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With a day free of appointments, Emma decided to straighten up the gowns in their stockroom, putting them back in order by color, style, and in some cases, designers for those brides who were dead set on having a gown by a “big name.”
She had just finished moving all the gowns by one of the designers into their own area along a far wall when a pale peach dress in the adjacent row caught her eye. She recalled ordering the sample on a whim since the color limited not only the season when it might be worn, but who might wear it. Dragging the gown off the rack, she removed the protective cover and walked with the dress to the full-length mirror at the far end of the stockroom. She held the gown against her body and pictured herself wearing it. Did a fanciful little swing of the skirts that sent them swaying back and forth.
The pale peach was perfect with her fair skin and strawberry blonde hair. It also deepened the color of her eyes, making them look as rich as a precious gem. The style was simple, but elegant with a strapless sweetheart neckline and a bodice that nipped in at the waist before flaring in waves of silk with an overlay of delicate tulle. A thick belt with intricate beadwork smoothed the transition from bodice to skirt.
So beautiful, she thought with a sigh and didn’t realize she’d said the words out loud until a very male voice repeated the sentiment.
“Very beautiful,” Carlo said as he walked into the room, his gaze loving and intense.
She whipped the gown behind her to hide it from his gaze. If she should ever be a bride in that gown, she didn’t want bad luck. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
He held out a picnic basket. “I wanted to surprise you.”
“Well you did,” she said more curtly than she intended. “I’m sorry. You just caught me by surprise.” And in a moment that might reveal way too much that she wasn’t ready to admit to yet.
“Is it a bad time? I could go,” he said and gestured to the door with his head.
Wanting to make up for her earlier abruptness, she stepped close to him, rose on tiptoes and kissed him. “I’m happy to see you,” she said as she moved away, the gown still hidden behind her back.
“Wait for me in the showroom while I put this away and we can have lunch in my office. I don’t have any appointments this afternoon.”
Carlo nodded and sauntered out, leaving Emma to take one last glimpse at the dress before she hung it with the other gowns in vaguely similar hues, but even tucked in amongst them, it stood out beautifully. She hurried out to the showroom where Carlo stood patiently in the hall, the picnic basket tucked under one muscled arm.
She slipped her hand into his free one and playfully tugged it. “This was so nice of you. I needed a break from the stockroom.”
He bent, kissed her temple, and said, “And I needed to see you.”
“We were at the wedding on Saturday and went out last night,” she reminded, discreetly skipping over the Sunday morning after the wedding. But she was secretly pleased by his words.
“And that’s way not enough time together,” he said.
Warmth flooded her, but the fear that seemed to always be with her rose up as well. “You’re going to get bored of me,” she said, turned and walked toward her office. Just like her father had grown tired of them, she thought.
As they entered her office and she closed the door, he trapped her against the wall, cradled her cheek and said, “Never. I will never get bored of you.” And to prove it, he dipped his head down to take her lips in a searing kiss that soon had her holding on to him as her head whirled from its potency.
As he broke the kiss, he met her gaze, his dark and intense. “I know you think there’s something inside you here that’s broken,” he said and tenderly tapped a spot over her heart. “That makes you feel as if you’re not good enough for anyone, but that’s not true. It’s just not true,” he repeated for emphasis.
A hint of pain, his not hers, colored his words. “Why does it sound like you’re not talking just about me?” she said, slipped past him, and to the chairs in front of her desk.
Carlo followed and placed the picnic basket on her desktop. He urged her to sit and took hold of her hands. “Since our dating is all about learning about each other, I guess it’s about time I told you a little more about me. I was engaged once before. Her name was Alexandra, but we called her Sasha.”
“We?” she questioned with an arch of her brow.
“All of the family. She was one of the girls in the neighborhood and everyone always thought we’d end up together. We did, only Sasha had her own ideas about what our life should be like.”
“I guess you had different plans?” Emma asked, but couldn’t sit still to listen to his story. Nervous energy pumped through her at the thought there had been someone else. Someone with whom he’d been involved seriously enough to ask her to marry him. She rose and busied herself by opening the picnic basket and removing the contents as Carlo continued his story.
“I told you before that Ricardo and Javier are my half-brothers. Their mother’s family were the owners of the bakery and my avô –” He paused at her questioning look. “My grandfather, actually my half-brothers’ grandfather. Avô never let the three of us forget that or that my mamãe wasn’t the right woman for his son-in-law. He was the exact opposite of my mamãe’s father who loved us to death.”
Emma set the bottle of lemonade from the basket onto her desk and leaned against the edge, bracing her hands on it to keep from reaching for him. “Is that why you started your own business?”
He nodded and his broad shoulders rose up and down in a nonchalant manner. “It was one of the reasons. Sasha thought I should join my half-brothers at the bakery and she never let up about it. I worked two jobs to help me raise the money to buy my first food truck and get it going, but that wasn’t good enough. Nothing I did was good enough because I could never be one of the owners of the bakery. That family was like Portuguese royalty on our stretch of Ferry Street. The epitome of the American Dream.”
She remembered him telling her that his family’s business was virtually an institution in the Ironbound and more than once she’d seen it picked as one of the top bakeries in New Jersey. Making the decision to leave that legacy . . .
She sat in the chair opposite him and this time she reached for his hands and held them, reassuring him with her touch and her words. “It takes a brave man to walk away from an easy life. You’ve built a wonderful business for yourself and your younger brothers. You should be so proud. I’m so proud.”
A half smile quirked up one side of his lips and awakened that tempting dimple. “It means a lot to me that you think that. Sasha didn’t hang around long once I stuck to my guns. As far as she was concerned, I wasn’t good enough. Her rejection stuck with me for a while, but in the end, I realized it was her loss that she couldn’t see the kind of person I really am.”
Just like you shouldn’t believe all the crap your father dumped on you, the little voice in her head chimed in.
If his passion had broken open a crack in the wall she’d built around herself, his honesty snapped the chains she hadn’t even known were around her heart. Even though she was still wounded by that imprisonment, suddenly things didn’t seem so impossible.
She leaned forward and whispered against his lips, “Sasha is an idiot.”
It was impossible to miss the smile on his lips for a second before he kissed her. It was a kiss filled with comfort and promise, absent the passion of their earlier kisses. But it helped salve the wounds they had both suffered in their earlier lives, beginning the path to true healing.
As they drifted apart, they were both still smiling. At the noisy growl of her stomach, Carlo said, “I guess you’re hungry.”
“I am. Let’s eat,” she said.
***
CARLO LAY IN BED, HIS body sore in spots from his exertions of the day before. Despite supposedly having a week off, he’d been too restless to do nothing after his lunch with Emma.
Considering the emotional way lunch had started off for both of them, it had ended nicely thanks to the marvelous food Jesse had selected and packed for him. Both Emma and he finished with full bellies, laughter, and the promise to see each other again mid-week for dinner.
He’d returned to the warehouse and helped Paolo and some of his crew in organizing and inventorying the assorted items they used for their events and for preparing their food. That meant lots of lifting and carrying, but by the end of the day, they’d finished with the plates and glassware. A good thing since in the rush of all the events of the last month or so they were down a number of items due to breakage or loss. The kitchen utensils and pots were in pretty good shape, but a few new baking trays would be a big help since they’d been doing more and more wedding cakes lately also. By the end of the shift, he’d had a list of items to buy and would visit the restaurant supply place later to pick them up.
Even with his assorted aches, he got up and did his regular routine. Light workout and television news shows. Jog. Long hot shower that helped loosen the kinks and relieved some of the pain. In no time he was dressed and rushing out the door to get to the supply house, a large rambling one story building filled floor to ceiling with all kinds of restaurant items.
With no real schedule, he ambled up and down the aisles, picking out a tool or pan here or there that they might need. Then he headed to the china section where he loaded up on the replacement pieces before moving to the glassware section for the remainder of the items on his list. When he arrived at the register, he realized the cashier was a friend who had used to work at a restaurant in the next town over.
“Hey, Carlo. It’s good to see you,” the young man said and welcomed him with a bro hug and hand clasp.
“Good to see you too, Shaun. What are you doing here? Making some extra bank?” he said and piled his merchandise on the counter for Shaun to ring up.
Shaun grimaced and picked up the first item to ring up. “Making all my bank, dude. Jersey Jose closed. They couldn’t cut it anymore.”
Carlo had eaten a few times at the restaurant that had offered a mix of Coastal Cuisine and Tex-Mex. The food and service hadn’t been bad, but then again, it hadn’t been fabulous and there was a lot of competition in the area from similar eateries and real Mexican restaurants. “Sorry to hear that. If you ever want work during your off hours, we sometimes need experienced wait staff for an event.”
“Thanks, dude. Hey, did you hear that the old Sea Kiss Convention Center is for sale? They finally got the insurance money after Sandy and started repairs but couldn’t finish and decided to sell it off. You always wanted to have a place where you could do your own thing.”
Carlo was surprised Shaun remembered. Emma and he had talked about it a number of times, but with as busy as they had both been, they hadn’t really given it much serious thought in ages. Not to mention that since he wanted to have a different relationship with Emma, he hesitated to raise the idea of a partnership again, fearing it would give Emma too easy an excuse to push him away if she was getting cold feet.
“I hadn’t heard. Thanks for the news,” he said and intended to check it out with the local real estate agent. The place was probably well out of his price range, but it never hurt to ask. After all, if he didn’t ask the answer would always be “No.”
Just like with Emma, the little voice in his head reminded.
He finished checking out and loaded up the Thunder SUV, appreciating the roominess of the rear storage area. Jonathan had seemed to think of everything, but the real test now was going to be how the car performed with the added weight of everything he’d just bought. He pulled out onto the street and hit the accelerator. The car took off without any hesitation or strain. It was enough to convince him that maybe electric cars weren’t just for people who didn’t really have to work.
Barely minutes later he was pulling into the loading dock at his warehouse. Paolo and Tomás were standing by the one bay, looking over some papers. Dozens of boxes sat behind them on the dock waiting to be unpacked thanks to a recent delivery. He got out and walked up to them.
“Everything okay?” he asked, wondering if there was an issue with the delivery.
“Fine. Just checking to make sure we got everything. Last thing we want is to find out next week that we’re missing something important,” Tomás said.
Carlo nodded and tossed the key fob to Paolo. “Stuff is in the back of the Thunder.”
“Where are you going?” Paolo groused as he walked away.
“I’ve got a call to make,” he said, thinking of the convention center and what he could do with a place like that. Besides lose his shirt. And possibly Emma if he rushed her into it.
He entered the office and closed the door, not sure that he was ready to share the news with his brothers or anyone else just yet. At his desk he shifted to his computer and pulled up the name of the realtor who he had first spoken to about a location for his business. Mary Sanders. She had helped him find and get a deal on their current warehouse. She was also the realtor who had assisted Jonathan in finding the location for his new research and development center.
Leaning back in his chair, he dialed Mary and she answered by the second ring. “Carlo! So nice to hear from you. How are things going?”
“Things are good, Mary. Thanks for asking,” he answered, but hesitated, wondering if he was crazy for even making the call.
“What can I help you with today?” Mary asked in her usual all business tone.
He took a breath and pushed ahead. “Rumor has it that the convention center is for sale,” he said, trying to keep his voice neutral although the call alone was enough to tell the shrewd real estate agent that he had an interest in the place.
“Rumor is right for a change, but I have to tell you that the price is on the high side if you ask me. The place isn’t finished inside and there’s a lot of work left to be done. It seems that they blew through their Sandy insurance money and then some. But it’s a prime location and with Jonathan Pierce hopefully bringing new blood into the area, it’s bound to see a lot of traffic. In fact, I’d be surprised if Jonathan doesn’t jump on this for his company to use as a meeting center.”
Carlo wouldn’t be surprised either. The location was great. Right at the westernmost edge of town but facing the inlet and the river. From the upper story there was a picturesque view of all the waterside Victorian buildings in Sea Kiss as well as the ocean and the neighboring towns to the south. From what he remembered, there were two nice-sized ballrooms with river views and then a few smaller ballrooms which faced the town and another section of river. He’d worked in the kitchens one summer and they had been immense with lots of stockrooms and walk-in refrigerators. He wouldn’t doubt that he could probably put everything in his warehouse into the areas and still have room left over.
“How much are they asking?” he said while tallying in his own mind what he had in his operating and savings accounts and what monies he might be able to put together from other sources like his retirement fund and the sale of the warehouse building.
“Four million. Like I said, on the high side considering the shape it’s in.”
A huge number. One that might be out of my reach, he thought. “How much do you think I could get for the warehouse?”
There was a long pause before Mary said, “Based on recent sales, I’m going to say a million and a half at least. If we could get the town to rezone it for multi-purpose including residential, at least two million if not more.”
With the money he had in the various bank accounts, that still left him short well over a million dollars. Before he could say anything else, Mary jumped back in. “You know your house is on land that could easily fetch a million. Maybe more.”
“That’s not something I want to consider right now,” he said, not yet ready to trade his dream home for the business of his dreams. His dreams and Emma’s. When they had been talking about an event planning business together, they had tossed around the idea of buying a building where they could host the events in order to increase their profits.
“Just saying,” Mary said in a sing song. She had been jonesing for the property his home sat on for years, but his answer had always been the same: No.
He shifted forward in his seat and drummed the fingers of one hand on the surface of his desk, considering whether to even look at the place. But he knew that if he didn’t, he would never forgive himself. “I’ve got a light week. When do you think we could go see the property?”
“I’ll make some calls and let you know.”
