Winner: The Mathesons Book 4

by Declan Rhodes

  He started to grin, and my doubts dissipated. Tony was into it. He tossed his head slightly to the right like he was preening for a camera.

  “Well, like I said. It’s not an actual filmed commercial. Mainly, we need a face, and when I thought about someone who could be both engaging and contemporary, I thought about my little brother. You’re an inspiration.”

  Suddenly, Tony leaned forward and squinted. “This isn’t about you wanting something from me, is it? I’m starting to latch onto this idea of my face hawking soda. Don’t go popping my balloon later, or I’ll smother you in your sleep.”

  “Aww, man, don’t you trust me?”

  “I trusted you that one time you told me that anchovies tasted good on pizza as long as they cooked them the right way.”

  “Okay, yeah, I was trying to pull one over on you when I said that. Sometimes you can be a little gullible.”

  “And I trusted you when you said that Mom would love an electric can opener for Mother’s Day.”

  “That was only because I was self-conscious about what I already got for her, but it turned out she loved the cactus. Who’d have known?”

  Tony continued his list. “And I trusted you…”

  I held up my right hand. “Okay, yeah, I get it. You’re my little brother. I’m going to find you handy to get myself out of a mess once in a while, but I’m serious about this. I think the judges of the contest will love you.”

  Tony tilted his head slightly to the right. “Yeah?

  I nodded. “In fact, if you’re okay with the idea, I’m going to text Jamie right now to let him know.”

  “Did you say the people judging the contest will see me, and maybe a whole bunch of others will, too?”

  My little brother’s vanity was showing through, and it was adorable. “Yep, and who knows, if the company likes our ideas, they might even decide to launch a real campaign featuring your face.”

  “I think there has to be a catch somewhere, but I’ll bite. If I’m going down, it sounds like I’m bringing you and the Jamie dude with me. Does he know you’re my brother? We don’t have any nepotism issues, do we?”

  “Of course, I told him that we’re related. And Jamie knows how brothers work. He’s got four of them. I won’t even address the nepotism comment. This isn’t Washington, DC.”

  Tony counted on his fingers. “Damn! That’s like Uncle Lorenzo’s family. Doesn’t he have five boys? And three girls, too? I have to admit that I lose count of our cousins sometimes. There’s so many of them.”

  I laughed hard. “I do, too. I keep a list of them on a piece of paper in my wallet, so I’ll have it handy when necessary. Mom has all the info tucked away in her head, and she gives me that look if I don’t know who she’s talking about.”

  “That look—yeah, I know the one you’re talking about. So, anyway, let’s get back to the important stuff. That would be me as the star of your commercial.”

  “Just say, yes.”

  “Oh, man, yeah, yes. So, you’re going to text Jamie about it? Maybe you need a quick pic to go with it.” Tony cradled his chin with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand while slightly squinting his eyes to try and appear sophisticated.”

  I said, “A photo’s not a bad idea, but be yourself. How about a small, normal smile. That’s the best.”

  “Okay, fine, but tell him that I can be as glam and fab as you want.” As Tony relaxed his face and smiled, I realized that he was going to be a hell of a handsome man someday. He would break more than a few hearts.

  I snapped the photo with my phone. “This isn’t half bad.”

  Tony looked at the image and rolled his eyes. “If you like accountants, I guess I’m fine like that. It’ll have to do.”

  I ignored Tony’s self-deprecating lines and typed my message to Jamie.

  “Game on! Just wanted to let you know we’ve got our model, and we’re going to win this. That’s my little brother, Tony, in the pic. See you at work tomorrow!”

  7

  Jamie

  As I approached Moretti’s, the Italian restaurant owned by Angelo’s family, I wondered how I’d never discovered it in my time living in Dallas. A small crowd of customers was waiting on the sidewalk with little buzzers to let them know when their tables were ready. It was still early in the evening for dinner. Moretti’s was a popular place.

  I turned toward Angelo at my side. “I guess we’ll need to wait for a table. It looks like your family’s establishment is a first-come, first-serve no reservations restaurant.

  “No to the first, and yes to the second. There’s an old family story about that. When Moretti’s caught on here in Dallas, Grandpa started taking reservations. Then, one night, an old friend from Sicily magically appeared in town, but the place was booked all night long.”

  “He had to give the poor guy take out? After he traveled all the way from Europe?”

  Angelo laughed, and I bit my lip. He’d let his hair down after leaving work. Without it tied back, the dark, wavy mane tumbled down to his shoulders. I didn’t know why, but I’d always had a “thing” for guys with long hair if they took good care of it. Those silky waves cried out for me to run my fingers through them.

  Angelo said, “No, he invited his friend up to the family apartment where everybody doted on him. There was plenty of food available there in the family kitchen, but Grandpa changed the restaurant’s policy that night. I can still see him as he told the story. My grandfather was a phenomenal man. He used his hands a lot when he talked. He proclaimed, ‘Moretti’s is for everybody! Every night is for everybody!’”

  “So why don’t we need to wait for a table?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  A few seconds after we stepped inside, a middle-aged woman elegantly dressed in a close-fitting black dress stepped up to greet us. She held out her hands to cup both sides of my face. “You must be Jamie!” Turning toward Angelo, she used a slightly scolding tone of voice. “And you didn’t tell me he’s such a handsome man!”

  Angelo sighed. “Uh, guess I missed that, Ma.”

  The intimacy of the first physical contact startled me, but I decided to go along with the approach of Angelo’s mom and not step back for fear that she would interpret my actions as rejection. Ma Moretti placed one hand on my belly. “And so slim. We need to fatten him up a bit, my angel.”

  While Angelo stepped in between us to slow the touching, I put together the word angel and the name Angelo. The pairing made sense. I was finding out that Angelo was a nice guy, if not quite angelic.

  “Jamie, this is my mom, Elena. And mom, I didn’t tell you he was good-looking, that’s true, but it’s not important to our project.”

  She touched my cheeks again. “So, handsome. My angel has cousins that are single. One of them, Anna, is quite beautiful. Maybe…”

  Angelo cut her off, and I pursed my lips to stop myself from laughing. He asked, “Is the table ready?”

  “Of course. Tony fussed over it for an hour after he got home from school. Over and over, he mentioned that we had such an important guest on the way. I must get back to work, but if there is anything you need, Jamie, let me know.”

  As she stepped aside, Angelo led the way to our table, shaking his head with each step. He stopped for a moment and whispered, “Ma loves gorgeous men, and she doesn’t hide her opinions. I sometimes wonder how Dad hangs on to her, but he does. They are so incredibly in love. It inspires me. Someday…” Angelo’s voice drifted off as he began to weave his way between tables of happy customers.

  When Angelo pushed through the swinging doors to the kitchen and held it open for a server exiting with a tray full of delicious-looking food, I stopped and looked around with a confused expression on my face. He said, “We’re over in the corner. I hope you don’t mind a table in the kitchen. It’s usually the best seat at great restaurants.”

  My uncertainty melted away. I remembered Mason bragging about getting the kitchen table with Kyle at one of his favorite places to ea
t in Los Angeles. The table for my dinner with Angelo was almost in a separate room to itself. It was walled off from the hustle and bustle of the kitchen on three sides, but we could still see the cooks and chefs at work.

  A small cactus sat in a pot in the center of the table. Angelo said, “I think that’s Tony’s idea of a joke, but Ma has a collection of cactus. She keeps them on a sun porch Dad had built onto the back of the house upstairs.”

  “I love cactus. I bought one in college, and it was the only green thing I could keep alive. Benign neglect seemed to work for me.”

  Dinner was a phenomenal affair. Angelo’s mom served us herself, and she fussed over me. She touched my shoulders and my hair in appreciation, and when she brought a plate of cannoli for dessert, she said, “Angelo and Tony worked hard on these. They are such good boys! Perhaps you can find my angel a pretty girl, and then you can double date with his cousin, Anna. She lives over in Fort Worth. It might as well be next door.”

  A sudden realization sank in. Angelo wasn’t out to his family. When we first met after the project pairing, I wasn’t certain that he was gay either, but he joined right in with my appreciation of a few handsome men at the deli where we had our first official meeting. Angelo cleared up any questions later.

  Angela’s mom wanted to fix both of us up with a woman. She assumed we were both straight. As Elena left us to our dessert, I leaned partway across the table and whispered, “I didn’t know you were still in the closet at home. You told me that everyone at work knows that you’re gay.”

  My comment instantly put him on the defensive. Angelo said, “We’re not here to discuss romantic entanglements. That’s why I’ve been trying to get Mom off that topic. We’re here to do work, right?”

  He looked up at me with those dark, sensitive eyes. I fought to keep myself from getting lost in them. “Yeah, that’s right. We’re here to work.”

  I took a bite of the cannoli. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d tasted a dessert so incredibly creamy with just the right amount of sweetness. “And apparently we’re here to eat well, too.”

  As I cleaned my plate by taking the last bite, Elena appeared again. She placed her hand on my shoulder and asked, “Did you get enough to eat? Would you like another cannoli? They only have five calories apiece. I promise.”

  I patted my belly, which felt like a ripe watermelon. “No, I couldn’t eat another bite. I’m so full, but it was an incredible meal. Thank you very much.”

  She beamed at me. “I’m so happy about that. You’ll have to come back and visit us often. Do your parents live in Dallas?”

  “Oh, no, I’m originally from Los Angeles, and they still live out there in California.”

  Angelo butted in. “Ma, I hate to be rude, but I promised Jamie that he’d get to meet Tony before he goes home tonight. We’re having Tony help us with the advertising project at work.”

  Elena squeezed my shoulder. “Well, yes, I understand. Tony’s a good boy. I’ve raised two excellent boys. I don’t know how my brother Lorenzo and his wife Sofia do it with eight children. That’s enough to send even the best mother to an early grave.”

  “Ma…”

  Angelo’s mom was fun. If she ever got together with my mom, I was confident they could happily talk for hours. I said, “Thank you again, Mrs. Moretti, and I’m certain that I’ll be back here to eat again.”

  The family resemblance between Angelo and his younger brother, Tony, was obvious. Tony had perfectly clear, smooth skin, and he trimmed his hair shorter, but the nose and eyes were very similar. The photos Angelo showed me were accurate. His brother was photogenic, but I thought Angelo was more interesting, at least in appearance. In manner, Tony was more polite toward me than his older brother.

  Tony started to blush as soon as we shook hands. He said, “I can’t believe that you want me to be part of your project. I’m just an ordinary guy, but I guess that describes most of the people I see in TV commercials now. I’ll do my best to not screw up your project. How’s this?”

  Tony turned his face to the side to show off his profile. I said, “That’s nice.”

  “Well, it’s not my best side.” He turned in the opposite direction. I couldn’t tell the difference. I’d never really understood the concept of a good or bad side. I preferred to see faces from the front.

  With a slightly scolding tone, Angelo said, “Just be yourself. Why’s the whole family have to act up around Jamie?”

  I said, “It’s okay. You should see my brothers. Mason tries to take control of everything while Tate just stands or sits there with his arms folded across his chest, looking like a private investigator examining every movement you make.”

  “Oh, they sound like fun,” said Tony.

  Angelo started to shoo his brother off. He said, “We’re not quite ready for you yet in the project, but maybe this weekend I’ll start taking some photos. Right now, I have to talk to Jamie one-on-one before he has to leave for the night.”

  “What’s wrong with your bedroom?” asked Tony. “There’s plenty of space to talk in there.”

  I swallowed hard. The bedroom was always my danger zone. I couldn’t imagine Angelo having any serious thoughts about doing anything with me. Outside of the project, I was confident he didn’t want to have any contact. Still, when you put me in a room with an empty bed—it was an invitation for strange things to happen.

  Seeing the frown on Angelo’s face, Tony said, “Okay, yeah, I get it. Good to meet you, Jamie. I hope I get to see you at the awards ceremony. I’ll make sure that you’re first on my list to thank.”

  Angelo rolled his eyes. “There is no awards ceremony. Goodnight, Tony.”

  After we heard the door to Tony’s room close, I said, “He’s great for a little brother, and I understand why you suggested him for our project. People will love looking at him on the screen. They’ll be too busy wondering about the handsome guy to realize that my words suck.”

  “Damn, I hope they don’t.”

  I pushed myself into a corner of the sofa while Angelo sat at the other end. I said, “Speaking of words; if you want to talk about the closet thing, I’m willing to listen. I might even have some reasonable advice to give.”

  Angelo started to interrupt. “I’m not really…”

  Ignoring his efforts, I kept talking. “Back in college, one of my best friends was in a situation sort of like yours. I didn’t have to deal with it because two of my brothers came out before Benji and me. No one was surprised at all about us, but this friend, Dave, was the only son in a family with two daughters. His parents were pretty traditional, and they expected Dave to carry on the family name and all of that.”

  Angelo didn’t try to stop me once I got rolling, but I watched him looking all around the room, almost everywhere but directly at me, while I told my story. I didn’t know whether he was bored, or if locking eyes with me would bring it all too close to home.

  “Dave said it wasn’t that hard most of the time. His family was halfway across the country, so in college, he could totally be himself. There was no way anything would leak back home.”

  Angelo started to appear frustrated with me. I stopped telling the story and said, “Maybe we should get down to work. I’m sorry that I went off on a tangent.”

  I always felt sympathy for guys who couldn’t be out, but I knew that they sometimes saw me placing myself into the middle of their personal life as an unwanted intrusion. I wasn’t Angelo’s friend. I was his work partner.

  Angelo responded with silence. Finally, he broke the quiet by asking, “Well?”

  “I guess you can show me your storyboard work.”

  “Damn, Jamie. You can’t leave me hanging.

  I raised an eyebrow. “Hanging?”

  “The story. How did it turn out?”

  “Oh,” I chuckled softly. He was paying attention. “I didn’t think you cared. I wasn’t even sure that you listened. Anyway, he ran into a problem when he met the right guy during his senior year in
college. He knew that if they were going to be together for the long-term, he had to tell his family.”

  Angelo nodded. “Yeah, that’s true.”

  “So, at graduation, Dave introduced Leo as his best friend. A few minutes later, as Leo was chit-chatting with Dave’s parents and siblings, Dave said, ‘He’s a little more than that.’”

  “How did they take it?” asked Angelo.

  “That part of the story is funny. They’d all figured it out already. Dave’s older sister said, ‘I knew before you left for college. I figured that you would tell us all sooner or later.’”

  “How’d she know?”

  “Well, Dave asked that question, and she said, ‘Think about the pictures of people you put on the wall in your bedroom. I’ll explain it to you if you don’t understand.”

  Angelo laughed.

  I said, “So maybe your family already knows and are putting up an act with all the girl talk. You could come up with a time and place…”

  Angelo interrupted me. He was polite but firm about changing the subject. “Jamie, thanks, but we’ve got work to do. We’re not here to discuss my personal life. I’ve got the storyboard ideas there in the folder on the coffee table. Have you worked through any of the ad copy yet? Did you think up any clever slogans?”

  8

  Angelo

  Less than five minutes after Jamie left, Tony emerged from his bedroom. “Are you sure that was the awful guy you described to me? He must be really devious because I thought he was kind of nice. I also thought I’d be the cute one, but man, some guys do get great genes handed to them on a silver platter.”

  I shook my head. “Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe I have been a little harsh. I’m glad you liked him. It’s going to be another intensive week and a half or so. Then, if we do win, we probably have to work together even more.”

  “Well, I just wanted to say...he wasn’t nearly as bad as what I expected, and I’m looking forward to the photo shoots. Now I need to get back to the computer. All those other guys in the game will think their country can survive if I’m not there to crush their dreams. World domination is so much fun when it’s not for real. I’m Good King Tony the First.”