He took the apron from her, smiling with affection. “Have a seat. I’ll get the rest.”
Three more side dishes were placed on the table before everyone dug in like they hadn’t eaten anything in a week.
“Man, I missed your cooking,” Jimmy praised, around a mouth full of food.
“I know I give you a hard time for making such a huge production out of each dish,” Alyssa said. “But it’s totally justified.”
“Thank you,” Angel said, humbly. “There are few things in this world I enjoy more than cooking for the people I love.” He raised his glass. “Por la familia! To family!”
Different toasts were called out as everyone raised their glasses and drank, before resuming with their meals.
“Give Tommy his welcome home gift,” Jimmy told Kira, nodding impatiently.
Both Audra and Kira glared at him.
“I thought we were going to wait until dessert,” Audra said.
“I can’t.” Jimmy practically bounced in his seat. “It’s too big of a score. Go ahead,” he encouraged Kira. “Tell him.”
“You got me a welcome home gift?” Tommy asked, surprised and intrigued. “What is it?”
While Kira rummaged through her handbag, Tommy looked at the faces around the table. Angel and Jessi looked just as confused, but everyone else seemed aware of whatever Kira and Audra had planned.
Kira passed an envelope to Audra, who passed it to Jimmy, and so forth, until it landed in Tommy’s hands. “What is this?” he asked again.
“Just open it, man!” Jimmy called, excitement bubbling from his voice, and adding a drumroll on the table with his fork and spoon for effect.
Tommy broke the seal and pulled out a stack of papers. He unfolded them and saw they were electronic tickets. The moment his eyes caught the name Metallica, his heart lurched. Then he saw the location—Section B, Row A—and he shouted, “Are you serious? How did you get these?” He flipped through the pages and saw that there were enough tickets for everyone, all sequential. They practically had the entire first row in the center section at Madison Square Garden. He’d been trying to procure tickets for months. He even asked Marissa, Immortal Angel’s PR rep, to use her contacts to get tickets, but she couldn’t.
“It turned out that I know someone on Metallica’s team,” Kira said. “And I called in a favor.”
“Who?”
“It’s not important.”
“It was an ex-boyfriend,” Jimmy answered.
Both Audra and Kira shot daggers at Jimmy for a second time tonight, and Audra also swatted his arm. “Be quiet.”
Brett’s head snapped in Jimmy’s direction and then turned to his wife. “What ex-boyfriend? And what favor?”
Kira shrugged innocently and gave him a sweet smile with doe eyes. Tommy had seen her use that expression on her father, and the hard-as-nails record mogul had crumbled in seconds.
“Just the son of the head of Blackstone Recording Studio,” Kira answered. “I ran into him at a luncheon I attended a few weeks ago honoring his father, and he told me what he was doing these days. I had to ask him for tickets.”
Brett eyed her suspiciously, but with a smile on his lips. “What about this favor? People don’t just hand over a dozen front row Metallica tickets.”
Kira batted her eyes at Brett again before explaining. “When we were teenagers, we broke into his father’s vintage record collection and accidentally scratched a rare Beetles LP worth six figures. It was his fault, but I took the blame because his father would have killed him. My father just wrote a check.”
Brett’s jaw hung open in shock, but everyone else around the table erupted in laughter.
“And I thought I married the rebel in the family,” Jimmy said, nudging Audra with his shoulder.
Tommy was too flabbergasted about the tickets in his hands to react. He just sat there and stared at them, afraid to look away as if they would disappear.
“What’s wrong?” Jessi asked. “You look like you saw a ghost.”
“I . . . I can’t believe this! Thank you, Kira! Thank you!”
