Chapter 3
Dante spotted her. Head down, Mallory sat on the filthy sidewalk with her feet in the gutter. Her business suit must be getting ruined, but she clearly didn’t care. It broke Dante’s heart to see her like this.
Pulling up beside her, he leaned over and opened the passenger-side door. He thought about parking and coming to escort her to the car like a gentleman, but he figured she’d just want to get out of there as soon as possible.
She looked up. Her makeup had run, and her eyes were red and puffy.Shit. They left her crying on the sidewalk. How humiliating!
Stoop-shouldered, she rose slowly and dropped into the bucket seat of his Camaro.
“Jesus, Mallory. What happened?”
She sighed. “You can probably guess…”
“Not really. Did it have something to do with seeing someone who wasn’t there?”
“I could have sworn he was real,” she said softly. “He even told me his name and that the little boy I was photographing was his son. Cute little kid. Until his mother freaked out, and then her son started crying too.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Yeah.” She sighed. “Of course, it didn’t help that I thought I was talking to the boy’s grandfather. I guess some guys go prematurely gray.”
“Or the woman may have married a much older man.”
“True. Men don’t shoot blanks until they’re, what…fifty or sixty?”
Dante covered a smile by looking the other way as he pulled into the street, merging with traffic. “Where would you like to go?”
She shrugged. “Home, I guess.”
“It’s almost lunch time. Why don’t we get some takeout on the way? I don’t imagine you feel much like cooking.”
“You got that right.”
“What are you in the mood for?”
“I don’t know. Strychnine? Arsenic?”
“Hey.” He reached over and rubbed the back of her neck. “Don’t talk like that. We’ll figure out what’s going on and fix this.”
“How? And why would you want to? I’m a total train wreck.”
“Oh, man… Let’s put off that conversation for a minute.” Dante speed-dialed his favorite pizza place. “Yeah, I’d like to order a large pizza. My lady friend will tell you what toppings to put on it.”
Mallory sighed. “Just veggies on half and whatever my man friend wants on the other half.” She gave him a weak smile.
“Pepperoni,” he said. “I’ll pick it up in a few minutes. It’s for Dante Fierro.”
As usual, the traffic took care of any wait time needed to make a fresh pizza. He picked it up while Mallory stayed in the car. He was glad she didn’t offer to pay for it. He’d like to think of this as their first date.Yeah, what a pathetic date.Hopefully, there would be others, and he could make those special.
He followed her directions and pulled into a short driveway in front of her two-story white vinyl-sided town house. Nice but boring. The large development made him think of how easy it would be to walk into the wrong place after a few beers—provided anyone left their doors unlocked. Nobody in South Boston would, of course.
A few steps led up to the front door. A far cry from the beautiful brownstone town house he’d grown up in. He didn’t know where Mallory had lived in high school. Her father was in real estate, but she could have been raised in a high-rise condo or low-rent apartment for all he knew. There was a lot he didn’t know about Mallory Summers. He was anxious to learn more.
She led him up a short flight of carpeted stairs and into an open-concept kitchen, living, and dining room. He thought the house style was called a split-level.
“It’s basic, but it’s home, thanks to my father. It’s his development.”
“Nice. Do you own it?”
