Brenda Harlen – The Bachelor Takes a Bride (страница 2)
“Oh. I’m sorry, I just assumed...”
“That I spend twenty-four hours a day at Valentino’s?”
“Something like that,” she admitted.
“It’s Saturday night,” he said, reminding her of the one night a week he forced himself to take away from work to ensure that it didn’t become all consuming. He could—and often did—take more days and nights, because a well-established restaurant pretty much ran itself even without one of his siblings or cousins on-site to oversee every little detail.
“Ohmygod—I didn’t think...you have a date. I’m interrupting a date. I’m
“Relax, Nata. I’m just working at home tonight—you’re not interrupting anything.”
“It’s Saturday night,” she repeated his words back to him. “
He shook his head. The abrupt change of topic and the demanding yet concerned tone in her voice were so typical of his sister, he didn’t know whether to chuckle or sigh.
“I’ll be there with your tiramisu in half an hour,” he said. “You can grill me in person then.”
“And I will,” she assured him.
He had no doubt, but all he said was, “Don’t let the girls go to bed before I get there,” then he disconnected the call.
And so he’d abandoned the blueprints on his desk, picked up his keys, dashed through the rain to his car and headed to Valentino’s.
He considered various responses to Renata’s question as he drove the familiar route, hoping to come up with something that was believable and reassuring. The truth—that he was tired of dating the wrong women—wouldn’t satisfy his sister. She would insist that he not give up, because the right woman was out there, waiting for him as much as he was waiting for her. But he was getting tired of waiting.
All of his siblings were in settled relationships. Nata and Craig had been married for almost eight years. His oldest brother, Tony, had been married to his high school sweetheart, Gemma, for nine. And Gabe, his other brother, had recently—finally—gotten engaged to Francesca, the woman he’d started to fall in love with more than two years earlier but for whom he’d only recently acknowledged his feelings. His sister and brothers had each found the right people to share their lives with and were happy and settled. Marco yearned for the same thing.
Caterina loved to tell the story of her first meeting with Salvatore, which happened to be on their wedding day. “It was like lightning—a surge that tingled through my veins. I had worried about what marriage to a stranger would bring, but I knew then that I would love him forever.”
Marco figured sixty-one years was pretty close to forever. And from what he could see, his grandparents were still very much in love with each other. Sure, they argued—sometimes loudly and passionately—and they often made up the same way. The key to a long and happy marriage, Nonna told him, was to never go to bed alone or angry.
So he didn’t question the conviction in her words, because that was how it happened in his family—starting with his grandparents, then his parents, and his sister and both of his brothers. No, he didn’t doubt it would happen that way, but he was starting to worry about the
He’d dated a lot of perfectly nice and undeniably attractive women, but none of them had been the right woman. He’d wanted them to be; each time he’d embarked on a new relationship, he’d had high hopes that
So he was waiting, albeit a little less patiently with each year that passed. He wasn’t ready to give up, but he wasn’t holding his breath, either. And if he didn’t actually experience a lightning moment of recognition, he would settle for a tingle of attraction—or even a spark of static electricity.
He backed into his usual parking spot behind the restaurant and turned off the engine. As he did, thunder crashed and the skies opened up again, the strong and steady thrumming of the rain on his windshield washed away by an absolute deluge. He unhooked his belt but didn’t reach for the door handle—he wasn’t leaving the shelter of his vehicle until the downpour eased up.
After a couple more minutes, when the rain finally began to slow, he saw the take-out door of Valentino’s open and a woman step out. She exited from under the red-and-white-striped awning with her pizza box in hand and hurried across the parking lot. Despite the ongoing storm, something about her snagged his attention and wouldn’t let go.
Her hair was short, dark and wet from the rain. She didn’t wear a coat, and her dress showcased some nice curves as she moved surprisingly fast in the heels she wore on her feet. Lightning flashed, illuminating the sky for what might have been a heartbeat if not for the fact that his heart literally skipped a beat.
His eyes continued to track the mystery woman’s path to her vehicle. She opened the driver’s side of a light-colored compact car and ducked inside, setting the pizza box on the empty passenger seat before closing the door, extinguishing the interior light.
He’d barely caught a glimpse of her, yet he felt an ache beneath his breastbone, a yearning that suggested she might be the one. Finally.
The initial sense of jubilant relief was supplanted by frustration as he watched her taillights disappear in the night.
He might have finally found her—but he didn’t have the first clue as to who she was or when and where he might see her again.
* * *
When Marco entered the restaurant through the same take-out door a few minutes later, he found his sister-in-law, Gemma, behind the counter.
Usually a hostess in the dining rooms, Gemma was happy to fill in wherever she was needed. And since their cousin Maria was currently on an extended holiday/honeymoon with her new husband—because it wasn’t just his siblings but also his cousins who were happily pairing up—they were short-staffed at the take-out counter.
Gemma glanced up when she heard the bell over the door and smiled at him. “What are you doing in here on a Saturday night?”
“Renata says the baby wants tiramisu,” he told her.
“She couldn’t even stand the scent of coffee when she was pregnant with Adrianna and Isabella,” Gemma noted. “Makes me think Nonna is correct in her prediction that this one’s a boy.”
“Well, she does have a fifty percent chance of being right.”
“She predicted that both Adrianna and Isabella would be girls,” Gemma reminded him. “And that Christian and Dominic would be boys.”
“She also predicted that you and Tony would have half a dozen babies.”
His sister-in-law laughed. “Well, I can promise you that’s
“But speaking of Nonna’s predictions,” Marco said, “did you notice the woman who walked out that door?”
“Lots of women walk out that door. And sometimes they come in. Sometimes men, too.”
He rolled his eyes. “I was referring to the last customer who left with a pizza box in her hands.”
“You mean Jordyn Garrett?”
“You know her?”
“Yeah—she’s Rachel’s husband’s cousin.”
Rachel Ellis—now Garrett—had been a friend of Gemma’s since high school, and Rachel and her husband, Andrew, were regular customers at Valentino’s, along with Maura, Andrew’s daughter from his first marriage. The previous November, they’d added another daughter, Lily, to their family.
“What else do you know about her?” he asked.
“I know that she left her phone on the counter,” Gemma said, glancing at the slim case on the ledge in front of the cash register.
“How do you know it’s hers?”
“Because I saw her set it down when she got out her wallet to pay for the pizza.”
The device hummed quietly, a light in the corner blinking.
“Maybe you should answer that,” she suggested.
“Why me?”
“Because I’m going to the kitchen to get the tiramisu for Nata.”
“Throw in a couple of cannoli for the girls,” he suggested.
“Of course,” she agreed, already moving past the pizza ovens and slipping through the door to the main kitchen.
Leaving him alone with Jordyn’s phone and its blinking light.
He touched the screen, expecting to see a password request, which would, of course, prevent him from accessing anything on her phone. But there was no password protection—the screen immediately illuminated to reveal the recent communication to the phone’s owner—assumed to be Jordyn—from someone identified at the top of the screen as Tristyn.
12 med wings would go good with the pizza and wine :)
He stepped behind the counter and peeked through the window into the take-out kitchen.
“Hey, Rafe—how long would it take for a dozen wings?”
“Ten minutes,” his cousin said, already with tongs in hand to count them out and toss them into the fryer basket. “You want ’em extra hot?”
“Medium,” he said. He figured it wouldn’t take Jordyn long to realize she’d left her phone behind, and when she came back for it, hopefully the wings would be ready for her.
“Your taste buds getting soft in your old age?” Rafe teased, dropping the basket into the hot oil.