by Cora Brent
“You have anything to add, Dom?” Gio asked.
I sat down in a random dining chair. “Nope, nothing at all.”
“Well,” said Melanie, “if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go to the office now.”
“See you later, Melanie.” Gio waved.
I said nothing. I started moving one of the longer tables into the center of the room. Gio came over to help. “You know, Donna misses you,” he said. “Tara and I stopped by Sonoran Acres on Sunday, and she was glad to see us, but said that you haven’t been around in a while.”
“What do you mean I haven’t been around in a while?” I asked, indignant over any suggestion that I was neglecting my grandmother. “I was there on Saturday. It was the only break I took all weekend except for sleep. I brought her Taco Bell. You know how she’s always asking for soft chicken tacos and says the kitchen staff won’t make them. We ate tacos and watched The Breakfast Club in her room.”
Gio laughed. “Ah well. She forgets things sometimes.”
“I guess it just wasn’t a memorable visit for her,” I said. “Did she seem okay otherwise?”
“Sure. Except she didn’t want to let go of Leah when it was time to leave. But once a nurse arrived to bring her to her hair appointment, she was all smiles.”
I thought about my diminutive grandmother, the undoubted Esposito powerhouse matriarch who’d raised two unruly grandsons when she should have been enjoying a calm retirement.
“I was thinking,” I said, “when the restaurant opening is out of the way, I might buy a house and bring Donna home with me.”
“Dom.” Gio shook his head and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “We’ve talked about this before. She’s happy at Sonoran Acres. Plus her medical issues demand regular supervision, and as her mind starts to slip even more—”
“All right, all right,” I grumbled, turning away. “I get it. It’s just that sometimes she looks at me with those confused eyes, and I hate leaving her there.”
Gio sighed and came closer. He touched my shoulder. “I know how you feel,” he said gently. “Last year Tara and I talked about getting out of the condo and buying a house so Donna could come live with us. But we had to face the reality that none of us are equipped to give her the kind of care that she’s going to be needing.”
This conversation hurt. My grandmother was eighty-two, and of course I realized she wouldn’t be around forever. I just didn’t like to think about it. Instead I liked to remember her as the tender force that would scoop me out of my bed as a small child when I would cry out from the nightmares of cold and abandonment.
My brother squeezed my shoulder, sending me some comfort. Gio was the one person who always seemed to understand everything I was feeling without me saying a word. Yet when we were kids, I’d always been the one to look out for him when it came to navigating city streets or playground bullies or the sheer bewilderment of being deserted by our mother.
When the Esposito family suffered ruin and a terrible rift that still reverberated, Gio never once faltered in his loyalty to me, not even when I would have deserved it. I couldn’t imagine any man I’d rather have as a brother.
“So tell me, Giovanni,” I said, “do you have any thoughts on how to make this odd-shaped dining room flow a little better?”
He grinned. “I might have a few ideas.”
As we worked together and then took a walk down the street to grab something cold to drink, Gio mentioned Melanie only once, saying he was pleased to see that everything was working out.
“She’s a keeper,” I agreed, giving an involuntary glance back at the stately brick outline of Espo 2.
Gio, who could read my moods almost as well as I could, raised an eyebrow and waited to see if I would say more. I didn’t.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MELANIE
“Come in,” I called at the knock on the door.
A cloud of carrot-colored hair preceded the anxious face of Patsy del Ray.
“Um, Melanie,” she said, “sorry to disturb you.”
“You’re not disturbing me, Patsy. How can I help you?”
Patsy tossed an uneasy glance at the empty space behind her, then eased inside the office. “I’m off the clock now to go pick up my kids, but I just wanted to double-check what time I should be back here tonight.”
“Five o’clock will be fine,” I said, repeating the same thing I’d already told the staff twice today. Patsy was a forty-year-old single mother who used to ride the rodeo circuit. Dominic had second-guessed me on hiring her because she had no serving experience, but so far my instincts had proven correct. Throughout training, Patsy had proved to be our most capable and conscientious worker, setting a good tone for the younger employees. Besides, if you can stay on a horse, you’re probably not going to drop plates.
Patsy bit her lip and then continued. “I know we already discussed this, but Mr. Esposito just told me to come confirm with you before I took off.”
“Well, you can tell Mr. Esposito you’re all clear until five.”
Patsy nodded, looking relieved. Dominic made her visibly nervous. Actually he made all the new staff a little jumpy. The closer we inched toward opening day, the more he brooded about every little detail. I couldn’t really blame him for agonizing over his own restaurant, but I wished he’d make an effort to be friendlier, at least to the newbies. They all kind of tiptoed around him as if he was a wild animal outside of his cage.
“I’ll be back soon,” Patsy promised. “My mom is going to be bringing the girls by tonight, and they’re so excited.”
I smiled. “We’re all excited.”
After Patsy left, I paused and chewed thoughtfully on my pen. Only two days remained until the grand opening. Tonight was the soft opening for friends and family. It was both a courtesy event and a marketing tactic. We were expecting a sizable crowd of friends, relatives, and a few members of the local press. All food and drinks were on the house as the point of the event wasn’t to turn a profit but to welcome Esposito’s to the neighborhood and get word out about the food.
Since the crack of dawn this morning, both Dominic and Gio had been putting the finishing touches on the dining room and testing out the kitchen equipment. In between taking care of a few administrative tasks, I’d been giving pep talks to the staff. Aimee, Carl, and Tim would be here from Espo 1, so we’d have some seasoned employees, but our new people were nervous. I was a little nervous with them. In a few short hours, I’d be right out there on the floor in an Esposito’s T-shirt, taking orders and serving food.
One thing I’d learned was the virtue of dressing comfortably when it came to rushing around with pizza trays balanced on each palm. The corporate look that I’d clung to so stubbornly had been abandoned, and now I arrived at work every day in a clean Esposito’s T-shirt and either a pair of jeans or a comfortable, flowing skirt, and minimal makeup. I didn’t miss dressing up. I loved the feel of tennis shoes instead of punishing heels. Plus I enjoyed the activity and the people and the sense that I was part of a bigger picture, a family. I hadn’t felt that way in a long time.
The weekly payroll still needed to be processed, so I tried to focus on that. I printed out the reports and began checking off each line item, using a brand-new pen that wrote in six different colors. I collected pens. Not intentionally, I just tended to accumulate them. I was forever forgetting how many I had and recklessly acquiring more. If someone had to inventory my life’s possessions, they would find thirty-eight pairs of shoes, endless wads of cat hair, and enough blue ballpoint pens to fill a bathtub.
Meanwhile out there in the restaurant, Dominic was yelling at someone about failing to clean the dough bins properly. I hoped it wasn’t Adam, a sensitive artist who’d already cried twice in training. Sometimes Dominic didn’t realize how much of a bear he could be, especially when he was running on adrenaline and caffeine.
I was in the middle of double-checking the payroll reports when the office door was thrown open with such force the knob hi
t the wall and left a dent.
A wild-eyed and clearly aggravated Dominic Esposito haunted the doorway. “There you are,” he growled as if I’d been playing hide-and-seek instead of sitting where I was supposed to be sitting and doing the job I was supposed to be doing.
“Yes, here I am,” I said a little warily. I’d become accustomed to his gruff moods. For the most part I’d learned to work well with Dominic. When the occasional clash arose, I tried to bite my tongue and remember that he was the boss. But whether the atmosphere was cooperative or stormy, there was always an underlying current of erotic tension that kept me on edge. I saw the way he watched me. And I saw the way he would jerk his head in the other direction and pretend otherwise. I wondered if he realized how much I watched him too.
Dominic jerked his head. “I don’t have time to run through the food handling procedures with the kitchen staff again. I need you to take care of it.”
“Sure,” I said, even though I’d already done that at least ten times. By this point I was confident the kitchen staff had memorized the rules even better than I had. “Let me just finish payroll, and I’ll get right on it.”
“Fine.” Dominic started to walk away.
I stood up. “Wait.”
He turned around, scowling. “What?”
“Remember what I told you earlier?”
“Melanie, there are eight thousand things that need to happen in the next three hours. Can you be more specific?”
I closed my fist around my pen and tried to ignore his rudeness. “That reporter from the Sun Republic is going to be here later, and she’s doing a piece on the restaurant.”
“Okay.” He shrugged tiredly. “That’s fine.”
I paused, wondering if I ought to press him further when he was obviously in an agitated frame of mind. “Have you given any more thought to what we talked about?”
“Remind me what that was,” he said. He stretched his arms, hooking his fingertips to the top of the doorframe and causing his shirt to stretch over his chest muscles in a way I couldn’t stop staring at.
“The happy hour menu,” I said. “Downtown is loaded with young professionals looking for the next trendy spot to land after a long work week. That spot could be Esposito’s.”
Dominic dropped his arms and was shaking his head before I finished talking. “That’s not really the kind of vibe we’re going for. This is a family restaurant, not a sports bar.”
I frowned. “I don’t understand why you’d close the door on an opportunity. Did you look at the area demographic charts I sent you?”
Dominic squeezed the back of his neck and made a face. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. I really hoped he would dash home to shower and clean up before the publicity shots happened. Right now his appearance was closer to a prison inmate’s than a successful restaurateur’s. The fact that he managed to pull it off, looking like a sex god, was beside the point.
“Not yet,” he admitted. Then he stopped glowering and gave me a frank stare. “Melanie, I know I’ve been running around here like a lunatic, and I haven’t taken a moment to thank you for the great job you’ve done. I do notice, though. I do appreciate it. Believe me, every day when I walk in to work, I’m extremely glad you’re here.”
I dropped my pen. My jaw might have fallen. In fact I was so stunned I couldn’t summon any words to respond with. It didn’t matter, though. Dominic was already gone.
Payroll still needed to be processed, or else there’d be twenty-seven livid Esposito’s employees with no money in the bank on Friday. Yet I was finding it tough to concentrate. After working closely with him, I’d come to realize that praise didn’t come easily or naturally to Dominic Esposito. Generally if he wasn’t scowling or shouting, it meant you weren’t screwing up too badly. Words of encouragement had so far seemed to be as rare as a supermoon.
“I’m extremely glad you’re here.”
That last line was probably just an offhand comment, yet it kept running through my mind, and I couldn’t do anything about it. I also couldn’t do anything about the way my heart started hammering like a heavy-metal drumbeat every time Dominic Esposito looked in my direction. That side effect was purely involuntary.
I felt myself blushing as I remembered the day Dominic had abruptly run his fingers through my hair and caressed my neck. Right then I wanted him so much I thought I would pass out. But then Gio walked in, and we practically recoiled from one another. We hadn’t touched since, not even accidentally. Whatever this thing was between us, we didn’t dare acknowledge it out loud. Even though the practical side of me understood that screwing around with my hot boss was not an excellent decision, I fantasized at least ten times a day about what kind of lover Dominic would be. It was becoming a tough habit to break.
Shaking myself out of my reverie, I returned to work. Once all the administrative priorities were out of the way, there was nothing keeping me inside the office. When I stepped back into the restaurant, it was like stepping into the calm before the storm. The tables were all impeccably set, and the servers were milling around, nervously polishing and straightening. I greeted several of them warmly and then made my way to the kitchen.
“How’s it going?” I asked. Gio was back there with Tim, Adam, and Gilberto, a good-natured fellow who’d worked for years in the kitchen of a famous gourmet taco shop before it closed six months ago.
“Hey, Melanie,” Gio said cheerfully as he peered into a dough bin. Unlike his brother, he seemed calm and collected. Dominic was nowhere in sight.
Tim was hovering by the ovens. “Gio, you still want to do one more test run before we get crowded?”
Gio mulled that over. “Yeah, let’s do that. Who wants some pizza?” he shouted into the dining room.
“But Dominic said to avoid messing up the kitchen,” Adam said as worry wrinkles deepened between his brows.
Gio only laughed. “It’s a pizzeria, folks. The kitchen is supposed to be messy. Besides, I’m hungry. Aren’t you?”
I watched as they all jumped into action. Gio checked out the fire burning at the rear of one of the mammoth brick ovens. There was something comforting and rather old-fashioned about the sight of the fire within the wide brick structure. Tim and Gilberto began rolling out the round, equal blobs of dough that would be shaped into individual pizzas. Adam uncovered the bins of sauce, cheese, and toppings while Gio waited, whistling softly with pizza peel in hand.
“Did Dominic leave?” I asked him.
“Yup,” he nodded. “He was here until three a.m. and is working on two hours of sleep. I sent him home to go make himself presentable. Nobody wants to order pizza from a belligerent woolly mammoth.”
“Can’t disagree with you there,” I said, smiling at his description. “I’ll bet he argued with you, though.”
Gio grinned. “Course he did. But I know how to win every now and then.”
When the pizzas were ready, Gio called the staff into the kitchen for a snack and a short meeting. He made everyone laugh with some stories of near disasters during the opening of Espo 1 four years ago, including an incident where Gio himself dropped a vat of marinara sauce on the floor an hour before opening.
“Swear to god, you guys, it looked like a crime scene,” he recalled, “or maybe the set of a horror movie. But you know what? We all pulled together, got everything cleaned up, and by the time the doors opened, no one was the wiser. So the moral of the story is, whatever happens tonight, don’t panic. Come see me. Come see Dominic. Or, if we’re not available, go to Melanie. We’ll handle it together.”
The staff enjoyed their pizza and relaxed for a few minutes. Gio was good at things like this, putting nervous minds at ease. Dominic would have probably said something terse and semithreatening like, “Don’t fuck up, or there’ll be hell to pay.”
A few last-minute glitches cropped up. There was a problem with the sink in the ladies’ room, so I had to call a plumber to make an emergency call. Gio made the decision to seal off the back patio
since that space wasn’t entirely ready for prime time. Tim managed to smack his head on a kitchen shelf, and at my insistence, sat at a corner table with an ice pack pressed to his forehead, which was already purpling.
In time a clean-shaven and calmer-looking Dominic returned. On his arm was a tiny, elderly woman whose faded, blue eyes danced as they took in every detail of the restaurant. I’d never met her, but I was sure she was Donna Esposito, the legendary family matriarch I’d heard so much about.
“Donna,” Gio shouted, and ran over with open arms.
I watched discreetly as the old woman beamed at her two grandsons. I liked seeing Dominic with his family. It exposed a whole other side of him, a softer side that was separate from the stern, driven boss.
Dominic’s head snapped up, almost as if he’d heard me thinking about him. He caught my eye, and I had to suppress a shiver of desire. He didn’t look away. I would have paid a fairly large sum of money to know what was going through his head as he stared at me.
It was Gio who waved me over, though. “Melanie. Come over here.”
Dominic continued to watch silently as I approached. He gently draped a protective arm across his grandmother’s frail shoulders and finally nodded in my direction when I was two feet away.
“Donna,” Dominic said in a polite voice, “this is Melanie Cruz, our assistant manager, bookkeeper, and all around indispensable asset. Melanie, this is my grandmother, Donna Esposito.”
Donna’s eyes focused on me and instantly lit up. “Oh, so this is her,” she said excitedly.
Gio was confused. “Who?”
“The girl,” Donna said as if everyone ought to know exactly what she meant. She extended a small, paper-thin hand. “You’re so pretty. Dominic didn’t tell me that, but he didn’t have to. I could tell from the way he talked about you that you were pretty.”
