Chapter Five
Dante
“I got the wine,” I said, making my way through the kitchen door at my mom’s place, my arms weighed down with two bags from the liquor store. “Why do we need this many bottles? Did you invite half the neighborhood over?”
“Well, the whole family is here, so kind of,” Valley said from her perch on top of the island.
She was in another of her professional pantsuits, but her gray jacket was draped over one of the kitchen chairs.
Her dark, wavy hair was pulled back in a clip and her mascara was a little smudged around her green eyes.
A long day of work explained the wine glass in her hand that was nearly two-thirds filled.
“Oh, don’t you look handsome,” my mother said, putting down her slotted spoon, wiping her hands on her apron, then coming over to straighten my lapels. “I made a handsome boy, didn’t I?”
“I dunno. I remember his faux hawk and porn-stache stage,” Valley said. “I think a good haircut does a lot of the heavy lifting.”
“Careful, Val. I remember your blonde stage. Or should I say orange, since you never got it fully lifted?”
“Goth stage,” she shot back.
“Trucker hats and tube tops,” I said, smirking when she winced.
“That was a rough one.”
“Stop teasing your brother,” Mom demanded, making me look toward my sister. Being the only girl, our mother was usually first to defend her against the rest of us.
“What’s going on?” I asked, then watched my mother turn quickly away, pretending that she desperately needed to check for something in the fridge. “Oh, Dante, dear, can you get the door?” she asked when the chime rang out through the house.
“Sure,” I said, putting down the wine bottles, then making my way through the house.
“I don’t think you should be playing with Grandma’s angel figurines,” I said as I made my way down the hall to find one of my nieces marrying one of her tiger figurines to one of my mom’s angels.
“Grammy lets me.”
My mother would have put me on weeding duty for a whole summer if I’d played with her collectibles. But the grandmother she’d become was much softer than the mother who raised me.
“Alrighty then,” I agreed, ruffling her dark hair before going to the door.
Only to open it and find Hazel standing there, glancing back over her shoulder toward the front gardens.
There was a covered dish in her hand, and she was wearing a burnt orange sundress with a lightweight brown sweater over it.
“Hazel,” I said as her head whipped over. “Hey.”
Hazel watched me for a moment before shaking her head. “She didn’t tell you she invited me, did she?”
“She didn’t. When did she?”
“Two days ago.”
“At the garden center?”
“At the grocery store. She, uh, took a lot of offense to the contents of my cart.”
“What was in your cart?”
“Well, the grocery store has this giant wall of all these fresh pre-made—”
“Yep, I can stop you right there,” I said, nodding. “She once opened my fridge and saw I had a bunch of those protein shakes and smoothies from a subscription plan.”
“What’d she do?”
“Demand I end the subscription and started making them for me weekly instead. Eventually, I had to start making them just to stop her from making them.”
“Completely defeating the convenience of premade ones.”
“You’re starting to understand my family.”
“Dante!” my mother called. “What are you doing? I raised you better than this. We don’t leave guests standing at the door.”
“I was greeting her.”
“You greet someone while inviting them inside,” she insisted, pushing past me to wrap a one-armed hug around Hazel. “I’m so glad you could make it!”
“I’m sure you made it sound like she had a choice,” I said, my voice so low that only Hazel could hear as my mother pulled her inside. She shot me a little smirk.
“What is this? I told you that you didn’t need to bring anything.”
“I know. But it felt wrong not to bring something. So I made some brownies.”
“You made them?” my mother asked, delighted.
“Yeah, I mean, the contents of my shopping cart aside, I do know how to cook and bake.”
“Oh, don’t be silly. You are a busy working woman. Of course you don’t have time to make your own meals every night.”
“Who is that?” August, my youngest brother, asked as he moved in beside me.
“Hazel. She works at the garden center. Mom is trying to hook us up.”
“So you need this more than he does,” Traveler, August’s wife, said as she came up with a whiskey for him, but handed it to me instead.
“Thanks, Trav.”
“She’s pretty.”
“She’s gorgeous. But she works for me. We all love Dom, but the Halloween season would have been a complete disaster without someone like Hazel to pull it all together.”
“We can’t wait to come check it out on family night,” Savannah, Nino’s wife, who was hanging nearby said. “The kids have been nagging us about seeing it. All their friends have been there already.”
“Just a couple more days,” I said. Given how much business we were getting, it was kind of killing me to have to keep the place closed to the public for one night. But we all agreed that it would be safer for everyone if we controlled the crowd.
As a whole, the families stayed safe because we were careful to keep Family business as far away from them as possible.
But it was rare that every member of the family got together with the kids.
If someone was looking for a chance to strike and cause the most damage, that was the kind of event for it.
Which was why we were not only going to be at the garden center, but we were each bringing in a few of our most trusted soldiers to act as security just in case.
“Hey, Dante, I saved her,” Valley said, leading Hazel back into the hallway. “Mom was asking her inappropriate questions about dating.”
“Really, it’s fine,” Hazel insisted. “She’s very… interested in everyone being happy.”
“And popping out babies,” Valley said.
“Have you guys ever considered that she hyper-fixates on your dating life because she’s lonely?” Hazel asked.
There was a full beat of silence after her words, making her eyes go round.
“I’m sorry. Was that inappropriate? I just got the feeling she’s been alone for a long time.”
“Most of our lives,” August said.
“It wasn’t inappropriate,” I assured her.
“We’re just kind of shocked we never thought of it,” Valley said. “Now I kind of feel bad for any time I had other plans and couldn’t go out with her.”
“Kind of explains why she wants to spend every spare moment with the kids,” Savannah said.
“Has she ever even dated?” Traveler asked.
“I mean not that she’s told any of us,” Valley said.
“Can you imagine being single for, what, twenty years?” Savannah asked, her eyes going sad. “No one to talk to after a hard day. No one to eat dinner with. To celebrate with. To give her flowers.”
“We give her flowers,” August said.
“Yeah,” Valley said, nodding. “But it’s different.”
“Do we know any men of a certain age she might be interested in?” Savannah asked.
“Should we really be doing to her what she’s done to us?” August asked.
“Doing what to whom?” Nino asked, joining the group.
Hazel eased closer to me, giving me a wince. “I didn’t mean to create a whole thing,” she said.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, pressing a hand to the small of her back as the crowd started discussing all the older men they knew. “Can I get you a drink?”
“Sure. Your mother said you brought wine.”
“She made me,” I admitted, getting a little laugh out of her.
“This whole family seems to revolve around her.”
“It does.”
“She must be pretty incredible.”
“She is.”
“So, are you going to play matchmaker for her too?”
“Luckily, I don’t know any single men her age, so I can sit this one out.”
“Maybe she’d like a younger man. Maybe someone you know from the gym.”
“At the risk of sounding juvenile here… gross.”
That got a genuine laugh out of her just as we moved into the kitchen.
The sound had my mother turning, catching us together, and smiling to herself.
“Do you need any help in here?” Hazel offered.
“Oh, aren’t you a dear?” my mom asked. “But no. I’m almost done. Dante, why don’t you take Hazel out back and show her the lovely path to the fountain garden that you so generously provided from the garden center?”
“That you stole from the garden center,” I clarified.
“Tomato to-mah-to. Take the girl out back and show her.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, giving Hazel a shrug.
“That’s a good boy,” she said, patting my cheek as I poured a glass of wine for Hazel, then pulled the back door open for her.
“So, does her cooking taste as good as it smells?” she asked as we stepped outside.
“Better. Way better.”
“I’m glad I didn’t go with tight pants. Wow, this is magical,” she said as we moved off the back porch and onto the cobblestone path.
Since the last time I’d seen it, my mother had someone in to install posts that she’d strung lights from on each side of the path, making a romantic trail through her flowerbeds and toward the water feature she’d made all of us kids help her build when we were young.
“Yeah, it is.”
“And your mom is going to bankrupt the garden center when she redoes all this in the spring.”
“I’ll probably need a whole truckload of annuals just for her. Though she has cut back some of the gardens to make room for playgrounds and such for the grandkids.”
“There were a lot of kids in there.”
“Oh, no. That was nothing. Most of the kids are in the basement. Ma converted it into an indoor play area. Got a whole kitchen, a grocery store, a mini movie theater, an art station—you name it.”
“Was she like this as a mom?”
“No. I mean she did everything for us. But she was a strict ‘toys in your room’ kind of mom. But that was likely more our old man and his demands for a clean house.”
“What toys were you into as a kid?”
“I was a builder. Building kits were my thing. Cars, houses, boats. I built Valley a whole dollhouse. Well, Ma bought the dollhouse. But it was plain wood. I painted, tiled, added furniture.”
“Well, that makes sense.”
“How so?”
“I mean, your vision for the garden center. Are you some sort of architect?”
“No.” But I’d considered that when I was a kid, before I understood the Family business. “I work in imports. But I do plan to work on some future projects like the garden center.”
Luca, the boss of the Family, was happy with the ease of washing our money through the garden center.
Sure, we had the docks, which did have a lot of legit imports, allowing us to clean a lot of money.
But we always needed to diversify. Like with Lucky’s pizza chain, like Famiglia, the wedding venue, and now the garden center.
I was already keeping an eye out for future opportunities, maybe ones that would let me flex more creative building muscle.
“Oh, wow. I see why she wanted you to bring me out here,” Hazel said when we reached the fountain.
Both strands of lights came together behind the fountain that sat in an alcove of raised flowerbeds with perfectly shaped greenery all around, creating a private—and, yes, romantic—oasis.
“Who has thrown the pennies in?” she asked, turning to look at me.
And, fuck, if she wasn’t even more gorgeous than usual with the lights shining on her hair, standing there in that pretty dress like this was some fucking movie.
“Pennies?” I asked, snapping myself out of the sudden urge to grab her, pull her flush to my chest, and seal my lips to hers.
“Yeah, there are pennies in the fountain. Do you guys use it as a wishing fountain?”
I stepped forward, our shoulders brushing, to peer inside. Sure enough, there were shiny pennies scattered on the bottom.
“Huh. Maybe Ma throws pennies with the grandkids. Got any wishes?” I asked, watching her profile.
“I don’t have any pennies.”
I reached in my pocket for my wallet, found a penny, and held it out to her.
She took it, staring at it like she was pinning all her hopes and dreams on it. She sucked in a deep breath, then tossed it. We both stood there, watching it drop into the water and sink to the bottom.
“What’d you wish for?” I asked.
“I can’t tell you or it won’t come true,” she said, turning her head to look at me.
And we were close. So damn close. I could just lean forward and my lips would be on hers.
As if hearing my thoughts, her gaze dipped to my lips.
I know I told Dom I wouldn’t do it.
It also probably wasn’t a good precedent to set to let my mother think she could play matchmaker.
But, fuck, just this once, I didn’t want to think about anything but what I wanted.
And I wanted her.
My hand lifted, fingers sliding across the smooth skin of her neck, my thumb pressing up under her chin as I started to lean in.
“Uncle Dante!” a shrill little voice called, making both of us tense and jump apart.
“Shh, leave Dante alone, honey,” my ma said.
But it was too late.
The moment was gone.
“Dinner is probably ready,” I said.
Hazel’s gaze slipped to the fountain once again before she nodded and followed me inside.
Even hours later, after Hazel was gone, and I was alone in my bed after a punishing late-night workout, I couldn’t stop wondering what she might have wished for.