Читать книгу Romano's Revenge - Сандра Мартон, Sandra Marton - Страница 7

THE women whose hearts had been broken by Joseph Romano, and the ones who yearned for the same fate, agreed that he was a black-haired, blue-eyed, sexy-as-hell, untamable, gorgeous hunk.

The old-line financial wizards who watched as Joe amassed millions on the San Francisco stock market said he was a cold-blooded, hot-tempered upstart. And they called him things a lot more graphic and less polite than “hunk.”

Joe’s grandmother, who’d adored him for the entirety of his thirty-two years, told anyone who would listen that her Joseph was handsome as a god, sweet-natured as an angel, and as smart as the you-know-what. Nonna had just enough of the Old Country left in her so that she wouldn’t say the devil’s name out loud any more than she’d say any of these things to Joe’s face.

What she did tell him, as often as she could, was that he needed to eat his vegetables, get to bed on time, find a good Italian girl to marry and give her, Nonna, lots of beautiful, bright bambinos.

Joe loved his grandmother with all his heart. She and his brother, Matthew, were all the family he had left. And he tried to please her. He ate almost all his vegetables, except the ones no real man would ever eat. He went to bed on time, though his interest in being there had nothing to do with sleep and everything to do with the succession of beautiful women who passed through his busy life.

But marriage…well, a man didn’t put his neck in that noose until he was ready.

Fortunately, Joe had never felt that ready. He didn’t expect to, not for a long, long time.

An intelligent man, Joe never mentioned that to Nonna during the last-Friday-of-the-month suppers they both enjoyed whenever he was in town. Supper with her, and a bachelor party for one of the guys he played racquetball with, was why he’d flown back to San Francisco on a warm Friday in late May.

He’d been in New Orleans, checking out a small start-up company whose stock looked interesting. When the stacked redhead who’d been walking him through the firm’s data leaned in close and said, in a sexy whisper, that she hoped he’d let her give him a more intimate tour of the French Quarter over the weekend, Joe had grinned and started to say he’d surely love that.

Then he’d remembered the bachelor party. More than that, he’d remembered that this was the last Friday of the month. Nonna had made a special point of reminding him that she expected to see him for dinner.

That was unusual. She never had to remind him because Joe never forgot. If anything, Nonna was always telling him that she didn’t want him to feel locked into their once-a-month Fridays.

“You have other things you want to do, Joey,” she’d say, “you do them.”

Joe had hugged her and told her that he’d sooner break a date with the queen than miss a Friday with her.

It was true. Sometimes he figured his grandmother was the only reason he’d made it through childhood in one piece.

She’d taken him in a zillion times when he was a kid and his old man was looking to beat the crap out of him for some numbskull antic. She’d been a rock for him and Matt when their mother died. She’d never given up on him, even after he’d pretty much given up on himself. And, when he’d finally straightened himself out, joined the Navy and then the SEALs, been honorably discharged and completed his college education, Nonna had simply said she always knew he’d make something of himself.

So Joe had flown back to San Francisco that May night, climbed into his cherry-red Ferrari, stopped to buy a bouquet of spring flowers and the smooth-as-silk Chianti he and his grandmother liked. Then he drove to her clapboard house in North Beach. She’d lived in it as long as he could remember, despite the efforts of both Joe and Matt to convince her to leave it.

Nonna greeted him on the back porch.

“Joseph,” she said, “mio ragazzo.” She gave him a big hug. “Come inside, sweetheart, and mangia.”

The hug and the smile were normal. The Italian was not.

His nonna had come to the States as a bride of sixteen. She spoke English with an accent but English was what she spoke, never her native Italian. Not unless she was nervous.

What was there for her to be nervous about? Joe frowned as he stepped inside the old-fashioned kitchen. Her health was excellent. He’d taken her to her doctor himself just a couple of weeks ago for her annual checkup. And he knew all was well with Matt and his wife, Susannah.

But Nonna was definitely behaving strangely. She was babbling—something else she never did, except when she was under some sort of stress—asking him about his trip but not giving him time to answer, telling him about her week without pausing for breath…

Maria Balducci.

The hair rose on the back of Joe’s neck.

That was the last time he’d seen his grandmother in such a state, the night she’d tried to set him up with Maria Balducci, who lived up the street. He’d shown up for supper and Nonna had greeted him just like this, with an unaccustomed flurry of Italian and a table loaded not just with antipasto and lasagna or manicotti but everything imaginable. Veal piccata, shrimp scampi, steak pizzaola.

A table without so much as one vegetable on it, unless some crazed nutritionist had suddenly decided olives and garlic were the equal of cauliflower and, even worse, carrots.

A table that had looked, to his suspicious eyes, very much like it looked tonight.

Joe fought back the desire to flatten himself against the wall as he checked the room, but no one else was there. Certainly not Maria, and she would have been difficult to miss.

“Joseph.” Nonna smiled a bright smile and bustled around the room. “Sit down, sit down, mio ragazzo, and have some antipasto. Prosciutto, just the way you like it. Provolone. Genoa, sliced thin as paper…”

“We’re alone?”

Nonna clucked her tongue. “Of course. Do you think I have someone hidden in the broom closet?”

Anything was possible, Joe thought, but he didn’t say so. Instead, he pulled out a chair and eased into it.

“No matchmaking,” he said carefully. “Right?”

“Matchmaking?” Nonna laughed gaily. “Why would you even ask such a thing, Joseph, huh? You’ve told me how you feel. You aren’t ready to marry a nice Italian girl, settle down and raise una famiglia, even though it’s the one wish of my heart. So, why would I try and play matchmaker?”

Joe rolled his eyes. “Anybody ever tell you that you have a way with a phrase?”

“I have a way with food.” His grandmother poked a finger at the platter of antipasto. “Mangia.”

“Yeah. Sure.” Obediently, he dug in, transferring what had to be a billion grams of fat and an equal number of calories to his plate.

“Good?” Nonna asked after a minute.

“Delicious.” Joe reached for the basket heaped with garlic bread, hesitated, then snagged a piece and mentally added two miles to his morning run. “So, what’s this all about?”

“What is what all about?”

He tried not to wince as his grandmother filled two water glasses with the elegant Chianti he’d brought and shoved one at him across the heavy white tablecloth.

“Come on, sweetheart. You made every dish I ever loved. You didn’t even try and disguise carrots and cauliflower the way you always do in hopes you could slip them past me. And there are Italian words falling out of your mouth. Something’s up.”

“Non capisco,” Nonna said.

Their eyes met, his the blue of the Mediterranean, hers as dark as the hills of Sicily. Joe grinned, and his grandmother blushed.

“All right.” Her voice was prim, her shrug small but eloquent. “Perhaps something is, as you say, ‘up.’ But it has nothing to do with matchmaking. Believe me, Joseph, I have given that up, completely.”

Good manners, but mostly the knowledge that his nonna probably wasn’t above boxing his ears, kept him from pointing out that he saw her cross herself as she rose from the table and went to the stove.

“I’ll bet you have,” he said pleasantly. Joe shoved his chair back from the table and folded his arms. “So, I can relax? Some eager female isn’t going to come sailing through that doorway with a tray of cannoli in her arms?”

Nonna swung towards him, a pot of espresso in her hand. “Certainly not. I know full well that you prefer your dimbos to real women.”

“Bimbos,” Joe said, trying not to laugh. “And they aren’t. They’re just pretty young women who enjoy my company as much as I enjoy theirs.”

Nonna sighed as she put the pot on the table. “Monday is your birthday,” she said, taking cups and saucers from the cupboard.

The sudden change in conversation surprised him almost as much as the information.

“Is it?”

“Yes. You will be thirty-three.”

“Now that you mention it, I guess I will.” Joe smiled. “Of course. That’s the reason for the feast.” He grabbed her work-worn hand and brought it to his lips. “And here I thought you were up to something. Sweetheart, can you ever forgive me for being so suspicious?”

“I am your nonna. Of course, I forgive you.” Nonna sat down and poured their coffee. “But, ah, this meal is not your gift.”

“No?”

“No. Surely, a man’s thirty-third birthday deserves more than food.”

“Sweetheart.” Joe kissed her hand again. “This isn’t just food, it’s ambrosia. I don’t want you to spend your money on—”

“You and Matthew give me more money than I could ever use in this lifetime. Besides, I have spent nothing.”

“Good.”

“But I am giving you a gift, nevertheless.” Nonna beamed at him over the rim of her cup. “Giuseppe, mio ragazzo.”

Joe’s eyes turned to slits. In a boardroom he’d have leaned towards the guy trying to scam him and said, bluntly, “Cut the crap.” But this wasn’t a boardroom, and this wasn’t some smart-ass dude in a pin-striped suit. This was his grandma, and he loved her, so he sat up straight, folded his arms over his chest again, and fixed her with a steely look.

“Okay,” he said, “let’s have it.”

Nonna looked pained. “Have what?”

“You’re trying to con me.”

“Con? What does this mean, this ‘con’?”

“It means you want to convince me to do something I don’t want to do.”

“How can you think such a thing, Joseph?”

Joe arched one eyebrow. “How?”

“Yes.” Nonna lifted her chin. “How?”

“Maria Balducci.”

“Oh, not that nonsense again. Honestly, Joseph—”

“It was February,” he said calmly, “and it was snowing. I showed up for supper and you plied me with steak pizzaola, shrimp scampi—”

“What is this ‘plied you’? Did I grab that handsome nose of yours and drag you to the table?”

Joe plucked his napkin from his lap and dropped it on the table. “You know exactly what I’m talking about, Grandma.”

“Grandma? I am your Nonna, and don’t you forget it.”

“You’re the biggest matchmaker in North Beach,” Joe said, shooting to his feet. “You dazzled me with goodies that night and then you brought out the big guns.”

“I brought out espresso, as I recall.”

“And Miss Italy 1943.”

Nonna stood up, too. “Signora Balducci was your age, Joseph.”

“She was dressed all in black.”

“She is a widow.”

“She had one giant eyebrow that stretched across her forehead.”

He saw his grandmother’s mouth twitch. “It was two eyebrows that merely needed plucking.”

“How about that long hair growing out of the mole on her chin?” Joe’s mouth also twitched, but he wasn’t going to laugh, not yet. “I suppose that could be plucked, too?”

“You see? That’s your problem, Joseph. There is no way to please you. That time I introduced you to Anna Carbone—”

“The teenybopper at that festival you dragged me to last summer?”

“I did not ‘drag’ you,” Nonna said with dignity. “I merely said I needed you to drive me there. It was coincidence that Anna should have been waiting for me. And she was not a teeny-banger.”

“Bopper. Yes, she was. It’s a miracle she didn’t still have braces on her teeth.”

“She was twenty. But I did not argue when you said she was too young, did I?”

“No,” Joe said coolly, “no, you didn’t. You just waited awhile and found Miss Eyebrow.”

Nonna’s lips twitched again. “Actually, I’d never noticed the eyebrows. Not until that night, in this kitchen. “

“Uh-huh. When the signora just happened to arrive at the door with dessert.”

“And the mole.”

Joe and his grandmother looked at each other and smiled. He sighed, took her in his arms, and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

“Okay,” he said, “let’s have it.”

“Have what?”

“I want to know what ‘gift’ you’re giving me for my birthday, and why you’re buttering up me up beforehand.” He looked over her head, at the door. “Is my dessert arriving by female express?”

Nonna made a face. She bustled past him, opened the freezer and took out a bowl. “Gelato. Just so you know that your dessert is not climbing the porch steps.”

Joe smiled and sat down again. “Homemade ice cream. Nonna, you’re going to spoil me.”

Nonna smiled. She waited until he’d spooned up a mouthful. “Good?”

“Wonderful. The best you ever made.”

Her smile tilted slyly. “Good. But I didn’t make it.”

Joe looked up. “You must have. Not even Carbone’s has gelato this delicious.”

“You’re right. Signor Carbone would kill for this recipe.”

“Well,” Joe said, “if you didn’t get it at Carbone’s and you didn’t make it, who…” The words caught in his throat. Slowly, he put down his spoon and looked at his grandmother. “All right,” he said grimly. “Let’s have it. And don’t embarrass either of us by giving me that wide-eyed, I-don’t-know-what-you’re-talking-about look.”

Nonna folded her hands on the white tablecloth.

“I worry about you, Joseph.”

Despite what she’d said before, here it was. They were going to go over the same old thing again.

“Nonna,” Joe said patiently, “we’ve been all through this. I’m not lonely. I don’t want a wife. I’m happy with my life, just the way it is.”

“You remember once, I asked you who sews the buttons on your shirts, huh? Who irons them?”

“And I told you,” Joe said briskly. “The guy at the laundry. And he does a great job.”

“Yes. And you told me your house is cleaned by a cleaning service.”

“That’s right. The same service I wish you’d let me send here, so you don’t have to bother—”

“I prefer to clean my own house,” Nonna said primly. She leaned forward. “But, Joseph, who cooks your meals?”

Joe sighed. “I told you that the last time around, too. I don’t eat home much. And when I do, there are all these terrific little take-out places a couple of blocks away…What?”

Nonna was smiling, and something about the smile made him want to get out of the chair and run for his life.

“I have accepted that perhaps you will never be ready to marry, Joseph, and that you are happy to let strangers iron your shirts and clean your home. But I have never stopped worrying about your meals.”

“There’s no reason to worry, sweetheart. I eat just fine.”

“I will not worry from now on.” His grandmother dug deep into the pocket of her apron. “Happy birthday, Joey,” she said, and thrust a folded piece of paper at him.

Joe took it and frowned. “What is this?”

“Your birthday gift.” His grandmother was beaming, her eyes bright with joy. “Open it.”

He did. Then he looked up. “I don’t understand. This is just a name.”

“Sì. It is a name. Luciana Bari.”

The vowels and consonants rolled off his grandmother’s tongue. Joe’s jaw tightened.

“And just who in hell is Luciana Bari?”

“Do not curse, Joseph.”

“And don’t you try and change the subject. We just spent an hour talking about teenyboppers, overage widows and your sneaky attempts to marry me off. If you for one minute think you can get away with this—”

Oh, damn. His grandmother’s eyes filled with tears. Joe grabbed her hand.

“Nonna. Sweetheart, I didn’t mean to call you sneaky. But after all we discussed, for you to imagine I’d be pleased by—”

“Luciana Bari isn’t a woman,” Nonna said. “She is a cook.”

A tear rolled down her cheek. Joe took out his handkerchief and gave it to her. “A cook?”

“Yes. A talented one.” Nonna dabbed at her eyes. “She made the gelato and even you admit it was delicious.”

Joe sat back. Trapped! Warning bells began to sound in his head; lights flickered and flashed before his eyes.

“Well,” he said slowly, “yeah. It was. I mean, it is. But what does this Luciana Bari have to do with me?”

“She is your gift, Joseph. “ Nonna’s lip trembled. “My gift to you. And I am saddened that you would think I was trying to, as you say, ‘con’ you.”

Dammit, she was. Joe knew she was—but her lip was still trembling and her eyes were still glittering. And, to be honest, the lingering taste of the gelato was still in his mouth.

“My gift,” he said carefully. “So, what does that mean, exactly? Is this Luciana Bari going to cook me a birthday meal?”

Nonna laughed gaily. “One meal,” she said, waving her hand. “What good would that be? I would still worry that you were not eating right. No, Joey. Signorina Bari is going to work for you.”

“Work for me?” Joe got to his feet. “Now, wait just a minute—”

“She will cost you very little.”

“She will cost me?” His eyes narrowed. His grandmother had reduced him to playing the role of a not terribly smart parrot. “Let me get this straight. You give me a cook as a gift, and I get to pay?”

“Of course.” Nonna stood up. “You wouldn’t want me to spend my money on your cook’s salary, would you?”

Joe’s eyes got even narrower. There was something wrong with her logic. With this entire thing, for that matter…

“What if I say no?”

“Well,” Nonna said, and sighed, “in that case, I suppose I’ll have to phone Signorina Bari and tell her she has no job. It will be difficult, because she needs one so badly.” She turned away and began clearing the table. “She has debts, you see.”

“Debts,” Joe repeated. It was parrot-time again. “She has debts?”

“Yes. The poor woman has not been here long. Just a little while and—”

“She’s from the Old Country?”

Nonna squirted dishwashing detergent into the sink and turned on the hot water.

“The poor soul only came here five, six months ago. She knows nothing of our ways. As for money, well, you know how expensive it is in this city, Joseph, especially for someone new. And she is not young, which makes it even more difficult to start over.”

Joe sank down in the chair, turned his eyes to the ceiling and huffed out a breath. A little old immigrant lady, probably with no more than a dozen words of English, alone and adrift in the complex seas of San Francisco…

“Not to worry, Joseph.” Nonna cast a sad smile over her shoulder. “I’ll tell her I made a mistake, offering her a job with you. I’m sure she can convince her landlord to permit her to stay on in her apartment another month. Not even he would be so cruel as to put her out on the street.”

“Her landlord,” Joe muttered, and shook his head.

“Yes. He wants her out by Monday, so she was thrilled when I said she could have that extra room in your house.”

Joe blinked. “Now wait just a minute—”

“Hand me that pot, would you? The one on the back burner.”

Slowly, like a man holding an impossibly heavy weight on his shoulders, Joe got to his feet, handed his grandmother the pot and reached for a dish towel.

“Ah, Joseph, just look at you.” Nonna put her hand on his. “I’ve taken the smile from your handsome face.”

“Yeah,” he said gruffly. “Well, I hate to think of some little old lady out on the street.”

“That’s because you have a kind heart.” Nonna sighed. “But, truly, this is not your problem. I was wrong to tell the signorina you would employ her, I know that now. Not to worry, bambino. We have so many wonderful things here in America. Soup kitchens. Welfare offices—”

“I suppose I could let her work for me for a little while,” Joe said slowly.

He’d expected his grandmother to say it wasn’t necessary, to argue just a little. Instead she swung towards him, beaming.

“You are a good boy, Joseph! I knew you would do this for her.”

“I’m doing it for you. And I won’t do it for long.”

“No. Certainly not.” Nonna’s smile broadened. “Two months, three—”

“Two weeks,” Joe corrected. “Three, max. By then, I’ll expect the signora to have found herself a real job and a real place to live.”

“Signorina.” Nonna made a face. “Not that it matters,” she said, plunging her hands into the soapy water. “The poor woman.”

“What?” Joe frowned. “Is there something else I should know about her?”

“Honesty compels me to point out that the signorina is not at all attractive.”

Joe thought back to the widow and that eyebrow.

“No?”

“No. The signorina is very pale. And very thin. She is shapeless, like a boy.” Nonna made curving motions over her own ample bosom. “She has no—no—”

“I get the message,” Joe said quickly. He arched an eyebrow. “You sure she’s Italian?”

Nonna chuckled. “Of course. She learned to cook in Fiorenze.” Her smile dimmed and she heaved a huge sigh as she opened the drain, then wiped her hands on her apron. “She is, how do you say, over the hill. Not young, Joseph. Not young.”

A pasty-faced, skinny crone who spoke no English. Talk about good deeds…Joe sighed. People had told him he was born to be hung, but at this rate he’d end up in heaven, after all.

“Well,” he said kindly, “as long as she can cook, that’s okay.”

Nonna turned and faced him. “And, just in case you are still worried, I can assure you that she will not bother you with her attentions. This, I promise.”

And a good thing, too, Joe thought. The last thing he needed was to find himself fending off an old lady.

“I know how the women fall all over you, Joey.”

“Uh, yeah.” He tried for a modest smile. “Some of them seem to, I guess.”

“But the signorina will not do so.”

“Yeah, well, considering her age…”

“She does not like men.”

“Fine.”

“No, Joseph. What I mean is…” His grandmother leaned closer. “She does not like men.”

The words dripped with significance. Joe stared at her.

“You mean…?” No. He couldn’t say the word, not to his nonna. “You mean,” he finished inanely, “she really doesn’t like men?”

“Exactly.” Nonna put her hands on her hips. “You see? It’s perfect. She will never be a bother to you, nor you to her. And I can go to my grave in peace, knowing you are eating properly.”

Joseph’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not going anywhere, you old reprobate. Not for a very long time.”

“I am not whatever it is you call me,” Nonna said sweetly. “I am simply a doting grandmother, giving her favorite grandson a gift.”

“Some gift,” Joe said, but he smiled, tossed the towel aside and put his arms around her waist. “You’re precisely what I called you, which is why I’d never play poker with you, or sit across from you at a boardroom table.”

“Flatterer.” Nonna batted her lashes and smiled up at him. “You’re much too clever for an old lady like me.”

“Yeah,” Joe said, and grinned, “I’ll bet.”

“Now,” Nonna said briskly, “how about more espresso?”

Joe shook his head. “I wish I could, sweetheart, but I’m going to have to run.”

“So soon?”

“I have an appointment. One of the guys I play racquetball with is…” Getting married, he’d almost said, but the last thing he wanted to do was bring up that subject again. “He’s having a party at his place on Nob Hill. I promised I’d be there.”

“Ah.” Nonna smiled, framed Joe’s face in her hands, drew it down to her and kissed him on each cheek. “How nice. Would you like to take along some food? I can put a little of everything into some Tupperware…”

“No,” Joe said quickly, “uh, really, it would just upset the, uh, the caterer.”

“Oh. Of course. I didn’t think of that.” Nonna stuffed her hands into her apron pockets. “Well, you have a good time, Joey.”

“I’ll try.” Joe reached for his suit jacket. He put his arm around his grandmother and they walked together to the door. “I love you, Nonna.”

“And I love you.” Nonna lifted her face for his kiss. “Remember now. Your new cook will be at your door tomorrow morning, bright and early.”

“Oh. Oh, yeah.” For a minute there he’d almost forgotten that he’d agreed to this crazy plan. Well, it wouldn’t kill him to let the woman cook a few meals for him before he found her another job. The city had to be full of people who’d want the services of a talented Italian cook, even if she was old, ugly, and a lesbian. “I’m looking forward to meeting her. What was her name again?”

“Luciana. Luciana Bari.”

“Right. Luciana Bari, formerly of Florence, Italy.” He grinned as he stepped onto the porch. “She sounds perfect.”

“She is perfect,” Nonna Romano said, and meant it.

In a house on Nob Hill, Lucinda Barry, of the Boston Barrys, the we-came-over-on-the-Mayflower Barrys, the oh-boy, we-are-broke Barrys…

Lucinda Barry, who had moved from the east coast to the west and sworn off men forever after her fiancé had dumped her for a brainless twit with money…

Lucinda Barry, whose landlord had just tossed her out for nonpayment of rent, who’d taken a quick course in desperation cooking from Chef Florenze at the San Francisco School of Culinary Arts, who was to start her very first job ever tomorrow as a cook for a sensitive, charming, undoubtedly gay gentleman she hoped would be too kind to notice that pretty much all she could do right was boil water and, amazingly enough, whip up terrific gelato…

That Lucinda Barry stood in the marble-and-gold powder room of the house on Nob Hill, eyed herself in the mirror and wondered why Fate should have done this to her.

“I can’t do it,” Lucinda whispered to her blond, green-eyed reflection.

Of course you can, her reflection said briskly. You don’t have a choice.

The girl hired to jump out of the cake had come down with food poisoning.

“Not from our food,” Chef Florenze had said coldly as the ambulance took the writhing young woman away. Then he’d frowned, scanned the little crowd of would-be culinary school graduates gathered around him for the night of cooking that would be their final exam, and pointed a stubby finger at Lucinda. “You,” he’d roared, and when Lucinda stepped back in horror, saying no, no, she was a cook, not a stripper—when she did, the chef smiled unpleasantly and said she wasn’t a cook, either, not until he handed over her graduation certificate…

“Ms. Barry!”

Lucinda jumped at the knock on the door.

“Ms. Barry,” the chef demanded, “what on earth is taking you so long?”

Lucinda straightened her shoulders and looked at herself in the mirror.

How tough could it be to trade her white chef’s hat, jacket and trousers for a gilded tiara, a pair of demitasse cups and a thong, and then jump out of a cardboard cake?

“Not as tough as being broke, jobless and homeless,” Lucinda muttered grimly, and set about the business of transforming herself from a cook into a cookie.