
    Out of nowhere, the cans of chowder betrayed me by flying off the shelf and onto the floor in a series of loud crashes. I watched in horror as one rolled all the way over to the boot of the blond.
    “Well, whom do we have here?” he asked, overjoyed to have a distraction from the labor.
    I was mortified, caught spying on a private conversation. And not just any conversation but one between two hot guys. I suddenly wished I had taken the time to put on makeup, but what were the odds of meeting two beautiful foreigners at Palermo’s? I tried to walk casually to the other side of the shelf, as if I was just doing the daily shopping.
    “Hi, I’m Adele. I live around the corner.”
    “Adele?” He looked at me with an eagerness that made me slightly uncomfortable.
    “Yeah, Adele Le Moyne.” My attempt to offer a hand failed because I was holding too many things, so I resorted to a half-nod, half-curtsey. Blood rose in my cheeks.
    “ Buongiorno , Adele. I am Gabe.” The blond’s light-green eyes sparkled against the grim backdrop of the store. “And this is my younger brother, Niccolò.”
    Niccolò nodded at me and then casually leaned against the wall with one foot up, his hands stuffed deep into his pockets.
    “Nice to meet you both. Bienvenue ?” Is welcoming appropriate under these circumstance s ?
    “The pleasure is entirely ours,” Gabe said, looking down at me with a dramatic smile. From my hiding spot, I hadn’t realized how tall they were, both over six feet. The outline of Gabe’s well-defined chest was easy to see through his fitted white T-shirt, which he had somehow managed not to dirty at all.
    I scrambled to think of something to say. “Mr. Felix said you are over from Europe. Italy?” I placed my bags on the ground.
    “ S i , ” Gabe said quickly. “We are looking for our cousins. We have three missing in action. Maybe you know them?”
    There was something strange about the way he had asked. Like the way a Mafioso would casually inquire about his next victim. My knowledge of