“Your eye!”
“Doesn’t control my hands or legs,” he said as he removed his suit jacket and set it over a chair. He started rolling up his sleeves as he turned from me.
Mom was staring at us when he started to walk toward her, and when he got closer, she turned away and went to grab for a plate. He took the plate from her.
“I’ll serve dinner tonight, Ms. Nola,” he said. “You cooked. I’ll do the rest. Have a seat at the table.”
“Are you sure?” she whispered.
He winked at her. “I got this.”
“Wheew,” she mouthed to me, fanning herself as she took a seat at the table.
I cracked up, wondering if his looks had anything to do with her worry for me. He was entirely too good looking, like against-the-laws-of-nature good looking. And I guess it was hard to believe he could be faithful to one woman all his life, given the fact that he had choices galore. But if Matteo vowed it to me, I believed him.
His word is as good as his blood.
The men who had been honest about not wanting to be faithful to their wives in the family were not, and the ones who were, were. To these men, their words meant something. In a world where that practice was archaic and not valued any longer, it was a breath of fresh air that this family still held tight to that—even if the truth hurt.
Dinner was so good, conversation was scarce. After dinner and dessert, though, Matteo picked up all our plates and brought them to the sink. Then when mom went to grab for the dirty dishes, and I told her we’d take care of them, he stopped her before she went to her room.
“Thank you for dinner, Ms. Nola.” He gave her a gentle kiss on the cheek. “It was delicious.”
I’d heard him, and his brothers, say and do that to Scarlett a million times, and it was nice to see him doing the same with my mom. She said something like, my pleasure, and then set her hand there, like she was keeping it close.
When I met him at the sink with more dishes, he kissed me and told me the same thing about dessert. I bumped him and said, “Thank you. For making my mom feel welcome, even when she wasn’t all that warm. I think she understands now…to a certain degree…what we feel for each other.”
“She loves you,” he said, handing me a dish to dry.
“She’s always been that protective over me.” I set the dish in the cabinet. “I guess that all goes back to love. But that’s why it was so hard for me to understand why she’d left me. Even though she told me I was spending the summer with Henri, I knew something was…off with her. She’d never even let me sleep over at a friend’s house. She said you never know what’s going on behind someone’s door.”
“I didn’t expect her to like me right away. She’s smart not to.”
I looked at him and narrowed my eyes.
He shrugged. “When something is that important to you, you guard it fiercely.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t smart enough to guard you. My sassy mouth got you in trouble.” I glanced at his eye. “That looks painful, Teo. Why don’t you go sit down. I’ll make you a glass of bourbon.”
“We’re almost done here,” he said. “Then a bath and bed.”
That sounded really nice.
I smiled. “It’s not every day you see a man such as yourself helping with the cleanup.”
“Why the fuck not? Are my hands too good for dirty dishes? If that’s the case, you should never touch one. Your hands are much cleaner than mine.”
I stared at the pattern on the plate and rubbed my finger along it, thinking about what had happened in Los Angles, to Damon Carter, and if that was what he was referring to. He interrupted my thoughts by clearing his throat.
“My old man did almost everything for Magpie when he was growing up. Nonno was in prison, and Brando Fausti had to become the man of the house. Magpie wasn’t always the way she is now.”
“Fun?”
He laughed some. “Yeah, she is that. Fun. Except for her candy mixes. Stay the fuck away. They look appealing, but you eat too much, it’ll turn your stomach sour.”
Too late for that, I was about to say, but since no one had filled him in on my vomiting spree after I’d indulged in it too much, I decided to stay quiet. He might make it hard for me to enjoy women time if I admitted it. He worried about me too much.
“Noted,” was all I said.
