Candy Crush (18 page)

“
Brice and Tanya are fine,” Daniel said
stiffly.

“
How about Laney?”

“
You’d know better than me,” Daniel
snapped back.

“
Yeah, I would. Lucky kid.”

She remembered the first time she met
Daniel, Brandon had said Daniel
fucked with his sister
.
Gabriella peered at the little girl. She had the same bright blue
eyes as everyone else in her family, but her hair was several
shades lighter and her skin was slightly ruddy and paler than the
rest of the family.

She was Daniel’s child, Gabriella was sure
of it. Apparently when Brandon said Daniel
fucked
with his
sister, he’d meant it literally.

By the time someone shoved a glass of wine
in her hand, Gabriella took it gratefully and all but chugged it.
Brandon materialized at her side and gently pried it out of her
hand. “Let’s not get sick, Sweet Pea. They aren’t really that
bad.”

“Your mother took one look at me and knew
we’d slept together,” she hissed at him. She glanced across the
room and saw the woman in question watching them. “And she’s
staring at us. Why is she staring at us?”

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of my mother.
She smells fear. Don’t act afraid,” he whispered hurriedly as the
woman in question made her way across the room towards them.

“So, Gabriella, tell me about yourself.” She
was at least three inches taller than Gabriella and had a
formidable presence, probably from raising four kids, three of them
boys. Gabriella was indeed afraid of her.

“Er, what would you like to know?”

“You’re obviously not Greek.”

“Er, no. I’m more of a mutt, actually.”

Mrs. Rosalie Sarantos paused, and then she
let out a guffaw that caused everyone in the room to turn their
way. She squeezed Gabriella’s arm and patted Brandon on his
arm.

“Oh my, Brandon, she’s funny. I was so glad
to hear you’ve finally settled down, but I’ll be honest and tell
you I was afraid I might not like her. No reason, I mean, I adore
Nicole. The jury’s still out on Stephanie.”

Stephanie was Patrick’s girlfriend. She
frowned because she heard what Rosalie said.

“But I am happy to say that I like
Gabriella.”

Gabriella began to worry the woman might
start crying. It was only dinner, for God’s sake. She and Brandon
had known each other for little less than a week. It wasn’t as if
they were announcing their engagement.

Brandon, who had maintained a bland face
throughout his mother’s chattering, put his hand on the small of
her back and guided Gabriella away from the woman. A few moments,
later, she found herself climbing stairs to the second level of the
two-story home.

“Where are we going?” Gabriella asked.

“I want to show you something.” At the top
of the stairs, he took her hand and they turned to the right and
walked to the end of the hall. They stopped in front of a door that
had a plastic faux license plate tacked to it, with the word,
‘
Brandon
’ written across it. “My old bedroom,” he said, a
boyish smile on his lips.

He opened the door and they both stepped
inside. Gabriella glanced around. It looked like not much had
changed since Brandon left high school, which was fourteen years
ago. The walls were dark blue and posters of various sports teams
and a couple of different hard rock bands still hung on the walls.
There was a double bed in the middle of the room, covered with a
blue and white afghan. The dresser was covered with trophies.
Gabriella stepped closer and discovered he’d apparently been a very
good baseball player, although he’d played basketball and golf as
well.

“Mr. All American,” she said, and he
shrugged.

He pulled her into his arms and kissed her
until her toes curled and her hands were under his shirt and
splayed on his back. When he pulled his lips away, she grabbed onto
his shirt in order to maintain an upright position.

“What was that for?” she gasped.

“It looked like you needed a break from the
family.”

She looked at him, saw that he was serious,
and smiled.

“Thanks. They are a little overwhelming. My
family is much smaller and quieter.”

“I thought you said you have a big
family.”

“Big extended family, but the immediate
family is just me, my parents and my brother.”

“My offer still stands, you can have mine
any time you want.”

Gabriella laughed. “I’m beginning to think I
don’t have a choice in the matter. They seem to be under the
impression I’m joining the family.”

Brandon sobered and turned to look out the
window. “Yeah, don’t let that get to you. They mean well, but they
are definitely overbearing. Just ignore all the wedding comments;
it’s what I do.”

Gabriella suspected that would be easier
said than done. “Do they do this every time you bring a girl home
for dinner?”

He looked at her through hooded eyes. “I’ve
never brought a girl home for dinner before.”

Gabriella was glad she was still clinging to
his shirt, because otherwise her knees would have collapsed under
her and she would have embarrassed herself by falling to the
ground.

As it was, she had to tighten her hold on
his shirt and take several deep breaths before she was able to look
at him. He casually turned away from the window and just kept
looking at her, through half-closed eyes, not revealing a damn
thing about what was going on in his head. Then he abruptly grabbed
her hand and turned toward the door.

“Come on, let’s get back downstairs before
we’re missed. Dinner should be ready soon anyway.”

The dining room table seated ten. An elderly
white haired, wrinkled woman with a sharp tongue materialized and
sat serenely at the head of the table when Brandon and Gabriella
entered the dining room. Anthony was busy trying to secure Anthony
Junior into a highchair, while Nicole prepared a small plate of
food for him. Courtney squeezed an eleventh chair next to her own
and buckled Laney into the booster seat attached to it. Everyone
else coupled up and sat down. Gabriella sat with Brandon to her
right and his grandmother to her left.

“So you’re the one, eh?” Grandma Sarantos
asked as she passed the salad to Gabriella.

“Er,” Gabriella said as she used the tongs
to place salad on her plate, carefully picking out the beets as she
did so.

Grandma Sarantos passed the pork sovlaki
next. “You don’t look Greek.”

Gabriella decided that comment did not
require an answer.

“How many kids do you plan to have?”

“Er…” She turned to look at Brandon, but he
was simply looking at her curiously, as if he too wondered the
answer to this question. She scowled at him and turned back to his
grandmother. “I haven’t really thought about it.”

“You haven’t thought about it?” She passed
the tzatziki and Gabriella looked at Brandon, a silent question
because she was not exactly sure what tzatziki was.

“It’s like a dip or sauce. Tastes great when
you dip the sovlaki into it,” he whispered.

“That don’t mean you don’t plan to have any,
does it?” Grandma Sarantos pulled her attention back.

“Not necessarily” –

“Good, because Brandon’s the first born.
He’s gotta give us a son. It’s his responsibility. He hasn’t been
very responsible, for which we should all be grateful. But now it’s
time. When’s the wedding?”

Gabriella had taken her first bite of
sovlaki dipped in tzatziki, and she immediately started choking.
Brandon banged on her back and Nicole jumped up to get a glass of
water.

“Marilynn, they just met a week ago,”
Rosalie admonished.

Nicole returned and shoved the glass into
Gabriella’s hand, a smile playing at the corner of her lips.

Gabriella’s eyes were streaming and she knew
her face was beat red. She gulped the water and then took two large
gulps of wine.

When she noticed that Brandon too seemed to
be struggling not to smile, she leaned over and whispered in his
ear, “I hope you don’t want to sleep alone tonight,” and he stopped
smiling.

“So?” Grandma Sarantos ignored her
daughter-in-law’s comment. “He brought her to dinner. The boy’s
thirty-two years old and this is the first time we’ve ever met one
of his young women. Might as well announce the engagement,” she
said firmly, and then she passed the bread.

After that, everyone wanted to discuss the
dead body Gabriella found in her apartment.

“Poor Mr. Partridge,” Rosalie said with a
cluck of her tongue. “I can’t imagine what his family must be
feeling.”

“At least they have closure now,” Nicole
added.

“So where are you staying then?” Courtney
asked.

Gabriella glanced down the table at her. It
was the first time other than the initial greetings that Courtney
had spoken to her. She was dark haired, blue eyed and had an olive
toned complexion like the rest of her family. On her brothers it
was sexy, on her it was… Exotic and beautiful.

Gabriella thought about Daniel Franks. He
was forty if he was a day, and he wasn’t overly good looking. What
had possessed this young, dark haired beauty to sleep with a man
nearly twenty years her senior, when Gabriella was willing to bet
that all the boys her age were tripping over themselves trying to
get her attention?

“At Brandon’s house,” Gabriella replied.
Courtney cocked an eyebrow but didn’t say anything further.

Brandon glared at Courtney and said, “A
little different, Court. We’re thirty. Old enough to know what the
hell we’re doing.”

Gabriella once again felt like she was
missing something significant. Courtney looked like she wanted to
reply, but Rosalie pinched her arm, so she didn’t.

Stephanie sat on Brandon’s other side.
Gabriella distinctly heard her mutter, “They’ve been dating for a
week and the family’s already planning the damn wedding. I’ve been
with Patrick for six months and his mother barely speaks to
me.”

Gabriella glanced at her, but it appeared
she was talking to herself. Neither Brandon nor Patrick
acknowledged what she said, even though Gabriella was certain they
both had heard her.

Grandma Sarantos spoke again. “How soon do
you plan to wait after you get married before you have kids?
Neither one of you are spring chickens, you know.” She looked
directly at Gabriella.

Luckily, Gabriella didn’t have any food in
her mouth this time. She looked at Brandon and refused to
answer.

“We’re having the lawyers draw up the
contract as we speak, Grandma,” Brandon said lightly. The comment
elicited several chuckles from around the table, but Grandma chose
to take him literally.

“What? It’s sex for chrissakes. You just do
what comes natural, and don’t use any barriers. Not difficult. I
did it six times.” This time, Brandon’s father was the one who fell
into a choking fit.

The conversation continued to ebb and flow.
They talked at length about the football game that Brandon and
Gabriella missed on Friday. Apparently the high school varsity team
is undefeated so far, and they had high hopes of making the
playoffs.

They discussed the flower blight, and
Brandon was annoyed because he was no closer to a solution than he
had been last Tuesday. Gabriella realized she had not yet told him
about her possible discovery, but she decided to wait and tell him
in private.

They talked about one another’s careers.
Brandon’s father was a real estate guru and actually owned several
of the properties in the historic downtown district as well as
various other properties in and around the small town. He chatted
about different vacant buildings he was selling or new tenants he’d
found for this building or another.

When Laney began throwing her food on the
floor, Courtney unhooked the straps to the booster seat and the
little girl scrambled to the floor and walked over to stand next to
Gabriella’s chair. “You’re pretty,” she said.

“Thank you,” Gabriella responded.

“What’s your name?”

“Gabriella.”

The little girl tried unsuccessfully to
pronounce her name.

“You can call me Gabby. It’s much easier to
pronounce.”

“How come
she
gets to call you
Gabby?” Brandon wanted to know.

“Are you going to marry Uncle Brandon?”
Laney asked.

Gabriella heard a loud sniff from
Stephanie’s general direction.

“We’ll see, sweetheart,” she replied, and
steadily refused to look at Brandon.

Never in her life had she experienced a
relationship that progressed at such an alarming speed. Even when
Miguel set his sights on her, it took weeks of wooing before she
would even go out with him, and then weeks more before it became
serious enough to move past first base. With Brandon, they were
talking about sex on the first date – which technically hadn’t even
been a date – they were living together two hours after they met –
even if they were sleeping in separate bedrooms – and four days
later he gave her a public orgasm and she tumbled into bed with
him. Now she sat at dinner with his family – the first girl he’s
ever brought home – and they were all discussing marriage like it
was perfectly normal and acceptable. To make matters worse, she
wasn’t even clear if what they had could even be defined as a
relationship.

She had a not-so-insane urge to scream.
Instead, she gulped more wine.

As soon as dinner was over, Courtney took
Laney upstairs to give her a bath. Courtney, Gabriella learned
throughout the course of dinner conversation, was attending college
at a university located about an hour and a half north of town. She
had an apartment near campus, and she came home on the weekends,
because Laney stayed with her grandparents during the week. As soon
as she bathed Laney and put her to bed, Courtney would be heading
back to school.