Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
BIANCA
I watch as Giovanni sets up his camera in the kitchen, using the tripod with the ease of someone who’s spent the last year making videos.
He’s wearing one of Helen’s shirts, this one a little looser than the last one he wore, but bless whatever company pulled strings while it was making them, it still hugs his shoulders and arms. Giovanni looks like what he is—a star—and I’m not the only one who’s staring.
After he explained his plan to Helen earlier, she said he was the angel she’d been praying to the sweet baby Jesus for, and Luanne gripped my arm and whisper-shouted, “I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you allow that hot piece to walk out of your life forever.”
I didn’t even mind that much that Giovanni overheard her and smiled. Especially since he followed up with: “I’m halfway through our book, Luanne. When are we having our meeting?”
“Next week,” she said. “Are you reading it together?”
“Bianca’s a faster reader.” He winked at me. “But maybe she’ll agree to a study session if I catch up.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Yes, Chef.”
Now, we’re in Helen’s kitchen—standing near the charred carpet. We have everything Luanne says we’ll need to complete the first lesson: the piecrust.
“Will you do the honors?” Giovanni asks me with a seductive smile as he finishes fiddling with the camera.
“Save that smile for the camera,” I say.
“No,” he says, running his hand over mine as he guides it to the correct button. “This one is just for you, cara mia.”
He steps back into position next to Helen and Luanne at the kitchen counter. The camera screen has been flipped so they can all see whether they’re on camera.
He smiles at me again, then counts off with his fingers, and I press record on three.
“Friends, I know you’re used to seeing a little less and a little more of me,” Giovanni says. “But this is going to be my new signature look. My girlfriend requested that I wear a shirt, so our friend Helen here, who is all about compromise, drew my abs onto it.”
“He let me trace ’em,” she jokes, lifting up a Sharpie she had tucked into her pocket. “It was the highlight of the last five years of my life.”
“Don’t tell your boyfriends that, Helen,” Giovanni says with a wink that’ll send butterflies cascading through every last person who watches this video.
“Now, Helen and I are holding a very special fundraiser for A Room with a View, a local retirement home in need of some TLC.” He plucks his shirt at his chest. “We’re selling these shirts so we can improve life for the home’s residents, including the menu in the kitchen.
So if you want, you can purchase your very own shirt from The Shirtless Chef shop, and every last penny of profit will go into A Room With a View so we can make sure my friends—” he gestures to Helen, Luanne, and a couple of other Shirties who’ve gathered in the kitchen, “—can keep living their best lives.”
I can practically see the money pouring in.
And I know…
I shouldn’t be in love with this man, who used to drive me crazy.
But I am. And each day, I’m falling a little deeper.
Giovanni and Luanne are so charismatic together on camera they almost make me believe in magic.
The way they riff off each other, performing as if they’ve been working together for years is truly something to see.
Giovanni clearly knows what he’s doing in the kitchen, but he’s eager to learn and treats Luanne with tremendous respect, somehow managing to be both deferential and flirtatious with her, and she eats it up.
Her secret ingredient for the perfect, flaky crust turns out to be a tablespoon of her homemade mayonnaise, which sounds kind of gross but is admittedly delicious.
The real treasure of their on-camera action, however, is her story of how she discovered it—when she was so tired from her son waking up three times a night that she accidentally threw a tablespoon of mayonnaise instead of butter into the flour mixture and decided to wing it.
“And that was that,” she says.
In exchange for her story, Giovanni tells her about the time he gave his nonna so much grief she accidentally made a pudding using salt instead of sugar.
When Giovanni and his brothers and sister refused to eat it, his nonna got heated, until his nonno insisted she try spooning up some herself, and she burst out laughing.
“And that was that,” Giovanni says, and he and Luanne both crack up.
The piecrust they’ve made looks perfect, and Luanne kisses him on the cheek after they take it out of the oven. “You can come back tomorrow, and we’ll work on the filling. I’ll bake with you anytime, honey.”
“I’ll take you up on that,” he says, and I cut the recording, feeling tears in my eyes, because it was so perfect. So real.
“Now, let me go make you dinner, ladies,” he tells Luanne and Helen, who made us all tea during the recording.
“There you go, making my day again,” Helen says, sounding choked up too.
While we wait for the piecrust to chill in the refrigerator, Giovanni and I add the T-shirts to The Shirtless Chef shop.
They’re set up to be produced on demand by a custom print shop, like the other shirts in his online store, but Helen insists we’ll get better returns if we make them ourselves. “We can screen-print them here,” she said. “Out there in the rec room. All of the Shirties will want to help.”
“We can do it for our next art club,” I agreed, making a mental note to source the T-shirts.
Giovanni smiled at me. “Am I allowed to come this time?”
I could have pointed out that he was technically invited last time. Instead, I cupped his face with my hand and told him the honest-to-God truth. “You’re going to be our inspiration.”
After we leave Helen’s kitchen, we bring the camera and tripod into the main kitchen, but we keep it off while I introduce Giovanni to the cooks, an older, harried-looking couple. He’s so kind to them, especially after they tell him their budget is so low they have few options.
Listening to them makes me pissed off at Rhett all over again.
“We’ll make do with what we have for now,” Giovanni tells them. “But I’ll fix this. You’re not going to have to worry about that anymore.”
I can tell from the relieved looks on their faces that they believe him.
So do I.
“We’re going to make minestrone,” Giovanni says. “My grandmother’s favorite soup.”
After I turn on the camera so Giovanni can get footage, I leave them to work so I can harass the RN on duty about her lack of needle skills. I give her a talking-to that she obviously doesn't appreciate but will hopefully remember and then make my way back to the kitchen.
On the way, I pause to greet Luanne, who’s working on a thousand-piece puzzle in the rec room.
“I can tell our boy’s working his magic,” she says, tapping her nose.
The air smells unusually decadent, of buttery piecrust and the rich, earthy broth of the soup. Judging from the smiles in the room, I’m not the only one who’s enjoying it.
We don’t stay for dinner, however, since Giovanni wants to go home and edit the videos so they can be posted in the morning. Nico, who’s helped him since the beginning, has volunteered to assist him remotely.
I know Giovanni is eager to put his plan into motion, now that he has one.
Here’s something else I’m certain of: these videos are going to be even bigger than his old ones, because Giovanni is more mesmerizing to watch now that he has become one with the Shirtless Chef.
In my heart, there’s an uglier, harder truth I’ve been trying to ignore…
This is the first step toward him leaving me forever.