I dried off and got dressed. After giving up on trying to make my hair behave, I went to find Angelo.
I paused in the doorway to the kitchen. He was bent over, sliding a pan into the oven, gorgeous ass on display. I could look at him like that all day, but what struck me the most was the very domestic scene and how strange it all was. I doubted he was making anything elaborate, but he was cooking for me in the small kitchen that looked like it hadn’t changed since the sixties. He was shirtless, all his tattoos bared for my perusal, but he still seemed so much softer than the man who’d forced his way into the bakery a week ago.
“You found something for us?” I asked when he closed the oven door.
He turned and smiled at me, a sunny, genuine smile, not intended to be seductive, not filled with menace. It made my heart beat much too fast. “You won’t fucking believe it.”
“Try me.”
“Frozen fucking pizza. This man knows how to cook. He sure as fuck knows how to order pizza from a decent place. If I told my nonna, she’d freak the fuck out. She might track him down and beat him with a motherfucking rolling pin.”
I loved how incensed Angelo was. “You put it in the oven for us, though?”
He snorted. “I’m fucking starving.”
“There wasn’t anything else that would be better?”
“Nah. I put in some mozzarella sticks and some buffalo bites too. The man was apparently living on frozen food. He may need an intervention.”
“Let’s worry about that later,” I said as Angelo set the timer.
“He’s got some decent wine at least. Do you want some?”
Angelo being a snob about his alcohol was too fucking cute. “When did you become a wine connoisseur?”
He rolled his eyes. “Fucking Lucien. Well, my dad too. No cheap ass wine gets served at my house. Even if no one else cared, Lola wouldn’t allow it. And when Lucien opened DiGiulio’s, Jesus, the number of bottles we had to try.”
“Did you really mind so much?”
He laughed. “Devil and I were drunk off our asses every night after dinner.”
I could easily imagine that. “What’s Devil’s real name? I don’t ever remember anyone using it in high school.”
Angelo laughed. “That’s the best kept secret in Boston. You’ll have to ask him yourself.”
That was not likely to happen. I looked at the two wine bottles Angelo had set on the counter. One was a Columbia Valley cabernet. “I’ve been to this vineyard. It’s excellent.”
“Then we’ll go with that one.” He rifled through the drawers until he found a corkscrew. I didn’t even try to act like I wasn’t staring at his arm muscles as he pulled the cork out.
“Like what you see?” he asked when he caught me watching.
“Fuck yes.”
He found some wine glasses and filled them for us. Then he tilted his head toward the porch. “Let’s sit out there.”
We settled into two Adirondack chairs and pulled a table between them for our wine.
For a few moments, we both looked out at the ocean. I watched the waves crash and took a few deep, calming breaths. I hadn’t been to the beach since I’d left California. I hadn’t realized how much I missed it.
Angelo finally broke the silence. “I want to make a new arrangement.”
“You’re going to let me pay off my debt with baked goods?”
“Hmmm. Everything of yours I’ve sampled—”
“Stolen.” He’d taken to grabbing whatever experimental baked good I had in the kitchen on his way out—including mango cannoli, tarragon biscotti, and orange chocolate cupcakes.
“—has been fucking delicious, but no. The arrangement is this: Everything about our nights together stays the same. I’m in control. You do as I say, but during the day if you need something, you ask me, and I’ll help you. As a friend.”
Why would someone like him want to be friends with me? “Why?”
“Do you really not understand how amazing you are? Smart, caring, determined. How many people would have accomplished all you have without any support from their family?”
“I… um…” Did he really see me that way?
“I promised to take care of you. I thought it might be easier to accept my interference this way.”
I studied him for a moment. “Sometimes I feel like I don’t know you at all.”
“Maybe you don’t. Maybe you’ve made too many assumptions about who I am.”
I had no doubt Angelo could look down the barrel of a gun and not even flinch, but his hand was shaking now as he asked to be my friend. Maybe he really had been nervous back when he’d asked me to tutor him. “You’re not going to convince me you’re some nice guy.”
“Nice? Fuck no. I would never try to do that. I’m dangerous, controlling, and I don’t take no for an answer.”