LOVE on The Horizon (Breaking The Rules #1) (20 page)

“Oh my goodness, come out of the cold! What happened? Why are you home? Is everything okay? Are you sick?”

Her mother stopped long enough to glance over me with a very curious eye as I stepped into the small foyer. “Oh, hello,” she said when she took a much-needed breath.

“Mom, this is Marco Puglia. Marco, my mother, Ellen.”

“It’s very nice to meet you, Mrs. Stanton.” I extended a hand, which she tentatively accepted.

“Please call me Ellen. Your accent, Italian?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“My grandmother was Italian. Romello was the family name. Do you know them?”

“Um, no, ma’am.”

“Oh. I wish I knew you were coming. I look a mess.” Her hands automatically rose to pat her hair into place, even though not one hair was even out of place. She smiled before turning toward Rebecca with eyelids narrowed into mere slits.

Rebecca looked a lot like her mother, down to the same ocean blue color of their eyes. The only real differences besides the obvious lines of age were about fifteen pounds, the length of their hair, as well as the silver-gray streaks that framed both sides of Mrs. Stanton’s face. “Kevin, come out here.”

“Becks?” Her father stepped into view, raising a pair of reading glasses off the tip of his nose.

“Hi, Dad.”

In an instant, Rebecca was in his arms being swung around like a five-year-old. “Dad, stop!” she commanded through giggles.

“What in all that is holy has you home?”

“It’s a long story. Dad, this is Marco Puglia. Marco, my dad, Kevin.”

I stepped closer and offered my hand for the second time. I towered over the man, affording me the perfect view of a shiny bald spot on the top of his head.

“Mr. Stanton,” I said with a nod. Unlike his wife, he didn’t correct my formal use of his last name.

“Mr. Puglia,” he responded, his voice suddenly becoming much deeper with a touch of a threat behind it.

“Um…Dad, let go.” Rebecca pried our hands apart when the man hadn’t released mine yet.

“Kevin, take their coats. Come in, we were just about to have dinner.”

“It smells wonderful in here,” I said, handing over first my coat and then Rebecca’s. The rich aroma of some kind of roast wafted through the house, reminding me we hadn’t eaten.

Rebecca took my hand and followed her parents deeper into the house. The house was homey and neat. Pictures of their five kids covered almost every inch of every available wall. My eyes moved from smiling face to smiling face, mentally comparing my girl to her brothers and sister.

“We’re starving, Mom. We haven’t eaten a real meal since yesterday in Florence,” Rebecca blurted out, her eyes widening the minute she realized her blunder.

Her mom stopped in her tracks. “Florence?”

Rebecca met my eyes before rolling hers skyward. “Um, I’ll tell you all about it.”

Rebecca and I sat on the same side of a rectangular table as her mother set dishes and utensils out for us. Ten minutes in, and I noticed there was at least one thing she had in common with my mother. There was enough food here to feed at least ten more.

The moment she sat to begin serving out portions of the meal, she asked, “Why were you in Italy, Rebecca?”

“Um…well, let me backtrack and start from the beginning.”

Her mother was on her third glass of wine.

Her father sat across the table from me, scowling the entire time as he stabbed food into his mouth.

And we hadn’t even gotten to the good part yet.

“Would it have killed you to call us and tell us all this was happening?”

Rebecca lowered her eyes like a child who was being scolded. She had just run through the facts: we met, we instantly had feelings for each other, the corporation considered a relationship a no-no, and so we left. She was honest in telling her parents she chose me over Sunset but left out I was fired in the process.

Not much was said as Rebecca rambled on about our time in Italy, including our visit with my family.

“They must have been shocked,” her mother said, slurring the word
shocked
.

“No more than you.”

Mr. Stanton looked at me long and hard. “You mean to tell me, you bring home a girl for the first time, and your family accepted her without question?”

“Um. It took a few days, but they couldn’t resist your daughter’s wonderful personality.”
Not entirely a lie.

“How long are you staying?”

Rebecca and I exchanged a look before she responded, “We’ll stay until Thanksgiving, then we need to get back to Florida. Ricky needs us there.”

“And this Ricky fellow, does he have a family? Or are the three of you going to live together like hippies?”

“Dad!”

“What? I feel like I don’t know you anymore, Rebecca. It took me weeks to get over you picking up and taking off without warning to work on some…” He raised his hand and waved it around in the air while searching for the correct word. As we waited patiently, he finally said, “boat.”

I actually had to bite the inside of my cheek to stop from grinning.

“Now you tell us that the career you were born to do, the very one you left your family for to be a gypsy wandering around the world without any responsibilities, is no longer your job? So, instead, you’re now going to buy your own…” The same lost look came over her face as he paused and spurted out, “boat?”

“Marco and Ricky have over seven years’ experience in the industry. It’s a great idea and a fantastic opportunity for me.”

“So, you’ll be working for them?”

Rebecca cut her eyes to me before responding, “No, I’ll be part owner.”

“Did you hit the lottery, Rebecca Anne Stanton?”

“No, Dad.”

“So how do you propose to afford your financial piece of this new venture?”

The news of our engagement still hung heavily in the air. Rebecca had slipped her ring off before walking into the house and had nonchalantly slipped it back on as she steered the conversation toward our union. I subtly reached beneath the lace tablecloth to clutch her diamond-donned hand in mine.

“That leads me to why we are really here.” In one swift motion, Mrs. Stanton picked up her wineglass and drained it in preparation for the next tidbit that was coming. “Marco and I are engaged.”

“What?” Her father stood so quickly, the kitchen chair he sat on fell backward behind him. “What!”

“Dad!”

“You’ve known him all of what…three months?”

“It doesn’t matter how long we’ve known each other. We just know.”

“Mr. Stanton, I’m sorry I wasn’t able to formally ask your permission to marry your daughter. But, please know I love her very much and want nothing more than her happiness.”

He eyed me like I just escaped from the monkey exhibit at the zoo. “Ellen, where’s the whiskey?” He lifted his chair before frantically opening cabinets in search of fortification. Her mother ignored him and poured herself another glass of wine.

“Please tell me you aren’t pregnant.”

“No!” Rebecca shook her head in frustration, exhaustion altering every line on her face. “We dumped a lot on you guys. Marco and I can stay at a motel if you need to process this alone.”

“You’re not staying here?” Her mother’s puppy dog eyes latched on to Rebecca’s, begging for her to stay.

It took less than three seconds for my fiancée to cave. “Okay, Mom. We’ll stay.”

“He will take Cooper’s room.” Her father pointed a finger at me while pouring himself a shot of Johnnie Walker Blue.

Oh, boy
, I thought to myself. This was going to be a long night.

Rebecca and I stood in the doorway of her childhood bedroom looking like two lost sheep. Helplessly, we watched as her mother moved around the room picking up half-wrapped Christmas presents, rolls of wrapping paper, and about two thousand bows. She yanked open Rebecca’s closet and tossed it all in before slamming the door shut.

I had to admit that standing in my love’s room was a bit of a turn-on. This was where she grew up, spent most of her time being a girl. I could imagine her as a teenager, lying on her bed and talking on her pink Princess phone with a friend. The Bon Jovi poster she warned me about faced the bed. The rocker stared intently into her eyes as if he were about to personally serenade her…before fucking her senseless.

After taking one look at her daughter’s twin bed and my six-foot-plus frame, my future mother-in-law decided to set us up in the basement.

“Your father will get over it,” she mumbled, as if she were trying to convince herself more than us.

And so there we were, lying on a lumpy sofa bed, surrounded by storage boxes and listening to her parents’ hushed yet audible voices filtering through the heating ducts.

Hearing snippets of her father’s argument like—he’s too old for her, mafia connections, and green card—caused Rebecca to cover her face embarrassedly with her hand. When their conversation finally halted, she whispered, "I guess it went better than I thought.”

It did
? I thought it was a complete disaster, worse than breaking the news to my family. After dinner, her mother had to lie down on the couch while her father excused himself to his workshop to “release some of his frustrations.” Rebecca and I were left to clean up the remnants of dinner while praying they both would pass out so we could somehow escape undetected.

“
Bella
, my fear is neither of them will remember any of our conversation based on the amount of alcohol they consumed tonight, forcing us to go over every torturous detail again in the morning.”

“Oh my God. I’ll die.” She shifted to lie across my chest, looking up at me earnestly. Her big blue eyes held my gaze, predictably causing my heart to beat faster. “Marco, my parents rarely drink, so I know they are freaking out over all this.”

“We really can’t blame them. Imagine how we would feel if our son or daughter came home with even half the news we’ve dumped on our families.”

“I know, and that scares me, that whole poetic justice argument.” She traced a fingertip through the patch of hair centered on my chest. “We forgot to call Ricky.”

“He texted me, and I sent him back a quick one explaining we were here safe and sound, we’d fill him in ASAP, and that I was still alive and well.” I cringed at the memory of hearing her dad’s power saw turning on that had my balls instantly contracting upward into my body from fear.

Ricky also mentioned her loan, but I didn’t want to bring that up and worsen her mood tonight. We’d deal with it all in the morning.

“Okay,” she said on a sigh. “Marco?”

“Yes,
bella
?”

“Can you make love to me?” She nodded at my immediate frown. “I know, I know, this isn’t as private and comfortable as your place was, but I need you.”

How the fuck could I deny her anything she asked, especially that?

“Will you promise me you’ll be quiet? I don’t need your dad barging in here with one of his power tools.”

“I promise.”

“Then, wish granted.”

We kept our clothes on, in case we needed to evacuate quickly.