As Fate Would Have It (Capparelli & Co. Book 2)

by Dee Lagasse

  Going pre-med in college, I quickly learned there were more important things to focus on than the makeup on my face and the way my hair was styled. Like getting an extra hour of sleep after staying up all night doing homework and still making it to class on time, for example. I’m happy with how I look, if someone else isn’t, that’s on them, not me.

  “No, probably not.” Ellis shrugs, pushing open my bedroom door. “What are you doing up so early? I didn’t think I’d see you ‘til noon. Hence me trying to sneak Tuck out while you were in the shower.”

  “My mom sent donuts and coffee,” I remind her, pulling a soft knit burgundy pullover sweater over my head. “You took the extra coffee for Tucker before failing to sneak him out, remember?”

  “Oh yeeeeah.” She nods, looking everywhere except at me. “About that…”

  Tugging the sweater down over my chest, I cock my head and raise my eyebrows, waiting for her to finish.

  When she doesn’t, I suggest pausing the conversation. “Why don’t we come back to this tonight over a bottle of chardonnay? With said donuts and coffee also came a note that demanded I meet the queen at noon. I’ll stop and grab the wine on the way home?”

  “No wine,” she says. “I have clients all day tomorrow.”

  “You know, I hear people can just sit and have a glass or two. It’s not completely necessary to drink an entire bottle, each, every time.”

  Rolling her eyes like that’s quite possibly the most foolish thing to have ever left my lips, she offers, “We call those people, quitters. How about Cap & Co. hangover food and an Avengers movie marathon instead? You get your superheroes and I can just stare at Thor.”

  Capparelli & Co., her family’s authentic Italian restaurant in downtown Abbott Hills, is our home away from home. Half of Ellis’s family, including Ellis, works there. And so do I. Only by a dumb stroke of luck, too, I should add.

  It just so happened that when I decided to stop pursuing being a pediatrician and start my own entertainment business, the Capparellis were also looking to extend their hours, making the restaurant, often called Cap & Co. by the locals, Abbott Hills’s only “after hours” spot. During the day, I work in the office, meeting potential clients, setting up playlists for weddings, sweet sixteen parties and other events, and four nights a week I handle the entertainment in the lounge at Cap & Co.

  “It’s Monday…” I start excitedly.

  Because, Mondays mean one thing.

  “Nonna went in and made cannolis today,” she finishes for me. “So, are you gonna tell me why you were summoned?”

  “I honestly don’t know.” I shrug, shaking the silver container of mousse before turning it over and pushing the top down. “It has to be something good though. She sent strawberry frosted donuts.”

  “Oh, yeah. Your mom wants something.” Ellis chuckles, now sitting up on the bed she had plopped herself on when she came in. “You better call me as soon as you leave the office with all the details.”

  “Will do,” I promise, saluting her before turning and making my exit.

  Grabbing the keys to my car off the counter by the still half full box of donuts, I contemplate grabbing one for the road, but the last thing I want to do is show up with white powder around my face. It wouldn’t matter to the press that it’s powdered sugar residue from the blueberry donuts. My mom is up for reelection this term, and the media eats shit like that up. I can see it now…

  “Coming up next in the five o’clock hour, Senator Helen Christian’s stepdaughter, Nicole Christian, shows up to state office with white substance around her nose and lips.”

  No. Thank. You.

  Never mind the fact the media is the only place I am ever referred to as her “stepdaughter.” No matter how many times we’ve corrected them, they make sure to emphasize that.

  But the truth is, Helen and Kinley coming into my life when I was six, quite possibly saved me…and my father.

  My biological mother, Victoria, found a lump in her breast when I was only two. In the early 90s, there wasn’t all the technology and medical advances there are today. They tried to get to it, but the cancer had already spread, and chemo wasn’t an option. Within a year and a half, I was a little girl, in all black, standing by my mother’s casket as they lowered her into the ground.

  It’s the very first memory I have. I don’t remember her. Or her laugh. Or if she sang me lullabies and read me bedtime stories. But I remember having to say goodbye. I remember feeling broken and lost. Because what on earth was a little girl supposed to do without her mama?

  I remember crying for her every night. Not understanding why she had to go to Heaven to be with the angels. When it got to the point that my dad couldn’t manage both his grief and mine, on top of adjusting to life as a single parent, he took me to therapy. After my dad was adamant he didn’t need to see someone himself, my therapist gave him a card with the phone number and address for a support group for people that had lost their spouses to cancer.

  And that’s where he met Helen.

  At first, they were just a shoulder for the other one to lean on when things got too hard. Then, when they realized they enjoyed each other’s company beyond that, they started hanging out as friends. Since my dad had me, and Helen had Kinley, it was easy for them to justify wanting to see each other for play dates with us.

  After three years of building sandcastles, the boardwalk arcade and playing mini-golf, Helen and my dad sat Kinley and I down and asked us how we would feel about becoming sisters. Little did Kinley and I know that for a whole year before they sat us down, my dad was taking Helen out on dates while I was at my grandparents’ and Kinley was at hers.

  Six months later, they were married in a small, intimate ceremony. We all took a “familymoon” to Disney World and when we came home, we all moved into a new house in Abbott Hills. The small town sat in between our two individual homes. I didn’t understand it at the time, and I didn’t talk to my dad for almost a week as we packed up from the only home I had ever known. As an adult, I know there is no way Helen could have moved into the house that my mom lived in and we couldn’t move into the house Helen’s first husband lived in.

  In the beginning, I called Helen by her first name and Kinley called my dad, Patrick. I’m not too sure when we transitioned to calling them “Mom” and “Dad,” but I can’t remember the last time I seriously called her Helen. She may not have given birth to me, but she earned her title. And neither my father or she ever let Kinley and I forget about our birth parents. I’ve had the same photograph of my mother on my nightstand since I moved into the house in Abbott Hills, we sent balloons up in the sky to Heaven on their birthdays, and we were encouraged to ask questions.

  Even all these years later, gaining a sister is probably my favorite part of their marriage. Kinley and I both have blonde hair and blue eyes, so growing up, people who didn’t know our background just assumed we were twins and we never corrected them. And when it came to our parents, we were treated just the same. Mom was equally strict and completely involved with both of us and Dad let us both secretly get away with just as much as the other one did.

  Which is also how I know the donut delivery and her request to see me is more than her being motherly. Helen Christian knows strawberry frosted donuts are the way to my heart. They’ve always been my weakness.

  Buttering me up with donuts can only mean one thing. She wants something. And if she’s reached bribing level, it’s something big.

  As I pull into the parking lot next to the brick building about twenty minutes from my apartment, I attempt to brace myself. The not-knowing has my stomach in knots. On the way over here, I thought of every possible scenario from her asking me to make a speech at a rally again or there being something wrong with my dad. At this point, I just want to know.

  Knowing the front door is always locked, I press the small black button that sits next to a speaker box.

  “Hello, can I help you?” the small, soft, timid voice of Juliette,
my mom’s assistant, comes through the silver metal speaker.

  “Hey, Jules,” calling her the nickname Kinley and I gave her upon meeting her four years ago. “It’s Cole. I’m here to see my—”

  Just as I am about to say “mom,” I stop short, distracted by the door opening from the inside, and then by the man walking through it.

  “Coming in?” he asks, flashing a big smile that showcases his bright, white, perfect teeth.

  And for the first time in my entire life, I’m rendered speechless. Like a deer caught in headlights, I just stare at him, dumbstruck by his very presence.

  Before this very moment, anyone that knows me would have told you I have a type. Something in the tall, dark, ruggedly handsome, covered in tattoos, probably in a band category. But, right now?

  I’m sorry, Cole isn’t available right now. She’s too busy heavily eye-fucking the clean-cut blonde standing in front of her. Please leave your message after the beep.

  Every tendril of his honey-colored hair is placed in the right spot. The styled back top of his head longer than the cleanly shaved sides. His face void of any facial hair allows me, and every other human being with a pulse, to appreciate the flawless structure of his jaw and his full lips.

  His jaw? Did you seriously just check out the man’s jaw, Cole?

  In the middle of questioning my new attraction to the bone structure that controls someone’s ability to open their mouth, I realize Mr. Perfection is still staring back at me. There’s a subtle hint of amusement mixed in those dark brown irises as he waits for his answer.

  “Come on up, Nicole.” Juliette’s mousy voice from the speaker box next to me snaps me out of the temporary fog that didn’t allow me to see or think about anything other than the man in front of me. “Your mother is expecting you.”

  Juliette, my mom, and the media are the only people on this planet that still call me “Nicole.” For as long as I can remember, I’ve just been “Cole.” Which has always been fine with me. “Nikki” doesn’t suit me and being called “Nicole” reminds me of getting in trouble as a kid.

  “Nicole,” Mr. Perfection repeats, nodding as if somehow the discovery of my name makes perfect sense to him.

  “Well, I guess that’s my cue,” I say, gathering enough self-respect to finally speak to the gorgeous man in front of me. “Thanks for holding the door.”

  “Sure thing, Nicole,” he smiles, moving behind it, so I can pass through.

  “Cole,” I blurt out. Without any reasonable explanation, there’s a sudden need for me to make sure he knows the name I choose to go by. “It’s just Cole.”

  “Hopefully, I’ll see ya around, Just Cole,” he says, flashing that panty-dropping worthy smile at me one last time before letting go of the door and walking away.

  I hope so, too, handsome.

  Man, I fucking hope so.

  Chapter Two

  PAX

  Well, shit.

  “Just Cole” has no clue who I am.

  Knowing that I had used the same exact terminology upstairs with her mother only ten minutes before causes me to grin like an idiot though. After introducing myself, Senator Christian had continued to call me “Paxton” throughout our entire meeting. Even after letting her know it was “just Pax” twice.

  Pulling out my phone, I scroll through my contacts until I find the recently added “Nicole Christian” and change it to “Just Cole.” Before unlocking my car, I shoot my mom a quick text to thank her for setting up the meeting with Senator Christian. Letting her know that after a forty-five-minute discussion with her childhood best friend, we decided me taking a job within the senator’s office wouldn’t work.

  As a general contractor by trade, I need to be moving, and she needed someone to sit still at a desk. So, she picked up the phone and asked a “Lorenzo” if he was still looking for help. There wasn’t any talk of my qualifications, but within minutes, I had a three o’clock interview with a Tucker Merrimack.

  While her intentions had been good, it was becoming more and more obvious that my mom was just doing everything in her power to keep me in New Hampshire. And while it might work for some people, sitting behind a desk answering phone calls and begging people for campaign money would only make me miserable and further push me out of the state.

  When I told my own mom that I needed to get out of New Hampshire, she immediately started pulling some strings in some form of an attempt to keep me in the northeast region of the country. Forty-five minutes away from home. It wasn’t out of New Hampshire, but it was far enough away that I would never bump into Alyssa and Tyson. Something I had been doing far too often in Nashua.

  I am the first of the Callaghan kids to move out of the southern New Hampshire suburb we grew up in. Both my older sisters still live in Nashua with their husbands and two kids a piece. And as much as I loved our hometown, I just couldn’t stay there anymore. Not when every time I went to the grocery store, pumped gas, or went and grabbed a bite to eat with friends, there was a good chance I would run into the two people formerly known as my best friend and girlfriend.

  I’m well past caring that they’re together. That ship has sailed, gotten lost in the Bermuda Triangle, and is never to be seen or heard from again. It’s the betrayal. Every time I see them together, I feel myself getting slapped in the face with it. Times two. The very moment one of our mutual friends sent me pictures of them sucking face at the bar while I was in South Carolina visiting my dad a few months ago, it was over. Half a lifetime of friendship. Almost a decade of a relationship. Done in a single second.

  Alyssa claimed it was a “mistake,” that it “only happened once after a few drinks,” but that was still one too many times for me. She lost her damn mind when I put the house on the market the next day without consulting her. Just like that, I became the bad guy.

  It didn’t matter that it had been my money that bought the house, my money that furnished it or even that I, and I alone, paid the mortgage every month…I was the one that was “throwing everything away.” I was the one that was “acting irrationally.”

  Granted, it was an impulse decision made completely on emotion, but even now, I don’t regret it. The house sold after only being on the market three days to a couple who had just gotten the word their adoption application had been accepted. They even paid six thousand more than asking price. It was like it was meant to be. For all of us.

  Within two weeks, I was out of the house, ninety percent of my belongings packed and boxed up in a storage container. Unsure of what my next move was, I rented a hotel room and rumor had it, Alyssa moved all her stuff into Tyson’s condo. So much for a “mistake” that had “only happened once.”

  My glamorous hotel life, living out of suitcases and takeout only lasted for a few days though. As soon as my sister Kennedy found out about the storage container and the hotel room, she came banging on the hotel door. Ten minutes later, with suitcases in hand, I was checking out at the front desk.

  The contents of my suitcase were emptied into the drawers of the dresser in Kennedy’s guest room and that’s where they stayed for the three months I lived with my sister and her family. But as much as I loved getting home from work and having my niece and nephew excited to see me, the few months in their guest room had been enough. Their home was warm and being with family had been the best thing for me right after the break-up, but when it came down to it, it just wasn’t my home and it was time to decide what came next.

  The first thing that came to mind was South Carolina. My dad would welcome me with open arms, and I could wing it once I got there. I had enough in my savings plus the money from selling the house to float for a little while until I got settled. But that’s when moving to Abbott Hills became my mom’s little project plan to keep me in New Hampshire.

  Six months. That’s all she asked of me. If I hated it after six months, she would “pack my bags for me herself,” she said. I knew it wouldn’t be as easy as that, but I figured I would humor her nonetheless. So
two days later, I put down the security deposit and paid for the first month and a half’s rent on a one-bedroom apartment in a small gated community.

  Getting them to agree to a six month lease had been about as fun as pulling out my own teeth, but after some harmless flirting and playing up the “my girlfriend cheated on me with my best friend” sob story, I had keys in my hand and an assigned parking spot right at the front of the building.

  Pretty set in the mindset that this would be temporary, I didn’t unpack much, choosing to leave most of my things in boxes lined up against the wall. Halfway through arranging what little I had for the living room, a knock on the door caused me to put down the hammer and nails I was about to use. I might not be staying long, but I still needed a place to put my television.

  Opening the door slowly, unsure of what I would find on the other side, I was surprised to see a short, brunette with a big basket of fruit. Before I could say anything, she introduced herself as “Juliette, Senator Helen Christian’s assistant,” and handed me an envelope containing a ticket for the Capparelli & Co. Halloween Gala.

  “Your mother forwarded your address. Senator Christian isn’t available to meet you today, but asked me to personally deliver these to you, and asks that you meet her at eleven, Monday morning at her office in Concord,” she had said.

  I didn’t decide that I wanted to go to the gala until a few hours before the seven o’clock ticket time last night. Finding a costume last minute had been trickier than I thought. I had to go right outside of town to a costume store and even then, the selection was slim pickings.

  As generic as it was, I figured Batman would be the safest route. I wouldn’t stick out. And it would give me the chance to inconspicuously check out the town I had agreed to call home for the next six months.