Caroselli's Accidental Heir

by Michelle Celmer

  “Oh, honey, it’ll be okay,” Sarah said, rubbing her back soothingly. Like a real mom. The kind who actually gave a damn about someone other than herself. “You just let it out.”

  Knowing she was making a huge fool of herself, but helpless to stop it, Lucy was glad that no one else was around to see her meltdown—

  “What did I miss?” someone said from behind them. A female voice with a distinct French accent.

  Oh, hell.

  Lucy sniffled and opened her eyes. Standing in the kitchen doorway was a tall, leggy blonde who, despite being Sarah’s age at least, looked young and stylish in a cream cashmere sweater and jeggings, her hair pulled back in a sleek ponytail. But when she saw the tears still clinging to Lucy’s cheeks, her smile dissolved and she dropped her purse on the counter. “Oh, Jesus, who died?”

  * * *

  “Tony! Wake up?”

  Tony bolted up in his chair, blinking himself awake, disoriented until he realized that he was still at the office.

  “Are you going to Nonno’s?”

  He looked up and saw his uncle Demitrio standing in his office doorway. He looked out the window; it was growing dark outside. How long had he been sleeping? “Yeah, of course. I’ll be there.”

  “Give an old man a lift? Your Aunt Madeline has my car.”

  “Sure,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “What time is it?”

  Demitrio looked at his watch. “Six-thirty.”

  “Six-thirty?” With a curse, he shot to his feet. He vaguely remembered leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes, thinking a twenty-minute nap would probably do him good. That was two and a half hours ago. Lucy was going to kill him. She was probably sitting in a corner at Nonno’s plotting a very slow and painful death at that very moment.

  “Oversleep?” Demitrio asked, looking mildly amused.

  Oh, had he ever.

  “I haven’t been getting much sleep since Lucy has been back.”

  His uncle grinned and Tony realized he’d taken that the wrong way. “What I mean is, I’ve given Lucy my bed and I’m sleeping on the fold-out couch in my office. It’s about as comfortable as a medieval torture device.”

  “So you two aren’t...?”

  “Truth is, I’m not exactly sure what we are.” He rose from his chair. “You ready to go?”

  Demitrio shrugged. “Sure.”

  Tony grabbed his jacket, tugging it on as they headed for the elevator.

  “I sense some urgency to get there quickly,” his uncle said.

  “I had planned to get to Nonno’s early so I could be there when Lucy met everyone. She doesn’t really have any family, and you know that ours can be a little intimidating at first.”

  Demitrio laughed. “That’s putting it mildly.”

  They stepped into the elevator and rode it down to the parking garage. “They’ll eat her alive.”

  “I don’t know about that. I met Lucy today when I stopped by Nonno’s. She strikes me as the type of girl who can hold her own.”

  “Oh, she is, but it would be nice if she didn’t have to for a change.”

  Traffic was heavy, and by the time they made it to Nonno’s everyone had started without them. Dinner was at seven sharp. It had been that way Tony’s entire life. Show up on time or eat your food cold...if there was any left. This was the one day out of the month that everyone threw caution to the wind and blew their diet. It was a feast, really.

  He spotted Lucy in the first chair next to Nonno, who always sat at the head of the table. Seated to her left was his mom, and beside her, his dad. Lucy was having what looked like a very animated conversation with the three of them. And she was smiling. But there was something different about her smile this time. Why had he never noticed the way it lit her entire face?

  He had the strongest urge to walk over to her chair, pull her to her feet and just hold her. Even if his entire family was watching. At the moment he didn’t care who saw them. He just wanted to touch her. And he wanted to apologize for being so damned inconsiderate. It would serve him right if she clocked him.

  “You’re late,” Nonno told them, alerting everybody at the table who hadn’t seen Tony and his uncle come in. Like Lucy.

  She turned and saw him standing there. He waited for the smile to fade, but it only grew wider. Was it possible that she was happy to see him?

  “Sit,” Nonno ordered.

  Aunt Madeline had saved his uncle a seat, so Tony took the only other empty chair, which was next to Nick at the opposite end of the table from Lucy. As the serving plates made the rounds he dutifully filled his plate, but he had a tough time keeping his eyes off Lucy. There was something distinctly different about her. Her skin glowed and her eyes sparkled. It was as if she’d come alive since he dropped her at Nonno’s house that afternoon. Or maybe it was his perception that had changed?

  Lucy didn’t like to talk about her family and he was sure there was a good reason for that. Maybe her childhood was worse than he’d imagined. Could it be that this was the first time he’d seen her smile and really mean it?

  The thought gave him a knot in his throat.

  Christ, what was wrong with him? What was with this sudden feeling of protectiveness, of wanting to take care of her? He’d never experienced anything like it. He only knew that he would do practically anything to keep her safe. To make her happy.

  When he thought about losing her...

  The air backed up in his lungs. Nope, he couldn’t go through that again.

  “Lucy looks good,” Nick said when he passed Tony the carrots. Tony took some, even though he didn’t have much of an appetite. “Everyone likes her and is wondering why this is the first time they’re meeting her.”

  And they would have to keep wondering because it was none of their business.

  “You dated her for like, what? A year?”

  “Almost.” If you could even call it dating. They were just...having fun. And if Nick was expecting details he would be thoroughly disappointed. Thankfully he had the attention span of a fruit fly, so Tony had no problem steering him away to a different subject. There was nothing Nick loved more than talking about himself.

  “Hey, how did the ultrasound go?” Tony asked him. “Did you find out what you’re having?”

  “That’s right, you missed it,” he said with a grin.

  “Missed what,” Tony asked.

  “Our announcement tonight. Terri wanted to do it that way. With flair.”

  “Jesus, she’s really turning into one of us, isn’t she?”

  “Scary, I know.”

  “I heard that,” Terri said from two seats over, giving her husband a look.

  Nick winked and blew her a kiss and the look dissolved into a smile.

  “It’s a girl,” she told Tony.

  “Wow, congratulations!”

  “How is Lucy doing with her pregnancy?” Terri asked him.

  “For about a month Terri was pretty miserable with morning sickness,” Nick said. “Which never seemed to happen in the morning, oddly enough. There was no predicting it. Out of the blue she would get this look, and God help us if we weren’t near a bathroom. It’s amazing the creative places you can find to barf when you’re really desperate.”

  From the other side of Nick, his sister Jessica leaned over and said, “Hey moron. Can we please talk about something other than barfing while we’re eating dinner?”

  “Yeah, sorry,” Tony said, giving Nick a shove.

  “Thank God that’s over now,” Nick said. “The whole first three months kind of sucked if you ask me.”

  He wouldn’t know. “I missed that part.”

  “Well, consider yourself lucky.”

  Tony wasn’t feeling all that lucky. Instead, he was feeling like he’d made a huge mis
take.

  It must have shown on his face.

  Nick set his fork down. “Tony, I’m really sorry. That was an insensitive thing to say.”

  Tony shrugged. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “You want to take a swing at me?”

  Tony laughed. “That’s okay. I appreciate the offer, though.”

  “You know, there’s something different about you lately,” Nick said.

  “It’s not every week a man learns his ex is pregnant with his child.”

  “No,” Nick said. “This started a while ago. Before Alice, even. In fact, I started to notice a change right around the time Lucy left.”

  After she left, he kept waiting to feel like himself again. The way he felt before he met Lucy. But he was beginning to believe that the man he was before Lucy simply didn’t exist anymore. Meeting her had changed him. He hadn’t even realized it until she was no longer there. “I guess her leaving hit me harder than I wanted to admit.”

  “Love is a funny thing. Terri and I were friends for almost twenty years before we figured out that we’re supposed to be together. If it hadn’t been for Nonno and his bribe, we might have gone through life never making that connection.”

  Is that what was happening to him? Was he falling in love with Lucy? Or was it possible that he was already there? Technically he had never been in love—at least, not that he knew of—so how was he supposed to know what it felt like?

  Dinner seemed to drag on forever, then Lucy helped clear the table which took another ten minutes. Then his dad and his Uncle Leo roped him into a conversation about work. Chocolate, his least favorite subject lately. When he was able to break free, he went looking for Lucy and found her sitting on the sofa surrounded by children.

  She looked up, saw him standing there and smiled. With a jerk of his head he gestured for her to follow him. But as she was getting up his sister Alana intercepted her.

  He was happy that she was getting along with everyone, but come on. This is why he never brought women to meet his family. They sucked people in. Whether they wanted to be sucked in or not. That used to annoy the hell out him, but now he was grateful. They may have been loud and obnoxious and nosy, but they really did mean well. He’d never truly appreciated that before now.

  But enough already.

  He walked over to where she and his sister stood. “Can I borrow Lucy?”

  “Nice of you to show up,” Alana said. “If I were Lucy, I wouldn’t marry you, either.”

  Seriously? His family was on Lucy’s side? “And everyone wonders why I never bring a guest to dinner,” he said, taking Lucy’s hand and pulling her along with him.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Someplace we can be alone.” He led her upstairs to the spare bedroom, which he knew had a lock on the door, and he used it. Then he took her by the shoulders and turned her to face him, taking it all in. “Wow.”

  She looked down at herself, then back up to him. “I know, I’m enormous.”

  “No. You look beautiful.”

  “Oh, it’s the dress,” she said, smoothing the silky material over her belly.

  Honestly, he hadn’t even noticed what she was wearing, but now that he had, he liked it. It was...the icing on the cake. She could wear a burlap sack and he would still want her. “It isn’t the dress. It’s you.”

  She flushed with pleasure.

  “I’m so sorry. I wanted to be here when you met everyone.”

  “It’s okay.”

  He shook his head. “No, it’s not.”

  “It really is. I mean, like, I should be thanking you. It was good for me to do this alone. I’m glad that I didn’t know about dinner when you dropped me off. I probably would have found some excuse to get out of it.”

  “What do you mean, you didn’t know about dinner? It’s the last Friday of the month.”

  “I know. I guess I forgot. We’ve both been preoccupied lately.”

  That was an understatement. “I should have thought to remind you,” he said.

  “It’s not your fault.”

  No, it was. She needed him to be on top of things, to take care of her. “Lucy, I’m sorry. I guess...I’ve been having dinner at my grandparents’ house every last Friday of every month for most of my life. I don’t even consciously show up. I get in the car after work and it just drives itself here.”

  “Like I said, it’s okay. I had so much fun today. Nonno isn’t at all like I expected. No one was.”

  “What did you expect?”

  She hesitated. “Well, you didn’t paint a very pretty picture of your family, so...”

  “I didn’t?”

  “In a year I barely heard you say a positive word about any of them.”

  No, that couldn’t be right. Was he really that negative when he talked about his family?

  “And who is Carrie?”

  “Rob’s wife. I didn’t see her here.”

  “I guess she’s in Los Angeles. Everyone keeps asking if I met her yet. I’m assuming there’s a reason why.”

  Yep, there was. “Alice is her best friend.”

  “Oooooh. Now I get it.”

  “That’s how I met Alice.”

  “Carrie is going to hate me, isn’t she?”

  He shook his head. “Not if she takes the time to get to know you.”

  “You think so?”

  “I do.” Lucy was so nice, so easy to get along with, he couldn’t imagine anyone not liking her. Besides, she had nothing to do with his relationship with Alice. That was all on him.

  “I know you almost just got here, but would you mind if we went home?” Lucy asked. “Or maybe you could drop me home and come back? I’m beyond exhausted.”

  “You were supposed to be resting today.”

  “And I did, just like Dr. Hannan said. I think all this waiting around is starting to get to me.”

  “I guess that means you haven’t heard from the doctor.”

  She shook her head. “I really hoped we would hear today, but what are the chances he’d call on a Friday night?”

  She had a point. So they would have to wait until Monday, which meant it was going to be a very long weekend.

  * * *

  It was eight-thirty when they decided to leave Nonno’s house, and almost nine by the time they made it to the car. Lucy never knew it could take so long to say goodbye. In one day, she hadn’t received so many hugs and kisses since...well, probably ever. She didn’t think there was a single shy or reserved individual among the Carosellis. She had been worried she would wind up sitting in the corner bored while the family did their thing. She should have listened when Tony told her that they sucked people in. He was right. She had always thought that sounded sort of creepy. But it wasn’t, not at all. It almost felt as if she had a real family.

  They were loud, they were nosy, and they were wonderful.

  “So, I guess that’s what’s it like to be in a big family,” she said.

  Tony chuckled. “A certifiably crazy family.”

  “But you wouldn’t trade them in for anything.”

  “I don’t know. I might be willing to negotiate.” He glanced over at her, grinning. “What are you offering?”

  “Be careful what you wish for.” She would take them in a minute. She sure wished someone would take her mom off her hands.

  “Maybe I wouldn’t trade them,” he said, “but I might be willing to loan them out.”

  A loaner family? Wasn’t that better than no family at all? “Your mom was so amazing to me today, and I really liked your uncle Demitrio.”

  “Yeah. I love my uncle Leo, but Demitrio and I have always been closer for some reason.”

  “You look just like him.”

  “Do
I?”

  He hadn’t noticed? Had the man never looked in a mirror? “You look alike, and sound alike. You even laugh alike. And you have the same build. When I first saw him I thought it was you.”

  “I guess we do look a little alike,” he said.

  “Do he and your mom not like each other? When she walked in, there was tension.”

  “Old scars maybe. I don’t know. My dad and Demitrio got into it a couple of months ago.”

  “An argument?”

  “More like a brawl.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Leo had to pull them apart. I’m assuming that it has something to do with that fact that my mom and Demitrio used to date.”

  Oh, now this was interesting. “When?”

  “Before Demitrio joined the army. After he left, my mom started seeing my dad.”

  “That had to be weird for your family. At least, I would think it would be. A torn-between-two-brothers situation.”

  “I suppose there could still be hard feelings. The truth is, I try to stay out of it.”

  It amazed her how he could be so clueless about what she considered blindingly obvious. That Demitrio could very well be Tony’s father.

  Is that why Tony’s grandparents were so rough on Sarah when she and Tony Sr. first married? Did they know it was Demitrio’s baby she was carrying? It sounded a little farfetched, but if she had learned one thing working as a bartender, it was that everyone had secrets, no matter their background or social status. It would be easy enough to figure out.

  Meaning that if he really were Demitrio’s son, someone would have figured it out by now.

  She was letting her imagination get away from her. Again.

  “Why the sudden interest in my uncle?” Tony asked, and she wondered if she should voice her suspicions, then decided it would probably be a bad idea. When things were going so well, why invite trouble?

  “Just curious,” she said, and he accepted the excuse without question. By the time they got to his apartment she had herself convinced she was being ridiculous. Mostly, anyway. Besides, it was none of her business.