But the old restaurant would always hold a special place in her heart.
“Maybe we should have gone someplace else,” Les March muttered, turning the menu over again. “I’m in the mood for a good tenderloin, not Italian.”
“There’s steak on the menu, Dad,” she reminded him. Her stomach growled. God, the man could be both fickle and extravagant. A thriving career in cosmetic dentistry had made him that way. Given his druthers, Les would drag them downtown, where they’d duck into various restaurants until he finally found a menu to his liking. Then they’d order at nine p.m.
Another thing that would never change.
Lester March, D.D.S. wasn’t a man to whom most people would attribute memorable qualities. He had a fuller head of hair than Theo, only now it was more silver than gold. His winning feature was a strong, perfectly square chin — the one distinctive trait he and Sabrina had in common that ultimately convinced her she wasn’t in fact adopted. She assumed that at one time he had a certain something that caught her stepmother’s attention. He did have perfect teeth. Maybe that had accounted for his allure.
“How’s the porcelain holding up, Sabrina?” Les finally put the menu down.
“Dad…”
“Come on. Let’s see the chompers.”
“We’re in public,” she hissed.
“Humor your old man, honeybunch.”
This isn’t going to end, Sabrina thought. She grimaced a smile for his inspection. Les put on his reading glasses and leaned forward for a closer look.
“Probably could have gone a tad lighter,” he said with a frown. “Other dentists would have stuck you with unnaturally white veneers. The kind that look blue. I’m more of a naturalist.”
“Stop justifying the color, Dad. I’m perfectly happy with the teeth,” she assured him. The veneers were Les’ idea, and he’d put them on gratis. There was no doubt that cosmetic dentistry was Les March’s forte. After years of straightening and whitening, Sabrina’s teeth could have been featured in dental association brochures.
“You, me and Mom used to come to Bella Notte once a month. Remember?” She failed to flatten the wistful note in her voice.
Les furrowed his brow distractedly. “You’re right. We did. Nola always insisted on this place. When were we here last? Thirty years ago?”
“Twenty-five.” Sabrina’s smile felt fragile. A well of bittersweet rose in her solar plexus, both comforting and forlorn, as though she’d come across a favorite childhood doll when cleaning out the garage. The smell of the rich cuisine — veal, poultry and seafood drenched in marsala-saturated white and red sauces — was thick and redolent and dredged up memories of the time Nola taught her how to correctly use a soup spoon to consume aragosta (“Scoop inward, from outer lip to your lip, dear”).
Nothing bad could happen at Bella Notte.
Sabrina ordered pomodoro caprese and a side of capellini Genovese. Les ordered Steak Diane and a second Glenfiddich with a twist of lime. Their relationship was a perfect argument for nurture over nature, Sabrina thought as they ate in silence. In this case, silence was a good thing. Because unless the conversation involved playing golf or performing intricate bridgework, Les March had little interest in any given topic.
They were complete opposites in every possible way.
Well, except for the chin.
“I suppose we should talk about your house—” Les mopped up the last bit of sauce on his plate with a piece of bread. “—and I’m sure you know you got yourself into a helluva pickle. That’s not like you, Sabrina. Why did you and Jackson get a divorce?”
“An annulment, Dad. Our marriage was annulled,” she reminded him patiently.
Les waved his hand distractedly. “Divorce, annulment. They’re the same damned thing.”
“That’s what Nola said.”
Les looked up sharply. “Jackson didn’t hit you, did he?”
“Oh, god no.” Sabrina replied hastily. Admittedly, she had intentionally been vague in her email, knowing that Les would never understand the reasons she insisted on ending her marriage so soon. But was physical abuse the only legitimate one he could come up with?
“Then … why?” Les persisted.
Sabrina tabled the idea of telling him about Jackson’s ultimatum. Conversations with her father were easier when she cut straight to the chase.
“Look, Dad. I realized I didn’t really lo — care that deeply about Jackson,” she paraphrased Nola’s words. “I don’t think he really cared about me either. We settled for each other. I know it sounds crazy, but I don’t think I would have figured any of this out had we not married each other.”
“Well, that’s pretzel logic if I’ve ever heard it,” Les harrumphed. “But I suppose if you didn’t love each other, nothing will fix that. I don’t know what I’d do if Livvy wanted to call it quits.”
The tines of Sabrina’s fork squeaked on the plate of capellini as her hand tightened. What about Mom? The three words popped into her mind as they always did when Les mentioned She Who Shall Not Be Named.
The words bubbled to her lips whenever Sabrina saw her father bring her stepmother flowers for no particular reason. And when he capitulated to her desire to upsize to a large home in Peyton Heights. What about Mom?
What about Nola?
Sabrina’s ears picked up the sound of a man braying from the direction of the foyer as he harangued the restaurant’s host. “Do you or do you not have valet parking? You do? No, sir, I did not see the sign outside.”
She recognized that voice. Her spine stiffened as though bamboo reeds had been shoved into her lower vertebrae. “Please tell me that’s not who I think it is, Dad,” she said warily.
But there was no mistaking the head of gold hair she saw coming through the front entrance. Slightly tubby with a florid complexion, Chet March bore few other similarities to Les and none at all to Sabrina. He had round, mean little eyes, and the pudgy flesh of his cheeks seemed to end right where his mouth began, giving him the appearance of a Labrador on prednisone.
Sabrina had been first introduced to her half-brother when she was fourteen and Chet was two. She had been relieved when she saw that the DNA that bound them was visually innocuous, and she didn’t hesitate to say so. This had spurred her stepmother, Olivia, to pull Les aside and inform him that his daughter was “acting like a brat.”
“What’s Chet doing here?” Sabrina hissed at her father.
“I asked him to drop by,” Les said in a reasonable tone. “We’re all family.”
Family. Right.
Chet walked toward their table purposefully. His smart custom-made suit completed an air of outward importance and made her half-brother appear a good decade older than his twenty-five years. His fiancée, Fay, trailed several steps behind. An exercise in self-obfuscation, she limited herself to plain pantsuits in unmemorable shades of beige and brown and walked with her shoulders in a slump, as though she were perpetually ducking under a labyrinth of low doorways. Sabrina couldn’t decide if Fay was a pretty girl attempting to be homely or a homely girl who just didn’t give a damn.
“Dad, thanks for calling me in for this confab. Sabrina.” Chet nodded at her dismissively as he pulled up a chair without bothering to pull out Fay’s. “How’s life on Capitol Hell?”
“Peachy, Chet.” She forced a cheery smile. “How’s tricks in the trading?”
“Busy. Four private companies went public today. One opened at twenty bucks a share and closed at eighty.”
“Not shabby.” Les looked impressed.
“Everything could change next week, of course,” Chet mused with his studied business frown. Sabrina theorized by the time he reached adolescence, he’d figured out he hadn’t exactly won the genetic lottery and had to compensate in other ways, starting and ending with the pursuit of fancy suits, expensive cars and other lucre.
Cued by Chet’s stare, a black-suited waiter promptly rushed to their table.
“No, we’ve already eaten.” He pushed
the proffered menu away. “But I want a whiskey sour — make that a double.”
“And a Diet Coke.” Fay’s voice was barely audible.
“She takes that with lime,” Chet told the waiter, then turned his attention back to Sabrina. “I hear you have financial problems.”
“You heard — Dad—?” Sabrina felt her poise disintegrate. She glared at Les, mortified. “How could you?”
“Wait until you hear what your brother has to say before you go off, Sabrina,” Les coached her.
Half-brother, she corrected him silently. Partial.
“Okay, then,” she told Chet. “Tell me what shit shape I’m in.”
“I estimate you’re spending more than fifty percent of your salary on basic living expenses, given your net-to-debt ratio — assuming no debt.”
Not this again, she thought miserably. Sabrina had heard so many of Chet’s long-winded lectures on the merits of the fifty-fifty net formula, she could recite them by heart.
“That’s a presumptuous statement, Chet. You don’t know what I make.”
“Yes, I do. I looked it up on the Internet.”
Sabrina stared at him, aghast. “You Googled my salary? I don’t believe it.”
“Civil servants’ salaries are public record,” Chet said a bit imperiously. She looked to her father beseechingly, but Les was staring into his scotch.
“Look, Sabrina, I wouldn’t have come here tonight if Dad hadn’t asked,” Chet went on. “We discussed at length a way to fix this that benefits both you and me.”
Clearly her father and Chet had cooked up some sort of half-baked solution behind her back. Sabrina felt played. “Just tell me what it is.”
“I’ll move into it. Well, me and Fay, that is.”
“Hmm.” She pretended to contemplate the proposal. She didn’t think there could possibly be a worse idea than renting her spare bedroom to Gage “Fitz” Fitzgerald. But here it was, the mother of them all. Then again, when had Les ever come through for her when she needed him the most? She could see her father looking from her to Chet hopefully.
Les had probably peddled the idea, Sabrina decided, noticing the anxious expression on Fay’s face. She lobbed Chet a slow ball.
“That doesn’t sound practical,” she told him. “The guest bedroom is terribly small for two.”
Father and son exchanged looks.
“You didn’t fully grok what I said, Sabrina. Fay and I want to buy your house and live in it ourselves.” Chet irritated her even further by over-enunciating. “We need our privacy. I’m sure you know why, having been married yourself. For one day,” he added snidely.
Fay choked on her Diet Coke.
“Cadence Corners is a good neighborhood,” Chet continued. “Nonexistent crime. Exemplary schools. The house isn’t exactly in Peyton Heights, but it’s still in a good zip. We drove around before we got here for a look-see. It’s small for a starter home, but Fay and I can manage until we find something bigger.”
“The historic houses are real pretty,” Fay offered up wispily before bowing her head again.
“It’s dandy you’re not put out by the floor space, Chet. Now, where the hell am I supposed to live?” Sabrina wanted to know. Her face flushed hot with anger.
“You could rent an efficiency,” Les finally jumped in. “Or—”
“—You could buy a place in Shady Oak Hills.” Chet finished his father’s statement by mentioning a remote unincorporated area with just as many strip malls and fast-food joints as there were people. Shady Oak Hills had erupted practically overnight on either side of a congested major arterial and had neither of the desirable landmarks that its name implied. A mish-mash of cheaply built houses and huge apartment complexes plopped on flat, treeless plots, the soulless community was Sabrina’s worst nightmare.
“Real estate’s dirt-cheap there compared to Cadence Corners,” Les pointed out.
“That’s because Shady Oak Hills is an hour-long commute to the city on a good day,” Sabrina said, aggrieved. “I don’t suppose it occurred to either of you that I represent Theo Ward, who represents Austin. Therefore, it might be a good idea if I actually lived here.”
A taut silence immediately descended over the table. Of course Les had cooked up a plan that would benefit Chet, his golden-haired boy. Sabrina pressed her lips together. She didn’t trust the words that might come out of her mouth next. She suddenly remembered the Christmas her father gave her a signed first edition of Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky. She’d been over the moon until she found out that he had given Chet a new Porsche. If her half-brother thought of her as far less than his sibling equal, she had only Les to blame.
Fay cleared her throat tremulously and reached for her Diet Coke.
“This didn’t go too well,” Les said and rattled the ice in his glass.
“What did I tell you, Dad?” Chet tossed down the rest of his drink and slammed the glass on the table. “I told you this would be a waste of time. You don’t want to sell me the house? Fine, Sabrina. I’ll just wait for the short sale and buy the damned thing.”
“Dad, you fix this. Right now,” Sabrina said ominously.
“Cool your jets, Chet,” Les offered up the obligatory chiding. “Sabrina’s given you her answer. She emotionally invested in this property—”
“—that she can barely afford. What are her monthly expenses, Dad? Seventy percent of her net? Eighty? Once that foundation goes, she’ll have to sell an organ on the black market to have it leveled.”
“Good god, Chet. Leave it,” Les said. “It’s only a house.”
“The house in Shady Oak Hills we looked at is nice too,” Fay told her fiancé quietly. Chet glared at her. Fay quickly looked at the window panels.
“She will take everything under advisement.” Sabrina stood up and hurled a couple of twenties at the table. “But right now, she must leave before she says something she’ll regret,” she tossed over her shoulder before she walked away.
Leaving Chet to simmer and her father and Fay to flounder, Sabrina sought refuge in Bella Notte’s courtyard next to a quintet of harlequin statues. The low concrete wall that wrapped around the outdoor fireplace felt cold under her bum. Meeting Les here had been a mistake. The restaurant stirred up memories she associated with safety and predictability. That is, until yellow-haired stepbrothers reminded her that the first twelve years of her life had only been an illusion.
She was so engrossed in her own thoughts she didn’t notice that the door to the restaurant had opened and closed until Les sat down beside her. Away from the odor of garlic and simmering wine sauce, Sabrina’s nose picked up the sweet, spicy smell of cloves that permeated his clothes. The familiar Dad smell she remembered from when she was a little girl.
“Your mother thinks we don’t have a healthy relationship,” he said after a heavy pause. “She says we talk but we don’t communicate.”
“We don’t,” Sabrina said. “But Mom shouldn’t try to mend other people’s fences.”
“Speaking of your mother, she sounds really happy.” Les scratched the side of his ear, looking vexed. “Did she accidentally discover the joy of nitrous oxide while swapping out whipped cream canisters, or is she seeing somebody new?”
“His name is Rex. Or Felix.” It was hard to keep up with Nola’s love life. “Yes, she’s happy.”
After another pause, Les said, “My marriage to your mother was always complicated, Sabrina. It got more complicated around the time we divorced. Now that we’re not married, we can finally be friends. This morning, your mother pointed out that I gave Chet far more advantages than you. I’m not proud of that.”
Sabrina felt a twinge of discomfort. Nola talked about Les, but Les didn’t talk about Nola. That had always been the unspoken rule.
“Why are we discussing this now?” Sabrina asked.
“Because we need to talk about it eventually. Because you just broke up with Jackson and it seems like as good a time as any. And because your mother’s right about
a lot of things.” Les sounded penitent. “Livvy’s a wonderful woman, but you know how she gets about money. I’ll free up some cash on the sly and help you out with the house. Livvy and Chet could never find out.”
The offer should have come as a relief. Instead, Sabrina’s stomach felt like it was weighted with kettleballs. She shook her head. “Dad, do us both a favor and don’t do me any favors. If there’s one thing I learned from the whole Jackson debacle it’s that you don’t lie to someone you love. Or even someone you don’t love. It’s inequitable.”
“Inequitable. I suppose that’s fancy legal talk for ‘unfair’,” Les laughed shortly. Then he sobered. “You’ve got a lot on the ball, Sabrina, but I can’t understand why you never put first things first.”
Sabrina was baffled. “What do you mean? I’ve always prioritized. I went to university. I graduated at the top of my class. I’m Chief of Staff. Did I leave something important off my bucket list?”
“A husband and children.”
“Because that worked out so well for Mom,” she said breezily.
“We just covered that ground, Sabrina.” Les tried to sound stern.
“Okay. God. What else, Dad?” She supposed they were deep into the “communication” part of the father-daughter evening.
“If I had one wish for you, it would be that you fall head over heels like I did when I met your stepmother,” he went on. “It doesn’t take you long to know when you meet the right one.”
Pour a little unblended in Les, and suddenly he was channeling Gage Fitzgerald. Fitz. Whoever the hell he was. Sabrina kicked at the back of her heel angrily with the toe of her shoe. Her next words flew from her lips unchecked.
“At least if I ever meet Mr. Wonderful, I’ll have the distinct advantage of not already being married.”
“I was not setting myself up for that, Sabrina.”
“Maybe not. But you did.”
There was a pause and then Les said, “I should have never allowed Chet to threaten a hostile takeover. I’m sorry. There are a lot of things I would have done differently if I had the chance.”
Something About You (Just Me & You) Page 10
