by Hazel Parker
“Which is?”
“Sommelier.”
How fascinating. For someone who yearned to meet someone who preferred the corks of wine over the metal snap-off cans of beer, I didn’t know nearly as much about wine as I wanted to. This seemed like a promising start.
“Where at?”
Brett laughed.
“Just somewhere out west of here, one of the vineyards, not a big place,” he said. “But what about you? Am I correct in assuming that you work at Polozzi’s?”
“Yes,” I said after a moment’s hesitation. It’s not like I had reason to lie; I just was a little on edge about men knowing exactly where I worked these days.
“And what do you do there?”
“Mostly back-office work, but it seems like we have the opposite problem. You want less of a presence of a boss; I want more of one. I’m having to pick up the pieces and scraps of my father because he’s often off doing his own thing.”
“I suppose there is some truth to that. Maybe we could arrange for a work swap day. I can pretend to know what I’m doing with numbers instead of wine, and you can know what you’re doing with wine like you do with numbers.”
He made me giggle. Damnit, he made me giggle.
“It looks like your friend is returning,” he said. “This is fun, Chelsea. I will speak to you when you are free again.”
“Sounds great,” I said, but I had to admit, that vastly understated how he made me feel right now. He had such a confident air to him, and, hey, I had asked for someone with more sophisticated taste…
But this still didn’t invalidate my hypothesis that the guys who had their shit together weren’t looking to settle down. If anything, the aura about him seemed to support that notion. He wasn’t as aggressive a “player” as some of the other guys I had met were, but there was certainly not a hard “romantic” vibe to him.
“Seems like you two hit it off rather well,” Amanda said as she sat down. “You still have my money. You didn’t even get the drink order in!”
“Sorry.”
“No, no, I don’t want you to be sorry. That is good—it means you two hit it off so well, you couldn’t even think to order a drink!”
Amanda waved the bartender down and ordered our drinks. I got a Ferrari Malbec, while she got a vodka-club soda. Apparently, she wasn’t kidding when she said that she had had a seriously rough day at work.
“You know, he keeps looking this way at you,” Amanda said. “I might have to cut out of this a little bit early to let you have some fun.”
“Oh, Christ, Amanda, you’re going to make me blush horribly.”
“No, seriously, you two seemed to really hit it off. I know the difference between a dude hitting on you for sex and a dude just making fun conversation with you.”
I mean, she said it, I didn’t think it, so…
Hope is a bit of a dangerous thing to latch onto, though.
But for the next twenty minutes, I slowly began to forget about Brett’s presence behind me as Amanda and I caught up on her life. I would remember the instant she looked over my shoulder, but I just reminded myself that my friendship with Amanda had been around for over fifteen years; this guy hadn’t even been a part of my life for fifteen minutes.
Nevertheless, when Amanda finished her drink, she put her hand on my arm.
“You gotta stay here,” she said. “See what happens with this guy. I’ll stay outside for a bit and make sure that he doesn’t do anything but see what happens.”
“Amanda—”
And, again, she just up and left without another word, without giving me the chance to fight back.
“You have a good friend,” Brett said the instant Amanda had walked out of the bar. “My friends usually like to gawk and holler at me when I’m talking to an attractive woman like yourself.”
I blushed and prayed that the red in my cheeks would vanish before Brett saw me, but when the heat didn’t dissipate immediately, I just turned to him and accepted that he’d notice it instantly.
“That’s very kind of you, Brett,” I said. “But don’t get too crazy. I’m not looking for a wild night.”
“I’m not either,” he said. “My party days aren’t behind me, but they aren’t necessarily the high I need to get past a day like today. I’m more looking for someone to take to the party rather than take from the party, if that makes sense.”
This guy...he was something else.
It was just too bad this was getting to be a little too close to perfect. I wasn’t going to cut it off for that reason, obviously, but I waited for the other shoe to drop—whether it was he was already taken, whether he was a trust fund baby, whether it was something else.
“So, how does one become a sommelier?” I asked, trying to keep the conversation relatively grounded.
“Well, it helps to grow up around wine,” Brett cracked. “Family is all into wine. Wine, sports, and cooking.”
That sounds like a great family to be a part of.
“But the better question, Chelsea, is how did someone intelligent, attractive, and charming like you wind up working in the back office of a furniture store?”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” I said, even though I knew he was just playing with me.
“Well, I can tell by the way that you speak, you are highly educated and well-read,” he said. “I need only look at you to see that you are attractive, and not just because of your looks, but because you take care of yourself. And, of course, I find myself attracted to you, so you must be charming.”
There was no way that this guy’s “real” conversational style was like this. It felt like the actual James Bond was talking to me.
And yet, it was working. I liked it. It was playful, fun, and silly. I couldn’t help but admit that it had an effect.
“Well,” I said, trying not to make it obvious how hot my cheeks were. “I suppose you could say I’m just committed to the family business. I could have gone to work in Los Angeles, but I wanted to be closer to my father. He’s...had a rough go of it the last few years.”
“Understandable,” Brett said.
Probably not the greatest of ideas to mention your murdered mother on the first encounter.
“So, that’s why I’m here,” I said. “But I’m looking for better. Still in the area. Better work. Better life. Better…”
“Better men?” Brett said, arching an eyebrow.
Oh, boy. This guy had no shame and no trouble calling things out as he saw them. I felt my body temperature rising and my leg start to bounce in excitement. I still wanted a real relationship, but it wasn’t every day that a man like this walked in and could woo the socks off of me.
“Perhaps,” I said.
I threw a smirk in his direction, waiting for him to give me something more. I couldn’t wait to see what more he had to say. It was just so fucking sexy.
And then…
“Well, alas, I think I would be more trouble for you than you think, so I will let you be,” he said. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Chelsea, and I am sure that I will see you around again.”
Huh?
“Wait—”
“No, it’s quite all right,” he said as he stood from his stool, laying down a twenty-dollar bill for what, as far as I could tell, was only one drink. “You’re a great person, but in some ways, it’s too bad I ran into you now. My future is already sealed.”
And there it was. There’s the other shoe to drop.
“You flirt with women when you’re engaged?” I asked suspiciously.
Brett laughed.
“Actually, I’m very single right now and with no one that I’m getting serious with.”
Huh? What the fuck...does this guy like playing mind games?
“Then what do—”
“I’ll explain it to you some other time,” he said. “You have a great night, Chelsea.”
And without another word, with only a touch of my shoulder, Brett left the bar. My eyes followed him all
the way out, down the street, until he disappeared from view. I was left confused...and curious.
Damnit.
Why had he just run off like that? And what did he mean, his fate was sealed? Like, he was moving? He was arranged to be married to someone? He was...I don’t know, a secret agent who was only here temporarily?
Ludicrous as some of the thoughts that popped into my head were, they weren’t nearly as crazy and confusing as the encounter I had just had.
I needed to see Brett again. I needed to know what he meant.
And I didn’t even have his phone number.
I supposed that was the end of it.
But something told me that for how almost perfectly orchestrated and fluid our conversation was, Brett wouldn’t let it be the end of us.
Or maybe I was just hoping for too much and I should have felt grateful I didn’t get dragged down by some asshole into another heartbreaking romp.
Chapter 5: Brett
Turns out that hottie was someone worth talking to.
As I left the bar, I knew exactly what I was doing with Chelsea. I could see she wanted more, but that was the point—if I left her hanging, she would want to see me again. And unlike her, I knew I would see her again.
She knew my first name. She knew I was a sommelier. She knew I was charming, light-hearted, and inquisitive. But that was it. If she wanted more, she’d have to hope for the element of chance to come into play.
I, on the other hand, knew where she worked. And while that was only one nugget of information, that nugget could easily launch into more. The Ferrari family had a way of finding out about people, and I was pretty sure she had said her father owned the place. It was not at all an unreasonable guess to say that her full name was likely Chelsea Polozzi.
Maybe if my plans to have Uncle Nick helped me fell through, I could rope Miss Polozzi in for a little fun. I felt pretty sure she wouldn’t mind too much—marry me for a few years until the old couple croaked, get some nice cash into the bank account, and then have the freedom to do whatever she wanted.
It was just too bad that I wasn’t very good or very capable of the whole commitment thing. She’d have to know that my wandering eye would get me into trouble.
Although, admittedly, for a woman as cute and as fun as she was, I thought that I could maybe give it a shot. If nothing else, it would be a nice hurrah before I had to “settle down.”
If, that was, Uncle Nick couldn’t help me like he’d helped brother Nick.
I pulled out my phone once I knew I was out of view. I again dialed Uncle Nick, who picked up in what sounded like a casino.
“You again, Brett?” he said. “Isn’t it past your bedtime?”
“I could say the same to you, old man,” I said with a chuckle. “Change of plans. I’m coming to Vegas next weekend. Let’s go gamble and get on a chase, shall we?”
Uncle Nick paused for a second, the sound of cheering going on in the background as someone threw a successful roll at craps.
“You’re sure about this?”
“Of course,” I said. “Some things are best experienced in Vegas.”
Uncle Nick sighed.
“All right, see you soon.”
He hung up before I could say a word. He knew full well that going on a chase had nothing to do with women.
At least, not in the way anyone who might have overheard us speaking might have thought.
* * *
I got off the plane at McCarren Airport in Las Vegas, and even though I had made this trip a couple dozen times in my life, it still felt surreal.
Instead of a thriving metropolis of technology, wine, and employees in hoodies and jeans, I saw people dressed to the finest degree, some playing slots, some holding up signs for millionaires and billionaires passing through. Las Vegas was easily the most plastic of any city that I had ever seen, but that didn’t mean I hated it. In fact, I fucking loved it; I knew I was getting laid just by being in the city’s atmosphere.
But this visit had nothing to do with getting laid, or at least not in the way I usually did it.
I hailed an Uber, rode it to the southwest side of Las Vegas, far away from the Strip, off an exit from Interstate 15, and found myself in a neighborhood pretty decently cordoned off from the rest of the city. It was a house I had come to know well, but as an adult, with how Dad and my grandfather would speak of Uncle Nick as “the crazy one,” I’d slowly started to see it differently.
Before I could knock, Uncle Nick opened the door.
“Come on in,” he said. “But don’t get too comfortable. You may not want to stay long when I tell you what’s going on.”
“What do you mean?” I said. “Did the strippers at the Spearmint all say no to your request?”
“Good to see you too, Brett,” Uncle Nick said with a laugh. “No. Unfortunately, it’s not nearly as humorous.”
Well, shit, what now?
“You might recall how your brother asked me to put an order in for some business?”
I nodded. How could I forget that?
“Well, your father, my brother, eventually traced it back to me, and let me tell you, if you ever see a man as angry in your life as your father was then, you may not survive the encounter. He absolutely reamed into me and told me to stay the fuck out of your lives and to not pull you into the family business.”
That seemed a little overbearing. We weren’t teenagers anymore. But I took a seat on Uncle Nick’s couch and accepted a beer from him as he continued talking.
“I told him that while I wouldn’t actively seek to bring you guys into this world, I wasn’t going to lie to you and pretend that it didn’t exist. If you asked for my help, I would give it. You’re blood. And besides, hiding shit like that would only come back to bite you in the ass. Better that you know of it.”
“You make it sound like we have an entire international mafia after us.”
Nick just laughed but didn’t respond. I couldn’t exactly say that his response filled me with comfort and confidence.
“Anyway, your father did not take kindly to it. He told me I was, let’s see, quote, ‘a fucking asshole who wants to fucking undo everything our father has worked for.’ He told me it was a damn good thing that I never had kids, because they’d probably be dead if I raised them in Vegas.”
“Jesus,” I said, trying to remember if I had ever seen my father so angry. I could recall a couple of times in our youth when we’d run into meetings with the three adults and the grandparents and my father would get red-faced, but I couldn’t ever remember him swearing at us like so or saying such incisive remarks.
“I’ve been called worse, believe me, so to some extent, I just saw it as your father blowing off steam, so I said fuck it, I’ll let him continue. But then he dropped the bombshell, which is why I’m not sure I can help you. He said that if I helped the four of you in any way related to our, ahem, background, he was going to tell your grandfather. And if you think the rules for you four getting the inheritance are stiff, kid, you don’t know anything.”
“So because you’re worried about losing out on your portion of the inheritance, you can’t help me, because doing so would violate that and get you cut out.”
“Smart kid,” Uncle Nick said wistfully as he took a long gulp of his drink. “So, I’m kind of fucked. I’m sorry, I wish I could help you, but I’m not willing to risk an ungodly amount of money just so you can get a ring on your finger.”
And so there it was.
I’d have to do this shit on my own. If I wanted to have my fair share of the inheritance, I had to play by some rules made in the eleventh century, keep myself to one woman, and then split apart as soon as Grandpa said goodbye, undoubtedly stirring up some questions and drama amongst the older generation. I could get away with it with my siblings, even if Layla would never stop giving me shit, but I couldn’t do this and remain on good terms with Uncle Frank and my dad.
“For what it’s worth,” I said, holding out my beer. “I
don’t know all that you do, but I tend to agree with you. If grandpa’s past is something that’s going to always be with us one way or another, then I think we have a right to know.”
“That’s what I’m fucking saying,” Nick said, clinking glasses with me. “But in a sense, I respect what your grandfather is doing. I may be here and not give a fuck about dodging this life, but I can assure you that that doesn’t mean there aren’t parts of it I don’t want to remember. There are some things in my childhood…”
Nick bit his lip. If I didn’t know the man better, I would have sworn he was on the verge of tears. He even looked the other way before he let out a long sigh.
“You think you know what secrets grandpa has, but you don’t,” Nick said. “I hope you have an understanding of what lies on the other side of that door, but I hope you never have to go exploring behind it.”
“I under…”
I stopped when Uncle Nick glared at me. No, no, I did not. So I dropped it.
“Sorry, kid,” he said.
“There’s gotta be a way,” I said, but it wasn’t exactly with the utmost confidence. “I mean...what am I going to do, just ask a girl on Bumble to be my wife for five years and get a few million in return? I’m sure that would land me with someone I wouldn’t mind.”
Uncle Nick chortled.
“OK, let me ask this,” I said, the gears slowly starting to turn. “What was it you were doing?”
“Well, so much for secrecy, huh?” he said. “I know some women that would be more than willing to play this game. And I don’t mean women my age. I mean—”
“Yeah, OK, maybe I don’t need to know everything,” I said, more than a little afraid of how Nick knew those younger girls. “But let me ask you this. Any of your old friends. Through ‘this life’ or however you want to call it. Do they have daughters? Maybe they aren’t women you talk to directly. But maybe they have someone. Could be a win-win.”
“Kid, this ain’t Medieval Europe,” Nick said with a laugh, but he stopped himself to think about it. “Actually…”