All I Believe (4 page)

Apparently I still seemed appealing though, since the dogs didn’t lose interest in me after their pants victory. They barked happily and jumped at me like I was a giant steak, and I tried to swing my feet up onto the wooden framework above me. A big, brown mutt jumped onto the table, lapped up my cappuccino, and lunged at my dangling backside. I had to arch up to get out of range.

Just as I started to lose my grip, a crashing sound behind me sent all the dogs running. I lowered my feet to the tabletop and watched their retreat. The pants were stretched between the poodle and the dachshund as they dashed from the plaza, the cuffs grasped firmly in their jaws. Apparently my loafers had been carried off as well, since they were nowhere to be seen.

I looked down at myself and realized I’d been left with just that tight t-shirt and the tiny red briefs. I was beyond embarrassed as I jumped off the table and turned to see what had startled the dogs. The incredibly good-looking guy in the suit stood a few feet behind me, holding a couple big pots, which he must have banged together. His light eyes were sparkling with amusement as he asked, “You okay?” He spoke English, though he really looked Italian.

“I’m awesome, and I’ll be even better after the earth opens up and swallows me whole.” I turned and started to hurry across the plaza, the smooth cobblestones warm beneath my bare feet. The guy fell into step with me, and I asked, “What are you doing?”

“Acting as your armed escort, in case the dogs come back.” He twirled one of the pots to illustrate his point.

“Thanks for the assist, since I assume you’re what scared them away.”

“You’re welcome.” When we reached the hotel, he walked me right up to the big door. The doorman opened it for me and managed to maintain a poker face as he glanced at my tiny red underpants, then directed his gaze heavenward.

“There we go. Safe and sound,” the guy in the suit said.

“Thanks again.”

“My pleasure. It’s not every day I meet someone with that much animal magnetism.” I hazarded a quick glance at him. I had to look up, even though I was over six feet tall. He had a good two or three inches on me. Amusement still danced in his eyes and I looked away quickly. The fact that he was so attractive just made it that much more embarrassing, for some reason.

I blurted, “It was the bacon-flavored anal lube. My grandmother hosed me down with it at the airport yesterday, and it got in my computer.” I immediately realized my explanation sounded completely insane, and retreated into the hotel before I could say anything else.

I glanced at him over my shoulder when I was partway across the lobby. He still stood in the open doorway with his arms crossed over his chest and a pot in each hand. He was blatantly staring at my ass, and when he saw me looking, he called, “Red’s a good color on you.” I was grinning just a little when I reached the elevators.

When I got to my suite, I realized my room key had been in my leather pants, so I had to go back downstairs to get another one. Since I’d left my passport in the room and my other ID was in my missing wallet, the desk clerk wouldn’t give me a key. I ended up dropping into an upholstered chair in the lobby to wait for my grandmother and Jessie. When I tried calling them again, it went straight to voicemail. I slid down in my seat and put my bare feet up on the coffee table in front of me. An upscale couple in their twenties stared at me, so I gave them a little wave and called, “
Bel giorno
.”

Ugh. This day was going great. I shut my eyes and leaned my head against the back of the chair. On the bright side, I was over six thousand miles from home, so I wouldn’t run into anyone I knew while I was dressed like that.

“Nico?”

My eyes flew open and I blinked at my cousin Remy. Technically, we were second or third cousins, or something like that, but just went with ‘cousins’ for simplicity’s sake. I had a lot of relatives who fell under that title, both in Italy and back home. Remy’s grandmother and mine were sisters. Nana’s family had immigrated to the U.S. when she was a girl, but two of her sisters had moved back as adults because they both fell in love with Italian men. All the sisters had had fairly large families and plenty of grandchildren.

Remy was in his late twenties with short, dark hair and a tidy beard. He was a stay-at-home dad, and his wife was a pediatrician. He was wearing his youngest child like an accessory in some sort of carrier that was strapped to his torso. The baby blinked at me and gave me a toothless smile. “Hey,” I said, getting up to shake Remy’s hand. I then ran a palm over the baby’s bald head and said, “Hi there, RJ.” The baby just blinked again.

“Wow. This, um…what are you wearing?” Even though he’d been born in Viladembursa, Remy’s English was flawless. Almost everyone in my family was perfectly bilingual.

“I didn’t go out like this. My leather pants smelled like bacon, so they were carried off by a pack of dogs with a poodle as their ringleader. Now I’m locked out of my suite, because they also took my room key. It was in my pocket.”

“So…you were mugged by a poodle?”

“Basically.” I sat back down, and Remy took the chair next to mine, setting a bulging diaper bag on the floor. “I didn’t know you’d be stopping by,” I said, trying to change the subject. “I thought we were meeting at your grandmother’s house for dinner.”

“That’s why I’m here. Nonna sent me to make sure you’re all coming tonight. She’s bent out of shape because your grandmother wanted to stay in a hotel instead of her house.”

“They talked about this. Nana and Nonna make each other crazy, and they know that, so I thought everyone was on the same page about us staying in a hotel.”

He shrugged and crossed his sneaker-clad foot over his knee as he leaned back in the chair. “You know how it goes, Nonna loves to stir up drama. Just tell me you’ll all be there. My grandmother feels like she has something to prove since your grandmother is a big-shot TV chef, and has been cooking since daybreak.”

“We’ll definitely be there. Nana just has a cable TV cooking show, by the way. I think the only reason anyone watches it is to see if anything explodes, and to count how many times she drops the f-bomb.”

The baby started to fuss, and Remy produced a toy out of nowhere with Ninja-like speed. That calmed his son instantly. “Nonna thinks her sister is the next Julia Child.”

“Not so much. She is a terrific cook, but somehow when she gets in front of the camera, everything sort of spirals out of control.” I sat up a bit and craned my neck as the handsome guy in the suit entered the hotel lobby, white paper coffee cup in hand.

He went to the bank of elevators and pushed the button, then scanned the lobby idly as he waited. When he spotted me, a big smile appeared on his face, and he called, “I’m glad to see you’re sticking with the tiny underpants. Not everyone can pull off that look.” That made a few heads swivel in my direction.

“Thank you,” I called. “Underwear as outerwear is all the rage in the states right now, and this pair is really quite conservative by most standards. I could have gone with a mesh thong, but I’m all about keeping it classy.” The guy chuckled as he got on the elevator.

“Who was that?” Remy asked as the elevator doors slid shut.

“No clue. He witnessed the bacon pants incident and chased the dogs away with some cookware.”

My cousin looked amused. “I don’t remember you being quite this colorful. When I visited you in San Francisco last year, you seemed….”

“Painfully dull?”

“I was going to say depressed. I think you were still reeling from that break-up. I’m glad to see you’ve put it behind you.” I didn’t bother pointing out that I hadn’t even sort of done that.

Remy and I visited for a few minutes, until a pair of desk clerks approached us and told me in accented and somewhat stilted English, “Sir, we have had some complaints from the other guests. May we offer you some assistance in adjusting your wardrobe?” Since the staff suddenly had a vested interest in helping me, it was easy to convince them to issue a new room key.

Once we got upstairs, my cousin turned the baby loose in the suite while I pulled on some shorts. Both pairs were white, tight and fairly sheer, so the red underwear was still very much on display. I went back into the living room, where Remy was following the baby around and moving anything potentially hazardous out of his way. My cousin glanced at me and said, “That’s a big departure from your usual khakis and oxford shirts. Are you trying out a new image?”

“Not by choice. My luggage got lost, so Nana went shopping for me. She also took my wallet by accident in the process of taking my only outfit to the cleaners, so I can’t buy anything else right now.”

Remy grinned at that. “I think your grandmother is trying to pimp you out.”

“You’re not wrong.”

“If you haven’t resolved this by tonight, come by my house first and I’ll lend you a few things so you have something to wear to dinner.” Since he was thinner and shorter than me, I didn’t think that would help a lot, but anything had to be better than the sheer shorts and painted-on stretch t-shirt.

“Thanks.”

“So, how goes law school? You seemed to be pretty much hating it last time we spoke.”

“I’m still hating it, more than ever.”

“But you’re sticking with it?” He grabbed a lamp with a glass base and lifted it out of crawling baby range. When I nodded, he asked, “Why?”

“Well, I have to do
something
, and just because law school sucks doesn’t mean I won’t enjoy being a lawyer.”

Remy frowned a little, then executed a smooth pivot and plucked a ceramic figurine from an end table before the baby could grab it. “You feel you have something to prove, don’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You were perfectly happy all those years you worked as an EMT, but after you caught your snobby ex cheating, you immediately applied to law school. Is it because he’s a doctor and you’re trying to prove you’re as good as he is?”

Part of me wondered if there was something to that, but I said, “I just needed a fresh start. I left my job when I moved out of Los Angeles, so it was the perfect time to try a different direction.”

“But it doesn’t seem to be a direction you enjoy.” Remy picked up the crawling baby, pointed him away from the big fireplace where he’d been headed, and put him down again. Remy, Junior didn’t seem to notice, and cheerfully propelled himself forward.

“I know, but like I said, working as a lawyer and slogging through law school are two different things.”

“I hope you’re right,” Remy said. “So, what else is going on with you? Have you been dating anyone?”

“No. I’ve been too busy with school.”

He gave me a knowing look and said, “So, maybe that’s the other benefit of law school. You can claim to be too busy to get involved with anyone again.”

“You missed your calling,” I told him. “Clearly you and your theories would have done well in the field of psychology.”

“The only reason I bring any of this up is because I like you, Nico, and it’s been hard watching you be so unhappy for the last couple years. You were so much fun when we were kids. I’ll never forget that summer I got to spend with you in California. But then…well, you became pretty quiet after your parents split up. And when you broke up with Erik…I don’t know. It kind of seemed like you lost your spark.”

“Maybe I just grew up. I was twelve when you stayed with us that summer. It’s not like any of us can act like kids forever.”

As if to totally disprove me, Jessie burst into the suite just then wearing a huge, colorful jester’s hat and carrying an armload of shopping bags. “Hi!” He called cheerfully as he deposited the bags in Nana’s bedroom. When he returned to the living room, I introduced him to my cousin, and the two shook hands. Jessie was still wearing the hat. It was red, blue and gold, and little golden bells hung from each of the six points.

“Did you or Nana get my messages?” I asked him.

“No, sorry. Our phones seem to be having trouble with international roaming,” he said, before turning his attention to RJ and saying in a high voice that made him sound like a cartoon character, “Hi there, baby! How are you, little dude?” Then he turned back to me and said in his normal voice, “What were the messages?”

“My wallet was in the pants you guys took to the cleaners.”

“Oh crap, sorry! I’ll go back right away and get it.”

“Thanks. Where’s Nana?”

“She ran into a childhood friend of hers, Rose something. They’re catching up at a café a couple blocks over. I told Nana I’d drop off our purchases and bring her a sun hat.” He visited with us for a couple minutes before retrieving a wide-brimmed woven hat from Nana’s room and leaving the suite again.

Remy glanced at his watch and said, “I need to pick up my girls from their playdate. I’m looking forward to catching up some more at dinner tonight! Be sure to bring your appetite. Nonna’s cooking enough to feed the whole town.”

After I promised once more that we’d all be there, Remy returned RJ to the carrier, slung the diaper bag over his shoulder, and took off with a cheerful, “
A presto
,” meaning see you soon.

I ate a granola bar that had been in my backpack, then opened my laptop like a book and left it running on top of a towel, so the last of the lube would hopefully drain out. At least it hadn’t fried the inner workings. I looked around for something to do, but just couldn’t face the stack of law journals, so instead I turned my attention to the tiny, fluorescent Speedo. I really wanted to go for a swim, and suits like that weren’t uncommon in Europe, so maybe I wouldn’t totally stand out.