Ready?
Max
Leaning against a post, I watch the beautiful young woman who’s supposed to still be five years old laughing with her cousins. Mom throws a party for just about any excuse, but my little girl’s first day of work feels monumental.
It was just yesterday that she was dancing around with golden curls framing her face, chasing butterflies, and then asking me to carry her around on my shoulders so that she could catch them. I’m going to blink, and she’ll be graduating from high school.
Ivy should be leaning against my side, watching Hope laugh. She should have been here for Hope’s first step, her first word, the first time she giggled. What if I’m doing this dad thing all wrong, letting her intern with—
How can I even think about Fiona and Ivy at the same time?
Cheating…you can’t cheat on a dead woman.
“You’ll make it through this.” Gabe claps me on the back.
Will I? “There are endless teenage boys there who are going to try hovering around my baby girl like bees around a flower. Maddox is going to end up killing me for flattening them.”
Gabe has the nerve to laugh. “You know you don’t have to worry about them. Sasha will kill anyone who looks at her twice.”
I follow his gaze to where Sasha and his brother Alex are standing next to Hope.
“That boy scares me.”
A two-hundred-pound quarterback for a major league team who hurls himself into physical danger every day really shouldn’t be afraid of a sixteen-year-old boy, but he isn’t wrong either.
The Everett drama distracted me from making plans for the cousins to thwart the little Casanovas of Willow Street when I can’t be there.
“Sasha does seem to be following in his father’s footsteps. ”
“That’s all his grandmother. I’d take on the whole defensive line alone at next week’s game before I’d even think a bad thing about that woman.”
“You know she’s here, right?” I glance around the backyard to find her cuddled up to her smiling husband.
“Luisella has a soft spot for me.” Everyone in the family seems to have one for Gabe, but that’s another story. “She’s coming to the game next week. Are you going to be able to make it? Your mom said you were going to be out of the country for a few days.”
I was, until today happened. “We’ll be there.” Hope insisted on seats at the fifty-yard line, but I also got us a box in case the people become too intense. “You ready for your next ring?”
“Yeah. It’s weird knowing this will be the last game I’ll ever play, but I’m ready to settle down and find someone like them.” Gabe’s eyes roam the sickeningly sweet couples who seem to be surrounding us.
“You know, finding that isn’t as easy as winning a ring. Do you think someone is just going to plop down in your lap and say, ‘hey, I’m your soulmate…the love of your life…your reason for existence?’”
Gabe grins. “I’m not worried. Our three nonnas will find her before I can blink.
The plan is I retire, they find her for me over the summer, we date through the fall, get married the coming winter, and are expecting by next spring when the twins graduate.
This way Mom is distracted when the twins go off to college by her first grandbaby. ”
“That’s quite a plan.” My personal life never followed any of my plans. I was supposed to graduate, open my company, build it up for a few years, meet a nice girl, get married, and then have a huge family while growing my company. Not one of those plans happened.
“I know, right? All I need to do to get the ball rolling is win in two weeks, then let the nonnas get to it.”
How many marriages have they arranged? Dozens and dozens over the years, not one of them has ended in divorce. Without a doubt, they’ll find someone amazing for Gabe.
Why hasn’t one of them ever even hinted at finding me another wife? That’s…odd, and probably something I shouldn’t worry about right now.
But it doesn’t make sense…the nonnas’ whole goal in life is to see every member of their family married with kids…Why not me?
My mind doesn’t like unsolved puzzles, but Hope’s giggle is all the distraction I need to pull me back to the here and now.
She’s safe here, surrounded by her family, but on Willow Street…
there are too many teenage boys who don’t understand that my baby girl is off-limits.
There will be times that I can’t be with her. Arranging protectors is a must.
Antonio’s twins should be the ones I approach to set up the family meeting, but Gabe’s right, Sasha Kamenev is scary.
He and his brother Alex are never far from Hope anyway.
They’ve been her little shadows almost since birth.
“Talk to you later.” I pat Gabe on the shoulder, then stalk towards Sasha.
The kid doesn’t flinch, nor does he take his gaze from my daughter and his brother, who are still laughing together, doubtlessly at some silly joke Hope told.
Sasha doesn’t wait for me to speak before saying, “I don’t need to take care of Everett.”
Huh?
“He won’t be bothering Hope while he works for you.”
Oh…Sasha doesn’t know yet that Everett thinks he’s Hope’s uncle.
Not thinks…believes it with his entire being, and yet he was still willing to walk away. “Everett isn’t the issue.”
Sasha turns slightly so that his gaze is still on his brother and Hope, but he can see my face as well. “Then what do you need?”
Why does this kid think everyone needs something from him? I mean, I do need something, but still, that shouldn’t be his first reaction…should it? “Tomorrow, after school, all the male cousins need to meet at my house.”
“Only the ‘male’ cousins?” Sasha’s voice takes on a hard edge. “You don’t need anyone else. I can take care of anyone myself.”
Definitely scary. “I don’t ask children to kill people.” Rough up nuisances on occasion, but adults take care of the wetworks for the family.
Sasha shrugs. “We’ll be there.”
And now I’m more than a little afraid of a sixteen-year-old.
***
Staring at the fire in Dad’s office usually helps me focus. It’s been that way since I was little. Dad would work at his big desk late into the night, and I would sit right here and think.
Only tonight, when I have bigger problems to deal with, all I can think about is why haven’t the nonnas been butting into my life and how am I not going to end up killing a bunch of teenage boys over the next few months.
Asking Sasha to watch over my daughter sounded like a brilliant idea at the time.
Now it sounds like yet another way to get stupid teenage boys killed and Maddox irritated with me.
Hope should just quit. Can’t I just build her a coffee shop and hire a great manager to oversee what she doesn’t understand yet? It would be way less stressful.
Is she really the reason I’m stressed?
“That doesn’t look like a happy thought,” Nonna’s voice comes from the doorway.
She’s gotten a few more wrinkles over the years, but Nonna’s brain is just as sharp as it has always been.
Without a doubt, she saw me walk over here and gave me just enough time to stew in my own thoughts before she decided to come over and solve my problems.
“They aren’t unhappy.” I mean, the idea of obliterating anyone who looks at my daughter isn’t a sad thought.
Nonna walks over and sits down next to me, wrapping her arms around me just like she used to do when I was little and had a problem.
Only now her arms are frailer and I’m closer to being a giant than I am to being a small child, but it’s no less comforting.
“Why haven’t you tried finding me a new wife after all these years? ”
She jumps back. “Where did that question come from? I thought you were worrying about Hope or your mom.”
“I am. Sort of. Everett isn’t a threat. And I have a plan to deal with boys flirting with Hope.
” A bad plan, but still a plan. “You have played matchmaker for every single marriage-aged person I know, but not for me. No one has. Not even Viola, and you know she can’t stand seeing someone who isn’t blissfully, happily married.
Why? Why don’t they think I need to be happy too? ”
“Oh my sweet boy.” Nonna grins at me. “You’re finally ready.”
“What? I didn’t say that. I just asked why you three haven’t been hounding me to get married.”
“Luisella and Viola wanted to, but I told them to back off because you were still mourning your wife.” Tears fill Nonna’s eyes.
“What if my perfect woman married someone else during that time? How could you three let her slip away from me?” And that sounded pathetic and whiny, neither of which I have ever been in my life.
Nonna laughs. Then leans forward seriously.
“Never would I have let the woman you were meant to be with slip into the arms of another man, but that wasn’t an issue.
And we don’t have to pick her for you. You already did that for yourself.
Just like your dad, you knew the moment you saw her. It seems to be a family trait.”
She can’t…I mean, she does…but she can’t mean Fiona. “No.” I shake my head. “All of this is because I’m afraid…”
“That’s how you know. When you look at a woman and fear everything and anything, it’s because your heart knows before your head that she’s the one. When I met Ethan…”
I want to turn my head and gag a little at my nonna’s winsome smile, but I’m not a child. Though right now I wouldn’t mind being fifteen again, staring across the classroom at Ivy, dreaming about a different future.
“…that man had me fighting the fear hard. For a while, I thought we could have a lurid affair and then walk away. Don’t you give me that shocked face, young man. I’m a woman like any other, capable of making foolish decisions in life.”
“Do I have to go punch Ethan?” It doesn’t matter that all of this happened over a decade ago. I’m still going to punch him. Then try not to cry when he knocks me on my butt.
“What am I going to do with all the overprotective men in my life?” Nonna shakes her head. “You’re trying to change the topic.”
That’s what we do when we want to hide from the topic at hand. “Love us.”
Nonna grins. “You’re going to see her tomorrow, aren’t you?”
“It can’t be her.”
“You know she’s never dated anyone.”
WHAT? “Impossible. The men on Willow Street have to be fools.”
Nonna’s smile gets larger. “A fool is a man who has a chance at a woman like Fiona and walks away because he’s afraid.” Nonna stands up, stops, and leans down to kiss my forehead. “None of my boys are fools.” As she walks away, she whispers, “He’s finally ready.”
I want to shout back that I’m neither a fool nor ready, but she’s already gone before I can even open my mouth to speak. Instead, I take a sip from the snifter and stare at the flames.