His face broke into a smile that made something in my chest flutter.
“Great. Let’s go.”
five
. . .
Holly
The momentwe walked into the restaurant, a petite woman with silver-streaked dark hair turned her head toward the door and zeroed in on us. “Luke!” She bustled over, wiping her hands on the apron tied around her waist, her sharp eyes darting to me. “And you brought someone. Finally.”
Luke’s neck, cheeks, and ears went pink. “Rosa, this is my … friend, Holly Bascombe. Holly, this is Rosa.”
“Holly Bascombe,” Rosa repeated before snapping her fingers. “Ah, yes. The florist. Your parents are Carol and Tom, yes?”
“That’s right.”
“Good people.” She glanced between Luke and me with an expression I couldn’t quite read. If pressed, I’d have to say it was assessing, like she was deciding where to file me in whatever mental system she used to keep track of people. “You look like you’ve had a day. Sit. I’ll bring you something.”
And just like that, she was steering us toward a corner booth, the kind with worn red leather seats and an unscented candle flickering in a mason jar.
Luke slid in across from me, his lips tipping to the side in a slight smirk. “I probably should have warned you first. Rosa can be a lot.”
“She seems nice,” I said. “And weirdly perceptive. It’s like she took one look at me and knew I needed carbs immediately.”
“She does that to me, too. It’s her love language.”
As if to prove his point, Rosa returned with an overflowing basket of bread. “You need to eat,” she said, looking at me. “And you—” She pointed at Luke. “You need to make sure she eats. She’s too thin.”
“I’m not—” I started, but Rosa cut me off with a definitive shake of her head.
“Too thin,” she repeated firmly. “I’ll bring lasagna. The good kind.”
She swept away before either of us could respond.
I huffed out a soft laugh and leaned forward, whispering, “Is there a bad kind of lasagna?”
“Not here,” Luke said, smiling. “Everything Rosa makes is ‘the good kind,’ but she has definite opinions about Guisseppi’s.”
A server appeared and set a glass of red wine in front of each of us.
“Did we order these?”
He shook his head and chuckled. “I never actually order anything here. I just consume whatever Rosa puts in front of me.”
“Exactly how often do you come here?” I asked, lifting the glass to take a sip. “Daily? Hourly? Are you on some kind of carb-based loyalty program?”
“At least once a week.” He shrugged, his expression turning a little sheepish. “Rosa’s convinced I don’t eat enough when left to my own devices, so if I didn’t, she might actually show up at my house.”
“That’s … oddly sweet.”
“She’s like my Italian fairy grandmother, if I were Italian. And if fairies existed.”
The image of this shy, brilliant man being adopted by a no-nonsense little old lady shouldn’t have hit me the way it did, but there it was—something low and achy settling under my ribs.
“You’re lucky to have her,” I said quietly. “And maybe she’s lucky to have you, too.”
His eyes warmed. “I never thought about it like that.”
