Page 58 of Falling for Mr. October

He grunts and nods. “All right. So this is where I tell you that someone has draped an old sheet with ‘Free Giovanni’ scrawled on it in red paint over the chain-link barrier leading to the apple barn, and there’s already a line of cars waiting to be let inside. When I told them to disperse, they threw apples at me. What are we going to do about that?”

My heart starts pounding. “Bianca and I have to issue some kind of statement, and I also told that dipshit Rhett I’d talk to the press.”

“The press is interested?” Theo asks incredulously, as if he can’t imagine why anyone would want to talk to a guy who walks around his kitchen half naked and records it. It makes me like him more, not less.

“I’ve gotten a few messages. Maybe this isn’t such a bad thing. I guess visibility is important for Bianca’s plan to work. I can work at the pumpkin patch or the apple barn until this is over.”

“So you won’t be tending the trees with me anymore?”

“Sorry, man,” I say, trying to sound regretful. “It’s peaceful out there. I’ll miss it.”

“No, you fucking won’t,” he says, his tone amused, and I suddenly realize that he quite intentionally bored the shit out of me.

I smile at him. “You were trying to drive me away, weren’t you?”

He shrugs, not denying it. “I’m not as trusting as my nonna, but if you’d like to know, I would have done the same with my little brother. You said you were here as his proxy, so I figured I got to be pissed at you too.”

“Fair enough.” I hesitate, then offer, “But look, Miles is really trying⁠—”

He lifts a hand, palm outward, and nods. “Yeah, I know. Bianca told me.”

Of course, she did. It’s impossible to keep a secret if more than one person knows. But I can’t regret it. They won’t worry as much if they know he’s safe and doing the work he needs to do.

“I want him to come back, you know,” Theo continues. “Mostly. But I’m still upset with him.”

“I get that. My own brother came home to Maine recently, and it was the same way.” I grin. “Except he’s the one who has his shit together, and I’m the family fuckup.”

“Not such a fuckup,” he acknowledges. “I checked out your channel. It’s pretty cool that you built all of that on your own. I’m not saying I want to run around with my flannel open and film myself chopping wood, but I respect that you built a business out of it.”

“Thanks. I couldn’t do what you do either.” I hold up my forefinger and thumb a quarter of an inch apart. “I was this close to drawing a face on one of the trees so I could pretend it was talking back. I don’t do so great by myself.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t jump straight to drawing abs on it.” He reaches for my hand, and we shake just as a tinny alarm goes off from just beyond the sunroom door.

Half a second later, Bianca bursts into the room like an officer with an arrest warrant.

“Your time is up,” she tells her brother.

“Good. I’m going to go see about that coffee I smell. By the way, Isabella has a wedding later. She asked me to send you over with some baked goods for the B&B, but I don’t buy it. She’s been best friends with that guy who runs the bakery since she was five. She doesn’t need any baked goods. She wants the goods from you.”

“Of course she does,” Bianca moans. “Suddenly all everyone wants to do is talk. I almost wish I were working today.”

It’s stupid, but the idea of her going back to work tomorrow makes me feel like my security blanket is being tugged from me.

“Maybe I could go to work with you,” I say before I can stop myself.

“You seriously want to go to The Rotten Apple?” she asks disbelievingly. “You’re terrified of old people.”

“I am not,” I sputter. “How could you say that? I love the nonnas.”

Theo lifts his eyebrows. “You don’t want to go to that place, man. I dropped off some apples there the other week, and this woman thought I was her son. It took me two hours to break away.”

“You were really sweet to Agnes,” Bianca says, “but yeah, she definitely didn’t think you were her son. She lures every hot young thing into her room. They don’t call her the Black Widow for nothing.”

“Aw, come on, Bianca,” he says, nudging her. “You could have warned me.”

“But then Luanne and I wouldn’t have had anything to laugh about.”

“Very funny. You two want any coffee?” he asks. “I’m going to follow that scent. If you tell Nonna Rose I said this, I will have your balls, but no one makes cappuccino like your grandmother, Giovanni.”