Two Besties, Two Babies, Two Dangerous Daddies novel · Chapter 15 of 32

Chapter 15: Ventnor

Trixie came home at five in the morning and told me Rino Vaccaro had asked her to dinner.

She said it while taking off her work shoes.

"Tell me you said no," I said.

"I said I'd think about it."

"Trix. He threatened to burn our apartment down."

"He threatened it sweetly. That's different."

"It is not different."

"He thinks I'm a gold digger who can be bought."

"You are a gold digger."

"Who can't be bought. That's the part he doesn't know."

She went to bed.

I lay awake with Cillian's lighter under my pillow and counted the ways that could go wrong.

I got to fourteen and stopped, because fourteen made me think of fourteen million.

On Sunday Cillian picked me up at noon.

He didn't honk. He came up the stairs and knocked, which I noticed, because nobody I'd ever dated had come up the stairs.

He was wearing his gray sweater and dark jeans, and he was holding flowers.

"For your mother?" I said.

"For you."

"Oh."

"Hers are in the car."

I wore my lavender sundress with the buttons down the front and my biggest silver hoops.

I was meeting a mob boss's mother, and I wanted her to see me coming.

At the last second I took his lighter from under my pillow and dropped it in my dress pocket.

His mother's house was in Ventnor, three blocks from the beach.

White shingles and a porch with two rocking chairs.

In the flower bed stood a statue of the Virgin Mary in a little knitted blue hat.

"Your mom knits hats for statues?" I said.

"Every winter."

"I'm going to love her."

"Yes."

His mother opened the door before we got to the top step.

She was tiny. She came up to the middle of his chest, gray hair in a bun, an apron that said KISS THE COOK.

She looked at me. Then at my stomach. Then at her son.

"Well," she said. "Took you long enough to bring her."

Then she hugged me so hard my earrings swung.

The dining room smelled like roast beef and furniture polish.

The table was already full.

Two old men sat at the far end.

One had a cane hooked on his chair. One had a hearing aid he kept turning up.

The Whalen elders.

Two of the men who'd voted to hand me over.

Neither of them stood up.

"So," said the one with the cane. "This is the girl with our book."

"I don't have your book," I said. "I have a nail file and a really good credit score."

The one with the hearing aid turned it up.

"What'd she say?"

"She said she's got no book," Cillian's mother said, putting a plate in front of me. "Eat, love. You're too thin for two."

I ate.

The elders didn't.

They talked across me.

The Vaccaros this. The book that. The vote.

"The vote stands," said the one with the cane. "Rino Vaccaro says the girl took it. Rino's counted our money for thirty years."

I put my fork down.

I opened my mouth.

Cillian put his big hand flat on the table.

Everybody stopped.

He didn't raise his voice. He never did.

"She's not handed to anyone," he said.

The room was so quiet I heard the clock in the hall.

"Not to you. Not to the Vaccaros. Not to me."

He looked at each old man in turn.

"If the vote stands, find a new boss. Vote again."

The one with the cane looked at his plate for a long time.

Then he picked up his fork.

"Pass the potatoes," he said.

That was it.

That was the whole war, over potatoes.

His mother caught my eye across the table and winked.

After dinner she took me into the kitchen and gave me a shoebox of his baby pictures and a slice of pie.

"He never brings anyone," she said. "Not once. Thirty-five years."

"He didn't bring me. I came."

"Even better," she said, and patted my cheek.

We walked down to the beach after.

The sun was low and orange, and the Ventnor boardwalk was empty except for a man walking a three-legged dog.

Cillian walked with his hands in his pockets.

I walked with my shoes in my hand.

"You said a whole paragraph in there," I said.

"I counted."

"How many?"

"Twenty-five words."

"That's a speech for you."

"I meant all of them."

I stopped walking.

He stopped too, a step ahead, and turned around.

"You know what I counted at the ball?" I said.

"Eleven."

"You remember."

"I said 'Come here.' I said 'You're sure?' I said 'Stay.'"

"That's six."

"The rest I don't remember."

"I do."

I stepped up close, so close I had to tip my head all the way back to see his face.

"You said 'You're beautiful' and 'Thank God,'" I said. "In that order."

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