It was hard to remember how much he wanted to sleep with Delaney when she woke him up
(“It’s so early I don’t know what time it is.”
“It’s four-forty-five A.M., ya big baby.”
“I’ve only been up this early when I haven’t gone to bed yet.”
“Shut up.”)
and shooed him from his uncomfortable sofa bed to work at San Basso, which once was a church but was deconsecrated and turned into, respectively, (a) a haunted house, (b) a post office, and now (c) a charity. Why Sofia and Delaney thought he would find this at all interesting at any time, never mind the wee hours, was a mystery.
And Lillith was a morning person. Ye gods.
“So, what?” he asked, yawning. He made noises of gratitude when Elena handed him a cup of coffee, Lillith a cup of hot chocolate (at least he hoped it was), then hiked up her navy blue skirt (the hem was a prudent two inches below her knee; Elena scolded and dressed like a fifties housewife) and climbed into the van’s driver’s seat. “Meals on Wheels? What? And the reason we couldn’t start at noon is…”
“Colomba di Pasqua,” Delaney replied, “and lots of it.”
“Dunno what that is.”
“And we do not start at noon because we are not lazy Americans,” came Teresa’s pert reply.
“Whoa! Too early for generalizing!”
Delaney ignored that, all of it, his yelp and Teresa’s cruelty. “While you’re doing that—”
“Doing what?”
“—Elena and I will work on inventory and then have a meeting with the chairman.” Sofia, he had been told on the drive over, had spent the night at Teresa’s shelter and was keeping an eye on the kids, as she often did. She was the youngest of Delaney’s little group, and Rake had assumed her days on the street weren’t as far behind her as the others’ were. Teresa’s third in command had also been plucked from the streets, and helped run the place. If he’d known baby-sitting might have let him sleep in, he would have—no. Not if it meant doing charity without Delaney. And Lillith assured him between slurps of cocoa that she’d help him do whatever it was. “Okay?”
“’Kay. Thanks for letting me finish charging my phone. When we get back tonight, I’ll try to reach out to Blake again.”
“Great!”
“That sounded suspiciously cheerful. So eager to get rid of me?” he teased. Please don’t say yes.
“No. I sort of can’t wait to see what Blake sends you next,” she admitted with a guilty smile.
“That makes one of us.” Rake drank more coffee and groaned. “He’d better be sane this time, that’s all I have to say about it. Um, Teresa, not to look a gift barista in the mouth, but why are there five tablespoons of sugar in my cappuccino?”
“Whoa,” from Lillith, who now had a tiny chocolate mustache, which was so friggin’ adorable, he wasn’t going to tell her.
“Aw, man.” Delaney shook her head.
Elena turned around to scold Teresa, finishing with “You will succumb to diabetes!” which, for some reason, Teresa found hilarious.
“Sono fiducioso di morte violenta sarà la mia fine. Diabete? Ha!”
Rake said nothing; he had noticed that Europeans tended to (rightly) assume most tourists weren’t fluent. Even though the other women knew he could speak Italian, they kept forgetting. And so he didn’t comment when Teresa explained that she knew she’d die a violent death, something sudden, violent, and unrelated to diabetes. Given how the others (except Delaney, who was bent over her laptop, and Lillith, who didn’t comment) agreed, he assumed they all shared the same outlook.
She drove the van right up to the former church, which, like every other building in Venice, looked like it had been built in the eleventh century, remodeled in the fifteenth, then benignly neglected ever since. It was near the St. Mark’s clock tower which, when it wasn’t so early, he appreciated as a beautiful sight. The area was mostly deserted, because Venetians were a clever and resourceful people who understood that 5:00 A.M. is still bedtime. And the tourists didn’t have a clue about anything, so they were still in bed, too. (Lucky bastards.)
He walked past three pillars to the entrance, Delaney and the others leading the way, and then they led him straight to the depths of hell: the kitchen of San Basso.
Colomba di Pasqua was a terrible fruitcakesque confection people were forced to eat at Easter. Not only that: It was tradition to give them at Easter. What kind of deep loathing does someone harbor to give a loved one a dense terrible cake studded with orange peel?
“It’s the garbage of the orange!” he cried, then had a coughing fit when he accidentally inhaled some flour. “It’s not a gift, it’s a prank! Something you do to someone you don’t like, every single year. It is not dessert!”
He was floured from eyebrows to knees, despite the apron Delaney had insisted on tying on him. Which was fine. He was a manly man and not threatened by any apron, however frilly, and better yet oh my God Delaney’d had her arms around him while she tied it in back! Their faces had been mere inches apart! And when her pretty wide mouth opened, he wondered, Oh God what is she going to saaaay?
“Try not to hurt yourself. There’s a lot of sharp things in here.”
“Right,” he replied, because honest to God, it was all he could think of. “Thanks for the tip. No picking up knives with my mouth.” This made Lillith laugh so hard, she almost fell off her stool.
“Just don’t be a dumbass,” she said, already on her way to the meeting. “You’ll be fine.”
“Hey! I don’t wake you up in the wee hours and give you impossible tasks and then demand you change your entire personality!” he shouted after her.
“Shut up, please,” she said in a tone he was starting to love. From Delaney, that was almost “Kiss me, you fool.”
Man, do I wish she’d kiss this fool.
Then she callously abandoned him—them—to their fate, and for the first time in his life, he regretted learning Italian. It meant he was reading the recipe right. He really did have to peel dozens of oranges. He really did have to scoop up cup after cup after cup of disgusting dried fruit. He really did need a buttload of almonds, the most disgusting of all nuts, and tube after tube of almond paste, the most disgusting of all pastes. He’d cracked so many eggs, his fingers were numb as well as stained orange. He was sticky and he stank and flour was fucking everywhere and he’d been at it for hours.
“It’s been forty-five minutes.” From Lillith, who looked adorable in her giant apron, and who was as flour-splashed and orange-stained as he was.
“Don’t you hate this? Why aren’t you sulking because you can’t stare at a screen? Any screen?”
“I like you” was the simple reply. “And if you’re my dad, we have to get to know each other.”
That gave him pause. “Right,” he replied carefully. “But if I’m not—”
“Then I’m no worse off than I was before.”
“If you don’t mind my asking—”
“Uh-oh.”
“—how did your mom die?”
“Hit-and-run. And nobody figured out who did it.”
“Oh.” But Donna had made arrangements of a sort—she must have; otherwise, Delaney wouldn’t have learned of her estranged friend’s death.
As if reading his mind, she added, “My friend Jim’s family took care of me until Delaney came. We used to play at each other’s houses all the time, before. His mom said we were practically siblings anyway.”
“Yeah?” He kneaded more disgusting dough, hoping that a lack of eye contact would keep her talking. “Did you mind? Being an only child?”
“… No.”
“Because I kind of envy you.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“So it was just you and your mom? The whole time?”
“Sure.”
“Did she ever talk about me?”
“Sure.”
“She did?” He stopped with the dough and looked up. “Really?”
“Mm-hmm.” Lillith was working on her own smaller pile of disgusting dough, but now she looked up and smiled. “She said meeting you changed everything.”
He hadn’t expected to feel pleased. “Really?”
“Sure! She said when she found out she was pregnant, she knew she couldn’t waste any more time scamming pretty boys, she had to grow up and be a responsible human being.”
“Oh.”
“You were responsible for her one-eighty. She always gave you credit for that.”
“Great.”
“Why haven’t you asked about the DNA test?”
“Uh.” Wasn’t expecting that from the kiddo. Delaney, yes. Not Lillith. “I’m not sure that’s something we should—”
“We’re friends, remember?”
He nodded. “Yes, that’s right. And friends don’t lie, so I’ll tell you the truth—I haven’t asked because I’m not sure what’s going on. And I’m curious. Because I thought all I wanted was my money and my life back, but … I just don’t want to walk out of the theater until I know how the movie ends. And…”
“And you’re wondering why Delaney hasn’t brought it up, either.”
“Yeah.” He surrendered, reminding himself he was in the presence of a mind quicker and less cluttered than his.
“It’s limbo, kind of. The in-between. No one’s in a rush to get to the next stage of—of whatever this is.”
He nodded.
“Which is curious.” She was fixing him with that dark gaze again. “Don’t you think? I mean, I know why I’m in no rush. And you know why you are. But what’s motivating Delaney?”
“You’re…” He tried to think of the word. Settled for a poor substitute. “Extraordinary.”
“No. Just smart.” But she smiled down at her dough, and edged a bit closer to him.
“Break time!”
“Thank God,” he groaned as Delaney and Elena came back to the kitchen.
“For the child, idiota.”
“Oh, please, not another one of those ‘Working children fourteen hours a day is cruel’ softies.” But he was already helping Lillith clean up, handing her a damp kitchen cloth to destickify her hands. When he moved to brush the flour off her shirt she jerked back so quickly, she nearly fell. “Whoa! Careful, hon.”
“Sorry. Ticklish.”
“Come along, my sticky tickly sweetheart.”
“Please don’t talk to me like I’m three.”
“You would prefer if I talked to you like you’re forty?” Elena asked.
As he and Delaney watched them leave, he grinned to hear Lillith’s “Come to think of it, yes.”
“How’s it going?” Delaney asked in the tone of someone who didn’t actually care how it was going.
“Well, I’ll tell you.” He shook his head so hard, flour flew and, fuck, it was in his hair now? How was that possible? What was the apron even doing? Because it wasn’t keeping flour out of his hair, that was for sure. “I’d pay someone a thousand bucks to get out of this.”
“Be glad I let you skip the hairnet.”
“Oh my God,” he replied, appalled. “I’m not vain, but that would be a crime against nature.” He clawed his fingers through his hair, then realized how the flour had gotten there. “When it’s clean, I’ve got great hair, and a hairnet—it’d be like drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa.”
“But you’re not vain,” she teased.
“Not even a little.”
“See? Count your blessings. However terrible things are, they can always get worse.”
“Thanks for the pep talk.” He took a break from kneading awful dough to glare at her. “I love it when you drop by.”
“We’re almost done here. But seriously. Rake. Things can get worse.” She sounded serious, like she was actively warning him, as opposed to rattling off a cliché.
“This isn’t really a church anymore, right?”
“Right.”
“Good. Because this fucking sucks. And I’m gonna blaspheme the shit out of the place, because making awful bread takes forever.”
“Again: forty-five minutes.”
“Fucking sucks.”
Delaney was, as usual, unmoved by his pain. Heartless, gorgeous wench! “If you worked while you bitched, you’d be half done already.”
“Why are you talking like that’s some kind of incentive? D’you even know what Easter is about?”
“Nope.” She leaned against the opposite counter, crossed her ankles, crossed her arms, and watched him. “CPS has a hard enough time taking care of kids’ physical well-being, never mind the spiritual.”
He admired the way she said it: like one of her flat facts (“Cantaloupe gelato is the best gelato, no others are worth discussing”), not something to elicit sympathy, or attention. He had the feeling that anyone who pulled the “There, there, poor darling, I’ll take care of you” crap with Delaney went home with a black eye.
“Okay, so, not much church. Got it.” He held his hands up, placating, and coughed when he stirred up more flour dust. “I’ll lay it out for you.”
“Goody.”
“Easter’s about shiny fake grass and crappy-ass chocolate and scary-ass Peeps and coloring eggs that no one eats and getting a bellyache from eating too much crappy-ass chocolate. That’s what it’s about. Not”—he gestured to the messy kitchen, his floured body, the piles of orange peel, the tubes of almond paste, the utter nightmare surrounding him—“this!”
“That was beautiful.” She smirked. “You should write greeting card verses in your spare time.”
“I know you’re being sarcastic, but thank you.”
“Y’know…” She gestured at the piles of garbage destined to go into the next batch of dough. “It’s pretty good.”
He could feel his temper unraveling. “It’s not! Not even a little.”
“You’ve been to Italy before, have you even tried a piece?”
“Yes! Once, when I was trying to bang a baker. She made it for me and I had to eat the whole thing and it sucked!”
“You know you’re screaming, right?”
“I’m aware!” Worse yet: screaming his sexual résumé. The baker had been way too fixated on using food during sex. Chocolate he didn’t mind. Dough, though?
That grin again. Any other woman would be pissed, or backing off, or yelling back. Claire Delaney just looked like a stranded millionaire shouting at her in a deconsecrated church kitchen was a present she got to open early.
“Look on the bright side,” she suggested, “now I know what to get you for your birthday. And thanks to Blake, I know exactly when it is.”
“I! Hate! Everything!” Each word was punctuated by his fist slamming on the countertop, raising a cloud of flour. Then he ruined his rage roars by sneezing.
“You seem tense. Maybe you should suck on a tube of almond paste until you calm down.”
“Oh my God, you are a horrible bitch,” he groaned.
“Yes.” The smirk was gone to wherever her smirks went when she wasn’t smirking. Hmm. Might not have gotten enough sleep last night. “It’s good you know that, Rake. It’s a good thing to always keep in mind.”
He shook his head and stepped away from the counter, which had the doubly pleasing effect of distancing him from piles of orange peel and getting him closer to Delaney.
She had her dark waves pulled back into a ponytail, which rippled whenever she turned her head, and ignoring the urge to touch it and press it to his lips was taking not a little self-control. She was wearing faded jeans and a black BOSTON EST. 1680 sweatshirt
(Somewhere else she lived? Or just passing through? Does she belong anywhere? Did she ever?)
and on anyone else it would look like she was getting ready to paint, or move
(odd clothes for a meeting at church)
but on her it was exactly right, perfect for supervising an entitled millionaire when not scooping pickpocketing children off the streets and keeping half an eye on a brilliant child who might be his.
“I can’t touch you,” he said, and why was he hoarse? The hour? The screaming? “I’ll get flour on you.”
“It’s a risk I’m willing to assume for the greater good” was the solemn response, which made no sense and was ruined by a giggle.
He touched her anyway; he couldn’t help it. He cupped the nape of her neck in his hand and tasted her mouth, her ripe, sweet mouth. She tasted like hot chocolate (Delaney was not a fan of coffee) and smelled like clean cotton, and her hands came up to press against his chest. He started to pull back, thinking she wanted him off of her, but she tightened her grip and he couldn’t move, and never was being held in place so glorious. He traced the seam of her lips with his tongue and she opened for him; her tongue touched his and she nipped at his lip.
He pulled back and groaned, then ran a thumb over her full lower lip. “That’s so good, Delaney, my God, your mouth.” And then he had to have it again, had to taste it, taste her, and it took several seconds to find the discipline to stop.
He sucked in a deep breath and shut his eyes, his lips still on hers, but now barely touching. “If you’re going to retaliate, could you just knee me in the ’nads or something?”
“Not the face,” she said into his mouth. “Got it.” And then kissed him back.