by Stacy Gail
“You do?”
“Yeah.” With a gentle kiss, he stepped back to pull her toward the bath. He got in first, then settled her between his legs, her back reclining against his chest. The heated water made their skin slippery, and she closed her eyes and relaxed against him to better savor the feel. “I’m not ready to share everything your dad and I talked about, but that was one thing we both agreed on. Your ability to love, when you were never shown any during your formative years, is a miracle that needs to be protected. I promised him I would, just I’m promising you that now. I’ll never take anything you give me for granted, including your heart, because I know I’m one lucky sonofabitch to have it.”
As her insides fluttered at that, she wondered if he knew she considered herself the lucky one. “That’s what you two super-tough badasses talked about? Love?”
“We talked about what a father should talk about with the man who’s in his daughter’s life. He needed to make a few things clear, so he did. I needed to make things clear after that, so I did. Come to find out, we both pretty much had the same things to say, and that put his mind at ease. Made me feel pretty good, too.” Shifting to the side, he flipped open the pizza box and dug out a slice. “Take a bite. You haven’t eaten all day.”
Obligingly she opened her eyes, then backed away a fraction when she saw something in the candlelight. “Wait, what’s on here?”
“Sausage, pepperoni, peppers, mushrooms and spinach.”
She jerked her head around to stare at him. “I thought you swore that as a faithful Italian, you’d die if you ever had pizza with spinach on it.”
“It’s on only half of the pizza, so I’ll live. You needed some spoiling after the crazy-ass week you’ve had, so naturally I thought of candles and spinach.”
Oh, this sweet, sweet man…
“A great combination if there ever was one,” she whispered, because there was suddenly very little air in her lungs. “And from the sound of it, what you thought of was me, and that means more to me than anything. I love you, Rude.”
“If you love me, you’ll eat.” With his mouth pressed to her ear, he fed her pizza, then sips of cold beer, then ate a slice himself while she heated up their water by draining some and adding more. When she returned to him, she nudged his legs together and straddled them so that she could comfortably face him while he polished off the last of his beer.
“The next time we need to relax in the tub, I’m going to figure out how the hell to turn on the jets. This is the first time I’ve ever been in this tub,” she admitted when he raised his brows at her wording. “I always thought it seemed way too big for one person, but now that we’re both in here, I get what it’s truly built for.”
Setting his empty bottle on the floor, his hands slid over her hips to cup her ass. And all the while, his heavy-lidded gaze made a feast of her wet breasts. “I’m glad you’re breaking it in with me, then. Now that we know this baby’s built for two, bath time’s going to be a helluva a lot of fun around here.”
“Getting dirty while getting clean all at the same time?” Rising up on her knees, she arched invitingly upward, a smile on her face as she poured a handful of water over her breasts. “Mm. Sounds like a win to me.”
“Jesus, you’re beautiful.” His breath heaved out of him as if suddenly there wasn’t enough air in the room, before he shook his head and again reached toward the vanity chair. “Before we go any further, I have one more surprise for you. Look at it quick, because I’m really wanting to be inside you in the worst fucking way.”
That statement, packed with need from her hungry, sexy man, was enough to tempt her to get busy right then. But then he handed her the First Christmas ornament they had bought, and in the candlelight she saw he had added their picture. It was a surprisingly good one for a selfie, with her face nestled into his neck and his head bent toward her, their body language screaming a togetherness that even a blind person would have seen. This would be their first Christmas together, but she had the bright hope that it wouldn’t be their last.
“It fits,” she whispered, smiling down at the photo.
“We fit,” he corrected, then took the ornament from her hands and set it aside so he could grip her by the hips and shift her against the hard shaft of his cock beneath the water. “In more ways than one.”
“You’ve got a clever way with words, Panuzzi.” Her breath hitched audibly as his stiffened flesh slid along her channel, and he leaned forward to take a wet nipple into his mouth. As she pushed into that delightful suction, he reached a hand down to rub the head of his cock against her until they both groaned. Her hips began to move fluidly while her hands came to anchor themselves on his broad, hard shoulders, and her head fell back as the sweet pleasure coursed through her. “Yes. Now you’re talking.”
“Baby,” he breathed against her skin, “this conversation’s just getting started.”
Her response got obliterated by his sudden, smooth thrust that filled her, and every thought melted away. She arched her lower back and rolled her pelvis to take him in as far as he could go, her eyes closing to better savor the feel of him inside her. He filled her so fully, so completely, that all she could think was that he was right. They did fit each other in every way, despite their unspectacular beginnings. Where they’d started didn’t matter. They had ended up in a place where he was the reason she smiled, and his arms had become the safe harbor she turned to for security, for love.
For everything.
He was her home.
He kept at her until he had her falling into a spine-bending orgasm, and her cries were still echoing in the tiled room as he gave into his own, the cords in his neck straining and her name on his lips as he came hard and long. And as he did she held onto him with all her might, and knew she would always be home as long as she was with Rude.
EPILOGUE
Four months later
“This party is off. The. Hook.” Adam Daresey danced by with his wife Tonya, while a multicolored light ball flashed over the dance floor. The faceted glass ceiling of The Crystal Gardens displayed a cloudless night sky. Beneath the sparkling glass canopy, sheets of string white lights, strategically placed spotlights and three rotating, multicolored disco balls set up a scene that was pure magic.
The anniversary party’s theme, A Honeymoon in Italy, was a huge success, with the partygoers helping the theme along by donning Venetian-style masquerade masks to match their glittering attire. Adam wore a Henry VIII-style round flat cap, complete with white feather detailing on the brim and a black and gold half-mask attached. His wife Tonya wore a golden sunray crown that flowed into a mask that went all the way down past her nose and came to bejeweled points at either side of her exposed mouth. A month ago it had been a full Venetian mask, but after spending five minutes in it to test it out, she’d had such a bad claustrophobic attack she’d taken a hacksaw to the mouth area. Then she’d had to call Sass, Scout and Frankie over for a mojito break to recover fully.
Sass was proud to say that they’d all been more than happy to offer their immediate and unconditional support.
“Glad you guys are having a good time.” In a simple black eye mask that tied in the back, Rude held her close while shooting Tonya and Adam a smile. It had been a battle to get him into even that much of a mask, but once Scout had decided it would be an essential part of the party, he’d had to be a good sport and go along with it like everyone else.
Once Scout had taken over the party-planning duties—with the most difficult hurdles of a theme, menu and venue having already been taken care of—things had moved along quickly. Tuscany was represented in the extensive wine-tasting bar that ran along one side of the Gardens. A Lamborghini car driving simulator had been set up for people of all ages near the area dubbed “Little Italy” for the children. Younger partiers got to make their own cookie pizzas, try their hand and tossing pizza dough and were taking turns at going through operatic scales at a mini karaoke stage set up just for them. And if t
hat wasn’t enough to keep them occupied, there was an open gelato bar, and complimentary amusement ride tickets had been given to the parents, if they wished to ride Navy Pier’s famous Ferris wheel, swing ride, or carousel.
The real operatic highlight had already occurred earlier that evening. Scout had booked a young up-and-coming operatic tenor currently going to school at Chicago’s College of Performing Arts, and all she’d had to do was twist Payne’s arm to personally give the kid a tattoo, paid for by Scout. The young man had sung Papa Bolo’s favorite song from Madama Butterfly, and when he’d finished M’appari, Papa Bolo had been wiping his eyes while Mama Coco hugged his hand to her heart.
As always, the mural of a bare-branched tree painted on plain white paper was there, covering an interior wall. Three tables had been set up nearby, and on each table a bowl of finger paint sat on top, along with rolls of paper towels and baby wipes. Each paint color was different, and the sign on the tables displayed which color belonged to whom. This year, biological and married Panuzzi family members were a deep purple; their former foster children—the strays—were a bright neon green; friends of the family were yellow. Each person attending the party was asked to leave their handprint as a “leaf” somewhere on the large family tree to record their place in the world that Papa Bolo and Mama Coco had built together over the decades. It was one of Sass’s favorite traditions, and she loved how the tree “grew” with each passing year.
It had been the first thing she wanted to do when the party officially started, but Rude had forestalled her, instead promising her they’d do it together later on. And while they had done a lot of the party’s attractions—from kissing under the mock-up of Venice’s Bridge of Sighs while in a gondola at the photo booth, to posting a video under the hashtag BoloNCoco4Ever to be displayed on the jumbo screen that had been rented, to enjoying the wine-tasting bar a bit too much—they still hadn’t gotten to the Panuzzi family tree.
“I think everyone’s enjoying themselves.” Swaying to the romantic crooning of Dean Martin’s “Buona Sera,” Sass barely felt her feet touching the ground as she smiled up at Rude. “I hope you are too. This is your first anniversary party, after all.”
“A hundred drunk family members packed into one place? How could I not be happy?” Grinning down at her, his arm tightened at the small of her back and lowered his brow to hers. “And I finally got you to dance with me. Thanks for not telling me to piss off this time around.”
Ugh, she’d never live that down. “I didn’t tell you to piss off.”
“In so many words you did.”
“Do you want to keep dancing with me?”
“Okay, okay.” With a chuckle, he brushed his mouth against hers, and the magic unfurled as it always did when he kissed her. The sweep of his tongue had her surrendering entirely, and she was just letting go of all thought to propriety when they got bumped. She blinked as they parted, trying to figure out how they could have been bumped when they were the only two people in the universe.
“You hear this song?” Dancing with his wife, Papa Bolo pointed to the speakers overhead. Since both he and Mama Coco wore glasses, they’d given a pass on wearing masks, though Mama Coco had a half mask designed like a cat pushed up on her forehead. “This was the very song I used to propose to your mother, can you believe it? And here we are dancing to it all this time later. Quick, check my pulse. I think I’ve died and gone to heaven.”
“I didn’t know that.” Rude raised a brow, looking surprised. “I thought ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You’ by Frankie Valli was your song.”
“That’s just the sentimental favorite. This song was perfect for a proposal. Even talks about getting a ring and putting it on her finger. Beyoncé might be all that, but that young lady wasn’t the first to put that thought to music.”
Sass was impressed Papa Bolo even knew about that song. “Did you plan for this song to play when you proposed, or did it just sort of spontaneously happen?”
“Sweetie, it was so romantic, I remember it like it was yesterday.” Holding onto her husband’s shoulders and more than a little tipsy after sampling her way through the wine-tasting bar—twice—Mama Coco smiled mistily at them. “There we were in the aisles of Giancarlo’s Deli, squabbling over what sort of meat should be used in a carbonara—”
“Guanciale,” Sass and Papa Bolo said in unison.
“Jesus,” Rude muttered while Mama Coco rolled her eyes.
“Bolo, look what you’ve done, infecting our Sass with your carbonara craziness,” Mama Coco scolded while Sass grinned at her former foster father. “Anyway, there we were, squabbling over how wrong he was—because really, a nice pancetta works just fine—when suddenly he grabs my hand, brings it to his lips and says, ‘this song, it was meant to be playing at just this moment, sweetheart. It must be fate.’ I thought he’d lost his damn mind.”
“Aww.” Sass smiled, picturing it. “That sounds so romantic.”
“It gets better. He then got down on one knee, right there in the middle of the store, and sang along with the lyrics—by the little jewelry shop we’ll stop and linger, while I buy a wedding ring for your finger. I almost fainted. The man behind the deli meats counter began to applaud. Then he gave us free samples. It was a beautiful proposal.”
“What can I say, I’m a hopeless romantic, like my father before me,” Papa Bolo confided. “Perfect proposals come naturally to the Panuzzi men. He proposed to my mother while they were cleaning fish.”
“Oh, Bolo.” Giggling like a girl, Mama Coco gave his arm a playful swat. “When a man proposes, it’s always perfect in the woman’s mind, because there’s love there. Love makes everything perfect.”
“I think that might be true,” Sass murmured as her former foster parents danced away, still laughing at each other. “My life has never been as perfect as it has been since the night you showed up with Chinese food and kissed me stupid.”
“Kissed you stupid, huh?” A wicked smile curled his mouth. “Damn, I’m good.”
Hell yes, he was. “And to think I almost didn’t let you in.”
“That wouldn’t have stopped me. Haven’t you learned by now that I’m unstoppable once I’ve made up my mind when it comes to you?”
Oh, she’d learned. When she’d turned herself inside-out getting her latest cookbook ready for publication, he’d been supportive and patient… until he’d kidnapped her for a weekend and taken her to the Peninsula Hotel in the heart of Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. Once there, her protests vanished as she’d been treated to a salt-and-oil de-stressing scrub at the elite hotel’s in-house spa. Then she and Rude enjoyed a deep-tissue couples’ massage that lasted an hour, followed by five-star cuisine served to her in bed and with his fingers.
He’d then made sure she slept like a baby by giving her three of what had to be the most spectacular orgasms in the history of that hotel.
When Rude wanted her to relax, he found ways to make it happen.
Strangely enough, she was totally okay with that.
Despite his determination to not allow her to work herself to death, she’d gotten the cookbook manuscript in under a self-imposed deadline, and she was proud of how Sass-Kicking Healthy Family Recipes had turned out. Her editor felt the same, even going so far as to advance its publication date to get it out for the New Year and the resolutions that came with it.
That had shocked Sass. Usually the publication process dragged on for months, if not years, but just when she needed the book to be fast-tracked, it was. As much as she wanted to believe it was an amazing stroke of luck, she suspected her father had had some sort of say in getting her cookbook to the front of the publication line.
Considering that they were all trying to beat the clock, she couldn’t find it in her heart to resent the interference.
Her editor was also impressed with the personal touches sprinkled throughout the book, including the ridiculous picture of her teenaged self, Scout, Tonya and Rude in front of Mama Coco and Papa Bolo�
�s new car—with only the car looking happy about it. Within the accompanying text, she’d pointed out that the sour-faced boy with arms folded across his chest had grown up to be the love of her life. Moral of that particular story—it was never a good idea to believe first impressions were the only impressions that mattered.
For his part, Rude still wanted to burn the picture.
She’d also received a couple more photos from her father. Like the first one, they were old black-and-white ones that he said no one had seen and therefore were safe for her to use without running the risk of identifying herself as his child and, sadly, putting a target on her back. One was when her father had been a small boy, tasting something his mother was spooning into his mouth, and another of his mother, when she was much older, with iron gray hair. All three of her grandmother’s photos had been included in the cookbook, along with several of her recipes and amusing anecdotes about those dishes that her father had shared.
She had been able to see Borysko Vitaliev a handful of times since their first meeting, and only on his terms. He’d apologized for this and insisted that if she ever had any need to get in touch with him, she could do so by contacting Polo Scorpeone. But her father was determined to keep such a profound distance that she’d begun to think that once he’d met her, Borysko Vitaliev had decided he was done with her.
That had hurt. She’d had no idea how family relationships were supposed to work, but she was pretty sure they weren’t supposed to meet once, then never acknowledge each other’s existence again. Rude, however, had pointed out that considering how many enemies Borysko undoubtedly had, his caution was probably a good thing.
That was pretty much what her father had explained during their second meeting, which took place a week after Thanksgiving at their apartment. She had been getting sugar cookies out of the oven while Rude cussed the crookedness of the tree in its stand, when a knock on the door sounded. They’d looked to each other in surprise; no buzzer from downstairs had sounded, so they hadn’t been expecting anyone. Rude had answered, and as he swung the door open, she’d almost dropped the baking sheet she held when Borysko and Polo Scorpeone strolled through.