“Robin is like one of my own,” he said without preamble.
Tony took a sip of coffee and leaned back against the table. “Glad she has you,” he said.
“I’m not going to take a liking to some rich playboy playing games with her.”
Tony set his cup on the table behind him and straightened. He reached out and slapped Hank’s arm in a masculine sign of agreement. “Neither would I, brother,” he said. He looked at his watch. “I have a dinner engagement. Have a good evening.”
CHAPTER 8
OBIN smiled and headed to the table.
“Hiya.”
“Hiya yourself, Casey.”
“Alright, then.”
After getting a cup of coffee, and with a near groan, she leaned back in the chair and propped her feet in the one across from her. “How’s the world treating you?”
“Well, now, here and there, mostly.” He lifted a finger to a sous chef and leaned under the heating lamps so that she could hear him over the din of the busy kitchen. “You’ll be wanting some of my pie to go with that coffee.”
“I would, yes.” She stifled a yawn as she brought the steaming cup of coffee to her lips.
A uniformed sous chef handed him a platter, which he slid under the lights and nodded at a waitress. She set the hollowed out bread round filled with steaming chili in front of Robin before returning to wait for her order. “You’ll eat that first.”
She shook her head. “Really, Casey, I’m not hungry.”
“You’s looking a bit piqued lately, Robin. You eat that before you get any of my pie.” Turning, he put his hands on his skinny hips and barked a few orders to the dinner prep crew.
Feeling a bit like a scolded child, Robin picked up the spoon and took a bite. The spices teased her tongue with just the right amount of heat. Not even thinking about it, she took another bite and another. “Piqued?” she asked with a smile after she had consumed half of the bowl. She broke off a piece of the bread and slowly chewed.
“Ayah. You don’t take care of yourself, girlie. Too busy looking after others.” He shifted a perfectly fried onion that sat on top of a juicy ribeye and held the plate at arms length, checking the appearance. Only when it visually pleased him did he slide it to the lingering waiter.
“I take care of myself just fine. I’m just tired. I had to work a breakfast shift this morning on top of the lunch.” And now she faced a full Saturday evening and night. She looked down, surprised that she had emptied the bowl. With a contented sigh, she finished her cup of coffee and grinned at Casey as he personally set a slice of pecan pie in front of her.
“You’s shouldn’t be working two jobs. That girl Maxi is working now, and Sarah’s mighty capable of it.”
The sweet crunch of the meaty nuts satisfied her tongue too much to form speech right away. Instead, she closed her eyes and enjoyed the flavors. Only after she had swallowed did she open her eyes again, and found a newly refilled cup of coffee in front of her and Casey sitting across from her. “You only sound like Hank when he’s not around, Casey. Will I look forward to nightly lectures when he’s gone full time?”
He threw his head back and cackled while he slapped his knee. He laughed for about fifteen seconds, then he stopped, shook his head, and abruptly stood and bustled back over to his command perch. “Just take care of yerself, missy. I kinda like having you around.”
She pushed away the half eaten pie and stood to get ready for work. “Two more years. Then I can slow down.” She considered the date and performed a quick mental calculation. “No wait, not even. This semester’s half over by now.”
Noise from the bar section of the restaurant invaded the room as the connecting door swung open. Robin ignored it, supposing one of the other bartenders was getting supplies before the dinner rush began, until Casey spoke. “You’ll be wanting something to eat this early, Mr. V?”
She turned her head and prepared herself for the skip of her heart that suddenly started occurring whenever Tony walked into a room. “No thanks, Casey I’ll just grab a coffee.”
He strode across the room with a liquid grace a man shouldn’t have, squeezing her shoulder as he walked by. With a sigh, she sat back down as he fixed himself a cup of coffee and lowered himself into the chair across from her.
Robin didn’t think she’d ever get used to looking at him. She thought after seeing him every single day for a week that she might possibly become immune to his looks, but his handsome face made her heart skip a beat every time. Because of her nonstop work schedule, they could not enjoy an actual evening out. Instead, he showed up in the parking lot of Benedict’s every afternoon at three. He had something new and fun to do every day. Movies, picnics on the floor of a limo, rowing, video arcades.
He had never approached her at the restaurant during working hours before. He’d made plans for that afternoon, but Robin had begged off, exhausted from the double shift she’d worked at Benedicts. She wondered if cancelling their date is what prompted this impromptu meeting.
“Tell me something,” he said, reaching under the table and pulling her feet into his lap. Before she could protest, he had slipped off her shoes and his fingers and thumbs were suddenly doing the most delicious things to her arches.
“Hmmm?” Unable to stop herself, she melted into the chair and leaned her head back, closing her eyes.
“I’ve been paying attention to that little tip jar you have on the bar, not to mention the credit card tips and the cash the customers hand you personally.”
She opened an eye and looked at him from under her lashes. “So?”
“So, between Benedict’s and here, six days a week for both of them, you make a tidy sum.”
Robin could barely concentrate on his words. His hands felt so powerful and so tender all at once. She didn’t have the energy to do anything more than enjoy the foot rub. Last night she’d gotten exactly four point two hours of sleep. As she sat there, she had a minimum of eight hours in front of her. “What about it?”
“Are you on drugs?”
She opened one eye. “Don’t irritate me when you’re doing that with your hands.” His fingers inched up her calves now, kneading and soothing. Robin had no idea how much her calf muscles ached until he rubbed the ache right out of them.
“I was just wondering why someone who makes what you make in tips in a single day, combined with what Maxine would have started making at the barest minimum, why you would live in the apartment you live in, and drive around in that hunk of junk you drive that isn’t going to start one night out here at one o’clock in the morning.” His voice became steely, but his hands stayed soothing, gentle with just the right amount of pressure.
She spoke without thinking about it. “Tuition.”
For the first time since he started talking, his hands paused. “What tuition?”
She opened her eyes, slowly sat up and drew her feet from his lap. “Sarah’s.” Under the table, her feet sought out her shoes and wiggled back into them.
He stared at her. “The numbers don’t add up, Robin. Maxine easily makes – ”
“Stay out of it, Tony. It’s truly none of your business.”
His eyes flashed while his jaw tightened. “I’m making it my business.”
She stood and pulled her peppermints out of her pocket. “Not until I do.” He opened his mouth to speak, but she held a hand up to halt him. “No. Not everyone can wake up with the luxury of knowing they have enough money in the bank to never go hungry, to never be cold, to never have to worry about transportation for the rest of their lives.” She stood and downed the remaining coffee in one swallow and popped a mint into her mouth.
“You think I don’t know that?” He sat back a bit and crossed his arms across his thick chest.
“I think you have it so good that it’s easy to wake up in your penthouse apartment and forget that there are mortals down below you who have to struggle while you send your blessings up to a god who lets children starve.” She slapped both
palms on the table and leaned forward. “I vowed that I would get my sisters through school. Me. Not with anyone’s help, not even from them. They would have the chance at a life that our mother wasn’t going to allow. I put Maxi through, and I’m putting Sarah through, and forget anyone who says I shouldn’t or I can’t or I look piqued when I do.”
He stood as well and leaned forward until they stood nearly nose-to-nose. “Don’t try to place me in a category, Robin. I won’t fit.”
She snorted and straightened. “Careful, Antonio Viscolli. You’ll choke on your silver spoon.”
For a split second, the heat in his eyes made her feel a little bit frightened, then he muttered something in Italian under his breath and came over the table to her side and grabbed her arm. “Come with me.”
She struggled to free herself, but it was no use. “What are you doing?” she sputtered, clawing at his hand. “Let me go!”
“I’d rather not make a scene,” he explained through gritted teeth while he eyed the suddenly still kitchen. He slammed open the back door and pulled her outside. A waiter crouched against a crate, book in one hand and cup of coffee in the other. His expression remained pleasant when he looked up at them. “Take over the bar for this shift, will you, Rob?”
The man stood up straight. “Sure. Sure, Mr. V.”
Robin sputtered. “No way. Get your hands off me.” Tony’s stride never broke and he continued to haul her across the parking lot. “I’m not going anywhere with you. Do you hear me?” Nothing. “I’ll scream for help.”
He stopped so suddenly that she ran into his back. He turned her until she faced him, and he gripped both of her arms. “Do it.”
She heard the very real threat in his voice. Not wanting to risk it, she clamped her lips together and stiffly shook her head. “Good. Now, get in the car.”
Keeping a grip on one of her arms, he opened the door and waited. “No.”
His voice was dangerously quiet. “Do you want to test whether or not I can bodily put you in there?”
She tried to stare him down, but eventually lost the battle, and with half a growl, she threw herself into the seat. Seconds later, Tony sat beside her, starting the powerful engine of the little sports car, and tearing out of the parking lot.
“Where are we going?”
“I have something to show you.”
“I hope you realize that you just hauled your best bartender out of your bar on the busiest night of the week.” She crossed her arms over her chest and glared out the window.
“Hank’s isn’t going to collapse because Robin Bartlett isn’t manning the bar for one Saturday night. As a matter of fact, it would still be there without a bar.” He took a corner fast enough to make her shoulder lean on the door.
“I’m losing tips.”
“I’ll give you a raise.”
“I don’t want a raise.”
“But you deserve a raise. You’re my best bartender.”
In a rage now, she slapped the dashboard. “You can’t just drag someone around like that and force them to do your bidding. I don’t care who you are or how much money you … ”
“Robin,” he said very quietly, but with enough ice to halt her screaming sentence, “I’m warning you, now, to just clam it.”
She decided to save it until they got to wherever he was taking them. The longer she remained quiet, the more calmly he drove. In the late afternoon light, Robin recognized landmarks and realized they had traveled into a pretty rough section of town. She remembered, all too vividly, living as a child and a young teenager in many of the apartment buildings they passed. Deep into one of the worst neighborhoods she knew of, he casually pulled into the parking lot of a large church. Robin knew the church. It took up two full blocks with all of its buildings and schools. For her, as a little girl, she had always used it as a major landmark.
“Why are we here?” she asked, trying not to let her apprehension creep into her voice.
For several moments, Tony didn’t speak. Finally, he said, “I apologize, sincerely, for losing my temper.” He turned off the car and got out, moving slower than usual as he came around to her side to open her door. As soon as she was out of the car, he took her hand in his. “My feelings for you tend to override a lot of things. Please accept my apology.”
His feelings for her? Reeling over the last several minutes, Robin could do nothing but nod and stammer, “Okay.”
His smile did not quite reach his eyes. “Let’s walk.”
Robin looked all around her. “Uh, Tony, this isn’t really the best neighborhood -”
Tony clinched his jaw. “Robin, mi amante, not everything in life is a debate. Could you, just once today, stop arguing with me? If it wouldn’t be too much trouble?”
Robin closed her mouth. Whatever retort she had prepared vanished in a heartbeat. She sensed that he intended to share something important with her. She suddenly wanted to know what that important thing might be.
He led them away from the church. “Let me tell you a story.”
“Really, that isn’t – ”
“Once upon a time, there was a young sixteen year old girl who fell in love with a fisherman in Florence, Italy. He was much older than her, and well below her station, but she didn’t care. Thumbing her nose at her parents, she married him, anyway. They told her to never come back and disowned her.” Tony steered her around the legs of a snoring man who sat against a building, empty bottle gripped in his dirty hands, and continued his story.
“Well, for about a year, life was bliss. Until the day a storm hit right off the coast and took the fisherman with it. She was young, devastated, alone, and pregnant. Not to mention poor. She tried to go to her parents for help, but they were true to their word and wouldn’t even open the door to her. Now, her husband didn’t have any family in Italy, but he spoke often of his Aunt Rosa in America. See, that was his dream. To eventually raise enough money to take his family away from the poverty that had trapped him in Italy and bring them to America.”
Robin scooted closer to Tony as they passed a hooker with mean eyes. He squeezed her hand and kept talking. “So, she wrote Rosa, sold everything she could to raise enough money to get here, and came on her way. She had expected the grand American life, and was crushed when she learned that Rosa was actually even more poor than she was, and lived in an apartment that didn’t even have a working heater half the time. She was miserable, very pregnant, and sleeping on a sofa in a cold two-room apartment. And Rosa was old. She was actually her husband’s great aunt.
“Neither women spoke English, and she had a hard time finding a job. Now, in this neighborhood, there were several things a woman could do to earn money, few of which are legal, and she went that route, falling victim to a few vices along the way. Her son stayed with Rosa while she went about her life, popping in and out every so often. Then she’d leave and do whatever it was that she did to support her heroin addiction.”
Robin knew, without a doubt, that the little boy in the story was Antonio Viscolli. Shamed at the way she’d spoken to him, at what she said, she suddenly didn’t want to hear the rest of the story. “Tony … ”
The look in his eyes and his single raised finger stilled her. “Wait. I’m almost to the punch line. Anyway, Rosa died when the boy was ten. He was in school, but only in the second grade, because he was having to learn English as he went. His mother showed up to claim the apartment, and having a young son did nothing to hamper her lifestyle. Life was hell for him, but he managed to make it on his own. Of course, rent had to be paid and food had to be bought, so, following the path of his mother, he hit the streets. He wasn’t very big and could get in and out of an apartment quickly. He made some pretty good contacts, and could fence a television for a good price. He even hit the business section a few times, got caught by the police twice picking pockets, and was pretty much headed toward becoming a hoodlum.”
She couldn’t imagine Tony doing any of that. Looking at him, dressed to the nines in his
suit, his shirt perfectly starched and gleaming white, his tie straight, the diamond on his pinkie catching the glow of the afternoon sun – he looked every single bit of the rich business man. No way could she picture him worming his way out of a window carrying a pilfered radio.
They stopped now, next to a dilapidated old building with boarded up windows. Tony turned to face her. The smooth cultured look vanished in a breath. His eyes had hardened. His mouth pulled into a thin line. Even his voice had changed. It sounded harsher, carried an accent that was a mix of Italian, South Boston, and insolence. “He found his mother dead when he was seventeen. She’d overdosed on her favorite drug. The needle was still sticking out of her arm.” He stepped away from her and looked over her shoulder down the street. “The landlord had already taped the eviction notice on the door, so without a backward look, he left.
“He was just out of juvie, so none of his so-called friends trusted him. Too many came out narks at first, so he had no place to stay.” He came toward her again and put an arm over her shoulder, turning her so that she was facing the building. He pointed toward the doorway. “That was a good place to sleep. It has a deep recess and a stoop. It blocked the wind, which was good, because January is bitter cold.”
Robin’s stomach muscles shivered, as if she personally felt that cold. Her voice quivered and her throat ached with unshed tears. “That’s enough.”
“No. It isn’t.” He turned her until they were looking down the street. “There’s an Italian restaurant down that way. They make good calzones. The wife used to make all the pasta by hand. And the guy, he’d throw enough food away at night so that anyone hungry enough, right after he went inside, could hit the Dumpster and fight off the cats and rats and get himself something to eat.”
“Stop!” She put a hand over her mouth and stared at him.
“I laid there in that doorway one night. It couldn’t have been more than twenty degrees. I was cold, starving, exhausted, and I swore that I would die before I suffered through one more night. I swore that would be the very last night. And, miracle of miracles, it was.” He turned them back the way they came and they headed back toward the tall steeples of the church. “The next night, I went into the church. I decided I’d case the place, see what I could get for what I could get. There was some service going on in there. I walked in right at the end of the singing and right before the preaching.