So Irresistible

by Lisa Plumley

  “It means we can’t open.” Flatly, Gabriella looked around her pizzeria. “Without dough, a pizzeria can’t open. Period.”

  “We can make more.” Shane strode toward the industrial floor-mounted mixer. He grabbed a bag of flour. “Tell me how.”

  She almost laughed. She was just that gobsmacked.

  “We can’t make more,” Gabriella said, still wondering where Pinkie had gone. “Not in time, we can’t. It won’t taste right. It won’t stretch right. It won’t work. It just won’t work.”

  “Not with that attitude, it won’t,” Shane protested. He put down the flour, then went to her. “Come on. We can do this.”

  Glumly, Gabriella shook her head. “No. We’re done.”

  “Don’t go all defeatist on me now! Not now.” Shane sounded inexplicably urgent. His gaze, full of determination and affection, met hers. “We can borrow some dough. There are other pizzerias. You know everyone in town. Someone will—”

  “Give us their pizza dough?” This time, Gabriella did laugh. Bitterly. “Even if they wanted to, they couldn’t. Most small pizzerias like ours mix dough daily. They make just enough to last until closing time. Nobody has any dough to spare.”

  “We’ll borrow from a big franchised chain, then.”

  Hopelessly, Gabriella glanced at him. “Shane … I appreciate your fortitude. I do. But we’re whipped this time.”

  “I don’t accept that,” he insisted. “Together, we can—”

  “Don’t you get it?” Exasperated and defeated, Gabriella rounded on him. “This isn’t the time when we hold hands and sing songs from Sesame Street. This is the time we quit.”

  Shane blinked. His jaw hardened. “I never quit.”

  “Yeah, well … ordinarily, I don’t, either.” Frustrated, Gabriella flung up her hands. She surveyed her ruined dough. “We can’t salvage this. It’s practically sourdough by now.”

  “Maybe Pinkie knows what happened,” Shane mused. “She must have been here. Maybe she saw something. Did … something?”

  His implications were clear. “You think Pinkie did this?” “Well, she was here, right?” Shane asked her. “Shouldn’t she at least have noticed the temperature was too high?”

  “Shouldn’t you have noticed?” Gabriella shot back.

  Belatedly, she realized that Shane had been there the entire morning. He could have turned up the thermostat to a heat-wave temperature. He could have sabotaged her pizza dough.

  He could have done it. Not her cousin. Not Pinkie.

  Except for the fact that, until Gabriella had shown Shane the video of her dad making pizza dough last night, he’d known exactly nothing about the intricacies involved in yeasted dough—especially when made in the vast quantities used by Campania. Even then, he hadn’t exactly been paying rapt attention, given all the sexual shenanigans they’d been up to. It couldn’t have been Shane.

  With no choice but to trust the man she loved, Gabriella turned to him. “I’m finished,” she said. “Campania is done.”

  “Gabby, no. Wait.” Shane reached for her. “There must be—”

  A way. Except she knew there wasn’t. “I’ll go call everyone and tell them not to come in.” In the hall, Gabriella paused. “Thanks for the new computer, Shane. It was very sweet of you. Maybe I can sell it to help pay off my debts.”

  “You can’t give up!” Shane protested. “Not now!”

  But Gabriella knew she could. She had to.

  “If you think of a way to save the day,” she told Shane, “let me know. I’ll be in my office, calling everyone with the bad news.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  In the end, Shane was forced to admit defeat.

  He couldn’t magically remake Campania’s ruined pizza dough. He couldn’t go back in time and lower the pizzeria’s thermostat. He couldn’t stop the rival fixer who was succeeding where he’d failed—where he’d decided to fall in love instead of do his job.

  By doing that, he’d let Gabby down, Shane realized too late. By lowering his guard, he’d made her more vulnerable to further attacks. He’d thought he’d been helping her. Instead, he’d been leaving her open to the same kinds of machinations he would have used, if this had been an ordinary assignment.

  But this wasn’t an ordinary assignment. And Gabby wasn’t an ordinary woman. And no matter what it took, Shane swore he’d fix things for her. He’d fix things the right way. For Gabby.

  The crazy thing was, Portland was full of “fixers.” And the first of them arrived at the pizzeria shortly after the crew did.

  Everyone was gathered around, woefully scraping overblown, sour-smelling dough balls off the overflowing sheet pans, having a pizzeria wake, grousing about who was sabotaging Campania and how they’d fight back, when the back-door call bell sounded.

  Bowser quit scraping. “Was that the bell?”

  “Couldn’t have been.” Pinkie hurled a sticky dough ball into the nearest trash can. “Gabriella canceled deliveries.”

  Insistently, the call bell rang again.

  “Sounds a lot like a bell to me,” Emeril observed.

  “Maybe.” Hypo frowned as he pulled long strands of gooey dough off his fingers. “You know, I think I might have picked up a bad case of … penguins!”

  As he calmed down, Frosty piped up, “Should I answer it?”

  “That’s my job.” Beside Shane, Gabriella frowned. She sat on two stacked fifty-pound bags of flour, having claimed they were better used now as a seat, since the pizzeria was never reopening. “I say no. Don’t answer it. I don’t care who it is.”

  “I’ll get it,” Scooter volunteered. Although there wouldn’t be any pizza char–smudged plates to wash, he’d come in anyway. For solidarity. Just like everyone else. “Be right back.”

  As he scurried away, Gabriella sighed. She eyed Shane, watching him set aside another cleaned-off sheet pan. “This is a lost cause, you know,” she reminded him. “We’re screwed.”

  “We could still make more dough for tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll need it. If you don’t ever reopen, what are these weirdos going to do with their time?” Illustratively, he gestured at Bowser, Hypo, Emeril, Frosty, and Pinkie. “Come on, Gabby,” he urged with an encouraging grin. “Think of the children!”

  “Nice try,” Gabby acknowledged. “But I don’t think—”

  Scooter interrupted her. He came back in, swinging a covered bucket. He plopped it on the make table. Opened it.

  “Voilà!” the dishwasher crowed. “Our problem is solved.”

  Everyone crowded around. “It’s pizza dough!” Pinkie said.

  “It’s from my place.” Another local pizzaiolo strode into the kitchen, trailing Scooter. There were shouts of greeting all around. He spied Gabriella. “Sorry I couldn’t spare more, Gabriella. That’s my overrun. It’s small, but it’s a start.”

  “So’s mine.” Another pizzaiolo came in right behind him. He added another, slightly smaller bucket of dough. “I heard what happened, Gabriella. If you close, who will I compete with?”

  During the next half hour, a dozen other local pizzaiolos came forward to donate pizza dough to Campania. Shane watched as the last pizzaiolo arrived, setting down his bucket with a groan.

  He examined the many other buckets. “I’d say you’ve got a night’s worth here,” he announced. “Put all these together—”

  “And you’ve got Frankenstein pizza.” Clearly overwhelmed, Gabby hugged him. She sniffled. “It won’t be Campania pizza, but it’ll be something. Something to keep us open another night.”

  “Hey, we might have closely guarded pizza-making secrets,” the last pizzaiolo acknowledged, “but it’s all still basically bread with tomato sauce and cheese. Your customers will get it.”

  After receiving another grateful hug, he filed out, leaving Shane and Gabby and all the crew members standing around in astonishment.

  It was true that no single pizzeria had been able to give them enough dough for service. But many pizzerias together, e
ach contributing a little bit, added up to more than enough.

  “I guess people in this town really do know you,” Shane told Gabby, pulling her close for a hug. He remembered what she’d said on the night they’d met at the brewpub, when she’d implied she was infamous among her peers. “They love you, too.”

  “I never would have believed this.” Gabby shook her head. “This is way too much.” She looked at her crew. “We can’t quit now, can we?” With evident relish, she rubbed her hands together. “Let’s get cracking on one more night at Campania!”

  The cheers that greeted her announcement were even more heartening than all those dough deliveries had been.

  Even with Shane’s infrequently used cheer among them.

  “I’ve been expecting a call from you,” Gregory Waltham said over the phone, sounding as dictatorial and difficult as usual.

  “Is that so?” Shane gripped his phone, having sneaked out to the darkened alleyway behind Campania as soon as his phone had rung. “This phone thing works both ways, you know. I’m glad you figured that out.”

  A painstaking exhalation of breath came over the line. Shane was all too familiar with that display of his father’s renowned “patience” with him. In his younger days, he’d been subjected to that aggressive form of forbearance much too often.

  “Don’t get smart with me,” his father shot back. “My sources tell me your fix is in. Why didn’t you tell me that?”

  “Because it’s not in. Who are your sources, anyway?”

  Silence. Then, “I was informed that Campania had closed.”

  “It did. Briefly.” Feeling perversely triumphant, Shane smiled. “Then it reopened.”

  He couldn’t have been happier about that. It had bruised him, seeing Gabby so unhappy. So defeated. Coming that close to having to shut down her family’s pizzerias altogether had taken a lot out of her. He’d never seen her with less fighting spirit.

  It was fortunate the Bridgetown pizzaiolo community had come through for her. Because Shane’s hands had been tied. Even though he’d been on the brink of spilling everything about his assignment to Gabby, in her office before disaster had struck, he hadn’t been able to do a thing when push came to shove.

  He hadn’t broached the topic of his “helping” her again, either. Not yet. But Shane planned to. He needed to pick his moment. Earlier, when Gabby had been happy about her shiny new computer, had been a prime moment. Now, when she was drained from a stressful day, wasn’t. Shane had to bide his time.

  “Reopened?” Gregory Waltham sounded infuriated. “What do you mean, reopened? What happened? I was told it was done.”

  Done. Shane knew what that meant. “Who told you that?”

  More silence. This time, the line crackled with fury.

  “Your game with two fixers is backfiring on you,” Shane said. “You’re losing control. If you call off the other guy—”

  “There is no ‘other guy,’” his father enunciated clearly. “I already told you, I dismissed the other fixer.”

  “Someone is working on this pizzeria fix,” Shane insisted.

  “Yes. Evidently, it isn’t you.” His father’s tone was cold.

  Frustrated, Shane gripped the phone harder. In the darkness, he heard cars whooshing past, pizzeria customers talking as they waited in line, a dog barking nearby.

  “Can’t you just believe in me, for once?” he asked his father, hearing his voice crack on the words. “Is that so much to ask? Are you that much of a fucking hard-ass that you can’t even—”

  “Language, Shane.”

  Shane laughed. Bitterly. “Answer the question.”

  His father exhaled. “Yes. That is too much to ask,” he said bluntly. “Given your past, given your history of screwing up, given where you come from … I have to be tough on you.”

  Shane couldn’t speak. This wasn’t what he’d hoped for.

  “If I wasn’t,” his father forged on relentlessly, not noticing or caring about Shane’s silence, “if I let you be you, with no controls and no limits, it would be a disaster.”

  Suddenly remembering what Lizzy had said, Shane closed his eyes. “Is that why Belinda left? Why you got divorced?”

  He’d been closest to his adoptive mother. Her leaving had hit Shane hard. Shortly afterward, he’d gotten expelled again.

  “Belinda couldn’t handle you. That’s true. But—”

  But Shane didn’t want to hear any more. He opened his eyes. “Never mind. This has nothing to do with the job at hand.”

  “And now you see why I have to take a firm hand with you,” his father said. “If I don’t, everything goes off the rails.”

  Hell. His father was right.

  Kicking himself for having gone down this road, Shane frowned at the gritty red brick that made up the pizzeria’s back wall. The sounds of the kitchen filtered faintly through the back door—music mingled with shouting and chopping and the slamming of pans—and Shane realized as he angled his head toward those now-familiar sounds that they were right for him.

  His father wasn’t.

  “Do you have anything else to say?” Shane asked him.

  Gregory Waltham chuckled. “Do you? Because a slot just opened up in my calendar, and I have fifty more ways to say you’re a screwup already jotted down on my notepad here.”

  “You’re making a joke. About this?”

  “Come on, Shane. You have to laugh, don’t you?”

  Not about this, Shane realized. Not about this casual cruelty. He might have deserved it. Hell, he knew he did.

  He’d done a lot of bad things in his life.

  All the same … “I’m not laughing.”

  “Then you’re not paying attention,” his father said. “Because your chest-pounding he-man routine is damn funny.”

  Language. Shane bit back an urge to tsk-tsk his father. “You think I’m bragging?” he asked instead.

  “When you tell me how good you are as a fixer?” his father clarified. “Yes, I do. Nobody is as good as you say you are. I don’t know how you earned that reputation of yours—”

  “The hard way.”

  “—but I’m not buying it. I know you, Shane,” his father pushed. “I know how little you had when I found you. I know how hard I tried to turn you around. I know how I failed.”

  “You didn’t fail,” Shane told him, his tone cynical. “It’s partly because of you that I’m a fixer in the first place.”

  “Nice try. But that patter of yours doesn’t work on me.”

  Yes, it does. Otherwise, they wouldn’t still be talking.

  “I’m a fixer,” Shane went on insistently, “because I didn’t think I could do anything else—be anything else.” Anything except bad. He gave a sarcastic laugh. “I’m the best there is at being bad. And even at that you won’t give me any credit.”

  “There aren’t any medals for ruthlessness.”

  “If there were, I think you’d win.” Shane took another breath, wondering if he dared to be this honest. Then he realized … he was him. Of course he dared. “Hands down.”

  “You’re lucky I’m your father.” Gregory Waltham sounded terse. Almost … hurt. “If you were anyone else saying that—”

  “I quit.” Shane gripped the phone, feeling his heart hammer with the enormousness of what he was doing. He shifted his gaze back to the pizzeria. Knowing Gabby was in there, loving him, gave him the courage to go on. “I’m off this job. For good.”

  A dumbfounded silence came over the line. Then, “You can’t quit. I need you for this one, Shane. I need you. Only you.”

  “See? That’s where we’re not syncing up,” Shane told his father. “Because I don’t need you. Not anymore.”

  “Shane!” his father sputtered. “Don’t be stupid. I’ll blackball you everywhere. I’ll freeze your trust fund.”

  For a moment, that almost gave Shane pause. But then he realized … he’d already done everything he needed to do with his money. With his connections. Everything else
didn’t matter.

  “Just make sure I can pay Lizzy,” he said. “Keep the rest.”

  “No! Shane.” His father lowered his voice to a more wheedling tone. On him, it made a rusty fit. “You must be almost finished there. You must be close to securing the pizzerias—”

  “You’ll never have the Grimanis’ pizzerias,” Shane interrupted. “Not if I have anything to say about it. And I do.”

  “No. Wait!” his father protested. “I’m begging you—”

  Shane couldn’t listen. “Bye. We’ll talk later.”

  “You’re damn right, we will! Listen to me, you little—”

  Click. With a satisfied motion, Shane hung up the phone. His veins coursed with more boldness than blood; his heartbeat felt loud enough to compete with the pounding music inside.

  Inhaling deeply, Shane looked at the night sky. He pocketed his cell phone, hardly able to believe what he’d just done.

  He’d cut loose from his father. He’d quit fixing.

  He’d ended his old life to make way for a new one. With Gabby.

  Now Shane had only one other loose thread dangling. It had to do with his past, with Casey Jackson—with what Shane had done to Casey. But after that was fixed, he’d be free. Free to do—

  From behind him, the pizzeria’s back door slammed.

  Frosty stepped outside, evidently on break. He eyed Shane, nodded, then gave his bandanna a weary tug to straighten it.

  Feeling equally weary, Shane nodded back at the big man. Any second now, Frosty would come out with one of his doofus non sequiturs. Mozzarella versus parmesan. Superman versus Godzilla. Missionary versus doggie style. Frosty was a veritable font of bizarre, off-the-cuff remarks and vulgar kitchen pantomimes.

  While Shane did like some of those things sometimes …

  “Somebody wants the Grimanis’ pizzerias, huh?” Frosty folded his arms, suddenly looking burlier than ever. “I guess we all knew about that. But it sounds like you know who it is.”

  “Hey!” Seated beside Shane in his car several days after the night the whole Portland pizzaiolo community had generously saved Campania with their dough donations, Gabriella gave him a poke in the arm. “You look a million miles away. What’s up?”