An Offer He Can't Refuse (36 page)

"I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face"

Johnny Mathis

Warm
(1957)

Rachele danced around the kitchen, preparing the evening
meal for herself and her father. Over the weekend, she'd made a big pan of lasagna and then frozen it in individual squares. Two were warming in the microwave. A little bread, a little salad, and her father would sit down to one of his favorite dinners.

Little did he know it was eggplant that gave the pasta dish its heartiness. The tomato sauce was purely vegetarian as well, with grated carrots, honey, and the juice of a fresh lemon to balance the flavors. Her traditional Italian papa didn't know how untraditional the Ciriglianos could be.

She caught sight of her reflection in the stainless steel toaster and grimaced. You'd think one look at her dark makeup and nose and eyebrow piercings would drive the point home, but no.

A few minutes later, with a full, fragrant plate in front of him, her father didn't even appear to notice when she seated herself across from him. It didn't wipe the smile off her face. It couldn't.

"Why are you humming?" her father asked, his attention still focused on his lasagna.

Humming? "I am?" She had been, she realized. One of Dean Martin's signature songs, "On an Evening in Roma."

You could put Usher in an Italian girl's iPod, but you couldn't take Dino out of an Italian girl's mental music files. "It was a good day at work, I guess," she said.

Her father grunted what might pass for an, "Oh, yeah?"

She decided to accept it as such. "First, Téa—"

"How's her mother?"

"Fine, I guess."

His head came up, his gaze fixing somewhere over her left shoulder. "When's the last time you saw her?"

Rachele frowned. "Let me think… last week? She stopped by with a new product for Téa to try. She's been moaning that her hair refuses to stay straight."

"Bianca has been moaning?"

"No,
Téa
. Her mother seems just fine."

"Fine?"

Rachele sighed. "Just fine."

'That's good. That's very good." Her father's head dipped back toward his food.

Rachele frowned at the top of his head. Did he really have the jones for Téa's mother or was the suspicion just a hangover from the bubbly atmosphere that had been floating around the design office in recent days?

'Téa's got a boyfriend," she blurted out.

Her father's fork paused between his plate and his mouth. He appeared to study the bite of lasagna.

Maybe he was noticing the eggplant for the first time in seven years. But then he shoveled it into his mouth without comment.

"As long as I've been working for her, she's only dated these fuddy-duddy fix-up guys, but this time she found a man all on her own." And Rachele couldn't have been more surprised if her father had commented upon the midnight-black shade of her fingernail polish. "She's been coming into the office
later

Her father grunted again, so Rachele felt obliged to tell the whole truth.

"Well, it was only once and she blamed it on a blow-dryer malfunction." Since Téa's hair had been a wiggly mass of waves lately, it was sort of hard
not
to believe her. But there'd been something that looked an awful lot like a case of beard burn on the underside of her chin. Rachele smiled to herself and rubbed a finger along her own jaw. Cal kept a close shave, but there was the teeniest rough edge to his skin that made his kisses only that much more exciting.

"Who's this man?"

"Cal…" Rachele started, then caught herself. "You mean Téa's… uh, man? His name is Johnny. Johnny Magee." And when he came into the design office, sometimes he'd hang in the reception area and lean against the wall, looking Rat Pack-cool if you didn't take into account the way he gazed through Téa's office doorway and just
watched
her working at her desk.

As if she was a present he'd never asked for and didn't deserve, but that he wouldn't ever, ever give back.

The thought was kinda weird, but Rachele wondered if it was the way her mother might have watched
her
when Rachele was a little girl. As if the other person mattered in a totally unexpected way.

"Johnny Magee owns the property on El Deseo," her father said between bites.

"Yes," Rachele answered. "I told you about that job."

"I've been there," he said. "Looking for you, but you'd let this Johnny's associate drive you home."

Rachele gripped her fork. Was this the right moment to talk to her father about her new relationship? She'd put it off time and again, and she knew Cal was getting impatient with her excuses. "His name is Cal. Cal Kazarsky."

"Well, it doesn't matter what his name is, because I don't want you going over to that house anymore." Her father didn't look up from his food. "And I don't want you going home with some stranger."

"Cal's not a
stranger
, Papa." A tense little laugh escaped from her mouth. "And I didn't go home with him, he drove
me
home."

"No matter." He waved his fork. "You won't see him again. You will not go back to that house."

She stared at the man across the table. He was in his mid-fifties, still handsome, she supposed, with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair. But he was her father, not her keeper, and Cal was right. If she didn't come clean, he would continue to treat her like a child. She'd kept her secret for too long already.

"You don't even know Cal," she said.

He waved his fork again. "Neither do you."

"Yes, yes I do." She swallowed. "I've been seeing him for a couple of weeks. We're… we're dating. Like a couple."

Her father frowned at his plate. "A couple? No. I didn't give you my permission to date."

His flat tone started her pulse thumping. She set down her fork and clasped her hands in her lap, trying to stay calm. Trying to sound calm. "Papa, I'm a grown woman. Twenty-one years old. I don't need your permission to do anything."

"You are my daughter," he said. "And you will do as I say."

She swallowed again. "Let's try this one more time. Papa. I don't need your permission to come and to go, to do my job, and especially not to… to fall in love."

His head jerked up. "I forbid you to use that word."

"Love?"

"I forbid you to use it."

She stared at him. "I don't understand."

"I forbid you to use it!" he repeated, his voice rising as he shoved back his chair. He stood, his hands in fists at his sides. "I forbid you to make mistakes or to be hurt or to have your heart broken. Do you understand me?"

"Papa—"

'There's to be no more discussion of this."

Rachele rose to her own feet, her legs shaky. She started backing away from the table, not afraid of her father, but afraid of what they might be about to sever. "We need to discuss this. This isn't a field trip you're forbidding me to go on. This is about my becoming my own woman. A grown woman."

"There will be no men in your life," her father asserted again. "And there will be no mistakes or hurt feelings or having your heart broken. This is for your own good."

She still couldn't believe what she was hearing. She'd expected him to be worried, but not to out and out refuse to be reasonable.

"Papa, I care for this man. I have feelings—"

But he couldn't concern himself to listen to them. "Defy me in this, Rachele," he declared with such conviction that she could only believe him, "and you are no longer my daughter."

Cold washed over Rachele's skin as she stared at the man who had raised her. Was this really her father? Was he really the kind of person who could dismiss her feelings, dismiss her, so easily? For years she'd thought it was grief that kept him at a distance, but now… now she could see that it was indifference. She was an obligation and a responsibility, but not a person to him.

"Then I guess I'm no longer your daughter," she said slowly. "Because I am going to defy you."

"You will do no such thing—" Then her father blinked, and blinked again, his expression growing bewildered.

"What is that on your face, Rachele Maria?" His forefinger touched his nose, his eyebrow. "What have you done to your face? You don't look like my daughter anymore."

And she realized that for the first time he was seeing her.

"
How could you do that to your face?
" he asked.

Her father was really seeing her. But he still hadn't heard a word she'd said. Rachele felt a wild urge to laugh.

Because it was too late for him to finally open his eyes.

It was too late to keep her from Cal.

It was too late to keep her from falling in love.

And, she thought, looking at the father who was, she realized, the true stranger in her life, it was too late to keep her heart from breaking.

He'd already done the job.

"I'm Confessin'"

Kay Starr

Rockin'with Kay
(1958)

Téa sat at a table on the patio outside of the Kona Kai
Spa's small bar, a glass of wine in front of her as she waited for Johnny to arrive. It should have been a peaceful place to wait, because a mid-October late afternoon in Palm Springs meant the air was a perfect 75 degrees. Palm fronds created spiky shade across the pebble-paved patio, and twenty feet away, a swimming pool refreshed the eyes. The scent of blooming gardenias in a nearby terra-cotta pot wafted by in the slight breeze. Behind her, water trickled from a wall-mounted fountain into a clam-shaped bowl.

But though Téa appreciated her environs, they didn't bring her a measure of peace. Ten days had passed since she and Johnny had decided to become each other's "distraction."

Ten days that had felt so right she was now convinced that something was about to go very, very wrong.

Her growing dread had only been exacerbated by the cer-tainty that eyes were watching her every move. With her stubborn refusals, she'd managed to discourage the mobsters roaming around town from hanging about her office, but when she was driving the streets and particularly when she was with Johnny, she sensed a stranger's scrutiny. It had to be someone sent by her grandfather.