Chapter Thirteen
After the party, Lark and Lorenzo had gone back to his apartment.
“I hope you sleep well,” Lorenzo said. “Feel free to help yourself to breakfast. I’ll be at the hospital early.”
“Okay,” she said. Scintillating conversation. But she did admire his success as a surgeon. Sunday mornings meant nothing when you were Lorenzo Santini. He would be off saving a life. Bringing hope. Being a rock star.
The bed in the guest room was wicked comfy, that was for sure, and Lark slept like the dead until seven thirty. When she went into the kitchen, there was a note on the island.
Thank you for attending last night. You looked very nice. Will be in touch.
“Wow,” she said. “A compliment!” Not the tingle-inducing type his brother had given her, but hey.
Well, she had to get back, since she was working in the ER this afternoon. Rather than sully Lorenzo’s kitchen by making breakfast, she figured she’d stop at Dunks on the way out. His coffee machine resembled a jet engine, and God help her if she messed up the settings. She packed, checked the gorgeous bathroom to be sure she had everything, then lugged her suitcase and dress bag the two blocks to her car.
It wasn’t there.
“Are you kidding me?” she said to no one. She’d been towed. Apparently, her perfectly legal spot had become illegal overnight. Or the car had been stolen. She tapped her phone—How to tell if my car has been towed in Boston—pulled up the site, entered her license plate, and sure as shit, it had been towed. For street cleaning.
“Thanks for the notice!” Lark said, exasperated. Only in Boston.
Another few taps, and she saw that her car was currently at the impound lot a few miles from here. She called the number. “Our offices are closed and our operators are unavailable,” said the recorded message.
Lark sighed. None of her siblings would be able to make it off-Cape to get her; the traffic was awful on Sundays in the summer. She’d have to take a Lyft. Another few taps on the phone and she winced. More than five hundred bucks, since it was a beautiful summer day with a lot of people heading Capeward.
But the Santinis would be going back to the Cape, of course! She could get a ride with them, then deal with her car tomorrow. Or ask Lorenzo to do it.
She texted Izzy. Any chance of catching a ride down to the Cape with you guys? My car was towed.
A second later, the answer came. Oh no! We’re already at the bridge and it took forever to get here. Hang on a sec.
Lark sat on the curb, draping her dress bag over her suitcase. It was already eight thirty, and she had really hoped to get home, see her nieces and eat before heading into the hospital for the evening shift, which started at three thirty. Her phone dinged.
Help is on the way! Just texted Dante, and he can drive you. Here’s his number.
Wincing at the hard tingle of electricity that sentence caused, Lark wrote back, Thanks, I’ll take it from here. So much fun last night! See you soon. Xoxox
Then she texted Dante’s number. No need to come get me. I can grab a Lyft back, but thanks.
Her phone rang. “Hey,” Dante said. “I’m three blocks away. I’ll take you home. I was headed down to the Cape anyway.”
“Is that actually true?” she asked.
He laughed. “No, but I don’t have to work tomorrow, so I can spend the night with my folks and win some brownie points.”
She glanced at her watch. He was her best bet of getting back at a reasonable time. “Okay. Thank you so much, Dante.”
Five minutes later, she was sitting in the cab of Dante’s pickup. “I really, really appreciate this,” she said.
“You’ve already said that. It’s not a big deal.” He flashed her a smile, then pulled away from the curb.
As she sat in the passenger seat, that dark, electrical current in her bones intensified. It was…disturbing. And inexplicable.
Once, when she was about fourteen, she babysat for a family in Truro. Very sweet little boys, lovely house, chocolate chip cookies on the counter for her. The dad—Allan—drove her home at the end of the night. The whole way, she’d had a similar feeling…an intense and indefinable discomfort for no apparent reason.
Allan dropped her off at her house, thanked her and drove away. Two months later, he’d left his wife for an eighteen-year-old girl. Had she had a premonition that Allan was a creeper? Was that what it had been?
“How old was your last girlfriend?” she blurted.
He glanced at her. “Why?”
“No reason.”
“Uh…thirty-one? Thirty-two?” Dante replied, changing lanes.
Okay, so not that. Another time, she’d refused a ride home from a party when she was in college. The driver had seemed sober, but had crashed. Blood alcohol level almost twice the legal limit.
“You didn’t have too much to drink last night, did you?”
“That’s quite a topic change.” He gave her a curious look. “I had two beers and a couple of sips of champagne. Why? Is my driving making you nervous?”
You’re making me nervous. “No. Just checking.”
“Guess that’s the doctor in you. But don’t forget, I drive for a living. Big shiny trucks.”
She smiled a little, and the darkly electric sensation subsided. She risked another glance. Dante wore a T-shirt and jeans, and his hair was thick and rumpled. She’d seen him somewhere, she knew it. That wasn’t a stretch…Boston, despite its boom in the past generation, was still a small town, and she’d gone to school there for eight years, after all. Firefighters were out and about all the time.
Oh. Wait. “Are you in a firefighter calendar, by any chance?”
He laughed. “Mr.October, last year. I was holding a gray kitten.”
That was it. Jordyn had sent her that calendar for Christmas, as a joke, and yes, Lark had looked through it appreciatively, then put it in recycling.
“Mr.October,” she murmured. “I knew I’d seen you before.”
He glanced at her but didn’t comment.
Traffic was bad enough that they didn’t talk until they were in Plymouth. “My grandparents live here,” Lark said. “My aunt, too.”
“Oh, yeah? You guys close?”
“Well…not really,” she said. “We see them a few times a year, but they’re kind of disinterested in us. My other grandparents are great, though. Grammy died a few years ago, but my grandfather is still around. He works at the bookstore with my sister, and he’s the best.”
“Nice.”
Lark hesitated. “Are you close with your grandparents? Other than Noni, I mean?”
“Well, we see Noni all the time,” he said. “But as you can tell, Lorenzo’s her favorite.”
“He said he grew up with her.”
“He did. Our other grandparents live in New Hampshire. Mom’s folks. They’re more normal.” A grin flashed and was gone.
“Lorenzo told me about how she kind of raised him,” she said.
“Yeah. He went to this school for supersmart kids, and that was kind of the end of that.”
“Of what?” she asked.
Dante shrugged. “Of him being one of us. He never really fit in once he left. He became almost like an only child, and that school didn’t help. I mean, it was a great education and all. But it made him feel pretty superior to the rest of us.”
“St. George’s, right?”
“That’s the one. Where excellence is expected and rewarded. That was their motto.”
“Pretty heavy burden for a seven-year-old,” she said.
“He was meant for that school,” Dante said. “He was speaking in full sentences on his first birthday. Mom and Dad had his IQ tested when he was five, and it was like a hundred and eighty or something. Way past genius level. So he fit right in, let me tell you. Became their king by the end of the first year.” He glanced at her, amused. “Can you imagine?”
“I can, actually. How old were you when he went?”
“Three.”
Her heart squeezed at the thought of two little boys being separated. “You must’ve missed him.”
Another glance from his dark chocolate eyes. “Cried myself to sleep for a month, according to Mom.”
Remembering her conversation with Lorenzo about that time in his life—and also her promise not to talk about it—Lark said, “Bet he missed you, too.”
Dante laughed. “You’d be wrong. Lorenzo was always too good for the rest of us. Thought he deserved everything. And everyone.”
“Everyone?” she asked.
Dante shrugged, not looking at her. “I mean, he definitely got Noni. Sofia pretty much worships him. Mom and Dad are in awe of him, a little dazzled with everything he’s done. It’s Izzy and me who want to smack him.” He gave her a quick smile. “You might feel the same way the longer you date him.”
She laughed a little. “There have been moments. Let’s change the subject. Do you like being a firefighter?”
“Of course I do. Best job in the world.”
“The shiny trucks and universal adoration?”
“You nailed it.”
“How often do you save kittens and babies?” she asked.
“Oh, daily, of course,” he said, grinning at her with that Firefighter Wink. “We deal with a lot of car accidents, medical calls and automatic alarms, too. But Boston has a lot of fires. Last month we pulled eleven people out of a burning building. Five kids in the mix. Two dogs, too.”
“Oh, my gosh, yes! I saw that on NECN. I knew I recognized you. They played that story for days.” Massachusetts worshiped their firefighters.
“It was a good call. No one got hurt.”
“Okay, answer me this,” Lark said as they inched across the Sagamore Bridge. “How did you avoid a Cape accent? Even a Boston accent. All four of you sound like you’re from Connecticut or something.”
“How dare you,” he said, tossing her another million-dollar grin that made her bones melt a little. It also made her realize how seldom Lorenzo smiled. “Mom’s mom, my other grandma, is British. She beat it out of us. Every time we dropped an R, out came the cane.”
“Well, that explains it,” Lark said.
“The British part is true, anyway. I can sound like a Southie when I need to.”
“Prove it,” she said. Her face flushed. This might be flirting. She was fairly sure it was.
A car cut them off at the rotary. “Nice fuckin’ move, ya moron!” Dante yelled, smiling as he leaned on the horn. “Stop gropin’ your cousin and keep your hands on the wheel!” He looked over at her. “How was that?”
“Wow,” she laughed. “I take it back. For a second there, it was like I was at Whitey’s.”
“You’ve been to Whitey’s? Best dive bar in the world. You really are perfect.”
Don’t read into that, she told herself, reading into it. (He thought she was perfect!) “I went to BU, then Tufts. Of course I went to Whitey’s. How about you? When did you move to Boston?”
“Right after high school. I wasn’t really the college type. Worked in construction for three years before I got hired.”
“And how is it you’re still single, Dante?” she asked. “I mean, a cute firefighter, saving dogs and children, a nice family, the name Dante…”
Yes. She was flirting.
He tilted his head a little. “Don’t know how much of this you already know, between Lorenzo and my sisters. And my mother. She’s been trying to marry me off ever since I was seventeen.”
“Did you ever come close? To getting married, I mean?”
“Yep.”
Nothing more. Just yep.
“Does this involve the girl you mentioned last night?”
He didn’t look at her this time. “It does.”
Her phone buzzed. It was Rena, the ER unit secretary. Scheduling error. No need to come in tonight. See you tomorrow.
“Oh. I just got canceled. Shoot, Dante, I’m sorry. You didn’t have to drive me after all.”
“Want to go back so we can take care of your car?”
“No, that’s fine. We’re in Barnstable already, and look at the traffic going off-Cape.” It was bumper to bumper.
“You got it,” he said. “Wellfleet it is.”
“You can stay for lunch, if you want. My landlady will adore you, and her house is amazing.”
He didn’t answer for a second. “Sure. Thanks. I haven’t been out that way in a long time.”
“So back to your almost marriage,” she prompted. “Actually, we don’t have to talk about that. I’m sorry.”
“No, no, it’s fine. She was the model.”
“Oh, I see.” Hence his leaving when they were talking about Addie’s brief stint in the fashion world.
“Lorenzo thought she was shallow. Turned out he was right. She dumped me for someone else.”
“Did you love her?” she asked.
“I did.” He glanced at her, then back at the road. Just then, his phone rang, and rather than have it on the truck’s speakers, he switched it to private. “Sorry. Gotta take this. It’s work.”
His end of the conversation informed her there was an issue with a grievance filed about a lieutenant, and Dante was part of the group who was handling it. She turned to look out at the familiar landscape of Route 6—oak trees and scrubby pitch pines, the sky overhead turning more and more gray. Good. They needed rain. The traffic had thinned, and they cruised along.
She dumped me for someone else.Ouch. So Dante Santini had had his heart broken. She wondered how long ago that had been.
After about half an hour, Dante hung up. “Sorry about that,” he said. “Work politics, irritating coworkers, all that. I’m on a committee, and you know how that goes.”
“No problem. I guess even the best jobs have their moments.”
“How about you? You like your job, Lark?”
She hesitated. “Yeah, I do. I’m kind of on hiatus, though. I really want to work in oncology, not emergency medicine.”
“Hm.”
She looked at him, a little curious at his lack of a follow-up question.
His gaze was fixed firmly ahead.
Suddenly, that dark, unpleasant electrical buzz wrapped her entire body and amped up. Her eyes widened, and she couldn’t breathe.
That profile. His hands on the wheel, the tattoo. He had been younger, obviously, but it was definitely…
Her throat slammed shut, all breathing cut off. She tried to suck in a breath and failed.
“Lark?” he asked, glancing at her sharply. “You okay?”
“It was you,” she managed, her voice choked. “Oh, my God, it was you.”