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Had it been worth it? Damn straight.
Her confidence in that statement took a nosedive as soon as she walked into the DeLuca kitchen.
She had expected Jack, and there he was, owning the space as he always did, but that’s not where her covetous eyes fell.
Tad.
Tad was here in DeLuca’s kitchen, wearing chef whites and testosterone, and making her world crash.
All. Over. Again.
Her brother spoke over his shoulder. “Hey, you’re late.”
“Your wife kept me gabbing,” she said mechanically, her gaze focused on the knife that seemed to be a natural extension of Tad’s hand. She coughed and, with great difficulty, turned to Jack. “What’s going on?”
“Tad’s in charge.”
“He is?” Tad was cooking the meal that would celebrate one marriage and would plunge him into painful memories of another. Stranger still, he was working with Jack and the knives were still being used for their original purposes.
He turned and just the sight of him sent a sharp zing humming through her. It was a painful pleasure to run her eyes over all that beauty.
“You ready?” Tad asked her.
“For what?”
“His big fat grovel,” Jack said, removing a pan from a burner.
“I don’t think so,” she said, unsure if she meant her reaction to whatever Tad was about to unload or the fact that her brother seemed intent on remaining as referee.
Tad tapped his knife in an insistent tattoo on the cutting board. “Jack, I need you to take your interfering, know-it-all, Limey ass out of this kitchen and give us some space.”
Unfazed by Tad’s bite, a relaxed smile came over her brother’s face. He looked at her squarely. “Is this what you want?”
“Making my own decisions, remember?”
He held up his hands. “All right, all right. Got it.” He kissed her cheek on the way out of the kitchen. “I’ll be outside.”
She swallowed into the silence, this wedge of awful, bruising space that stretched between them like a cavernous maw. She held onto it for a couple of moments while they assessed each other for…she didn’t know what.
“How’s Evan?” he asked.
“Fine. Sylvia’s bringing him by later.” She forced her lungs to cooperate. “Do you have something to say to me?”
He stared at her in a way that made her supremely uncomfortable. That stare coated every nerve and set up a high-frequency vibration through her body. Nervous as hell, she ran a finger over the nearest stainless steel counter. Still, he wouldn’t speak.
“How come you’re here? In the kitchen?”
“Today isn’t just about Tony and Frankie.”
It was also about Rafe and Vivi. She loved that he was facing it head on, but she pinned on her game face all the same.
“And it isn’t just about my parents. It’s about honoring who they were and making them proud and that means making a move forward. I don’t think they’d be all that proud of how I’ve lived my life since they died. I think they’d be pretty pissed off at me.”
Her heart turned over, revealing the soft, defenseless underside. “You were twisted up inside. It’s hard to get untwisted if it suits you better to be that way.”
He looked like he was mentally trying that on for size. A sly smile, directed more at himself than her, quirked his lips.
“Yeah, that’s about it. You know, a very wise person once told me that I deserved to be happy. I didn’t really know what that meant until a few weeks ago, when we went from friends to so much more. I thought I was too selfish to give myself to another person. To two people, you and Evan. This mistake I made came with its own accessories: a hair shirt, a bucket of mortar in my heart, a black cloud following me around. I let it take over and make decisions for me. I let it turn me into a selfish bastard. But no more.”
