I yanked free of his hold. “If email is all you can spare me as your future wife, don’t bother. I’ll see you at the signing of the prenup.”
“Lucy…”
I slammed the SUV door and ran up the steps. I was about to insert the key when the door opened, and Dad stood there, concern furrowing his brow.
He saw my face, and a mixture of fury and a father’s love etched his features. It only intensified the pain I was already feeling. I had no idea why my heart was aching as if I’d lost something. This was only business. A sob rose in my throat.
But Dad was attuned to what I really needed. His hug. He opened his arms and I crashed into them.
“What the hell am I doing?” I cried.
The sound of a heavy wooden door banging shut reverberated in the foyer. He must have kicked it closed seeing that he had his arms full of me.
“Do I need to kill someone, mia cara,” Dad murmured in my ear.
I ended up with a tear-clogged laugh. “No. I’m just being emotional.”
He clasped my shoulders, inching me away so he could look into my eyes. His countenance was grim, and he wasn’t playing. “Say the word, and the marriage is off. I don’t care about the consequences or the money.”
“The marriage is not off,” Mamma screeched. “What ideas are you putting into our daughter’s head, Paulie?”
She strutted briskly towards us. “What happened?”
“Does it matter, Lottie? Our daughter is miserable.”
Okay, miserable was pushing it a bit. Now that I was surrounded by the safety of my family’s love, I began to identify the emotions weighing down my chest. Anxiety was one. Frustration was the other. “Mamma is right,” I said. “Kirill and I just had a little fight, and I got annoyed with him.”
Dad narrowed his eyes. “Your face didn’t say it looked like a little fight.”
“Marriage jitters?” I suggested, smiling through my tears.
“Come on, Stellina.” Mamma wrapped her arms around me and led me toward the kitchen. “I made some tea. Did you eat enough at the luncheon?”
I could use some sweets. “What pastries do you have?”
“I just stopped by the Iranian bakery.”
“Did you get nazook?”
“You know I did.”
Dad fell behind us. He loved it when Mamma and I were mother-daughter bonding. It hadn’t always been that way, and we’d been estranged throughout my teenage and young adult years. I blamed her for emotionally manipulating Dom into becoming a made man.
My mother and I still hadn’t addressed our rift. I’d been busy moving my life back to New York and we agreed to set our differences aside after almost losing Dad last year. We just fell into a co-existence pattern.
I settled onto a barstool while Dad perched on the one on my right. Mamma went to get cups before lifting the kettle to pour us tea.
“How’s wedding planning coming along?” I asked.
“Well, your brother’s wedding is coming along just fine,” Mamma said, not looking at me. “How about yours?”
“Cake tasting tomorrow, remember?”
Mamma sniffed again. “It’s too cookie-cutter.”
I laughed. “Don’t let Margo hear that.”
“Cookie-cutter with a price tag like everything is embellished with gold,” Dad muttered.
