by Lisa Plumley
Shane still couldn’t speak. This was, almost to a word, exactly the speech he’d always hoped his father would make.
Too bad it had come too late. Now, it didn’t mean much.
Especially when it was missing the “I love yous” he wanted. Most likely, those would always be missing. That was life.
“I want you to stay on with my company,” his father said, filling the gap with authority and certainty. “As a fixer, as a legitimate ‘troubleshooter’ with an office and a salary and an expense account … whatever you want. No more freelancing.” He chuckled. “Not that you’ll need to take my offer, of course. I didn’t really freeze your trust fund. It was only a threat. You’ve always responded to threats, ever since you were a kid.”
Finally, Shane found his voice.
“Yeah. I ‘responded’ by rebelling,” he said. “By showing you I didn’t need you. By wrecking myself with fixing.”
You got stuck in it, Lizzy had said, then you leveraged it into a job, and then you got even more stuck. You used fixing to survive, and it worked for you. But not anymore.
His assistant—his friend—was right.
Shane needed to get out. Starting now.
Gregory Waltham chuckled again. Uneasily. “Well, those days are all behind us now, right? We can just move on from here—”
“No. We’re not doing anything,” Shane interrupted. His gaze fell on the cardboard box full of groceries Lizzy had left. He knew what his first step had to be. “I told you. I quit.”
“Yes, you quit the Grimani job. Understandably. But this—”
“Is over,” Shane said. “Bye, Dad. Maybe we’ll talk later.”
Pushing the button to end that call was one of the most satisfying things Shane had ever done. Not because he was angry. Not because he’d bested his father—and Gregory Waltham had admitted it. Not because he had closure or ever would. But just because there was peace in that gesture. Just because he’d needed to do it—for his own well-being—and he’d done it.
Shane didn’t know where things would go with his father from here. But he did know where he was going.
He was going to turn over a new leaf. He was starting in Portland. He didn’t know where he would end up. But Shane did know that until he did some serious work toward making himself into the kind of man Gabby could love, he couldn’t blame her for letting him leave—or for not following him. He wasn’t going to weaken. He wasn’t going to go back. No matter what it took.
Because Gabby deserved better. And someday, so would he.
“Yo, Gabriella.” Hypo nodded at the make line, which Gabriella had been busy stocking in advance of first service. “What’s going on with you today? You just put Pinkie’s crème anglaise in the spot where the ricotta goes for pizza bianca.”
Startled, Gabriella looked down. She dipped her finger in the creamy white stuff she’d just spooned into the nearest stainless steel well. She tasted it. Vanilla flavored. Sweet.
She made a face. “You’re right. Argh. I can’t focus today.”
“You’re missing your lucky charm,” Hypo diagnosed. “Shane.”
She was missing him. But Gabriella hadn’t exactly been in a position to say so earlier when he’d left. She sighed.
“The man saved my life. He caught the pizzeria’s saboteur, saved all the pizzerias, gave me enough money to fulfill all my dreams for Campania, Reggio, Abruzzo, Tropea, Salerno, and Benevento combined, gave me carte blanche to expand to Seattle, and made my dad happier than I’ve seen him since the Seahawks went to the Super Bowl in the ’05 season.” Out of breath, she gave Hypo a wry look. “I couldn’t quibble about a day off.”
Hypo thought about that. “Maybe not. But I would have.” He grinned. “If you let your wealthy new big-shot investor ride roughshod over you now, who knows where it’ll end?”
“That’s right.” Scooter passed through the kitchen, agilely carrying a tray full of clean drinking glasses. “You’ve got to start the way you mean to end up with that man.” He winked. “Crack that whip. Make Shane know who’s boss.”
“Who’s boss? I’m boss!” Gleefully, Pinkie came in. Hands on hips, she surveyed her territory. “Everyone, work harder.”
“Pinkie,” Gabriella told her gently, “you’re not in charge of Campania yet. Of another pizzeria, yes, soon, but—”
“I’m going to prepare like crazy for it, too!”
Everyone else shook their heads. “We’re doomed,” Bowser prophesied, having reluctantly said goodbye to Lizzy so he could begin his shift. “Pinkie has gone power mad. Scooter has gotten wise, somehow, the old coot.” He cast the dishwasher a playful look. “Hypo has learned to distinguish ricotta from vanilla custard sauce, which is nothing short of a miracle—”
“Hey,” Hypo put in, “I’m not all nervous tics and hypochondria. I have many positive qualities, too.”
“Name one,” Bowser challenged.
“I’m very good at Internet browsing with my thumbs.”
“Hmmph.” Bowser turned to Gabby, a triumphant gleam in his eyes. “And, to finish what I was saying, Gabriella here obviously turned her brain into pudding during her chilly little lock-in in the walk-in this morning, because if she hadn’t—”
“Hey!” Gabriella protested. “A little sensitivity.”
“—she would never have let Shane walk out of here.”
Caught, Gabriella paused in midscoop. She needed to clear out that crème anglaise. But she had to have her priorities.
Deliberately, she straightened. “Things are … complicated.”
Bowser greeted her very dignified response with a snort.
“Good pizza is complicated. An excellent extra-dark stout is complicated. Making a woman love you is complicated—”
“Humble brag,” Pinkie shot back, buzzing him out by slapping her hand on an imaginary game show buzzer. “Try again.”
“—but what you are, Gabriella,” Bowser went on steadfastly, ignoring Pinkie, “is stubborn. And proud. And way too willing to let both of those things stand in the way of your happiness.”
Silence fell in the pizzeria’s kitchen.
Gabriella lifted her chin, stymied for a comeback.
From the pass-through, Jeremy spoke up. “Shane’s not ever coming back here,” he said somberly. “You know that, right?”
Fed up, Gabriella whirled to face him. “That’s too far, Jeremy. Even for you. I know you don’t like me, but—”
“I like you!” Jeremy seemed astonished—and, suddenly, completely sincere. Wide-eyed, he said, “Sure, I can be snippy sometimes. But I don’t ever mean it. I’m trying to be funny!”
“Try again,” Scooter advised drily. “You’re about ten miles off the mark. Ellen DeGeneres, you ain’t.”
“She’s so funny,” Pinkie said. Everyone else agreed.
Gabriella thought maybe her brain had turned to pudding.
“Sor-ry!” Jeremy sniffed. Huffily, he grabbed a tray of salt and pepper shakers. “Ellen, huh? I guess I’d better go practice my dancing.”
To everyone’s amazement, he arched his brows and then wiggled away, dancing while he headed to the wait station to refill condiments and make roll-ups.
“Now that’s funny!” Hypo yelled through cupped hands.
Jeremy waved, then just kept boogying.
Gabriella couldn’t help laughing. “My whole world has gone crazy. Up is down. Black is white. Bad is good.”
“Maybe you need the perspective of leaving the pizzeria,” Hypo suggested. “You’re obviously working too hard.”
“Yeah,” Bowser agreed. “And now that we have rich Uncle Moneybags footing the bill, you can take a vacation.”
Meaningfully, they all advanced on her.
Gabriella stepped back, confused as all get-out.
“You’re taking a vacation. Right now,” Scooter advised.
“That’s right,” Pinkie agreed. “Go find Shane already!”
“This has to be the first day you two have gone
without nookie since you met,” Bowser added. “So go get some!”
They came closer. They surrounded her.
Unbelievably, they lifted Gabriella off her feet.
She was basically being crowd-surfed toward the back door.
“But … the prep!” she protested, waving her arms. “The first seating! We’re short one server, down two line cooks—”
“We’ll handle it,” Hypo assured her. “We can do it.”
They pushed through the back door. They deposited Gabriella on the pizzeria’s back steps, in the alleyway near her bike.
She blinked at the bright sunshine, feeling as though she hadn’t glimpsed it for hours. Which, actually, she hadn’t.
She’d been too busy stuck inside, trying to deny the truth.
Shane wasn’t coming back. She’d seen it in his eyes.
“I don’t know what to do in this situation,” Gabriella argued. “I haven’t done it before.” And I can’t trust myself. “I need guidelines. There are no rules, no handbooks, no traditions—”
“Screw those.” Bright-eyed, Bowser gave the finger.
He actually had a lot in common with Shane, Gabriella realized. That would be one reason to bring Shane back.
“If you get scared,” Hypo told her, “just think of something that will distract you long enough to get through it.”
Gabriella met his gaze. “Penguins!” they shouted together.
Warmed by her crew’s efforts on her behalf, Gabriella hugged herself. She looked at them. They beamed back at her.
“We believe in you, dummy,” Pinkie said. “Move your ass.”
“Yeah.” Scooter nodded at her. “Go get your man.”
“Shane might not want me,” Gabriella confessed. She couldn’t count on what had happened between them in the walk-in earlier. They’d both been under duress. Neither of them had been thinking straight. “I did accuse him of sabotage. That’s hard to come back from.”
“Pshaw.” Bowser waved away her concerns. “You had your reasons. What’s a little misunderstanding between friends?”
“At least you talked to him about that,” Pinkie pointed out, giving her a significant look, “instead of hiding.”
She was right, Gabriella realized. They were all right.
Hiding out was not like her at all.
“Okay.” She squared her shoulders. “I’m going.”
Already prepared, Hypo tossed Gabriella her bike helmet. Pinkie threw her her purse. Bowser offered two encouraging thumbs-ups. So, fully outfitted in seconds, Gabriella looked down at herself. She was dressed in her sauce-splattered whites with a safety-first bike helmet and superdorky kitchen clogs.
She hardly looked her best. But there was no time to waste.
“Well, here I go!” Gabriella exclaimed, arms thrust high in a pose she hoped would foretell victory.
Then she turned … and saw the flat tire on her bike. Rats.
It became obvious to Shane pretty early on that he wasn’t supposed to be doing this. He wasn’t supposed to be standing in the crowded Pioneer Square in downtown Portland—with the TriMet rail sliding by every few minutes and the pigeons bobbing and weaving at his feet and the passersby gawking—handing out food to the unfortunate homeless few who hung out there.
He wasn’t a damn food bank.
But when Shane had considered all the steps involved in donating that cardboard box of groceries on his way to the airport—locating the food bank, driving there, parking, hauling the stuff inside, speaking to someone who would undoubtedly spot him as an impostor good guy right away—he’d decided to skip it.
Over a “goodbye Portland” triple ristretto espresso from his still favorite Bridgetown coffeehouse (where the barista had again recognized him with a smile, even after all this time), Shane had decided to take a new approach. He’d decided to take the food straight to the people who needed it most.
With Aussie Bill’s genial help, the whole endeavor had morphed into a sort of raucous midday picnic. Someone had started making sandwiches. Someone else had volunteered to share the squeeze packets of mustard sequestered in his backpack. Another person had begun pouring orange juice. Conversation had picked up, turning from travels to shelters to weather.
Amid it all, Shane grinned. He could have wound up like one of the perennially “backpacking” college-age homeless kids who played music on street corners while busking for change. If things had been different, he could have ended up checking municipal trash bins for cans to recycle. He could have been alone sleeping rough in doorways for shelter from the rain.
Something more lasting than a picnic needed to happen for these people, Shane knew as he caught Aussie Bill’s eye and grinned. But for now, this was a start. It was the start of Shane’s redemption. It might have been cheesy and obvious, but it was also stupidly fulfilling. He was on the right track now.
On the opposite side of the square, a woman came into view, bicycling as though her life depended on it. She was easy to spot on account of her blazing white (if sauce splattered) chef ’s uniform—and on account of her persistent presence in his dreams. Gabby. Shane blinked, sure he was imagining her.
He wasn’t. It was Gabby. But she was already bicycling past. He was going to miss her. He couldn’t reach her in time.
Downhearted, Shane watched as she whizzed down the street. Even if Gabby was going to his apartment, she wouldn’t find him there. She couldn’t call him; he’d already ditched his phone to avoid the temptation of weakening too much and calling her.
He needed to redeem himself before he did anything else.
He needed to finish this, then track down Casey Jackson—
“Uh-oh, mate. We’ve got trouble.” Aussie Bill nodded down the street at a police patrol. “We’re about to get shut down.”
“The police can’t shut down a harmless picnic.”
Aussie Bill disagreed. “Can and will, mate. See ya.”
He picked up a sandwich and ajar of farmers market jam for the road, then disappeared around the corner. Everyone else followed his lead, leaving Shane alone with a box of carrots, ground coffee, plenty of crumbs, and some orange juice. Plus a single peanut butter cookie that had gotten wedged into a corner and had been overlooked in the mêlée. Shane loved peanut butter cookies. He wondered if Pinkie made a good peanut butter cookie.
Not that that was relevant to him. Not for a while yet.
Easily dodging a suspicious-looking police officer, Shane hefted his cardboard box and left the square. He headed for his car, parked several blocks away near Portland State University.
He looked up. He was going to miss these damn American elm trees. Even in the light drizzle that was falling, they looked good. Green. Leafy. Majestic. Those trees were sturdy in a way that Shane had never experienced. They were planted for good.
Still walking, Shane caught a flash of white. Gabby?
No. Gabby wasn’t an overeager pigeon fighting for bread crumbs being thrown by one of those ill-advised people who insisted on feeding birds—when the winged scavengers could damn well forage for themselves and probably would have feasted on the bread-crumb thrower’s fingertips if the person wasn’t careful.
Maybe, Shane realized, he was a little surly today.
Deliberately countering that, he approached a group of students. In short order, he’d given them his box of food.
“Dude,” one of the students called as Shane walked away. “Did you know there’s still a peanut butter cookie in here?”
“You can have it.” Genially, Shane waved.
“Sweet.” With an eager grin, the students split it.
Pursued by their wolfish exclamations of how delicious it was, Shane continued down the south park blocks. People passed while walking their dogs; couples shared lunch on park benches; flowers bloomed in well-tended beds beside the sidewalk.
His car came into view. Just one more block, and he’d be headed for the airport—headed for his uncertain redemptive future.
&nbs
p; But he could handle that, Shane told himself, even as he felt reluctance to leave pull at him. He could handle anything.
“Hey, you!” a woman called loudly from behind him, breaking into his thoughts. “I’ll buy you a drink if you can accurately guess my bra size!”
Shane stopped. Only one woman had ever been bold enough to challenge him that way. Only one woman had ever dared.
It couldn’t be. Could it?
With his heart in his throat, Shane turned around.
Chapter Twenty-One
“You are damn hard to catch up to,” Gabby told Shane, grinning as she pulled off her bike helmet. She strapped it to her bike, then came nearer. “I almost had you back at Pioneer Square, but then the police came and you bolted.” She gave him a teasing look. “Have you done something bad again?”
He couldn’t believe she was joking about that.
“I told you,” Shane said, “I’ve done a lot of bad things. I could give you a list.” That would scare her away. Maybe he wouldn’t give her a list. “I could give you references.”
“References who’d attest to your legendary badness?”
Yes. He was too gobsmacked at seeing her this way to think clearly. Shane regrouped. “You need to know the truth. I’m not a wholesome guy with an all-American past and a bright future.”
“You can’t say what your future will hold.” Gabby looked right at him, just as brash and as confident as she’d always been—at least when she wasn’t being run into the ground by a secret saboteur. “And as far as your not being ‘wholesome’ goes … well, I just saw you give a box of food to a bunch of strangers. You’re not a bad person, Shane.”
“Actually,” he tried arguing, “I am. Sometimes.”
“You clearly need a self-image check,” Gabby persisted. “Because the man I see is someone who saved me today. Someone who saved my family’s business. Someone who pulled together my crew when I couldn’t, who helped manage all those disasters, who made sure I reconciled with my mom and dad and then washed all the dishes afterward.” She stepped nearer, her eyes full of compassion. “Maybe no one else has ever told you this, but I’m going to. You’re a good man, Shane. Maybe in spite of yourself—”
