Total pages in book: 206
Estimated words: 192184 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 961(@200wpm)___ 769(@250wpm)___ 641(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 192184 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 961(@200wpm)___ 769(@250wpm)___ 641(@300wpm)
Her face was red. I kissed her on the temple and held my arm out. She hesitantly took it.
The maître d greeted me excitedly. “Mr. Tommy, so nice to see you!”
“Augustus, this is Tia.”
He lamented for nearly thirty seconds about how gorgeous she was and how nice it was to meet her. Yeah, she was beautiful, but he was laying it on a bit thick.
I gave him a look. He pulled himself together and kissed her hand and led us to a table, then immediately brought over a bottle of red wine and poured glasses for us. A waiter brought bread to the table and menus were presented. He spoke to me in Italian about the specials prepared for the evening. When they were gone I leaned over and reached for her hand and skimmed my thumb across her knuckles. She didn’t pull away and her face revealed nothing but a warm-looking smile. I returned the smile, giving her a look that showed I was pleased with her.
We were sitting across the table from one another at a really romantic Italian restaurant with red and white checkered tablecloths, soft lighting, candles, and I’d decided to try to pretend that I was on a date with the guy from the ice cream parlor.
I figured it’d be the only way I could pull off the feat of acting like I was happy or even open-minded about being in his company. I didn’t think I could pull off acting like I was happy to be sitting here with Tommy Ferrano, the guy who had done all those awful things to me, so I tried, instead, to rewind the clock in my head and pretend that the gorgeous hunk from the ice cream parlor hadn’t morphed into the sadistic criminal who’d threatened to sell me into slavery.
I decided that this wasn’t the guy holding me for some ransom that could never be paid. This wasn’t the guy who’d spanked me, getting off on my pain, who’d tricked me into sex and then forced sex on me. This man didn’t tie me to his bed and screw me, making me cry from embarrassment at responding to him. I tried my hardest to rewind my brain to when I first saw him.
What if I could be here in this nice restaurant with the gorgeous guy from the ice cream parlor who’d given me an outrageous tip, who’d flirted with me, who’d winked at me with some unspoken promise? That’d be nice. That unspoken promise wasn’t going to be a nightmare. This was just a date. My loved ones hadn’t been threatened, my future hadn’t been stolen, and I wasn’t being forced to sleep in the bed and the arms of a criminal. I wasn’t being forced into anything. Thinking like this was the only way I figured I could pull it off.
“Mind if I order for you?” he asked me, caressing the back of my hand with his thumb.
There was light in his eyes, not darkness, making it easier for me to pretend.
“Sure,” I said, “Just no shellfish. I’m highly allergic.”
He nodded, then he spoke Italian to the waiter.
“I heard you’re half Italian. You speak it?” he asked after the order was taken.
“No, my mom was Italian, but she never taught me. She only spoke it in the house when she was yelling at my dad or using it to keep some secret from me talking on the phone. We never understood her, but knew when she spoke Italian someone was either about to get something good or get in trouble.” I laughed a little, and then I knew my face sobered, thinking about her, about my dad.
“I ordered us the lasagna. The lasagna here is to die for.” Tommy tried to change the subject. “The only lasagna better was my mother’s. She never passed the recipe on before she died, but my sister Tessa does pretty good.”
“I think my mom was the only Italian woman in the world who couldn’t cook,” I said, smiling, but Dad could cook. Between Dad and Rose, I’d learned to cook, too.
Dad had shown me how to make meals seemingly from nothing. When the fridge and pantry had been nearly bare at times he’d come up with gourmet concoctions. I’d watch and had started to make suggestions for spices or additions to the meals based on what I could find in the cupboard or freezer. We joked that we could make anything taste gourmet with a little of Dad’s secret spice blend.
The waiter brought warm bread and an antipasto platter. It smelled mouth-watering and for the first time in days I was actually hungry. It all tasted as good as it smelled, “Oh, this is so good!” I exclaimed and Tommy looked happy. He kind of smiled like ice cream parlor guy, looking insanely attractive. He wore jeans but with a black button-down dress shirt today under a blazer and the top few buttons were down. I could see a little of his chest. There was a thick silver chain on his neck with a crucifix of about two inches long on it. I felt a pang in my gut, reminding me that it was just wishful thinking that this wasn’t what I was pretending it was, that this wasn’t a real date with that guy that I’d daydreamed about.