by Brenda Novak
“You said the name of your restaurant is Da Nonna?”
“Yes, but it’s not entirely mine. I only own half of it. My mother and I took over for my grandmother, once she passed. That’s why we changed the name to Da Nonna. It means Grandma’s place. But that’s the only change,” she added proudly. “We still use all of Nonna’s old recipes.”
“It sounds wonderful. I’ll stop in once I get settled. But I don’t want Mrs. Buchanon to have to pay for my dinner. Let me get my purse.” Natasha didn’t have a lot of cash, and her debit card had been declined at the U-Haul place, but she was hoping there’d be room for this meal.
“Don’t bother,” the woman said, stopping her. “Aiyana’s already taken care of it. And she’d be mad at me if I let you pay instead.”
“This is...such a nice welcome.” When Natasha put the basket down and opened the lid, the scent of garlic, onions and basil permeated the room. “There’s even a bottle of wine in here.”
Obviously curious, Mack walked over, and that was all it took to distract Lucas from his lunch. He followed Mack and leaned up against Natasha while Mack sorted through the basket. “Wow,” he said. “Looks delicious.”
“This must be your little boy,” Camilla said.
“Yes. His name’s Lucas. Can you say hello to Mrs. Ricci, Lucas?”
“Hello,” he mumbled shyly.
“What a cutie.” Camilla jerked her head to indicate Mack. “Looks just like his father, doesn’t he?”
For a moment, the whole world seemed to stand still. “Mack isn’t Lucas’s father,” Natasha said, oddly breathless, her heart in her throat. “My ex still lives in LA. Mack is...um...just a family friend who’s helping me move.”
Camilla’s face went as red as her hair. “Oh! I’m sorry. Aiyana made it sound as though you weren’t bringing your husband with you, but when I saw—” she gestured toward Mack “—and then Lucas, I assumed...”
Her words faded away when she realized she was only making things worse. “I have to go,” she said and hurried back down the walkway.
Mack didn’t move or speak as Natasha closed the door, and he didn’t offer to help when she lifted the basket into the kitchen. “Looks like we’ll have a great dinner,” she said, infusing as much enthusiasm into her voice as possible in an attempt to direct attention away from what’d just occurred. She’d always told herself and everyone else that Lucas belonged to Ace. But the truth was she didn’t know for sure—didn’t want to know, either. Although she and Ace hadn’t been exclusive when she’d returned to Whiskey Creek and spent that crazy night with Mack, she had slept with him before then, so chances were good Lucas belonged to Ace.
But sometimes when she looked at her son, she saw Mack’s likeness herself.
Lucas scrambled up on a chair Mack must’ve brought in and shoved the paper towel that held his sandwich aside so he could see inside the basket. “Are there any treats?”
“There’s some tiramisu, which is dessert.”
“Tira...what?”
She forced a laugh while watching Mack from the corner of her eye. “Never mind. You wouldn’t like that even if I could give it to you. I packed some snacks, so you don’t have anything to worry about. Speaking of which, we’d better finish unloading the van. I’ll just go brush my teeth first.”
Her mind was racing a million miles a minute, and so was her heart as she got out the toothpaste. It’ll be okay. Even if Lucas wasn’t Ace’s son, Mack couldn’t be mad at her. He’d never followed up after their night together. Not the way she’d wanted and needed him to. At the time, she’d fully believed he wouldn’t want to know.
She heard movement behind her and wished it was Lucas, but she could tell by the heavy tread on the stairs that it was Mack. He came up and leaned against the bathroom doorjamb, watching as she brushed her teeth.
His eyes never left her as she rinsed and dried her mouth. Finally, she answered the question she knew was burning uppermost in his mind. “It’s not possible.”
“You’d tell me?”
She dried her hands and tried to slip past him, but he caught her by the shoulders, which wasn’t hard to do since she only came up to his chest, and searched her face so thoroughly she could scarcely bring herself to meet his gaze. “Of course I would,” she lied. Things were what they were, and she was going to leave them that way. Lucas had a father; there was no reason to confuse him. And if she was wrong about the genetics, it didn’t matter. It wasn’t as if her mistake was costing Ace anything. She was taking care of Lucas herself. He wasn’t even paying child support. “Do you mind?” she said when Mack still didn’t step aside.
“Can we talk about the circumstances and timing?” he asked.
What was she going to do? She’d gotten over him, moved on with her life. She refused to open her heart or her mind to anything from the past. “I’ve already told you—no.”
“No, you don’t want to talk about it? Or no, it’s not a possibility?”
“Both.”
“Damn it, Tash,” he muttered, but he let go of her and moved out of the way.
* * *
It was difficult not to watch Lucas even more closely as they unloaded the truck. Mack didn’t want to put Natasha through anything else. Her life had been rough, and he’d inadvertently caused some of that pain. But did that mean he had to accept what she said without proof?
When she caught him studying Lucas, who was playing in the truck while they unloaded, he got back to work and lifted another box out of the moving van. “Where do you want this one?” he asked.
She seemed worried about what he was thinking and feeling, but she didn’t address it. He could tell she was too afraid—and that only made him more suspicious.
She peeked inside the flaps. “I’m sorry—I forgot to mark it. Looks like it goes in the bathroom.”
After she grabbed a different box, she followed him inside, and they made one trip after another until they’d managed to empty the van.
“Now I just need to put all this stuff away,” she said. “Moving is such a nightmare, isn’t it?”
He didn’t reply. She was trying to act as though that incident with Camilla Ricci had never occurred, but he couldn’t get the woman’s words out of his head: Looks just like his father, doesn’t he?
“Mack?”
“I’ll take the truck back to LA,” he said.
She nibbled at her bottom lip as she eyed him warily. “And then what?”
He came closer to her, so that he could lower his voice. “I’m going to buy an in-home paternity test.”
The blood drained from her face. “Why?”
He pointed at Lucas, who was busy taking toys out of a box they’d brought in. “That’s why.”
The gravity in his voice somehow drew Lucas’s attention, and he hurried over. “Me, Uncle Mack? Are you talking about me?”
Mack didn’t answer. He was too focused on Natasha, who didn’t seem to know what to say.
Lucas tilted his head back to look up at him. “Uncle Mack, are you mad?”
Mack pulled the boy close enough to be able to give him a reassuring pat. “No, I’m not mad. What happened was my fault.”
“What’d you do?” he asked.
“I made a mistake. But I’m hoping your mother will give me the chance to fix it.”
Natasha covered her face.
“Come on, Tash,” he said. “You know I would never have left you high and dry with a kid.”
She rubbed her forehead as though she had a spot on it she was trying to remove.
“Let me get the test,” he pressed. “Hiding from it won’t change the truth.”
“It’ll change other things,” she mumbled. “But now that you suspect, you’ll do it anyway.”
“I’d rather have your permission,” he said. “And I would rather you not hate th
e idea of it quite so much.”
She dropped her hands. “Damn it, Mack. I could’ve moved here myself. You didn’t have to come. Then that woman wouldn’t have said what she did and—and this probably would never have happened.”
She couldn’t even have rented the moving van without him. But he didn’t point that out. This wasn’t about helping her move and they both knew it. She was scared. If he was Lucas’s father, it would completely rewrite her child’s story, change one of the most important aspects of the boy’s life, which would be hard on Lucas and would certainly necessitate a difficult conversation with her ex-husband and his family.
Those were no small things.
“I’ve wondered from the beginning,” he admitted. “I would’ve asked you eventually, even if...if Camilla Ricci hadn’t said anything.” He lowered his head to catch her eye, since she was now staring at the floor. “I’ve just been working my way up to it.”
“I know,” she said with a sigh. “You almost asked me last night.”
His stomach filled with butterflies at the prospect of gaining proof of what he’d long suspected. Was he a father? What would it feel like to know for sure? “So you’re okay with my getting a paternity test?”
She blinked rapidly, giving him the impression she was on the verge of tears. “Where will you get one?” she asked without specifically answering.
“I researched it online. They sell them at Walgreens.”
“Walgreens,” she echoed faintly. “It’s that easy.”
“These days, yes.”
“How long does it take to get the results?”
“After we swab our cheeks—they need the mother’s DNA, too—and mail in all samples, it’ll take the lab only a couple of days before we can get the results online. So...from start to finish, including shipping, I’d say a week.”
She rubbed her palms on the front of her cutoffs, a nervous gesture he’d seen her do many times before—and one that drew his attention to her legs. She’d always had magnificent legs.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked. “Once we know, we can’t un-know. There will be no going back. And if what we suspect turns out to be true, your brothers will find out about that night seven years ago. Your father will, too. And my mother.” She drew a deep breath. “Maybe we should rethink this.”
She didn’t mention her ex, but he knew she had to be imagining what the results might mean for him, too. That their son didn’t belong to Ace would not be an easy thing to explain to him, especially after so long. And what would she tell Lucas?
“I’ve spent seven years thinking about it,” he told her.
“Thinking about what?” Lucas piped up.
“Thinking about you,” he replied and felt his heart melt as he lifted the boy into his arms and received a spontaneous hug.
Five
Mack left right after dinner. Natasha let Lucas help her unpack the kitchen, but once she got him into bed, she spent the remainder of the evening pacing. Was she facing yet another big upheaval?
If the paternity test came back positive, and Mack moved to Los Angeles, he’d be close enough to visit Lucas. Which meant he’d become a fixture in her life, too. There’d be phone calls to coordinate visitation, and he’d come to the house to take their son and bring him home. Maybe he’d even stay over once in a while. And she’d have to be amenable. How could she not be accommodating after everything he’d done for her?
And yet...how would she cope with having Mack back in her life? With having the man she’d always wanted to love her love her son instead?
Her phone began to ring. She could hear the vibration on the counter. Grabbing it, she checked the screen. Dylan was trying to reach her. She didn’t hear from him often, and they’d spoken recently, so she wondered if he was calling because he couldn’t get hold of Mack.
She pressed the talk button as she went out onto the front porch, where the katydids were singing and the air was cooling off as it grew late. “Hey, Dyl.”
“Tash, how are you?”
She sank onto the top step. Dylan was like a big brother to her. She loved him but also resented the fact that Mack had always put Dylan and his other brothers first, that he’d chosen to abide by their sense of propriety over being with her.
But Mack and his brothers were especially close and incredibly loyal to each other. They’d had to be to survive. So she supposed she should’ve expected that she would never quite be one of them—and yet, because they’d taken her and her mother in when they were homeless, she would be off-limits in a romantic sense. “Hanging in there,” she said. “What about you?”
“The same. It’s crazy busy at the shop.”
“That’s a good problem to have. How’re Cheyenne and Kellan?”
“Great. Chey’s now a beekeeper. We have a colony in our backyard. Not sure if I mentioned that the last time we talked. And Kellan is enjoying summer until football practice starts next month.”
“He’s growing up fast.”
“He sure is,” Dylan said. “How’s the move?”
“I’m managing.” She decided not to mention Mack. She was so used to Mack downplaying any attention he gave her that she’d made a habit of doing the same.
“From what I hear, you didn’t get a very good divorce attorney.”
Mack must’ve shared that recently, because even he hadn’t known much about her divorce until a couple of days ago. “She did her job.”
“Not according to Mack. He insists you got fleeced, which makes me feel terrible. I offered to help. Why didn’t you take the money and get a decent lawyer?”
Because she didn’t want to go even deeper into debt. And when she accepted their help, she fell more firmly into the “sister” category, something she’d been fighting ever since she’d fallen in love with Mack. Yes, along with her mother, they’d taken her in for three years when she was in high school. But they’d been adults at the time; she was the only minor. She hadn’t been raised with them or by them. And she would’ve traded everything the Amos brothers had ever done for her if only it would also have changed the nature of her relationship with Mack. She’d wanted him that badly.
But what they could’ve had together was in the past, she reminded herself. She wasn’t going to let her obsession with Mack dominate her life anymore. She’d made that decision when she married Ace, had cut all emotional ties—the ones she could cut, anyway. Now that she was divorced, and Mack was coming around again, it could get difficult. She wasn’t stupid. But she was determined to guard her heart and not wind up the brokenhearted young woman she’d once been. She would do anything to avoid that. “Because I didn’t want to fight,” she said. “I just wanted out.”
“I can understand that, but now you have to pay spousal support? That’s bullshit. Why can’t he work?”
That Ace made no real effort to support himself grated on her, as well. The men she’d admired most—the Amos brothers—worked hard. But when she’d been negotiating the divorce, she’d been so consumed with grief over the loss of Amelia Grossman that she hadn’t had the strength or the presence of mind to make sure that their finances and belongings were divided fairly. She simply hadn’t cared enough about physical objects and money to stop Ace from taking advantage of her. A child had been lost. “It’s only for the next three years.”
“Only?” he echoed, clearly perturbed. “What about all the student debt you’re carrying? Do you have enough to get by?”
She hoped he hadn’t been told she’d been unable to rent the moving van. “I’ll be fine, Dyl.”
After a slight pause, he said, “Would you tell me if you needed anything?”
“Of course.”
He sighed. “Since I’m not there, I can only take your word for it. But Mack will be closer to you now. I guess he’ll make sure.”
“Los Angeles is an hour and a ha
lf away. Mack and I won’t even see each other.”
She knew that statement was dependent on Lucas’s paternity, but he didn’t. Even still, he said, “Oh, really.”
“Yes, really,” she said, irritated by the skepticism in his response.
“Okay.” He backed off, but she could tell it was only to placate her. “By the way, I saw your mother last night for the first time in a long while.”
Natasha wanted to continue to insist that Mack wasn’t going to be a big part of her life—only as much as she had to allow if it turned out that he was indeed Lucas’s father. But with Lucas’s paternity still up in the air, she decided that now was not the time to keep going after that. “Where was she?” she asked, allowing herself to be distracted instead.
“Are you ready for this?”
She sat up straighter. The simple answer was no. Her mother had always been an embarrassment, had chosen the exact wrong thing to say or do in almost every situation. “That’s ominous.”
“She was at my father’s.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m not. I think they’re seeing each other again. She might even be living there.”
She shook her head. “They’d be stupid to get back together. It came to blows there at the end.” And she knew her mother was at least as much to blame as J.T. Anya could get abusive when she drank.
“Not only do they fight like cats and dogs, neither one of them will stand up and be responsible for themselves. But they aren’t the type to learn from past mistakes, or they’d both be in a much different situation right now.”
“You deserved a better father,” she said. “You all did.”
“And you deserved a better mother. But you’ve got us, so who needs her,” he joked.
“I can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve done.” She was truly grateful, had no idea what would’ve become of her without them. And yet...she knew all too well that having her life intersect with the Amos brothers—Mack in particular—had been as much a curse as it was a blessing.
