He tossed the washcloth into the bathroom and curled up next to me in the bed. I’d expected to have another restless night, but instead, I slept like the dead with Peter safely in my arms.
8
Peter
Freddieand I settled into a domestic routine after the first week I was there. I’d wake god-awful early so I could sneak downstairs and get started on breakfast, which had the added benefit of keeping Sophia from seeing me sleeping in her daddy’s bed and asking too many questions. If Freddie worked the dayshift, they’d leave soon after, leaving me to the household chores. Freddie still argued that it wasn’t my job to clean up after them, and I’d counter it was clean or pay rent. That usually shut him up in a hurry.
Night shifts were where it got tricky. Half the time, she’d whine when it was time for them to leave, begging us to let her stay home with me. So far, Freddie had convinced her to see her Nonna, but I could tell it was wearing on all of them.
Freddie grumbled when his phone rang. “Hey Carlos, what’s up… yeah… sh—crud… I’ll have to run Sophia to Mama’s, but I’ll get there as quick as I can.”
He hung up and tossed his phone towards the couch. “Everything okay?”
“No. One of the prep cooks is a bumbling idiot who makes Matteo look calm and collected, which is why we try to only use him as a runner. But apparently we’re short-staffed, so Carlos had him helping make the soups, and the jackass wasn’t watching where he was going,” Freddie explained as he rummaged through the clean clothes I had planned on folding once he left for work. “He managed to crash into Carlos and now both of them have some pretty nasty burns. I’m three cooks down for the day and lunch rush will start about the time I drop Sophia off at Mama’s.”
I pulled Freddie aside, not wanting to undermine him in front of Sophia, given her obsession with wanting to stay home. “Why not let her stay here and give your mama a night off?”
“Because I don’t want to get her out of her routine,” he replied sharply.
“It’s not going to kill her to stay home. Besides, your mama’s been complaining that she doesn’t know what’s going on at the restaurant since she started watching Sophia more often.” He snorted back a laugh. I understood there was an added bonus to her watching Sophia, meaning she wasn’t sticking her nose in, trying to tell the boys how to run the family restaurant, but they didn’t see how adrift she was. That restaurant had been her life for nearly thirty years. “Come on, just let Soph stay here with me tonight. It’ll make the women in your life happy.”
“That’s dirty, man.”
“Yep, but it worked, didn’t it?” I admitted gleefully.
“Fine, but this can’t be a regular thing.” I leaned in to kiss him, but Freddie pulled away, clearly letting me know he wasn’t happy about me pushing the issue.
If I had my way, Sophia could stay with me whenever he was at work. With another adult in the house, it seemed pointless for her to split her time between two homes. Freddie talked about routines, well she deserved for hers to include going to sleep in her own bed every night.
Sophia squealed when Freddie informed her she was staying home with me. She ran into the kitchen, where I was making some quick sandwiches for lunch. “Did Daddy tell you I don’t have to go to Nonna’s tonight? I get to stay here with you. We can bake and watch movies and then you can read me a story before bedtime. You’re way better than Nonna is at story time. She doesn’t do the voices.”
“You do voices when you read to her?” Freddie asked. I glanced up, noticing the dopey grin on his face. Mama used to tell my sisters the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, but I got the impression Sophia was the gatekeeper of Freddie’s heart.
Sophia helped me carry the sandwiches and a bowl of fresh fruit to the table. She definitely took after her daddy when it came to wanting to help out in the kitchen, and I knew that’s where we’d wind up spending much of the afternoon. Funny how I’d adamantly refused to come home, telling Papa I didn’t want to be chained to the oven like he was through much of my childhood, and now I was teaching Freddie’s little girl the recipes we’d all memorized as children. It wasn’t baking I hated, it was everything that went along with it, including the fact that I would’ve been forced to be someone I wasn’t.
I wrapped Freddie’s sandwich in plastic and portioned some fruit into a storage container so he could eat while he drove. From the sounds of it, this might be the last chance he had to get some food in his belly for a while.
“Soph, start eating while I talk to your daddy for a minute. When you’re done, we’ll clean up and plan the afternoon.” I followed Freddie to the front door, waiting patiently while he shoved his feet into his work shoes. “Breathe babe. It’s going to be fine. If you’re screwed for tonight, give me a call and we’ll figure out a way I can come in and help you.”
“You don’t—” I stopped him from finishing that tired argument by pressing my lips to his. His entire body relaxed with a sigh. “Fuck, you can’t do that Peter. What if Sophia saw us?”
“Would that really be the worst thing in the world?” Yes, there would inevitably be questions, but at some point, Sophia was going to find out her daddy liked both men and women.
“It’s not about that and you damn well know it,” Freddie growled. I didn’t want him leaving in a shittier mood than he was already in, so I wrapped my arms around his waist from behind as he grabbed his keys and wallet off the small table next to the door.
“I know and I’m sorry,” I apologized, pressing a kiss to the center of his back. He’d been cagey about showing any sort of affection around Sophia because he didn’t want her getting the wrong impression. He didn’t want her getting attached to me, only to have me bail the way her piece-of-shit mother had. It was probably for the best I didn’t know what the woman looked like, because if I ran across her on the streets of New York, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to hold back from telling her what I thought of her.
I also hadn’t found a way to tell Freddie that every day I spent here, I was more reluctant to leave. Between getting to know Maria and helping her come out of her shell and figuring out there was crazy chemistry between Freddie and me, it was hard to face going home. I’d turned in my rental car over two weeks earlier, because it seemed a waste to keep paying for it when I could easily rely on mass transit if I needed to go anywhere when Freddie and Maria were both unavailable.
“We’ll talk about this more later,” Freddie warned me.Shit.If he pushed, I knew I’d tell him the truth, and that scared the shit out of me. What I’d offered him was a casual fling, but this arrangement hadn’t felt casual to me for a while now. Admitting that to him was likely to scare him off. He was newly out, and only to me, still waiting on his divorce to become final, and was stretched thin between his commitments to the restaurant and his daughter. More than anything, I was worried he’d confirm my biggest fear: there was no room in his life for love.
“Get out of here. And drive carefully.” On a good day, Freddie had a lead foot, so I didn’t want to think about how fast he’d drive knowing the kitchen was in crisis mode and two of his cooks were on their way to urgent care.
“If you need me, call. The number for the pediatrician is on the fridge along with Mama’s if you have any questions.”
“We’ll be fine.” I pushed him towards the door. “Get out of here so we can work on a surprise for when you get home.”
My dick twitched as I thought about one surprise in particular. I’d planned on saving it for the next time we were home alone, but if I got my way when we talked, those nights would be few and far between moving forward.
