Chapter Twenty-One
“At the table with good friends and family you do not become old.”
Tad pulled up outside Casa DeLuca on the Harley, his stomach rumbling with what he wished was hunger but what was more likely a case of sour grapes. Lili had warned him but he had to see for himself.
Quietly, he let himself in the front door and made for the kitchen, but instead of heading outside, he watched the gathering around the big picnic table through the window that faced the backyard. They had a full house today, all the usual suspects and one special guest.
Simon St. F*cking James.
He was one of a cozy pair of bookends with Jules on the other side and Evan in the middle. The wily little prick said something over Evan’s head and her soft, musical laugh wafted over the unseasonably warm May breeze through the open window. Tad felt it like a chef’s knife to his heart.
Demon threw his dino-giraffe on the ground and Jules stood up to retrieve it, giving him the full picture. She had pulled her hair into a top knot like you might see on a dolled-up poodle. Her oversized tee hung off one perfectly round shoulder, a streak of something pea-green—probably peas—cutting a path across one breast. Peeking below the shirt’s hem were the white ravels of cut-off denim shorts, frayed over her creamy thighs. The whole image should have been fairly nondescript, but in Tad’s eyes, she was so f*cking beautiful.
He lifted his hand in a wave but Evan chose that moment to screech for the damn toy and she turned back to the table without seeing his greeting. For the briefest moment, he questioned if he was even here. He felt oddly insubstantial, strangely transparent. Talk and chatter continued, all that vitality moving on and around him. His life for the last ten years had been like this—an ebb and flow, where he would sometimes pull up to the shore only to have his progress ripped from under him by the greedy surf.
Simon now bounced Evan on his knee, making the kid giggle while Jules looked on indulgently. Tad recognized that look. She was happy—cautiously so, but happy all the same. They had created a bundle of life together, and no matter the guy’s sins, he was still Evan’s father. An unbreakable bond of blood and genetics. And Tad was still his parents’ son.
Doing the right thing had never felt so wrong.
Frankie bustled in, barely looking at him, and wrenched the fridge door open. She pulled out a large ceramic bowl of zabaglione.
She pushed a plate of washed strawberries toward him with a knife. It was a move she tried every now and then, as if his hands would start chopping involuntarily, somehow possessed by muscle memory. Every time she did it, he ignored it, and every time he did that, she sighed deeply like the Italian mama she was.
“How is business?”
He curled his hand around the butt of the chef’s knife and started to bisect the ruby-pink fruit. Watch your fingers, Taddeo.
“The Tasty Chicago review is going to be bad but we’ll survive it.”
She nodded her understanding. As the wife of a restaurateur, she’d suffered her fair share of poor reviews over the years. Nothing was so bad they couldn’t bounce back from it.
“How did you spend the day?”
He focused on his knife work. Be one with the knife. It kept him from shaking.
“The usual.” Got wasted, screwed the girl he was crazy about, broke her heart.
“Ten years is a long time, Taddeo.”
Common sense acknowledged that but in his heart, ten years still felt like ten minutes. Every detail was as sharp now as the day he lived it. His thumping head, the hard bench in the cell, the unyielding expression on Tony’s face when Tad stepped into that interview room at the CPD Third District after a dreamless night.
For one brief glittering moment while he made pasta with his beautiful girl, he had thought he might not need to go on that bender this year. Something—or someone—would be here to distract him. Keep him sane. The dead part of him flickered to life every time he saw Jules and Evan, though it had no right to get so excited.
“I hear you helped Jules through this business with Evan’s father.”
Through the window, Jules and Simon were focused on their son and at that moment they chose to share the connection with one of those Hallmark eye-locks that seemed to spark the air around them. Look at what we have created. Envy formed a rock in his stomach, a lump of green desire that threatened to consume everything around it.
He turned to find Frankie looking at him curiously, perhaps wondering why he would do something so clearly against his self-interest.
“She lets Jack push her around. He’s Evan’s family and that’s important.”
“Yes, it is. But that man will never love Evan as much as we do.”
Something crumbled inside his chest, probably one of those stupid f*cking bricks Tad the engineer had become so adept at building. Next thing he knew, his feet had moved his body out back to stand behind St. James. The conversation petered out as awareness of Tad’s presence stole across the group.
Jules looked up at him, her sparkling eyes big as the platters on the table. He had no idea if his argument had helped her come to this decision but one look was enough to know she didn’t hate him. He held onto that while he waited. One, two…
St. James turned around and arched a supercilious eyebrow. He thrust out his hand.
“Tad, isn’t it? We haven’t met officially. Simon St. James.”
Tad ignored the hand. Sure it was a dick move, which was okay because right this minute, Tad DeLuca was the biggest dick who ever lived.
“I’d like a word with you in private.”
He could feel the stares of his family like a nasty kitchen burn, particularly Tony, whose expression registered concern. Shane shook his head slightly in warning while Jack’s eyes narrowed to slits. Ignoring them, he turned and walked to the gable of the house and waited.
Thirty seconds passed before St. James rounded the corner.
“How can I help you?” he asked, his nervousness not quite covered by that swanky accent.
“By not f*cking up.”
“I don’t plan to. This means a lot to me.”
Tad scanned Simon’s face for signs of insincerity and came up empty. No matter, the road to hell and all that.
“Jules is part of this family and we’ll protect her and Evan against all comers. You’ll get to do the father thing, but Evan’s going to grow up a DeLuca.”
A bomb of emotion went off in his chest, blowing those bricks to kingdom come. Evan would grow up a DeLuca. He meant that Evan was a part of la famiglia, but Tad wanted so much more than that. He wanted Jules and Evan to have his—Tad’s—name.
“Hold up there, tough guy,” Simon said, his hands raised in mock defense. “I get that you Italians are a clannish bunch but there’s no need to get shirty. As long as I get to see my son, we’ll get along just dandy.”
The urge to punch this idiot took root in his core, but Tad never lost his temper. Years ago, he had learned to control his anger because the one time he had whaled on a guy had set in motion a chain of events that ended with his parents’ lying six feet under. But if ever he was ready to pound a guy into the wall, it was now. How did a douche like this get to have a beautiful kid like Evan? Where was the justice in that?
With the last remaining threads of his control straining to breaking point, Tad willed his body and voice to calm. He had a good four inches on this guy. Time to use it.
He stepped in close. “You’ll get to see him. You’ll get to call him son. You’ll get to hear him say ‘Daddy’. But if I hear of one single instance of you forgetting to call when you should, or canceling that visit on his birthday at the last minute, or doing a single thing to piss off my girl, you’d better hope you’re on good terms with the saint in your stupid f*cking ass name because you’ll need him when I get through with you. We clear?”
St. James swallowed and nodded.
“Everything all right here?”
Over St. James’s shoulder, Tad locked eyes with Jack.
St. James moved aside and divided a look between them. “No problem. Just getting acquainted.” His superior smile looked like it might cause him an injury. “I should get back to my son.”
Got it. You have the luckiest sperm on the planet. Tad watched his retreat, rage nuking every cell.
“You need to hit something?” Jack asked.
“Will you hold still or should I get Shane out here?”
Jack sighed. “Perhaps I was a little hasty when I spoke the other day. I don’t like what’s happening here but I understand now that you had Jules’s best interests at heart.”
“Always.”
A flicker of understanding ignited between them that felt like the beginnings of mutual respect. Nice, but Jack’s quasi-acceptance didn’t change a thing between Tad and Jules. Her interests would be best served if he stayed the hell away from her.
The pause stretched from uncomfortable to… well, comfortable, if he was being honest.
“Time to eat,” Jack said, evidently trying to be the bigger person here.
“I’m not hungry,” Tad said, turning away to the street. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be hungry again.
* * *
“How come Jack’s not here getting his hands dirty?”
Using the heel of his work boot, Tad pushed the pitch fork into the densely-packed earth to its hilt. Once secured in the ground, he joined Shane on the patio. His friend passed him a cold one and took a long slug from the bottle in his own hand.
“Don’t want to mess up Lord Kilroy’s lily white hands. You know how he feels about anyone contaminating the air he breathes.” When Shane raised a disapproving eyebrow, Tad went on. “Look, I know he’s your brother but he’s not my favorite person right now, so he doesn’t get invited to partake in the fun.”
He gestured to the “fun” with a wave. The yard hadn’t improved much since he’d started tearing it apart three days ago. Rolled up grass sod lay to the side, the herb and vegetable garden was at best “distressed”, and the earth was in various stages of upturn like the Caddyshack gopher had paid a visit. He could have hired people to do it but the work’s weight was about the only thing keeping him from smashing somebody’s face in.
“I’m touched you thought of me when you needed free labor,” Shane mumbled.
“There’s beer and pizza in it for you. Besides, I know you can’t stay long with Cara needing you to keep her satisfied every minute of the day.”
Shane gave a sly smile. “Can I help it if my hot wife can’t keep her hands off me?” He took a long draught and leaned his elbows on his knees. “So the beef between you and Jack. Still Jules, I assume?”
“He’s just trying to protect her,” Tad said, resigned. He lowered himself to the bleach-weathered Adirondack chair and crossed an ankle over his knee.
“Yup, because she really needs protecting. Are you still going with the not-good-enough-for-her play? Or have you moved onto some other crappy excuse? Lean back there and tell me all about it.”
Tad groaned. “You missed your calling, Irish. Wasted making cakes. Absolutely wasted.”
“I would have thought this business with Evan’s father would have focused you. Made you see what you’ve been missing.”
Ignoring him, Tad picked at the label on his beer bottle.
“Or the fact that she started dating. Sure, that woke you up, didn’t it? Made you realize you’re crazy about her?”
The label tore. He used to be able to get it off in one smooth peel.
“The f*ck, man.” A combination of awe and disgust thickened Shane’s voice.
Tad dragged his eyes up from the bottle, knowing they would reveal everything he had been hiding for two long and painful years, and no longer caring.
Shane’s glare was incredulous. “You’ve been in love with Jules from the beginning.”
The final brick in that fortress around his heart fell away. Not admitting it, even to himself, was another one of those brilliant strategies he had for keeping sane. It was up there with avoiding kitchens and liking his women loose and drinking himself into a stupor once a year. Absolutely brilliant.
“Tad, I’m not asking you, I’m telling you that you’d better come clean or I’m calling Cara and Lili in to get it done.”
Gripping the bottle tighter, Tad drew a deep breath to fuel what he had to say next.
“It was the night Jack was taping his show at DeLuca’s. She waltzed in like the world owed her a living, all bravado and hair and attitude. I turned to Lili and asked who the shit was that and next thing I knew this blond spitfire was marching into the kitchen on a mission. The second I saw her, I knew that was it for me.”
Colpo di fulmine. The thunderbolt had struck him to his knees.
“Two minutes later, she announces she’s pregnant to Jack and the crew, but for that two minutes, Shane…”
He paused, his heart too full with the emotion of it. That perfect 120 seconds when he watched her take that first step to becoming so strong. He had known she was special then and every second with her since confirmed it—and confirmed he wasn’t worthy.
“For that two minutes, everything was stripped away and all that was left was possibility.” And hope. “But then, boom, she’s Jack’s sister, and boom, she’s pregnant, and boom, she needs a friend, not some horn dog who wanted in her pants.”
Shane studied his beer, then pointed it at Tad for emphasis. “And boom, you’re still not doing anything about it. You are such a p-ssy.”
Should have known better than to expect a smidge of sympathy from his so-called friend. The bubble of rage in his chest threatened to rise up and choke his throat.
“This from the guy who knew Jack Kilroy was his brother for twelve years before he decided to show his smug-as-all-get-out, pointy-ass, Irish face.”
That just got Tad a shake of that smug-as-all-get-out, pointy-ass, Irish head.
“We’re not talking about me and my now-perfect life. We’re figuring out how a guy who has been in love with a woman since the first day he laid eyes on her still can’t get his head out of his Italian arse and work it out. But if you want to go there, be my guest. I let a million things get in the way of connecting with Jack. I built up the barriers in my head—he didn’t want to know, he hated our father so he was going to hate me, he was doing just fine without another hanger-on. Etcetera, etcetera. All my life, I wanted a family. Jack, Cara, you guys. I wasted a shitload of time and if I could do it differently, I’d have called Jack the day I found out he was my brother and told him I wanted to see him.”
Tad downed his beer, praying for the cool liquid to take the edge off. Shane had excellent reasons for not reaching out to Jack sooner, the primary one being their violent, abusive father who’d beat Shane senseless when he was a kid. Feeling worthless is usually a perfectly adequate reason not to take the next step.
“Well, it all worked out in the end. You got Cara and Jack and soon, you’ll have your kids. And you got a cool cousin-in-law in the form of Yours Truly.” The guy had nothing to complain about.
They both took long draughts of their beers, the swallows cool and satisfying in the muggy heat.
“Swing set would look nice over there,” Shane said after an extended beat.
“Real subtle, a*shole.”
Shane laughed and pulled out his buzzing phone. “Hey, gorgeous. What’s up?” His expression turned to granite as he listened to whatever Cara was saying. “I’ll be right there.”
He bolted out of his seat. “Come on, Cara’s at the hospital.”
* * *
Thwack.
Tad turned the corner on his way to the emergency room waiting area and found his uncle dealing a deathblow to an uncooperative vending machine.
“How’s Cara?” Shane had jumped out of the car and raced inside while Tad parked.
“No news yet. Shane is with her now.”
Thwack.
“What happened?”
“She was meeting with a client, the big one who is the son of the mayor, when she started getting cramps. Of course, she carried on with the meeting. When she left, she headed here and then called Shane.”
“Jesus.” He knew Cara was a workaholic and the consummate professional but that took the cake. Assuming she made it out of this okay, Shane was going to kill her.
Tony shook his head disapprovingly. “Now we must wait and see.”
Wait and see. Well, that just blows.
“Need some help?” he asked, nodding to the candy bar that wouldn’t budge.
“It is hanging on the edge right there.” Tony’s glare was usually quite persuasive but the recalcitrant Kit Kat gamely withstood Il Duce’s pressure.
“You don’t eat candy. What’s going on?”
“Your aunt is a sugar fiend.” His uncle shrugged in that lazy Continental way of his. “Not unlike your father. He had quite the sweet tooth.”
Tad felt a smile tugging at his lips. “Junior Mints were his weakness. He said it was the best thing about going to the movies.”
A couple of moments ticked by, not uncomfortably. Tad could feel a space opening up in the air around him, a welcoming gap he could step through to a place where everything wasn’t quite so skewed.
“I went to the cemetery last week,” Tony said. “There were fresh white roses. Your mother’s favorite.”
Tad had driven out there the day after he sobered up. Rosehill Cemetery was just a few miles as the crow flies, but he had never seen the appeal in fixating on a slash of earth and a lump of stone. Better to internalize the pain and fixate on their memory.
“I hadn’t been there since the funeral,” Tad said. “Seemed it was time.”
“That day was hard for everyone.” Tony met Tad’s gaze, his blue eyes tinged with regret and distant memory. “I didn’t make it easier.”
“Easy would have been worse. I needed it to be hard.”
The truth of that carved out a cavity in his chest. He had needed it to be hard because that was the only way he could get through it. Tony’s disapprobation had hurt but it had worked to keep his guilt tangible, just the way Tad liked it.
His uncle let go of a world-weary sigh. Tad would have sworn the old man was carrying Jesus’s cross on the way to Calgary.
“I was never so glad as the day Cara called to tell me you had come to visit her in New York after all that time away. I should have come to see you but I thought you would not want people to crowd you.”
This was the first he’d heard that Cara had called home or that Tony had known. Though to be fair, after numbing his brain dead with drugs, drink, and p-ssy halfway around the world, he didn’t remember much from that trip.
“I was only there a couple of days before heading out to Italy. Seeing you might have sent me back to Asia.” Instantly he regretted his flippancy. “Sorry, bad joke.”
Tony looked thoughtful. “I should have apologized to you properly for how I acted. Two years later you were home, back where you belonged, working at DeLuca’s. Not in the kitchen like I hoped, but I expected that would come. I thought that was enough. We have never needed a lot of words.”
“I would have liked to hear them all the same,” Tad said around the lump in his throat. “I didn’t drive the car or run that light but I’m the reason they were out that night. I know what I did was wrong but damn, I needed you to tell me that, even as f*cked up as I was, you still saw me as family. As a DeLuca.”
Tony’s eyes flashed. “That has never been in question. It was an accident. I was wrong to react the way I did and even more wrong not to put things straight between us.”
Tad fought to get a leash on his emotions. Thwack. He gave the vending machine a slap, drawing a curious look from some punk ass kid off in the corner.
“Taddeo, tell me you have not imagined you were not a part of this family…” He trailed off, focusing once more on that freakin’ Kit Kat bar. Seemed it was much easier for them both to look elsewhere.
“I don’t know. I hated myself, Tony, and maybe it was easier for me to think you were still bitter. Every time you looked at me, I saw Dad. I saw his disappointment, I saw his dreams for me go up in flames and the life he wouldn’t have. And every time I looked at you, I remembered that I was closer to you than my own father and that just made me feel a different level of guilt. In the kitchen, you and Vivi taught me everything, and when you barely spoke to me when I came home, it cracked me in half.”
Aw, crap, the old man looked like he was going to cry and if he lost it, Tad knew he might not be far behind. It had been a shitty week.
Tony drew a deep breath that seemed to stave off the threatened waterworks. “You had changed, Taddeo. You were so closed off and I thought you needed more time. When I asked you to cook with me, you refused. One year turned into two and…” He waved his hand to fill in the rest.
Something loosened in Tad’s chest, a rigidity turning wobbly and warm. Could he really have forgotten that Tony made overtures of peace all those years ago? Every time Tony had spoken to him, Tad had braced himself for a lecture, built a wall to shut it out before it found traction. He didn’t want to cook and whenever Tony mentioned it, Tad took it as a veiled criticism of Tad’s choices. Just another example of letting down Vivi.
Memory could be selectively cruel, especially when you’re so determined to play the martyr. Vivi had always told him he wanted too deeply, felt too acutely, loved too much. Of course he was going to give this martyr business 110 percent.
Your heart may break many times, Taddeo, but when you find the right one… it will be perfetto.
Tad had let his pain blind him to Tony’s peace offerings over the years. Neither of them were good with words.
“Tony, I’m sorry.”
His uncle looked horrified. “Taddeo, you have nothing to be—”
“Not about the accident. I can’t carry that weight anymore, but I am sorry about how it hardened me. About how I let it take over and used it to push people away. Especially you.”
Tony’s lips turned up in the barest smile. “We are always here for you, Taddeo. This family doesn’t always tell each other these things but there is no shortage of love.” He patted Tad’s arm awkwardly.
Tad’s throat was too thick with emotion to respond. A few moments passed. The Kit Kat still teetered on the edge.
“Now that we are on better terms,” Tony continued after a minute spent staring at the vending machine, “I feel I can ask you this.”
“Shoot,” Tad croaked.
“Do you have a dollar to spare? It seems I will have to pay again for this chocolate bar.”
Good one, Tony. Tad felt as though an elephant had taken a step off his chest and oxygen was now rushing to make his anemic blood strong. Filling in all those transparent gaps, making him solid again.
“There you are,” he heard Lili’s soft voice behind him.
“How is she?” Tony barked.
“She’s okay. It was Braxton Hicks contractions but they wanted to be sure, hence the delay. She’s already asking for her chocolate fountains binder. Shane’s trying to decide how much rope he’s going to need to keep her on bed rest.”
Tad sighed. The women in this family tended to have this effect, even the ones who were related by marriage.
“Grazie de Dio.” Tony grasped Tad’s arm in a friendly way, his relief palpable, then gave him the eyebrow. “Now you must take care of this business with Julietta.”
Merda, that didn’t take long.
Lili folded her arms and stared at him, using less of the DeLuca stink eye and more… Christ Almighty, was that compassion?
“You okay? You didn’t answer any of my calls or texts. Or the door.”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I just needed some time.”
“You know I love you, right?” She sniffed, as if that could somehow temper the sudden bout of schmaltz. “I don’t tell you but you’ve always been there for me. In high school when I had it rough, and then again with all that online stuff when I met Jack, you’ve always been like a brother. I don’t think you realize how much I care about you. How much we all do.”
“Where the hell is this coming from?” he snapped, instantly regretting it because he knew everyone was feeling raw.
She stroked his forearm, easing him out of his ill humor. “We need to tell each other these things more. Maybe Jack’s sensitivity is rubbing off me.”
He laughed nervously. Lili often joked that Jack, for all his stiff upper lip Britishness, was more Italian than the entire DeLuca clan put together. But that wasn’t strictly true. Vivi had been emotional, and Tad used to be like that as well. These days, he felt like a walking open wound and a certain green-eyed girl was the only one with the right-sized suture kit.
“I love you, too,” he said gruffly.
“Then you’re probably not going to like what I have to say next.” She peered up at him, her shining blue eyes determined. Nice turnaround, cuz. “You’re, in my husband’s vernacular, acting like a total arse. I know you love her.”
“Language, Liliana,” Tony warned.
“Sorry, Dad.”
“Did you guys have a freaking intervention without me?”
Her brow furrowed. “What?”
“Nothing.” Tad split his gaze between them and inhaled deeply. “I messed up with Jules. Things got hard and I messed up.”
Tony considered him. “No one said love was easy. When your aunt had cancer, it was a difficult time for this family, but loving her during that time was never hard. The hard part is the times she will not rest when I ask her to or she refuses to add the extra spoonful of Marsala to the zabaglione or acknowledge that I am right when it is clear as day.”
Lili laughed. “So she’s hard to love when she won’t cooperate with you.”
“No, I am the one who’s hard to love. The DeLuca men never know what is best for them but we must learn from our women.”
“Amen,” Lili said.
Tad thought back to Jules’s determined words as she told him she was the best thing to happen to him. Undoubtedly, she would move on and get over him but as every single one of his female relatives was fond of telling him, men were the weaker sex.
Tad didn’t have that kind of strength. He would never get over her.
He sure as hell didn’t want to and he sure as hell didn’t plan to. Jules was the kind of woman you worshipped on your knees, you walked over burning coals to get to, you went to hell and back for. He had been there and he didn’t like the décor. Clawing back his life needed a goal. Not the bar, not cooking, not even that jungle in his backyard.
Just Jules.
If he had her and Evan, then he just might make it.