The song ended and I killed the engine and got out, still unsure of what I planned to do. Without knowing what I’d say if she answered, I knocked and waited.
Annetta answered wearing a pair of tight blue jeans with rips down the legs and a white sweater hanging off one shoulder that showed about an inch of her flat stomach. It took everything in me to focus on her eyes and not gawk at her body. I’d always suspected she was perfect under her baggy chef uniform, but damn.
“Hey, Dom.” Her brow furrowed. “What are you doing here?”
Not the reception I’d been expecting, but her question was valid since I still had no idea. “I wanted to stop by and see how you’re doing.”
She crossed her arms. “Uh…fine, thanks.”
Realizing I needed a better reason than the one I’d given her, I added, “How’s work? How are you liking the restaurant?”
“Oh, that.” Her shoulders relaxed and she let out a breath. “It’s going well. Everyone’s been great and helpful, and now that the dinner’s over, the environment is way more relaxed.”
“Good to hear. Are you still getting enough hours?”
She arched an eyebrow at me. “That’s a weird question for a security guy to ask.” Her posture stiffened again. “Why do you want to know?”
Since I’d managed to keep myself in check during the dinner and fought off the temptation to venture into the kitchen, I hadn’t seen Annetta at all that night. But judging by her current cold shoulder posture, she’d seen me. If she’d witnessed me dancing with Valentina or chatting it up with any of the bosses, my cover had been blown. It was time to come clean. Well, as clean as I could come about my job.
I scratched at the two-day scruff on my chin and admitted, “Yeah, I’m not really an employee of the restaurant. I do some security work, but only for my family.”
“And your family is the one who rented out the restaurant?” she asked.
I nodded. “See, I told you you’d be disappointed.”
“For your engagement party?” she asked.
I just about choked. “What? No. Definitely not.”
Her eyes sparkled. She’d known it wasn’t my engagement party, but had to mess with me. Thrown completely off, I couldn’t help but smile.
“So…the little girl in the pink dress…?” she asked. “She’s not your fiancée?”
That wiped the smile right off my face. Wondering who the hell told Annetta about Valentina, I said, “Nope. Just a family friend.”
“Really? Because she’s already picking out wedding colors.”
I didn’t want to lie to Annetta, but I didn’t want to push her away with the truth, either. How could I tell the girl I was interested in that my old man planned to make me marry someone else? I sighed and looked up at her, hoping she could hear and see my honesty. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”
Annetta studied me, keeping her arms crossed in front of her. “Okay. Why are you really here, Dom?”
Why was I there? Her frank questions always seemed to throw me off. I leaned against the doorframe and tried to solve that puzzle for myself. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Been a rough couple of days and I just wanted to…to hang out.”
“Hang out? With me? Why?”
“I don’t know…because you’re fun to be around and I miss talking to you,” I replied.
“Oh.”
Neither of us seemed to know what to say after that, so we stood there staring at each other like idiots. Finally, Annetta flashed me a shy smile. “I miss talking to you, too.”
Emboldened by her confession, I asked, “You wanna go somewhere? Maybe grab a bite to eat?”
She chewed on her lip and looked over her shoulder back in the house.
“If you’re busy, we can do it another time.” I wanted to be with her right then, but would settle for a rain check over an outright rejection.
“I was supposed to go out with a friend, but she ditched me for a date with your friend.”
“Huh?”
“Mario. He stole my friend Adona today.”
Mario tended to be a bit shy around the ladies. “She must have asked him.”
“Knowing her, it was more like a clobbering over the head. I don’t know if he’s ready for a girl like Adona. Poor guy. I tried to warn him.”
The idea of Mario being accosted by some overly-zealous girl made me grin. “It’ll be good for him. And funny. I wish I could be a fly on the wall for that date.”
The sound of Annetta’s laughter made me feel better than I had in days.
“So what do you say? Let’s get out of here and go do something.”
“I just…let me turn off the television and leave Papa a note.” She started to turn away, then paused. “You wanna come in?”
“Sure.”
I followed Annetta into the small, single-level house. A brown recliner sat beside a blue floral sofa in the modest living room. Everything looked clean, but worn. Residual food smells lingered, and books and magazines were stacked on the coffee table, giving a comfortable feel to the place. I tried to imagine what it would be like to grow up here, but couldn’t.
Annetta turned off the small television and invited me to have a seat. “Is what I’m wearing okay?” she asked, eyeing my suit.
I definitely didn’t want her to change. “Perfect. You look great.”
She blushed and headed for the adjoining dining room, where she grabbed a tablet and pen from the table. “Can I get you anything to drink? Water? A coke?”
“No thanks. I’m good.”
She sat beside me on the sofa and used the coffee table to scribble out a note. “So…you’re sure that girl in the pink dress isn’t your girlfriend or fiancée, right?”
I held up my right hand. “I, Dominico, do solemnly swear I am unattached.” And I’d stay that way for as long as possible.
She giggled. “Good to know. It’s not like I’m assuming this is a date or anything, but I’m not that girl…the one who dates guys with girlfriends.” Her cheeks turned bright red. “Again, not dating, but I mean…never mind.”
There was something so beautiful and endearing about her innocence, it made me want to wrap my arms around her and protect her from the world. But she probably needed protection from me and my family more than from anyone else. Guilt sliced at my gut, making me feel like the world’s biggest asshole for even knocking on her door. If I cared about Annetta at all, I should have stood up, walked right out of her door, and drove until I lost the urge to see her again. But I was selfish and weak, so my ass stayed on her sofa, watching her beautiful lips turn up into a shy smile.
She signed her name to the note and left it on the coffee table before grabbing a jacket from the coat tree by the front door. Then we were off, but I had no idea where to take her. I wanted us to be able to talk, so the movie theater was out, as were any of the shows. Things like bowling and shooting pool seemed too generic and overdone. After today I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to sneak away to be with her again, so I wanted whatever we did to be memorable.
Then, I got the perfect idea.
“Do you like solving mysteries?” I asked.
“Uh…like Sherlock Holmes-type mysteries, or more Scooby Doo style?”
I laughed. “Is there one you’d say yes to over the other?”
“Actually, no. I love both. Are we gonna be pesky kids and solve a crime?”
I gave her my best mysterious smile in answer and started the car.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Annetta
I SAT ACROSS the table from Dominico and tried to figure out why I’d agreed to “hang out” with him. Although I believed what he’d told me about the girl in the pink dress, I felt like he was withholding part of the truth. So why had I agreed to go to an undisclosed location with a guy only telling me part of the truth? That was the mystery I really needed to solve, and apparently this was the place to sleuth.
“This mystery you were talking about…does it have anything
to do with which drink they’ll bring us next?” I asked, sipping something the bartender had whipped up when I’d asked him to surprise me. I hadn’t been drinking long enough to know everything out there, and enjoyed trying new cocktails. Especially the fruity ones.
Dominico checked his watch. “Only for the next ten minutes.” He didn’t offer any more information, and I didn’t ask, because I enjoyed not knowing. Still, I scanned the room, searching for clues about where we were.
The stylish aluminum ceiling, hunter-green walls, numerous gilded mirrors, crystal chandeliers, and gorgeous oak bar gave the place an old-fashioned feel. The menus were black with no logo. They probably had a sign out front, but we’d parked in the back and come in the side door. Dominico had me grab a table while he slipped off to chat with another man in a suit, who I’d guessed to be the manager or owner of the place.
The two men put their heads together for a moment before Dominico looked at his watch, nodded, and came to join me, all of which had told me not a thing about what he was up to.
“You take this mystery business seriously, don’t you?” I asked.
“Hey, when I do something, I do it right,” he replied.
Before I could figure out how to respond to that statement, a loud alarm sounded.
“What’s that?” I asked, covering my ears.
Dominico smiled. “You’ll see. Or hopefully, you won’t.”
The alarm ended, and a family hurried past the bar entrance. “I told you it wasn’t in there,” the forty-something mom said. “If you guys would listen to me every once in a while, we would’ve won.”
Neither the dad nor the two teenage boys replied. Instead, they kept their heads down and sped up their pace, looking embarrassed as they passed.
“So it’s a win or lose thing?” I asked.
Dominico nodded and looked away, but not before I caught his smile.
Fine. If he didn’t want to give up any clues about what we were doing, I would pump him for other information. “You never got the chance to tell me about your family,” I said, drawing his attention back to me.
“That was intentional,” he admitted, taking another sip. “You don’t really want to hear about them.”
“Yes, I do. Do you have any siblings besides Michael and your sister who’s about to get married?”
“Nope. Just the three of us.”
He really didn’t want to talk about them. Too bad, since I’d entered full-on mystery-solving mode. “Your parents still married?”
“Yep.” He looked at me like I was crazy, which told me divorce wasn’t an issue in his world.
“Nice. What are they like?”
“You’re like a dog with a bone,” he said.
I shrugged. “You’re the one whetting my appetite to solve mysteries.”
He chuckled and played with his glass. I didn’t think he’d answer, but he surprised me. “Mama is nice. Smart. Forever trying to feed us. You’d like her.”
I giggled. “Is she a good cook?”
“Oh, the best.”
I arched an eyebrow.
“Present company excluded,” he amended. “But if you ever tell anyone I said that, I will deny it.”
Mimicking the gesture he’d shown me the first night he took me home, I held up my right hand and said, “Scouts honor.”
“You’re tellin’ me you were a Boy Scout?” he asked.
I leaned back in my chair and threw up my hands. “No more than you were.”
He held my gaze for a moment before breaking into a smirk. “Touché.”
Dominico’s mother was a housewife and his father was some sort of businessman. I made a mental note to ask Papa if he knew anyone in the Mariani family so I could find out more, but I wasn’t able to squeeze anything else out of Dominico before a man approached and introduced himself.
“My name is John and I’ll be your guide for this evening. Please, follow me.”
John was quite possibly the most serious person I’d ever met. He didn’t give us so much as a smile as he stood arrow straight and led us out of the bar and down the hall. He opened a door and gestured us through to a large room decorated and furnished in an early 1900s motif, before handing us each a spy glass and a Sherlock Holmes style hat. Then he started in on the spiel.
“This is the escape room, which means your goal will be to escape it. To do this, you’ll need to solve five riddles that will each give you one of the numbers on this lock.” He pointed at the keypad on the wall. “Enter all five numbers and the door will unlock and you will win.”
A little thrill ran up my spine. I’d heard of places like this before, but had never been in one. I scanned the room as he continued speaking, wondering where all the clues were hiding.
“In a moment, I’ll hand you your first clue,” John continued. “It will lead you to the first number and your clue to the next. You will have sixty minutes to solve the lock and escape the room before an alarm sounds, letting the entire establishment know you failed.”
“Oh. That’s what happened to that family,” I said.
Dominico grinned. “Amateurs. Don’t worry, we’ve got this.”
John didn’t look so certain about our sleuthing abilities as he handed over our first clue, wished us luck, and then let himself out. The door clicked locked behind him, and then the second hand on the giant wall clock started ticking.
“Have you done this before?” I asked.
“No, but how hard can it be?” Dominico read the first clue aloud—a riddle blatantly pointing us to the fireplace. We searched the hearth until we found a loose stone, which we pulled away to find another piece of paper. This one had the number six and a clue on it.
“See? Piece of cake,” Dominico said. “Nothing to worry about.”
Except each clue grew increasingly difficult to find. Not only that, some of them purposely misled us. I would have sworn the third clue pointed to the window, but when I pulled back the heavy drape, a giant fake spider jumped out at me. I screamed so loud I’m sure the entire building heard. Dominico rushed to help me, but when he saw what had happened, he laughed so hard I thought he was going to pee his pants. Once my heart stopped racing, I laughed as well. We worked together and eventually deciphered the riddle, but I exhibited much more caution searching for the fourth clue.
By the time we had the fifth riddle in hand, we only had six minutes left. We read it over and over, looking for patterns and searching for deeper meaning, but it didn’t make sense. I was scanning the paper, hoping to shed some light on the problem, when I realized the first letter of each word spelled out “red lamp.”
“Red lamp! Red lamp!” I shouted. We had barely over a minute and still had to punch in the code.
Dominico rushed for the end table with the red lamp and searched for the clue. When he couldn’t find it, he ripped off the shade and tossed the lamp on the floor. Surprisingly, it didn’t break.
“What are you—you can’t—”
Before I could even form a coherent sentence he jumped on the lamp, smashing it to pieces. I watched, too shocked to speak, as he bent and removed the final piece of paper from the debris and laid it on the coffee table.
“Read me the numbers,” he said, running toward the keypad.
That snapped me out of my stupor. I leaned over the table and recited the digits as he punched them in. The door clicked open only seconds before the clock ran out.
“Ohmigod, we did it!” I said, looking from Dominico to the smashed lamp. I still couldn’t believe he’d broken it, but the adrenaline had me all amped up.
“It’s okay, I’ll pay for it,” he assured me. “Now let’s go get our prizes.”
“We get prizes?” I asked.
“Of course we do. We won. This is one of the more difficult rooms. Not many people win.”
I elbowed him as I walked by. “You could have warned me.”
He chuckled. “Nah, didn’t want to psyche you out.” Then he grabbed my hand and tugged me back to
him.
Surprised to be suddenly pressed against his body, I looked up at his face. He gave me his sexy smirk again, and thanked me.
“For what?” I asked, watching his eyes. They were almost black, and made me feel like Alice, standing on the edge of a bottomless pit full of all sorts of magical potential.
His free hand wound itself in one of my curls. “For this. I needed it.”
“I did too,” I admitted. “Thank you for rescuing me from boredom and bringing me along. This has been a blast. I still can’t believe we beat the clock. I thought for sure we were gonna have to take the same walk of shame that family did.”
“Nope. No walk of shame for me. If we didn’t make it, I had a plan B.”
“Oh?” I asked.
“I was gonna knock the stiff out and we were gonna jet out the back door.”
“The stiff?” I giggled. “You mean John, our friendly neighborhood guide?”
“What? I could take him.”
“He’s like, a hundred years old. I could take him.”
Dominico laughed. “Point.”
“Well, thankfully it didn’t come to that.”
“Yeah. Good thing you’re as smart as you are beautiful.”
My cheeks burned and I didn’t know what to say. We stood like that for a moment, staring at each other. I had the craziest feeling he wanted to kiss me, and was surprised by how much I wanted him to.
“I apologize for interrupting, but they are ready for you,” John said, pushing open the door the rest of the way and interrupting our moment.
“Who?” I asked.
“The photographer. We need pictures—lots of pictures—to immortalize the night we kicked Escape Room C’s ass!”
Laughing, I let Dominico tug me down the hall. We were shown into a small room with an early 1900s backdrop. We dressed in overcoats with attached capes and the silly little hats Sherlock Holmes wore, which the photographer informed us were called deerstalkers. We each got a magnifying glass and a pipe for props, and we spent the next ten minutes egged on by an overzealous cameraman to explore every ridiculous pose we could.
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