Chapter Seven
ROME
“Mama!” I yelled into the house as I made my way through the front door.
She lived in the same house that she and my step-dad had bought over twenty years ago.
It bore the wear of years of raising six children.
There were scuffs on the baseboards, marks on the wall with all of our heights, and the same photo of my late father in his dress blues that had been hung in the living room the day we moved here.
I was only eight years old when I moved here with my mom.
I had been terrified that my mom’s new relationship would overshadow my dad.
My step-dad, Mateo, could sense those fears and made sure to hang the photo of my dad in the living room so it was the first thing I saw when I walked through the front door.
It had been thirty years since my dad had passed.
I didn’t remember him. He’d had a heart attack when I was only four years old.
While I had no memories, his life impacted my own every day.
I joined the Army to follow in his footsteps, supported my mom and family the way he would have, and refused to let his memory get lost in the day-to-day motions.
I could admit I had been hung up on the memory of my dad for years.
When my mom started dating, to say I was a menace would be an understatement.
Despite it all, Mateo stuck around. My mom understood my reluctance to accept Mateo and never pushed a relationship between the two of us.
It took years, but we did become close, forming a relationship that resembled that of father and son.
“Love you, Dad,” I whispered as I passed the photo. “Mom!” I called again.
“Rome,” she exclaimed as she rounded the corner, and as usual, took my face in her hands and squished my cheeks. “You’re withering away. Is your boss not feeding you? She needs to feed you. Come!”
My mom hadn’t aged in years; her tan skin remained free of wrinkles, except the small ones around her eyes from smiling. She had one streak of grey hair that marred her black mane.
She pulled me into the kitchen where she was cooking our usual family dinner. Lucia Romano Cipriani didn’t believe in takeout. It was a fact everyone knew.
Mateo was a chef by trade and taught my mom all he knew over time, and she surpassed him in skill years ago.
The two started a restaurant a couple of years after they were married.
My mom ran the business side of the restaurant while Mateo was the head chef.
Despite their busy schedule, my mom insisted that we have a home-cooked family dinner every night.
It wasn’t always perfect. Some dinners merely consisted of generic cereal and pancakes. While other dinners were entire spreads with multiple courses, and ended with us all well-fed. What mattered, though, was the company—that my sisters and I were all sitting around the dinner table together.
Many dinners growing up ended with one of my sisters running away, crying.
The teenage years were rough on everyone.
But without fail, we were all at the table the next night.
That’s what family was about. No matter what was happening between us personally, when it came down to it, we showed up for each other… without question.
“Mom, leave the poor boy alone,” my sister, Bella, complained from her spot at the dining table. She was rolling pasta dough in front of her, presumably for ravioli, based on the ingredients spread around the kitchen and the connected dining room.
“I’m eight years older than you, don’t call me a boy,” I argued as I took the seat next to her and began helping her with the dough. She was the oldest of the Romano sisters, Mateo’s daughters, but she was still my baby sister. A fact that drove her crazy many days.
Bella had long black hair and dark brown eyes that were almost black, much like my own. She was in the process of taking over her dad’s restaurant and spent most of her time either in the restaurant kitchen, or in the kitchen here. Cooking was her calling, and she was incredible at it.
Bella glanced at our mom, who was busying herself on the stove, before turning her gaze to me. “I hid the paper from Mom, but is it true? Are you dating your boss?”
I chuckled just thinking about that damned paper. “No, it was just a bunch of poorly timed photos. If I were dating someone, I would’ve told you.”
Out of all of our siblings, Bella and I were the closest. We had a huge age gap, but had always been eerily similar. Secrets had always been nonexistent between the two of us.
While I was in the Army, I wrote to my entire family. My mom and other sisters received edited versions of what I experienced. Bella always received the whole truth, often serving as a sounding board for my worries.
“But…” I began, throwing a glance at our mom, who was still preoccupied, “We’re going to pretend to date for a while.”
Bella’s eyes grew wide. “Why?”
“She asked me to, I figured, why not?”
In truth, I wanted to help Bec. She despised every part of who I was.
I laughed too much, talked too much, and smiled too much.
She could barely stand to be in the same room as me, yet that was my entire job.
The only reason I hadn’t been fired was because I was good at my job—one of the best—and she respected that most.
Bec was an impeccable businesswoman who was given a shitty hand. Her board of directors refused to place their trust in her, simply because she was a woman. The media had painted her as cold-hearted and ruthless. While that description could be helpful to any man in her position, it only hurt her.
Rebecca Bly was damned good at her job, and I would do whatever she needed to help her prove that—even if that meant pretending to date her for the optics.
“Has anyone told you that you’re too agreeable?” Bella asked, her tone joking.
I chuckled at my sister. I had never heard that complaint.
I was a career soldier before retirement and being hired on as a member of the Bly Enterprises Security team.
In the Army, I had to be agreeable to my commanding officers.
There was no such thing as too agreeable in that line of work.
Since working at Bly Enterprises, I had been too focused on the jobs in front of me to disagree.
Hell, maybe I was too agreeable… but I didn’t mind it. It had gotten me this far in life.
“I owe her brother; the least I can do is help her out.”
Will, Bec’s older brother, had hired me a few years back, after I had first retired from the military. He wasn’t my biggest fan… not because of my performance, but my personality. He and Bec were very similar in that regard.
While working in Oregon, I had been given two responsibilities.
Protect his now wife, and find the people who were targeting her.
I ultimately failed on both fronts. While Jackie was now safe, and the people harassing and targeting her were now behind bars, I had nothing to do with it.
My failures almost resulted in my best friend's—her brother’s—death.
I couldn’t even think about that night, the pain too raw and fresh.
I hated myself, knowing how horrendously I had failed some of the most important people in my life.
I couldn’t face my best friend, Malachi. Not after he had almost lost his life because of me. He had been calling every other day for months, but I had managed to dodge him each time. My sisters were starting to grow suspicious, but didn’t press me on why I was ignoring him.
This assignment as Bec’s bodyguard was my chance to redeem myself. It also gave me the opportunity to live in New York City, and thus came with the perk of making my five sisters and my mom happier than ever.
“So why do you have to pretend to be her boyfriend? Have you ever even been someone’s boyfriend before? Not just their hookup? One night stand? Bad decision?” Bella asked with a smirk.
I rolled my eyes, not that she noticed. Bella’s focus was on the dough in front of her, but she wasn’t going to let this go.
“You’re pretending to be someone’s boyfriend?” Aria was leaning in the doorway, her gaze curious. She was the third born, and by far the most mature out of all of us.
“What’s Rome doing?” It was Livia this time, her pink hair a rat’s nest on her head. I had a feeling she’d just woken up.
Luna, her twin, followed close behind, “Rome’s home?”
“He just got here,” Bee, my youngest sister, explained as she plopped down in the seat next to me.
Having five sisters was usually great, but it also meant a lot of intrusive questions.
“Sit down and be quiet,” Bella hissed, throwing a glance to our mom, who was luckily still preoccupied in the kitchen, listening to the radio and dancing along as she cooked.
My sisters all complied, taking their seats at the dining table. While growing up, many arguments broke out over who was sitting where at the table, on the couch, in the car… you name it, we fought about it. This led to us getting assigned seats, seats we still honored to this day.
The five of them were quite the crew. Our Italian genes were strong, and it was evident in each of us.
Bella and I had black hair and nearly black eyes.
Aria was the outlier, with her light brown hair and eyes.
Luna and Livia were identical twins, and while they still shared their matching dark brown eyes, Livia had dyed her hair pink in high school to help differentiate them, leaving Luna with her natural dark brown hair.
Bee, the baby of the family, was a mix of all of us—her hair was lighter, but she had darker eyes.
The problem was that they were all strikingly beautiful. I had helped their dad run off more boys than we could count. The older they got, the more I let go, but I still dreaded the day they would start to settle down.
God help the men who fall in love with the Romano sisters.
“What I’m about to tell you, you need to keep to yourself, okay?” I looked at each of them as they nodded in agreement. “I am going to… well… I’m going to fake date my boss for the foreseeable future.”
Livia raised her hand as if we were in grade school. I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. “Yes, Livia?”
“Are we talking about boy Bly or girl Bly?”
“Girl Bly. Bec,” Bella supplied, “Boy Bly is married.”
From my back pocket, I pulled out the tabloid that I had gotten earlier, and threw it onto the table. It was like watching rabid dogs go after a chicken leg, when watching my sisters go after the paper. Livia, as predicted, was victorious.
She flipped through the pages, smiling at the various pictures of me and Bec over the last few months. “These are pretty damning.”
Bee peered over her shoulder, taking a look at the pictures, “He’s just being a gentleman. Why do these journalists think that means they’re dating?”
Luna stifled a chuckle, “Rome? A gentleman?”
“Your brother has always been a gentleman.” My mom’s intrusion caused a flustered Aria to steal the paper and stuff it under her legs on the chair.
The rest of my sisters and I, all stifling laughs now.
“Thanks, Mom,” I answered.
She pinched my cheek as she smiled at me fondly. I took her hand in my own. This woman was the most significant presence in my life. Between my father, Mateo, my commanding officers, and various team leaders, I had no shortage of role models in my life. But my mom… she was the greatest of them all.
“When I was dating your father, your brother here ensured that he only treated me with the utmost respect. He was born a gentleman, just like his father.”
I was only eight years old when Mateo and my mom had started dating, but I had known even then that my mom deserved only the best. I hadn’t been the gentleman she was remembering.
I had spent the better part of a year trying to convince Mateo to leave my mom via various…
pranks. Mateo had kept it to himself all these years, a part of him still trying to win me over.
Conversations turned towards my sisters and their various lives.
Bella was in the countdown of taking over the restaurant, Aria was beyond ready to quit her job as a teacher, Livia and Luna were chatting about the latter’s boyfriend, and Bee was fawning over the photos of me in the paper that she’s stolen from Aria.
Despite the conversation happening around me, I couldn’t keep my thoughts from turning to Bec.
She barely tolerated me as it was. I wasn’t sure how she could pretend to have any positive feelings for me.
It wouldn’t be hard for me to pretend to have feelings for her.
Bec was beyond beautiful. Her eyes were a steel blue that felt piercing each time she looked at me, her hair always perfect as it fell in waves down her back.
She was stunning, and damn, was she brilliant.
There were many times I followed her to her meetings, and the clients and business partners assumed they would be working with me.
I would drive the business into the ground if I were in charge for even a day.
Bec commanded every meeting with the utmost class and power.
She ran those boardrooms with expert precision.
I was drawn back to reality by a pasta noodle bouncing off of my forehead.
“What?” I asked, looking around the table.
Livia rolled her eyes, “You seriously weren’t listening to anything we just said?”
I shrugged, neither confirming nor denying.
Bella laughed softly, “How often do you tune us out?”
“To be honest, the majority of the time.”
I was met with a table full of complaints and more pasta noodles being thrown at me. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry,” I said through laughs… my hands raised in surrender. “What were you saying?”
It was Bee who spoke this time, her smile going from ear to ear. “Operation: Turn Rome Cipriani into the best fake boyfriend.”
I barked a laugh, “I know how to be a boyfriend. Do you think I’m an idiot or something?”
No one answered. Silence for just a moment before all of the girls looked at each other and burst out into laughter. I guess that was an answer in and of itself.