“She is.”
~ 16 ~
Lara sat at her table by the window and picked at her bagel. The Ground Floor was in its usual afternoon lull, which was her favorite time to be here. The few other customers were also regulars, and she recognized them all as neighbors.
Trey had brought her back to The Ground Floor almost a month ago, and in that time, she’d found her comfort with it again, and could come on her own again, rebuilding her routine. She’d never again walk on a street without knowing everything going on around her, not even on her own block, but that, perhaps, was a good thing. A normal thing.
On this Saturday afternoon that was twenty-one weeks exactly from the day she’d been taken, Trey sat with her, soaking biscotti into an espresso. But even his beloved, calming, centering presence couldn’t settle her anxieties today.
“Please don’t back out, Lara. I need this. We need this.”
She knew he was restless, that his happiness in the way they’d spent this month together had limits hers didn’t. Her small world constrained him, made things harder for him. He’d made dozens of concessions for her. It was time for her to reciprocate. And she wanted to.
But this thing he’d asked of her was a big leap. To meet his family. To meet his mother.
When he’d asked her to celebrate their birthdays, which were so close together, with a small dinner at his parents’ house, she’d agreed. The thought had made her anxious then, too, but she’d known it was the right thing. That he was devoted to his large family was not a surprise, and Lara understood she’d need to find her way into that, if they were truly committed to this thing between them.
This thing. This relationship. This love.
But now the day was here and loomed over her, full of newness and uncertainty. Full of fears she’d built her life around avoiding: what if they didn’t like her? What if she couldn’t eat what his mother served? What if in her anxiety she began counting aloud? What if they thought she was too odd, or too old, for their son?
Trey took her hand. “It’s going to be fine. I promise. I’m not asking you to meet the whole clan. Just my parents and brother. That’s it.”
“Dinner is hard. You know that.”
“I told you, my mom will cook while you’re there. Pasta and salad. Sauce and dressing optional. Bread. And a cake from the market.”
“She already thinks I’m weird.”
He made a sound of pure frustration, a sighing growl. “I know you need to run the scenarios, babe. We’ll go over this as many times as you need to. But right now, just tell me you’re not talking yourself out of it. Promise me that you’re coming to the Cove with me, to eat dinner with my family and spend the night in my house.”
Another new thing, to stay at his house, which she’d never seen. But that one was easier to find a place for. Just her and Trey, in a house by the ocean. It belonged in the same place that her memories of the cabin sat. That made sense.
And if she got through dinner, she could have that.
She lifted her new pendant from her chest—Trey’s birthday gift to her. A Fibonacci spiral, rendered in platinum, on a dainty platinum chain. Lara didn’t wear jewelry, she didn’t like the feel of it on her skin, but this, she’d never take off. “I promise. Just let me be scared and sort things out in my head in the meantime.”
He brought her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “I am here for all your sorting needs.”
~oOo~
Trey’s parents lived in a large, Arts-and-Crafts-style house perched on a low hill. All the front windows were lit from the inside. Only three people lived inside, and there were clearly more than three rooms alight—by Lara’s count, at least five, possibly six different rooms had windows facing the street, and all had lights on—so she assumed that this was an attempt by someone in the house to make it seem as inviting as possible.
Trey had told her that his mother knew about her childhood, and the PTSD and generalized anxiety, and food aversions, which ruled her even now. She was glad; it made some extra space in her acceptable range of okay, which made her more able to be okay. Having to pretend that she was like everyone else and hide all the ways she was not wore her out quickly, and when things began to slip, they slipped quickly. Trey had cleared a path for her to be more like herself.
They were parked at the curb in front of the house. Trey reached over the console and took her hand. “You ready?”
She was about to say yes, when a wholly new thought terrified her. “Your mom! What do I call her? Mrs. Pagano? Or do I call her Misby?!”
He laughed. “That’s just for me. Her name is Sabina. You can call her Mrs. Pagano at first if you want, but she’ll tell you to call her Sabina. My dad calls her Bina, but that’s just for him.” His head tipped to one side. “You’re not worried about what to call my dad?”
She hadn’t been. His name was Carlo, and it hadn’t occurred to her to call him anything else. “I’ve never met someone’s mother before.”
“But you’ve met someone’s father?”
“No—yes. … It’s … I don’t know. I’m anxious about your mom.”
He gave her hand a squeeze and let it go. “Start with Mr. and Mrs., and let them tell you otherwise. Okay?”
“Yes. Okay.”
He got out of his car and came around for her.
~oOo~
His parents met them in the front hall, with his father at the fore. Carlo Pagano was a tall, lean, handsome man, not quite as broad across the shoulders as his son, but a bit taller. Thick salt-and-pepper hair, mostly salt, matched the same in a close-trimmed beard. He wore tortoiseshell glasses and an easy smile. Jeans and an untucked white Oxford-cloth shirt, with bare feet. He was the picture of a healthy, affluent man, approaching the end of his middle age, who’d lived well and taken care of himself.
After a quick hug with his father, Trey set his hand on Lara’s back. “Dad, Misby, this is my girlfriend, Lara Dumas.”
Lara offered her hand. “Mr. Pagano. It’s nice to meet you.”
His father shook her hand gently. “Please, it’s Carlo. It’s very good to meet you. Trey hasn’t brought a woman home to meet the family since high school.”
Finding herself thoroughly pleased at that thought, Lara’s cheeks warmed. Trey made her blush in all kinds of unfamiliar ways.
His mother stepped up with a warm smile. “And I am Sabina. We’re so pleased that you’ve come to share your birthday with us.”
Sabina Pagano was a striking woman. She, too, was clearly in her late middle age, with shoulder-length dark hair glittered heavily with grey. Her face and body had the soft roundedness of a woman who had been gorgeous and voluptuous in her youth. She still was stunning, even as she approached sixty.
She was intimidating for more than her beauty and poise. This was a woman who controlled her family. Lara could sense it, like an electric charge running between Sabina and each of the men around her.
Trey’s mother offered her hand, and Lara couldn’t raise hers. It was irrational, of course, but the thought was there, that she, too, would be trapped in that electric field if she let Sabina Pagano touch her.
This was why she didn’t like women. Her thoughts jumbled like dice in a cup around them.
Trey’s hand was still on her back. Discreetly, gently, he brushed his fingers down her spine, with just a hint of a push. Lara forced her arm up, but she couldn’t manage to do that and also smile and say something polite. So she stoically shook his mother’s hand and girded herself for the binding charge.
Which of course didn’t come. Sabina gave her hand a soft squeeze and let it go, without any faltering of her own welcoming smile. “Come, we have a few nibbles in the kitchen, and then I thought we four might make dinner together. Ben will be here in about thirty minutes.”
Sabina turned to the kitchen, and her husband went after her. When Lara had a few feet of space from them, she looked up at Trey, “I’m so sorry.”
But he wasn’t angry. “Yo
u’re here, and you’re trying, and I love you. We’re all set.” He took her hand and led her down the hall and around a corner.
The kitchen was a large, warm room, lived-in but lovely, filled with maple cabinetry and black granite countertops with shimmering bits of mica, and all the crockery and appliances and clutter of a busy family’s main space. A large center island bore plates of foods that no one but Lara would consider appetizers. Saltine crackers. Gouda cheese, not smoked. Baby carrots and celery sticks.
The band across her chest that was her anxiety eased, and she took a deeper breath. She looked at Sabina, who was smiling at her.
“This is good? You will eat these things?” Her accent was subtle, but gave a hint of exoticism to her words.
“I will. Thank you. I know it’s no fun to cook for me.”
“It will be great fun,” Sabina countered, “because we’re glad you’re with us. Everyone has things they like and do not. Ben doesn’t like tomatoes. Imagine growing up in a family like this one and not liking tomatoes.”
Lara surprised herself and everyone in the room when she laughed. “I don’t like tomatoes, either.”
“Something in common already,” Carlo said and brought a large pot down from a hanging rack above their heads. “Would you like to boil the pasta?”
~oOo~
Trey led her over the sand to a dark fire pit ringed with Adirondack chairs. He sat down in one that faced the water and pulled Lara onto his lap. Then, with his arms around her, he shook out a soft, ragged quilt and tucked it around her. She was often cold, but he always kept her warm.
She rested back against his chest, with her head tucked at his chin, and looked out at the ocean. Dark waves rolled in, slow and sluggish, like they, too had had a full day and were spent.
His arms settled around her, holding her snugly. “You’ve been quiet since we left.”
“Just sorting.”
“Anything you want to talk about?”
“No. Not yet.”
He took that at face value and didn’t push for more. Lara settled in to his cozy embrace, to the encompassing quiet of this wide, empty beach and the vast, dark ocean beyond it, and felt safe.
With Trey and his parents, all of them together, she’d made capellini Alfredo, and salad. She’d watched and listened as they’d spoken together, laughing and easy, and, with Trey as her touchstone, she’d been able to let them pull her into their talk. When his brother, Ben, had arrived, it had been almost as if he were the unfamiliar one—just for a moment, until Trey’s funny, garrulous younger brother folded himself easily into the scene.
Conversation at dinner had been interesting and easy, without threat. Trey had spoken of tension with his father, but none had been apparent tonight. They’d been lighthearted with each other, and if it had been a performance for her, then it had been a good one—and that they would be easier with each other to make it easy on her was a good feeling. Heartwarming. She wouldn’t say she trusted Trey’s family, but she could see that someday she might.
After vanilla cake with buttercream frosting—a favorite—Trey’s parents had given her a wrapped gift. That was the scariest part, not knowing how to react when unfamiliar people did something so unexpected. The gift was a set of four hardbound books: Orchids in Autumn, Lavender in Summer, Violets in Spring, and Evergreen Winter, signed to her by the author, Theodore Wilde. Who was Trey’s uncle, married to his Aunt Carmen. The books were a set of memoirs, and Carlo had explained, as she flipped through the first one, that a good way to get to know the Pagano family was to read Theo’s books, especially the last two.
It was the kind of meaningful gift—the whole evening had been the kind of meaningful gift—that scrambled Lara’s head. Too many new feelings to make sense of. It was easier to keep people at arm’s length.
But here she was, snuggled up with Trey, and she wanted to be nowhere else in the world. In this place she’d never been, after this day full of anxiety and unfamiliarity, she was safe and snug and warm and loved.
She’d been right—Trey’s house was like the cabin.
Because it wasn’t the place that mattered. It was the man. He was her safe place.
Her head quieted with that thought, and she shifted on his lap, turning to nestle more fully against him. His arms held her close, and he dipped his head to kiss her temple.
“Can we go inside?”
“You cold?”
No, she was warm all over. “I want to make love.”
He always smiled when she said it like that, and she knew he thought it was old-fashioned, but what they did together wasn’t fucking, not to her. It was deeper than that, more important.
He changed his hold of her, sliding one arm under her legs, and stood up, cradling her as he so often did. She liked how easily he carried her, and he seemed to like it, too.
~oOo~
Trey’s house was a small beach cottage, with an attractive but fairly obvious large addition. The original cottage was two stories, with a sharply peaked roof, and the single-story addition jutted out from one side.
Inside, the second story showed itself to be a loft. The front wall of the cottage was two stories tall, and at the back, a spiral staircase led to a room that overlooked most of the rest of the original building. All one space: living/dining/kitchen, with a bathroom off the kitchen. A small bedroom was tucked under the loft.
The addition was two more bedrooms, another full bathroom, and a laundry room.
Trey gave her the full tour, even of the addition he didn’t use except for laundry, and let her take her time to understand the space. The bedrooms in the addition were empty, but showed that they’d once been a master suite and a little boy’s room.
As she went through each room, Trey gave her details. “My Uncle John and Aunt Katrynn own the cottage. I rent from them. They put the addition on when they were expecting their first kid, Johnny. I think they meant to stay here indefinitely, but then Aunt Katrynn had twins, and they needed more space. And a real yard, with grass. It sat around for a few years, and we all just used it like a beach base. When I graduated college and came home, I asked if they’d rent it to me.”
Back in the part of the house he lived in, Lara looked up at the large window at the top of the front wall. It faced east, and had no covering. “It must be bright in the mornings.”
“Yeah. I sleep in the loft, and yeah. It’s hard to miss the dawn. I love that—waking up with the sun, taking a board out first thing and catching some waves before I do anything else with my day.”
Trey’s style was masculine and beachy. He was fairly neat—she’d known that already, just from being with him so much—and didn’t like clutter. Neither did she. There was an intentionality to his space she appreciated. The walls were all painted a medium grey, and the trim and cabinetry, even the floors, were whitewashed, showing the grain of the wood and a hint of its pale color. His furniture didn’t exactly match, but it all sat comfortably together—the square pine table and tall, slat-back chairs with wicker seats. The slouchy grey sofa, the Eames chair and ottoman, the jute rugs and the scuffed trunk that served as a coffee table. The long white bench, with jute baskets of beach gear, along the wall by the door.
On the wall above the sofa, the only wall décor she could see, was an extensive collection of framed photos, twenty-six in all, in different frames with the same pine tone. All the photos were beach scenes, and after a few moments perusing them, Lara understood that they were all taken outside this cottage, and that the people in them were Trey and his family. Surfing, playing volleyball, sitting around the fire, lazing on blankets, or standing in groups and posing for photos.
A lot of people. A very large family.
“This is your family.”
“Yeah. Like I said, this is home base for the beach.”
“Did you take all these?”
“About half of them. Some are older. I begged them off Misby.” He stood right behind her, close enough that she felt the heat of hi
s body, and pointed at the photos. “Let’s see … that’s Uncle Luca, Uncle John, and Uncle Joey, back before Joey got hurt. He hasn’t surfed since then. That’s Aunt Carmen and Uncle Theo, the guy who wrote your books, and that’s their daughter, Teresa. From last summer, her and Ben’s high school graduation party. That’s me, Dad, and Ben, sharing a wave. And that old guy standing by the big grill, that’s my grandpa.”
“Everybody in your family is extremely good-looking. It’s terrifying.”
She felt his chuckle against her shoulder blades. “Yeah, there’s good genes, I guess.” He bent down and kissed the side of her face, right at her ear. “No need to be scared,” he whispered. “You’re gorgeous, too. You fit right in.”
He was all around her, surrounding her with his scent and his heat, with the sound of his voice and his breath. These hours in Quiet Cove, with his family, in his home, his world, she felt she was truly encompassed by him, swallowed up. And it was a good feeling, that surrender. Like being wrapped in that soft old quilt. A Pagano quilt. Turning her head, she found his mouth and brushed his lips with hers. “Where’s your bed?”
“In the loft. C’mon.”
~oOo~
The loft was like the rest of his living space: attractive and fairly neat, uncluttered and intentional. Against the back, street-side wall was a wide, low platform bed, made with a white comforter and two matching shams, framed by two gooseneck sconces above two vintage campstools for bedside tables. Along one side wall, filling the low space to the place where the peaked roof began to slant, was low, long, elaborate shelving and drawer system that Lara guessed served as a dresser. A string of white mini-lights framed the peak on the back wall
Simple Faith (The Pagano Brothers Book 1) Page 22