by Seth Eden
“Y-yes.” I stuttered out. He made me feel so nervous, so off-center. “Kelly Carr.”
He thrust out his hand which I automatically shook. The contact sent a zap up my arm like I’d dragged my feet across the carpet and touched a metal doorknob. “Marco Varasso. I just purchased this establishment from your boss.”
“You did?” I felt blindsided. Why would Ian sell the bistro? Organic Eats had been incredibly popular during all seven of the years I’d worked here.
“I did. You seem surprised.”
Surprised didn’t begin to describe it.
“I take it he didn’t inform any of you that he was selling,” Intense Suit Guy—Marco Varasso—assumed. Accurately.
I simply shook my head. What would this mean for all of us? What if this new owner radically altered how the bistro was run or got rid of everyone? This was the only job I’d ever had. I didn’t know what I’d do for money if I could no longer count on it.
“You’re panicking,” he said, reading me like a book. Lord, that was disturbing. “Don’t. I’m not here to ruffle feathers, though I do plan to be fairly hands on.”
His eyes had dipped briefly to my chest when he’d said, “hands on,” but they hadn’t lingered. When I met his gaze, it was hooded, cautious, as if he hadn’t glanced down at all. Had I imagined it? Imagined him scrutinizing my body instead of my face?
“Order up!” Carlos called out, even though I was already right there. Still, I was glad. I needed to get away from this man.
“Got to go. Nice to meet you, Mr. Varasso.”
I hurried away, collecting a large round serving tray and filling it with food and drinks. I nearly sprinted in my eagerness to put some distance between myself and Intense Suit Guy, needing to regain my equilibrium.
I delivered the meal, thinking I’d feel better now that I wasn’t so near to him, but I didn’t. I continued to feel unnerved by his presence even from across the room. Going to the center of the restaurant, I straightened the globe, rosemary and geranium, needing something to keep my hands busy.
“Who’s the hottie?” Laura appeared by my side, her features assessing Marco Varasso as if he was her favorite dessert.
I leaned in and whispered, “Get this… He’s the new owner.”
“New owner? What the hell?”
“I know.”
“Ian sold it out from under us?”
Technically, the bistro wasn’t ours to sell it out from under from, but I knew what she meant. She and Chloe were my best friends and had worked here almost as long as I had. All three of us had years invested here. Our regulars knew each of us by name and requested us whenever they came in.
“Seems that way.”
Laura fumed for a few minutes, taking every free moment to watch Intense Suit Guy as he sat in what used to be Ian’s office and booted up his desktop.
“Chloe ditch us to go out with that girl who’s been hanging out lately?”
That was Laura, she tended to bounce from subject to subject any time she felt upset. The coping mechanism allowed her to process things. Focusing on Chloe’s bi-sexual social life gave her something to latch onto.
“Yeah. Think her name was Sarita.” And I’d been grateful to take the extra shift.
“What is Hot New Owner’s name?” Laura then asked me, in her Ping-Pong manner of making conversation. But her question gave me pause. Yes, the guy was hot, but the descriptor didn’t do him justice. It seemed inadequate and too benign. I’d sensed something in him during our abrupt first meeting, something not quite menacing, but still dark.
“Marco Varasso.”
“The last name sounds familiar to me. Where have I heard that before?” she asked. I had no idea, though now that she mentioned it, I felt like I’d heard of that surname, too. “This doesn’t bode well for us, does it? Maybe I should check around to see if anyone else is hiring.”
“You think he’s going to let us go?” I asked her.
“I have a bad feeling.”
The thing about Laura’s bad feelings were that they were hit or miss. She liked to think she was a bit psychic because her mom read palms and tarot cards, but the truth was, her guesses were right no more often than anyone else’s. I didn’t say any of this, though.
Laura clung to her pessimism like a safety blanket. Expecting the worst all the time seemed to give her a sense of comfort when those awful things didn’t actually come to fruition. To each their own, I guess. Personally, I tried to look on the bright side, even when there didn’t end up being one. Life was hard enough without actively seeking out reasons to make it worse.
“Suppose that makes him off limits,” she went on, zeroing in on me. “At least for me. You, though. Damn.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Kelly, when you two were having your little confab, he acted as if you were the only person in the room.”
“So?” He had been uber attentive, but maybe that was his version of being polite. If a big jungle cat could do polite.
“So, he seems interested in you, despite the whole dressing like a nun thing you’ve dedicated yourself to.”
Whether he was interested in me or not didn’t matter. Though I had no aspirations to joining a nunnery, I didn’t date random men, and I certainly wouldn’t date someone responsible for giving me a paycheck. If he decided not to fire me, at any rate.
When I’d first started working here, I’d had several men come on to me or ask me out, even though I never encouraged them. To help head them off, I began to go more and more conservative with my clothing. Now, I wore baggy t-shirts and knee-length shorts in the warm months and long, heavy sweaters over jeans or thick leggings in the cooler ones.
Laura and Chloe both knew about my parent’s situation. They knew I didn’t have time for a man in my life, even if I’d wanted one.
Which I didn’t.
My friends hadn’t hassled me about my lack of a love life in a long time—years, in fact—and I’d rather them keep it that way. Another of my orders was up, so I rushed over to collect it, thankful to have a reason to end the discussion.
4
Marco
I stayed and observed how steady things remained for the rest of the evening. Despite it being a weeknight, the bistro had patrons right up until their nine o’clock closing, which I took as a good sign. I felt more fatigued than I cared to admit—I hadn’t spent this many hours away from either home or the hospital in months—but I wanted to see this through. Needed to, even.
I craved to prove that I was fully back up on my feet, regardless of the fact that I was overdue to apply fresh bandages to my burns by two hours. The skin across my back and shoulders felt tight, itchy, and even as if something was stinging me in a couple of the worst spots. The combined effect set my teeth on edge, but I did my best to ignore it.
The cook had cleaned up the kitchen and departed, which left me alone with the servers as they washed down tables and swept up the floor. I’d thought there’d been two servers, but when I came out the office, I found myself there alone with Kelly Carr.
Ian had referred to her as the cream of the crop, and I understood why. She’d been on task the entire night, not once slowing down or wasting any opportunities to build rapport with patrons. Despite bumping into me near the kitchen a few hours ago, she seemed to have this natural grace as she moved about the room, almost like a dancer.
But her gracefulness and skill at doing her job hadn’t been the only reasons I’d noticed her. She was also ravishingly beautiful. Long shiny hair that reminded me of the caramels Rosa used to bring us as children. Flawless fair skin and full lips, both of which appeared to be unadorned with any type of cosmetic.
And then there were her eyes.
I’d never seen anything like them. They were a lush emerald color like you might spot in some faraway meadow. Within that deep green were starbursts one shade lighter. It was like looking at pictures from the Hubble telescope at nebulas out in space. For a moment, I�
�d been totally entranced by them. By her.
So I wouldn’t come across as some sort of creepy stalker, I’d reached out to shake her hand. She’d taken it, and the moment I’d touched the soft skin of her palm, I felt something I hadn’t experienced in what seemed like forever.
Desire.
Before the fire, bringing a flavor of the night into my bed had been a hobby of mine. An outlet. These women were where I went for fun, for release, and to distract myself from my life. Using my charms to acquire a different woman for as many nights of the week as possible had been my main focus outside of the chores I’d been set relating to the family business.
It’d been enjoyable.
Luca had even called me a manwhore because of my behavior. And even though it’d pissed me off at the time, in all honesty, he hadn’t been far from the mark.
Still, once upon a time, my relationship with the opposite sex had been anything but casual.
Back when I was fifteen, I’d fallen for a girl. Like, genuinely fallen. She’d been my first real kiss, my first sex, my first everything. Her name had been Emily, and I’d called her Em. We’d run into each other when I’d gone with Luca to bring a substantial sum of cash to a small Mom and Pop store down by the pier.
She’d been a year older than me and working the register as the lone cashier. While Luca went to the back, I stayed out front and flirted with her. The fireworks between us had been instantaneous.
During that summer, I’d spent every available waking moment with her. Even though we were both underage teenagers, I’d wanted to marry her and told her so. She’d even said yes.
I’d been too naïve to understand how doomed such a plan would be.
Her father, the owner of said Mom and Pop joint, had been out of town for a couple of months. The moment he returned and caught us making out in a back room, he went apoplectic with rage. He’d forbidden her from seeing me again, calling me a dirty Varasso boy, and when she’d protested, he’d sent her off to live with some relatives in Oregon.
I never saw her again.
Up till then, I hadn’t realized how my family was perceived. I didn’t know anything but the family business, and everyone we interacted with were either members of our family or those associated with what we did. Maybe I’d been fooling myself all along, but I hadn’t thought of us as criminals. Or at least, I didn’t consider myself or my brothers to be criminals.
We were merely us. We did the jobs we needed to do. The jobs Dad expected us to do. I’d always adored my mother and respected my father. When she died, I’d been thirteen. Losing my mom had been difficult for all of us, and my way of coping was to create a closer bond with my father. I went out of my way to defer to him, to impress him, to be the most obedient son ever.
So when I came home distraught over losing my girlfriend, I’d hoped for some sympathy. Some understanding. Some kindness. Maybe even some advice.
What I got instead was a backhanded smack across my face.
“Man up, you little pussy,” Angelo told me, his face a mask of disdain. “You’re a Varasso, and Varassos have to be strong. Hard. She’s made you soft. Distracted you from what you should’ve been doing. If I’d known you were fucking around with that girl, I’d have put a stop to it long before now.”
I’d sat there on the floor of the headquarters inside our home—the force of his blow had knocked me down—holding my bruising cheek and staring up at him in shock.
My father’s behavior shouldn’t have thrown me for such a loop, but it did. I’d been the quiet dutiful son my whole life. I’d done everything he asked without question. I’d admired and loved my father, and I’d been living under this illusion that he loved me. But he didn’t, and that night was the first time I realized it.
Angelo didn’t love any of us.
We were his sons. His progeny. His legacy. Our purpose was to live up to the Varasso name and keep the business going, nothing more. We didn’t actually matter to him as people, as human beings. He was the soulless king, Luca was his direct heir, and the rest of us were mere princes, backups to the throne. But he held no true regard for us. No warmth or affection.
That knowledge altered me on a fundamental level.
I stopped being quiet, dutiful Marco and began to argue with my father, even physically fight him. I stirred up trouble with him every chance I got, enjoying making him uncomfortable, enjoying making him as angry as he made me. I wanted a reaction out of him.
At first, I think I believed that maybe if I poked the bear hard enough, he’d show some semblance of real feeling towards us. Towards me.
But all I ever received from all my defiance was his wrath.
The evening the Bianchis came and shot down Angelo in our home, I’d been furious. Livid, even. But it was because of the lack of respect Donovan Bianchi had shown our family, not because I loved my father. Not because I’d miss him.
Because I wouldn’t. I didn’t. I hated him with every cell of my being.
From the moment he’d slapped me, I’d become a very different person. Nearly overnight, I went from being a rather sensitive boy to donning the mantle of a grown man, a cold and ruthless one at that. Luca had been privy to that initial meeting between me and Emily, but he hadn’t known the extent of it. No one had.
No one except the father who’d cruelly mocked me for it.
When I’d been sixteen and he eighteen, Luca had confronted me while Sandro and Gabriel watched from the sidelines. I hadn’t thought any of my brothers had noticed the change in me, but they had.
“What the hell is up with you?” my eldest brother had asked me. “You never used to be like this with Dad, all loud and argumentative.”
“Leave me alone,” had been my not so witty response, but of course, he hadn’t.
“You’re mad all the time now, and I want to know why. We all want to know why.”
Gabriel had been fourteen and Alessandro only ten, but the bond we’d shared as brothers had been close, especially the one between Luca and me. Before, I would’ve probably broken down and told them everything. I would’ve been honest and open. I would’ve let them in.
But this latest and much more aggressive version of myself didn’t allow for that. So instead of responding, I’d stormed off, leaving all three of them behind.
Instead of investing my time in my brothers, I invested it in women. Not in the way I had with Emily, but rather as entertainment. They were diversions. But ever since getting burned, I hadn’t been with any women, as diversions or anything else.
Today had been the first time since the fire that I’d even felt attracted to a woman. Not that I’d do anything about it. Kelly Carr may pique my interest, but I didn’t have the luxury of being able to pursue something with her. The severe nature of my injuries meant having a good ole naked free-for-all was over for me. Possibly for good.
Which didn’t exactly make me a barrel of laughs, but there wasn’t much I could do about it.
“Mr. Varasso?” she said from the open office doorway, drawing me out of my head. I’d been staring unfocused at nothing like a daydreaming high school kid. Damn. “Are you planning to stay later? Everything’s already locked up, but I can leave the alarm off if you’d like.”
I glanced at my watch and saw that it was half past ten. Not that late, really, but later than I’d been staying up for the past several months.
“No,” I told her, feeling more tired and out of sorts than I wanted her to know. “I should get home, too. I need to memorize the security code, anyway.”
I followed her to the door and became surrounded by her unique fragrance. It reminded me of something familiar, something like the baby lotion Molly used on Antonio. But the scent was mixed with something floral, too. The combination was light yet heady. Whatever it was, I wanted to inhale more of it. I lingered close to her so I could.
I watched as she inputted a surprisingly complicated number of commands into the security panel, and then closed up, trying my own key for the f
irst time.
“I hope you don’t think this is too forward, but can I ask you something?” she said. Now that we were outside in the cool night air, I felt more than ready to get out of here, but I nodded. “Should I expect to get a pink slip in the morning?”
She seemed exceedingly nervous as she stood there, so I put her out of her misery. “I see no reason for anyone to get a pink slip, certainly not you.”
Kelly literally breathed out a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Mr. Varasso.”
And that reminded me… “Call me Marco, please. I’m guessing we’re not far enough apart in age that standing on formality would make sense. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Instead of answering, she gave me a tiny smile. It wasn’t shy exactly, but it had a guilelessness to it that I found endearing.
“Would you like me to walk you to your car?” I asked her.
“Oh, no. I don’t have one. I’m just heading to the bus stop. The next one should be by soon.”
I didn’t like the thought of that, of her sitting out at a bus stop at night, even in this neighborhood. She looked so innocent in her modest shirt and short set, and she’d be easy pickings for anyone out to do harm.
“Come with me. I have a car and can take you home.”
“Oh no, Mr. uh… Marco. That won’t be necessary. I ride the bus nearly every night.”
She did this every night? Christ, that was dangerous. Talk about tempting fate. “I insist. It’s no trouble.”
“I live too far away,” she continued to protest, and I almost broke into a tirade. Goddamn it. Didn’t she realize I was trying to be nice? That I wanted to do the right thing? I couldn’t let her wind up as some statistic on the news. “Whoa, are you okay?”
“What?” I bit out, not sure why she’d asked me that out of the blue.
“Well,” she seemed hesitant. “It’s just that you look like you’re… hurting.”
I shut my eyes and took a deep breath. I was hurting. I’d never neglected my burns the way I had tonight, and now I was paying dearly for it.