Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
Deuce
“I swear I heard Landry ask a vendor if they can source body bags,” Lottie whispers to me with wide, troubled eyes.
I give her an easy smile back, tamping down my irritation at Valentina for, once again, drawing attention to herself. “I’m sure she was kidding.”
Valentina’s angry voice comes through the storage room door where she’s been working tirelessly on the Battle of the Boutiques for three days now.
“No, I will not simply take your word for it. You ever heard of a contract? Crap on a cracker, it’s like you’re not even a real business!”
Not even I can keep the wince from my face at that outburst. Lottie flails her arms around, mouth flopping open and closed, clearly at a loss for words. Should I be happy Valentina at least didn’t curse at whomever she was speaking to?
“I’ll go see if she’s okay,” I say quietly, pushing off the tabletop behind the register where I was reviewing the parameters for the sale we have planned the following week.
I see the dark-haired she-beast that is my fake girlfriend bent over the worktable, papers strewn across the surface. She’s writing with enough pressure to imprint the words on the wooden desktop below her piece of paper.
“Landry, honey?” I say calmly, not wanting to startle her.
Valentina whips around, several papers falling to the floor. “What?”
She’s got a pen jammed into her slicked-back ponytail. The one she was writing with is in her fist, raised in the air like she intends to use it like a knife.
I hold my hands in the air in a gesture of peace. “Easy, V. Just wanted to check on you since everyone on the sales floor can hear you arguing with vendors.”
Her eyes flick to the door, like she’s just now remembering where she is. “I didn’t cuss!”
I dig into the pocket inside my suit jacket, pulling out nothing but air, then press my index finger to her forehead. She pulls her face back with a confused grunt.
“Gold star for you.”
She swats my hand away, swiveling back to her work with zero appreciation for my joke. “I have work to do.”
I check my watch. “I have to go run an errand. You be nice to people on the phone while I’m gone. This is a small town. You can’t just yell at people and then expect to have friends when you see them at the store the next day.”
She rolls her eyes and picks up her phone, already dialing another vendor. “If people weren’t such flat-tired wheelbarrows, I wouldn’t have to yell.”
I snort, then pat her shoulder. “Okay. I like the creative cursing, but maybe just take it down a notch, huh? For me? Your devoted boyfriend?”
She shrugs her shoulder, effectively removing my hand. She hits the call button and puts the phone to her ear. I slip out the back and head for my car. I have just enough time to swing by Dad’s and get to the hospital.
He’s waiting for me on the stoop when I pull up to his townhome just off the Square minutes later.
He’s got on pressed khakis and a short-sleeved button-down shirt in a green plaid.
My father was once a handsome guy, tall, muscular, and always highly educated.
He’s still a part-time professor at the university, though I know it was a hit to his ego to have to scale back after his cancer diagnosis.
It’s not easy being a college professor while also being a person of color in the deep South.
Stereotypes persist even when there are several degrees under your belt.
“Hey, Papa.” I inject as much cheer as I can into my voice. He’s always wiped after his chemotherapy session, which is why I insist on driving him there and back.
“Son.” He climbs in the car, shuts the door, and puts on his seat belt. Then he turns to me with a serious expression. “What’s that woman got you doin’?”
He’s been chomping at the bit to know how my meeting with Bettina went last week. He also knows we don’t discuss her business over the phone. It only takes one wiretap to make you cautious for the rest of your life.
My father spent my entire childhood trying to protect me from that life.
I’m sure he always regretted his short affair with Bettina long ago.
I hope he doesn’t regret that their time together gave him me.
Now that he’s older and dealing with health issues, our roles have reversed.
I’m now the one protecting him from Bettina.
He doesn’t need to know all the details and he certainly shouldn’t be worrying about me. I want him focused on getting well.
“She asked me to house Valentina Ricci for a month or two while Bettina cleans up a little mess in New York.”
He stares at the side of my head while I drive. When he speaks again, it’s that unhurried Southern drawl I love so much. The cadence is so slow, some might think the mind is slow also. That couldn’t be further from the truth. My father is a brilliant man.
“That must be why I heard you have a girlfriend after forty-one years of dodging that bullet?”
I shiver at the term, a tell my father doesn’t miss. “It really hasn’t been bad.”
Dad guffaws, now staring out the windshield. “Benadryl, taken for more than the recommended time, can cause gastric discomfort.”
I pull up to the hospital and start the task of looking for a parking space. “Thank you for the pharmaceutical warning. Do we need to pick some up for you?”
Dad points to a space two aisles over. I gun it, throwing him back against the seat with a grunt.
I’ve seen these senior citizens. They’ll fight dirty for a parking spot.
I whip the car around to the right aisle and jam on the brakes when an old lady in a Buick slides her boat of a vehicle into the space.
She looks over at me and cackles, taking forever to pull all the way in.
“No, not for me,” Dad says as I creep down the aisle, once more on the hunt for an open space. “For you. To help you deal with the allergic reaction to being around Valentina.”
He knows about her, of course. I spent several summers half in love with the girl and told him all about her when I got back home.
He also had to tend to my knife wound when I came back that last summer.
The summer visits stopped after that. I never asked what happened, but I’m pretty sure Dad threatened Bettina over her lack of parental oversight, bartering her guilt for no more mandated visits. One more reason I owe my father.
I snort. “I’ll take that under advisement. So far, she’s been annoying, but tolerable.”
I hit the accelerator again as a red Corvette pulls out of a space just ahead of me. I hit the turn signal, indicating this one is mine just as a car pulls into the aisle coming from the other direction.
“Oh no you don’t. I’ve got my signal on!” I yell at them through the windshield.
Dad just shakes his head in amusement. “There is no law about signals reserving spaces, son.”
“It’s etiquette, Dad. Everyone knows this.”
The Corvette finally backs out and I take the turn too fast, pulling into the space before the other vehicle can take it away from me unfairly. An old man drives by, beady eyes aimed at me and his gnarled fist shaking at me out the lowered window.
See what I’m saying? Old people are aggressive in parking lots.
Feeling like I just went to battle, I get out of the car and come around to help Dad out. This car is low to the ground, perfect for slinking through the back country roads like a race car. Not great for elderly getting in and out.
He takes my help, pausing to pat my face as he looks at me with a proud smile. “Just don’t go falling in love with her, boy. That path leads to destruction. Ask me how I know.”
The warmth I feel at him calling me boy when I’m a middle-aged man is washed away by the guilt I feel over his words.
He could have washed his hands of Bettina long ago if it weren’t for my existence.
He’s told me over and over he wouldn’t trade me for anything, but I know joint parenting with the Mafia Maven hasn’t been easy.
“Don’t worry, Dad. Valentina is too hardened by a life of crime to want romance.”
I huff a laugh just thinking of her accepting flowers or a soft touch. She’d search the blooms for poison and break my finger for touching her. We head across the blacktop, the heat radiating off the surface and threatening to melt our shoes.
Dad’s quiet until we get to the door of the hospital. He turns and stops me from opening the door where we might get a nice rush of cooled air.
“You didn’t live that life, not most of the time, but you might be more similar to your mother than either of us would like. I worry you’ve taken on a bit of the hard heart too.”
“Dad,” I say, shocked. He’s been very careful to never compare me to her or to suggest I’m like her in any way because of my biology.
“I’m not hard hearted. I genuinely enjoy dating all kinds of women and I care for them quite a bit.
I just haven’t settled down with one because I’ve never seen love work out for anyone. ”
Dad puts his hand on my arm, looking older than I’ve ever seen him. “I should have protected you more from that woman.”
I turn to open the door and help him inside out of the heat. “You did a fantastic job raising me. All you should be worrying about right now is getting well so we can keep going to Angel games this fall, you hear?”
Dad grumbles, but eventually pulls out of his bad mood when the normal nurses see he’s arrived for his appointment.
They all love him. Of course they do. He talks to them like real people instead of order takers.
He knows their kids’ names and wedding anniversaries.
He pulls even the quiet ones out of their shells with a genuine, slow kindness that eventually seeps into me too.
I sit back in my chair and watch him, a little smile pulling at my lips.
He’s a good man. The best, really. Whereas many people look up to Bettina simply because they’re scared of her, I look up to my dad because he’s good to his core.
Dad eventually drifts off to sleep, his head tilted away from the door.
The nurse comes in quietly to check on his IV drip.
She shoots me a thumbs up and whispers that it’ll only be another thirty minutes before I can take him home.
I settle back in the chair and close my eyes.
It’s a shame I see Valentina on the back of my eyelids when I do.
She’s infiltrated my home, my business, and now my mind like some kind of replicating virus.
I smell her perfume all the time. I hear her sing off-key in the shower.
I have to be on guard at all times to deflect her verbal barbs.
And now I have her whispered confession of panic attacks in my mind.
A blemish in her otherwise perfect armor.
It only makes me like her.
Okay, not like her entirely. Just five percent like her. There’s still ninety-five percent of massive dislike. Surely I can tamp down the five percent until it’s back to a full hundred percent of contempt, right?
The door bangs open suddenly and I nearly jump out of the chair. It’s a testament to his fatigue that Dad doesn’t even stir. Anger courses through me, along with a healthy hit of adrenaline. I am harboring a wanted woman, after all.
But it’s Valentina who fills the doorway, not an oblivious nurse or a dangerous goon from New York.
She’s got her knife in hand, her feet in a wide stance like she’s ready to fight to the death. She’s also dressed in a white coat and pale green scrubs. Clearly she’s stolen a disguise.
“What the actual fuck, Valentina?” I whisper-yell.
Her wide eyes dart around the room before settling on my father. Her head tilts to the side and she straightens, like she intends to walk over to his bedside. I step in front of her, blocking her line of sight.
“I’ll only ask one more time,” I bite out, voice low and menacing. I’ve let her into my house and my business, but I refuse to let her infiltrate my father’s life. He’s had to deal with Bettina and all her bullshit way too much already. “What are you doing here?”
She points the knife at me and then around me. “What the hell is this?”
My fingers circle her wrist and hold the knife away from me. The Lord and I both know she can’t be trusted with that thing.
“I asked first,” I respond petulantly.
She rolls her eyes, but lets me take the knife from her hand.
When I give it back with a cocked eyebrow, she slides it under her pant leg and secures it God knows where.
She lifts her nose in the air and tries to look confident.
She’s not meeting my gaze, the only tell that I’ve got her on her back foot, scrambling to make sense of what’s going on.
“I followed you.”