“I guess man’s best friend is telling you to back off,” Aiden told Vanni. “He doesn’t like the way you talk to me.”
“You’re cruisin’ for trouble, buddy,” Vanni said. He left, and an atmosphere of anger hung where he’d been.
Surely Olivia was going to ask about Vanni’s comments. She’d make it easier if she did because he’d just have to tell her the truth.
“Boswell, you’re very handsome,” she said softly, holding out a hand to the dog.
Aiden heard her swallow and saw the trouble—no, the frightened expression in her eyes, dammit— Aiden would have liked to take hold of that hand and pull her away somewhere completely private. If he could be completely alone with her, he’d find a way to explain what had happened without making himself sound like a snoop. But this might be his best chance at trying to put her mind at rest. He spoke very quietly, “Please trust me, Olivia. This must all seem scary and too much for you, but I promise I’ll take care of you. And you’re safe with me. Okay?”
“I don’t really know you, do I?”
She’d be a fool if she didn’t doubt every word he said. “No, you don’t. Bear with me. Once we get through dinner, I’ll make sure I explain the mixup. There isn’t time now.”
Boss had eyed Olivia’s hand for a long time; now he approached and put his wet nose in her palm. There was no missing the slight trembling in Olivia’s hand and arm. But the old canine womanizer rested his big, ugly head on the woman’s palm, showed his fearsome teeth in his version of a besotted smile, and studied her with liquid eyes.
“Oh,” Olivia said. “He’s smiling at me, Sam. No wonder he’s so special to you. He’s an absolute love.”
Boss inclined his head and proceeded to lick her forearm with a tongue large enough to make the journey from wrist to elbow in less than a second. A paw rose and hung in midair until Olivia held and shook it.
Aiden made a mental note to let Boss sleep wherever he wanted to sleep tonight. The dog deserved a medal for excellence in diversionary tactics.
“Dinner,” a voice shouted from somewhere.
“That means what it says,” Aiden told Olivia. “You don’t keep Mama and Pops waiting. By the way, don’t let Pops get to you. He’s got an evil sense of humor and a mean mouth—but he’s one of the best. Give him a chance. And give me a chance, okay?”
“We’d better go to the table,” Olivia said. She couldn’t promise him anything.
Sam nodded and ushered her ahead of him into the Zanettos’ dining room. Despite the generous size of the area, a huge table filled the space. Spread with a green-and-white cloth, every inch was all but covered with oversized dishes. The smells attacked Olivia’s taste buds and they watered. Bowls of pasta, bowls of red sauce, bowls of salad, baskets of bread, platters of meat and cheese, a block of Parmesan on a tray with a grater—she had never seen quite such a feast. In the center of the table stood an old and elaborate piece of brass with a naked boy holding up a large bowl overflowing with fresh fruit. Candle holders encircled the bowl and unlikely prisms of crystal dripped from the oddest spots. Red candles flickered in the holders. Sam put Olivia in a chair between himself and an ancient, bent, and grizzled man at the head of the table.
June, wearing an apron, waved her hands at Mama and talked volubly in Italian. A man who resembled Vanni but who was a slightly older and more heavyset version, nodded to Olivia and took a seat opposite. To his left sat a thin woman with black hair pulled severely back from a beautiful, sad-eyed face.
“Sit,” the old man said in a husky voice. He coughed and his whole, thin body shook. He waved an elegant, if gnarled hand. Nicotine stained the fingers, and the grooved nails curled like a parrot’s claws. “Show some respect for the food that is prepared.”
Sam joined Olivia at once, and Vanni sat to Sam’s right. June threw up her arms, but sat down. The stocky man took a seat between her and the lovely, quiet woman. Mama, grinning as if no gathering had ever been more perfect, took a chair facing her white-haired father-in-law.
Shouting across and around the table made conversation, or even understanding, impossible. Sam leaned toward Olivia and said, “That’s Basilio and his wife, Pia. Basilio runs the business.”
“What are you whispering about, Biondo?” Mama asked. “Speak up.”
“Perhaps he is making love to his new lady,” Pops Zanetto said. “Is that what you’re doing, boy?”
“I was explaining who’s who to Olivia,” Sam said. “She’s tired, so I thought I’d make it easy on her.”
“June,” June said, shooting a hand across the table for Olivia to shake. “We’re glad Biondo has finally found a woman to bring here. We offer him good Italian girls, don’t we, Mama? He turns them all down.”
Mama nodded, her expression one of deep despondency.
“We bring wonderful Italian women,” June continued. “And we leave them alone to get to know each other. But always it is, ‘She talks too much,’ or, ‘She eats too much,’ or ‘She is too forward.’ Have you ever met a man who thought a woman was too forward? And when we tried to get him to explain what he meant, he couldn’t. So we asked the girl and she said she got a little close to him on the couch, then she put a hand on his chest, then she looked up at him, and moved her hand to his leg. Then she undid her blouse—”
“June,” Mama snapped.
“Let the girl finish her story,” the old man said, pointing a shaky finger. “At my age, stories about other men’s good fortune are all you have. Go on, June.”
Olivia sucked in her mouth to control an urge to grin. Sam leaned forward and rested his chin on a braced hand. His expression revealed nothing of what he was thinking.
“Mange, mange,” Mama ordered. “The food is getting cold.”
“You mange,” Pops said. “Tell the story, June.”
Bowls and platters began to make their way around the table, and heaping forkfuls of rich food were piled on plates.
“As I was saying,” June said, a righteous annoyance turning her lips down. “This beautiful Italian girl with big young breasts any man would be grateful to see, opens her blouse for him. She isn’t wearing anything underneath, and she moistens her lips and closes her eyes. And she waits. And nothing happens.”
Olivia put her hands in her lap and bowed her head. She had an irresistible vision of her mother witnessing this scene. “Get on with it,” Pops ordered. “Then what?”
“When he didn’t kiss her, or touch her, she moved her hand the smallest distance, just enough to touch the big salami and—” Roars around the table drowned June out.
Very discreetly, Olivia put her hand on top of Sam’s on his thigh. He turned his hand up, laced their fingers together and squeezed. Already amazed at her own forwardness, Olivia was too surprised by his immediate response to know how to react. Poor Sam was probably so mortified, he didn’t know what he’d done. Right now he would cling to any kind person.
As the laughter subsided, Basilio said to his sister, “How do you know how big Biondo’s salami is?” And his sister tapped his face a little harder than might be considered friendly.
Pops chuckled. “She doesn’t, although she might like to. But Olivia could tell you right now. Pass the gravy.”
With all eyes on her, and on the forearm and wrist that disappeared beneath the table, Olivia grew hot and knew her face would be the most unbecoming shade of tomato red. Sam took her hand and held it on top of the table.
There was a small silence before, undaunted, June said, “That poor girl was all but naked and holding his burrito and what does she get for her trouble? Nothing. He tells her she’s a nice girl—”
“Which she isn’t,” Pops said.
“Then he gets up and turns his back so she can button her blouse. And he never asks to see her again.”
“The babaloos couldn’t have been so good,” Pops said. “Maybe you’ve done better this time, huh, Biondo?”
Olivia felt all eyes go to her chest but managed not to cross
her arms over the region.
“Enough,” Mama said. “You are a bad influence, Pops. Eat, eat, all of you. There’s plenty more and we got one or two present who need more meat on their bones.”
Olivia didn’t doubt she was among the one or two.
Pia said, her voice surprisingly full and low, “Basilio’s working too hard. How we going to have time to make babies when he works all his life away for his family?”
Sam cast Olivia an apologetic look.
“Later,” Mama said. “Our Basilio is a tower of strength to this family. We’re in dry cleaning, Olivia. The best dry cleaning in New York, maybe in the world. June works with him, and his brothers Adamo and Emilio. Then there is Sophia who is—well, you will hear anyway. Sophia considers herself an actress. But she is a good girl. Every mother should have such good children.”
“You forget Lucan.” Pops’s face became expressionless.
“Him, we don’t talk about.” Mama crossed herself and turned to Sam. “How come you bring your girl here instead of Hell’s Kitchen?”
“Lucan is living in sin with a Protestant,” June said. “Pass the Parmesan.”
Aiden knew he was supposed to be Mama’s diversion from the subject of Lucan and scrambled for something, anything, to say. “A leak,” he said. “Yes, there’s a leak in my place.”
“Where?” Vanni asked.
Later, Aiden thought, he would have to tell Vanni that a man’s friends should try to make his life easier. “In the bathroom. Makes the whole place cold.”
“It’s always cold. You like it cold,” Vanni said.
“He’s old-fashioned,” Mama said, smiling. “He doesn’t want temptation right under his nose, so he wants his girl to sleep here. Eat, Olivia, eat. It’s not you don’t look good, but you could be better covered in places. And you are welcome in our home for as long as you want to stay. Just watch that Biondo, where he puts his hands. I see now that he’s no different than the rest.”
“What places?” Pops asked. “What places she needs better covered?” He pushed a small serving of spaghetti and sauce around his plate. Olivia hadn’t seen him take a mouthful yet.
“Pops,” Mama said. “You got to give an example to these young people. Don’t teach them they got to be personal all the time.”
“Like you are, you mean?” Pops said. “So where does Olivia need fattening up? Not the babaloos. This I can see.” He kissed his fingers while eyeing Olivia’s chest. “But Biondo maybe likes a little more here or there.”
“Don’t feed that dog,” Pia said, bringing a skinny fist down on the table. “It’s not healthy, him slobbering in here.”
“Where?” Pops persisted. “Where she needs the fattening up, boy?”
“Nowhere,” Sam told him. “She’s just right as she is— in my opinion.”
Olivia’s eyes filled with tears. She had to be beyond exhausted or she’d control her emotions better.
“Now if you said things like that to me when you got home, it wouldn’t matter how late it was,” Pia said to Basilio.
“You’re beautiful,” her husband told her, and from the look in his eyes, Olivia knew he meant it. “I’m a lucky man.”
“Get her to bed,” Pops said. “Never mind dinner, go do the thing before she forgets what you said.”
June slipped Boss a chunk of pepperoni and followed it with a saucer of meatballs.
“She’s feeding the dog at the table again,” Pia said. “It’s disgusting.”
“Welcome to our home,” Vanni said to Olivia.
“It’s lovely,” she said. “Thank you for letting me be here. I’ve never experienced anything like it.”
Evidently Pops found that funnier than anything he’d ever heard. He laughed and coughed and wiped at streaming eyes with the backs of his hands. When he gasped for breath, he used two hands to take a goblet of red wine to his lips and suck it down in gulps.
“Stop it,” Vanni said, abruptly and loudly. “Pops, you stop that now.”
“Leave him,” Mama said quietly.
“I’m not leaving him,” Vanni said. “He shouldn’t get excited because of his heart, you know that.”
Pops produced a handkerchief and blew his nose. “What does it matter?” he mumbled. “I lived long enough already.”
“Don’t,” Mama said. “Think of Vanni.”
“Think of Vanni, think of Vanni,” Pops said. “What’s the matter, you’re afraid I’ll die laughing? Seems like a good way to go to me.”
“Our grandfather needs a heart transplant,” Basilio said, and the big man’s open devastation made him seem smaller. “According to the medical profession, he’s too old.”
Pops said, “They’re right. When it’s time to go, it’s time to go.”
“What they mean,” Basilio continued, “is that he’s not rich enough. At least, he refuses to tell them he is and won’t let us spend the money on him.”
“I worked for that money for my children and my children’s children,” Pops said. “You think I like the idea of being chopped up like a pig carcass, then, if I should be so fortunate as to live, watching all of you try to pull things together without having enough money left to do it with. No, thank you. Kindly drop the subject.”
Olivia watched this family interact and felt strangely bereft. She loved her parents and Theo, but she’d never known displays of emotion, other than tightly contained anger, and there had rarely been a sense of really close ties. The FitzDurhams loved each other, but didn’t know how to let each other know.
“I need all of you to help me.” Vanni’s announcement silenced everyone. “We all love Aiden, but he’s making a big mistake that could ruin his life. We don’t want him to do that. By the way, Olivia thinks Aiden’s name is Sam because he hasn’t managed to explain that it’s not. It’s not Sam, and it’s not Ryan. Ryan Hill—some of you may have heard that name mentioned—he lives upstairs from Aiden. Ryan’s been corresponding with Olivia by e-mail and calling himself Sam.”
Very carefully, Olivia shifted backward in her chair.
“Vanni,” Sam—or Aiden—said. “I have a problem to work through here. But it’s my problem, not yours.”
“This is a close family and you’re a member,” Vanni said, his handsome face so hard he didn’t look like himself. “I gave you your chance to clear things up, and you failed. Now we gotta help you.”
Olivia couldn’t quite swallow. She frowned around the table. When she tried to remove her hand from… whoever he was, he tightened his grip on her.
“Do you think you’re being fair?” he said to Vanni. “Do you think this is the place to drop all this on Olivia?”
“We both know there isn’t anything you can say here without knowing it’s absolutely safe. We joke around, but nothing goes out of the room unless one of us tells the others it should.” Vanni looked at each Zanetto. “We got big trouble. Not one word gets repeated outside the family—okay?”
Mama wrung her small, plump hands and said, “You don’t have to say it even. Let us help you, Aiden.”
Aiden. So that much was obviously true.
“Okay with you, Aiden?” Vanni asked.
Aiden looked at Olivia. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It all happened so fast that I didn’t get a chance to break it to you before you left England. I thought you were in danger. Now you and I both know you are. I did what I did because I wanted to help you. I don’t know if you can believe that. You don’t know me, so why should you, but I’m still asking you to give it a whirl. There’s something rotten going down with Ryan Hill—he’s the guy you know as Sam. I happened to be looking after his orchids—he lives in the apartment above mine—and I saw your messages on his computer. My machine was on the fritz so I was going to do my own e-mail from his. And I admit it—I read his mail, your mail. I should say I’m sorry, but it would be a lie because I think you need my help.”
His long speech left Olivia silent and unsure what to say. She looked into his clear blue eyes and tho
ught she saw an honest man. She also noticed the small gold hoop he wore in one ear—and liked it.
He cleared his throat. “You may not want my help, but you must find someone you can trust.”
“You’re in danger,” Vanni said, and his mother hugged herself and rocked. “Somehow Ryan Hill found you, and you were a threat to him. There’s no other explanation. He’s safely tucked away upstate, or he has been. I’m betting he’s on the move now and it’ll only be a matter of time before he tracks you down. The thought of him finding you alone isn’t something I want to think about.”
Olivia couldn’t feel her hands. She was terrified, and when she looked from face to face she realized she was also among total strangers.
“Cut it out, Vanni,” Aiden said.
“Because it’s true? What good will that do? We gotta have a plan.”
“First Olivia has to be convinced she hasn’t been grabbed by a maniac—me—who can’t be trusted.”
“I do trust you.” She hadn’t had any intention of saying that, but she did. And her instincts about people had always been good. “What would you have to gain from me? Certainly not my fortune, or my ravishing person. Right?”
Pops chortled again, and again tears squeezed from the corners of his eyes. He pointed at Olivia. “You got to like the girl. But you got to wake up, Olivia. You dress yourself like an old lady, but you’re a woman a man likes to think about putting his hands on—and other things on. Am I right, Biondo?”
Basilio said, “You are right. Pops. Now remember you’re the head of the household and supposed to be an example.”
“I thought I was,” Pops said, shrugging, a devilish glint in his eye. “I was telling the truth, just as my father taught me, and your father taught you—and you, Basilio, will teach your children when you and Pia learn that it can take passion to put those little meatballs in the pan.”
Olivia found her voice. “Sam—Aiden, you and Vanni are also in the FBI?” she said.
“No.” Vanni could be a little overzealous with his annoyance, “And neither is friend Ryan. He’s NYPD. We all are. He must have decided you’d think FBI sounded more romantic.”
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