Caroselli's Accidental Heir (8 page)

Even
she
could boil noodles.

She rinsed her hands at the sink then sat down beside him. “How did you learn to cook?”

“My
madre.
She was a cook for a wealthy family in our village. She also made candy and sold it to the local merchants. I helped her.”

“What did your father do?”

“He was a merchant. But he died when I was very small.”

“Was it just you and your mom?”

“Yes, just the two of us. We had very little. Many nights we went to bed hungry.”

That certainly was something they had in common.

“You, too,” he said, and it wasn’t a question. He already knew.

“Tony told you?”

“I could see it in your eyes.” He laid a hand over hers and patted gently, and something about the gesture made her want to cry. He was being so kind to her. Despite who she was.

“My mom and I didn’t have much, either,” she told him. “And it was just the two of us.”

“I helped as much as a child could. When I was old enough, I sold our candy from a cart on the street, going door to door, every single day, until the cart was empty. That’s how I met my Angelica.”

“Was it love at first sight?” she asked him.

“It was for me. But she was from a wealthy family and her parents did not want a peddler for a son-in-law.”

“Did you elope?”

“We planned to, but her parents found out and took her away. To America.”

Wow, talk about harsh. Moving their daughter halfway around the world to get him out of her life. “So what did you do?”

“I followed her.”

“Here? To Chicago.”

He nodded, the memory making him smile, lighting his face with a youthful glow.

Memories were powerful things.

“She was the love of my life. My other half. I would move heaven and earth to be with her.”

It sounded as if he had.

“We began to meet in secret, but soon her father found out.”

“What did he do?”

“When he realized that I would not give up so easily, he made me a deal. I could have his daughter’s hand when I could provide for her in a manner he saw fit. No easy task for a young man selling chocolate, I assure you. The day I opened the doors to the first Caroselli Chocolate store in downtown Chicago, I asked again. This time he called me foolish and said I would fail. That I would never amount to anything, and I would never be good enough for his daughter. A year later I owned three stores and still couldn’t keep up with demand. So I asked him again.”

“And?”

Nonno
smiled. “He gave us his blessing.”

Lucy dropped her chin in her palm and sighed wistfully. “I think that’s the most romantic story I’ve ever heard.” Tony had told her that his grandfather came to this country with only twenty dollars in his pocket, but she hadn’t realized how poor he had actually been, and what hard work it must have taken to build his fortune.

For some reason the idea made him seem a little less intimidating.

“Could you imagine how different my life would have been if I had listened to him? If I had believed I wasn’t good enough. Instead, every time he doubted my worthiness, I worked that much harder to prove him wrong. I think he meant it to happen exactly that way. If not for my father-in-law, I would not be the success I am today.”

He was lucky to have someone who saw his potential, someone who cared enough to push him in the right direction.

“Now, for the noodles,” he said, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. “We’ll need flour and eggs.”

Flour and eggs? Why would they need that to boil noodles?

“And in the pantry on the top shelf you’ll find the pasta maker.”

Wait a minute.
Pasta maker?
“Are we actually
making
the noodles? Like, from scratch?”

“My mother’s recipe,” he said, tapping his temple. “It’s all up here.”

Her first thought was, so much for this being easy. But then they got started and she realized it wasn’t really all that complicated.
Nonno
showed her how to make a crater in the center of the flour, then add the wet ingredients and fold it in on itself, over and over until it was thoroughly mixed. It was fun running the dough through the rollers, watching it grow thinner and thinner until it was ready to cut into strips, which they left to dry on racks.

When they were finished she got up from the stool and gave the sauce a stir. It really did smell amazing.

Her stomach growled greedily. So loudly that
Nonno
heard it.

“Ah,” he said with a smile, one that crinkled his eyes, and showed off teeth that may not have been perfect, but were his own. “You approve.”

“I can’t wait to try it. Although I think we made enough to feed an army.”

“We do have many people to feed tonight.”

Her hand stopped mid-stir. Did he say tonight? As in
tonight?

“What people?”

“The family, of course.”

Eight

“T
hey come the last Friday of every month,”
Nonno
told Lucy.

And it was indeed the last Friday of the month. Her heart sank. “So, I’m making dinner for your entire family?”

Nonno
nodded.

Aw, hell. She knew Tony ate at his grandfather’s the last Friday of every month, but she hadn’t made the connection.

Suddenly she wasn’t all that hungry anymore. Even worse, what food she did have in her stomach wanted to come back up for a visit.

“I need to rest,”
Nonno
said, rising slowly from the stool, appearing a little unsteady on his feet. “When I wake up, we’ll do the salad.”

Meaning he expected her to stay. Well, crap. What was she supposed to do now? He’d been so nice to her today. It would be rude not to stick around, but to meet the entire enormous family in
one
night? Why didn’t he just toss her into a cage with a pack of hungry wolves, or a tank of bloodthirsty piranha?

Either way she would be ripped to shreds.

“Walk with me,”
Nonno
said, taking her arm to steady himself. As they walked slowly through the kitchen to the elevator, she thought about his story, and the way he’d followed his beloved Angelica around the world. It tugged at her heartstrings, and at the same time made her inexplicably sad. She could only wish that someday someone would love her so completely that he would move heaven and earth to be with her.

“You were right,” she said, the words coming out of her mouth before she had even decided to say them. “I left hoping that Tony would follow me. He didn’t.”

It stung to admit that. To leave herself so vulnerable. For the first time in her life she had let herself wish for something. Something big. Unconditional love.

She should have known better.

Nonno
gave her arm a reassuring squeeze as they stepped in the elevator and the doors rolled closed.

“I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with him,” she said, feeling as if she should explain. So he would understand why someone like her would get her hopes up about a guy like his grandson. “I didn’t think I even knew how to love someone. Then bam, there it was. And he didn’t love me back. How’s that for irony.”

“You told him this? That you love him?”

“Absolutely not. It would be too humiliating.”

He looked confused. “Because you assume that he doesn’t love you?”

“It seems like a pretty safe bet.”

“Ah, but mind reading is tricky business.”

“Mind reading?”

“Isn’t that what you’re doing? How can Tony know how you feel if you don’t tell him?”

Because what she felt didn’t matter. “Didn’t Tony tell you that he and I are just friends with benefits? It doesn’t get much clearer than that. That’s all it ever was to him. All it was ever
supposed
to be. It’s not his fault that I blew it. That
I
broke the rules.”

“But your feelings changed. Couldn’t they could have changed for him as well?”

Why was he pushing so hard about this? “Did Tony say something to you?”

A vague smile pulled at his tired eyes. “Tony says many things to me.”

She wasn’t sure how to take that. The door opened and he let go of her arm to step off the elevator. She expected him to turn and say something else, but he walked into his room directly across the hall and closed the door.

What the heck had he been trying to say to her?

She took the stairs down, calling Tony to see if he could drive her home to change. In black leggings and a long sweater, she wasn’t exactly dressed for dinner. He didn’t answer, so she left a message. She hoped it was casual Friday.

She stepped back into the kitchen, and was startled by the male figure hunched over the pot of sauce until she realized it was Tony. He had incredible timing.

“Hey, I just called you,” she said.

He turned, rising to his full height, and only then did she notice the gray feathered through the man’s dark hair.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her cheeks flaming with embarrassment. “I thought you were Tony.”

“Demitrio,” he said. “Tony’s uncle.”

So this was the CEO of Caroselli Chocolate. She’d expected someone much more...something. Intimidating maybe. But in jeans and a polo shirt, he just seemed like a regular guy.

“You must be Lucy,” he said.

She accepted his outstretched hand. It was eerie how alike he and Tony not only looked but sounded. If she closed her eyes and listened to each of them, she might have a hard time telling them apart.

She could only imagine the things going through his head at that moment, like, what was this stranger doing snooping around his father’s house? “You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here,” she said.

He smiled. The same quirky, slightly lopsided grin that she had seen on Tony a bazillion times. “The tomato-stained apron sort of speaks for itself.”

“Oh, right.” She’d forgotten she was wearing it. “Cooking lesson.”

“I figured. Is
Nonno
around?”

“He just laid down for a nap.”

“My contribution to dinner,” Demitrio said, gesturing to a bakery bag stuffed with long thin loaves of unsliced bread that he’d left on the table. “I might be a little late tonight, so I thought it best to bring it by now.”

“I’m sure he’ll appreciate that.”

Demetrio flashed her a smile that was so Tony, it gave her a bizarre little shiver. She must have been looking at him funny, because he asked her, “Everything all right?”

She shook the fog from her brain. She was making an even bigger fool of herself than usual. “Yes, sorry. I don’t mean to stare. It’s just that you and Tony look so much alike. You even sound alike.”

His grin was a wry one. “It’s almost as if we’re related.”

They had the same ironic sense of humor as well, and there was something about Demitrio that put her at ease. Just the way Tony had when they first met.

That was three people in the family who didn’t seem to hate her guts. Four including Tony. Only a couple dozen to go.

“Helloooo! Lucy?” someone called, and they both turned to see Tony’s mom glide into the room. She smiled when she saw Lucy standing there, but when she noticed Demitrio, she stopped abruptly and the smile disappeared. “Oh. Hello, Demitrio.”

“Sarah,” he said, nodding cordially, his expression tight. “I was just on my way out.”

Whoa, talk about tension. They were definitely not happy to see each other.

“It was nice to meet you, Lucy,” Demitrio said.

“You, too. I’ll see you later.”

When he was gone, Sarah turned to her and smiled, but Lucy could see that she was shaken by the encounter. Of course she wondered why, but it was
so
not any of her business.

“I came by to make sure
Nonno
wasn’t wearing you out,” Sarah said. “Tony told me what the doctor said about keeping off your feet.”

“He did?” Hadn’t they agreed not to say anything to the family until they heard back about her test results?

“For the record, Tony didn’t voluntarily tell me about the appointment. I had lunch with Gina yesterday and she mentioned that Nick and Terri saw you two at Dr. Hannan’s office. I browbeat the details out of him.”

“Gina?”

“My sister-in-law. Nick’s mom. Who technically isn’t my sister-in-law since she divorced Leo, my brother-in-law. But they just set a date.”

“Set a date?”

“For their wedding.”

“They’re getting married again?”

She shrugged, as if she didn’t understand it, either. “I’ll believe it when I see it. I love Gina like a sister, but she’s always been a little...well, flaky. But who am I to pass judgment?”

Weirder things had happened.

“Enough about my crazy relatives,” she said, waving the subject away like a pesky insect. “How do you feel?”

“Physically I feel fine. It’s hard to imagine that something could be wrong.”

“So you haven’t heard from the doctor?”

“Not yet. He said Friday at the latest.”

“Well, try not to worry. My instincts are telling me that everything will be just fine. I have a sixth sense about these things.”

She hoped Sarah was right. In Lucy’s experience, if something had the potential to go badly, it usually did. She just couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that something was terribly wrong with the baby. And it was her fault. She had never been particularly religious, but if there was a God, she hoped He would cut her a break this time.

“Have you started making a list of the things you’ll need?” Sarah asked.

“Things?”

“For the baby. Three months probably seems like a long time, but take it from someone who’s been there, the days will fly by. It’s good to be prepared.”

“I guess I need everything. But maybe we should wait until we hear from the doctor. I would hate to spend a lot of money on a bunch of baby stuff we’ll never use.”

“Oh, Lucy,” Sarah said, and then she did something totally unexpected. She pulled Lucy into her arms and hugged her hard. Lucy was so stunned by the gesture, she wasn’t sure how to react. She couldn’t even recall her own mom ever holding her this way, much less a practical stranger. With so much compassion, and genuine affection.

Something deep inside of Lucy urged her to pull away, to keep her distance, but she was so tired of being alone. So tired of constantly pushing everyone away. So she didn’t. She took a huge leap of faith, hugging Sarah back, dissolving into a sobbing, sniffling blob. And once she got started, she couldn’t seem to stop.”

“Oh, honey, it’ll be okay,” Sarah said, rubbing her back soothingly. Like a real mom. The kind who actually gave a damn about someone other than herself. “You just let it out.”

Knowing she was making a huge fool of herself, but helpless to stop it, Lucy was glad that no one else was around to see her meltdown—

“What did I miss?” someone said from behind them. A female voice with a distinct French accent.

Oh, hell.

Lucy sniffled and opened her eyes. Standing in the kitchen doorway was a tall, leggy blonde who, despite being Sarah’s age at least, looked young and stylish in a cream cashmere sweater and jeggings, her hair pulled back in a sleek ponytail. But when she saw the tears still clinging to Lucy’s cheeks, her smile dissolved and she dropped her purse on the counter. “Oh, Jesus, who died?”

* * *

“Tony! Wake up?”

Tony bolted up in his chair, blinking himself awake, disoriented until he realized that he was still at the office.

“Are you going to
Nonno
’s?”

He looked up and saw his uncle Demitrio standing in his office doorway. He looked out the window; it was growing dark outside. How long had he been sleeping? “Yeah, of course. I’ll be there.”

“Give an old man a lift? Your Aunt Madeline has my car.”

“Sure,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “What time is it?”

Demitrio looked at his watch. “Six-thirty.”

“
Six-thirty?
” With a curse, he shot to his feet. He vaguely remembered leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes, thinking a twenty-minute nap would probably do him good. That was two and a half
hours
ago. Lucy was going to kill him. She was probably sitting in a corner at
Nonno
’s plotting a very slow and painful death at that very moment.

“Oversleep?” Demitrio asked, looking mildly amused.

Oh, had he ever.

“I haven’t been getting much sleep since Lucy has been back.”

His uncle grinned and Tony realized he’d taken that the wrong way. “What I mean is, I’ve given Lucy my bed and I’m sleeping on the fold-out couch in my office. It’s about as comfortable as a medieval torture device.”

“So you two aren’t...?”

“Truth is, I’m not exactly sure what we are.” He rose from his chair. “You ready to go?”

Demitrio shrugged. “Sure.”

Tony grabbed his jacket, tugging it on as they headed for the elevator.

“I sense some urgency to get there quickly,” his uncle said.

“I had planned to get to
Nonno
’s early so I could be there when Lucy met everyone. She doesn’t really have any family, and you know that ours can be a little intimidating at first.”

Demitrio laughed. “That’s putting it mildly.”

They stepped into the elevator and rode it down to the parking garage. “They’ll eat her alive.”

“I don’t know about that. I met Lucy today when I stopped by
Nonno
’s. She strikes me as the type of girl who can hold her own.”

“Oh, she is, but it would be nice if she didn’t have to for a change.”

Traffic was heavy, and by the time they made it to
Nonno
’s everyone had started without them. Dinner was at seven sharp. It had been that way Tony’s entire life. Show up on time or eat your food cold...if there was any left. This was the one day out of the month that everyone threw caution to the wind and blew their diet. It was a feast, really.

He spotted Lucy in the first chair next to
Nonno,
who always sat at the head of the table. Seated to her left was his mom, and beside her, his dad. Lucy was having what looked like a very animated conversation with the three of them. And she was smiling. But there was something different about her smile this time. Why had he never noticed the way it lit her entire face?

He had the strongest urge to walk over to her chair, pull her to her feet and just hold her. Even if his entire family was watching. At the moment he didn’t care who saw them. He just wanted to touch her. And he wanted to apologize for being so damned inconsiderate. It would serve him right if she clocked him.

“You’re late,”
Nonno
told them, alerting everybody at the table who hadn’t seen Tony and his uncle come in. Like Lucy.

She turned and saw him standing there. He waited for the smile to fade, but it only grew wider. Was it possible that she was happy to see him?

“Sit,”
Nonno
ordered.

Aunt Madeline had saved his uncle a seat, so Tony took the only other empty chair, which was next to Nick at the opposite end of the table from Lucy. As the serving plates made the rounds he dutifully filled his plate, but he had a tough time keeping his eyes off Lucy. There was something distinctly different about her. Her skin glowed and her eyes sparkled. It was as if she’d come alive since he dropped her at
Nonno
’s house that afternoon. Or maybe it was his perception that had changed?