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“Taddeo, are you unwell? Do you feel faint?”
“I feel like my stomach is going to swallow up my balls and give them an acid bath.”Hello, word vomit.“Sorry.”
Her lips widened into that puckish smile and he remembered how good she had always been to him. Even during that dark time after the accident when he didn’t deserve a kind word.
“Your parents would be very proud of you. It is quite an accomplishment for one so young.”
He didn’t feel young. He felt like the most beat-up, elderly twenty-nine-year-old who’d ever lived.
“Tony and Dad opened DeLuca’s when Dad was twenty-five.”
Paul McCartney recordedAbbey Roadwhen he was twenty-seven. George Harrison was only twenty-six. Besides, all he was doing was opening a wine bar. Not exactly changing lives here. The acid bath churned, threatening to corrode his throat and all the organs in between.
“Dad wanted more for me, Frankie.”
“Yes, he did but he was hard on you. It is the way of all the DeLuca men.” His cousins had borne the brunt of Tony’s expectations but managed to come out strong and resilient. “Remember that you are your own man, Taddeo. Not your father’s or your uncle’s. You have the right to be happy.”
Happiness as a right? The pursuit of it, perhaps, or at minimum the pursuit of hedonistic pleasure. Anything beyond that seemed greedy when his parents would never again feel the sun on their cheeks.
“This year, Taddeo… maybe it’s time to stop being so hard on yourself.”
In his aunt’s eyes he saw her worry that he was going to take all that shame and self-loathing and give it an extra twist. Francesca was the only one who knew how bad it got.
Every year, he carved out a couple of days away: a friend’s cottage in the Upper Peninsula, a flea bag hotel in Cancun, anywhere he could lay low and drink himself to unconsciousness. She had tried to talk him through it, but she also realized he needed it to survive the rest of the year. Between them was an unspoken understanding that she keep it from the rest of the family. Doubtless, she was worried he’d take off on another round-the-world binge and he didn’t exactly discourage that conclusion. In the end, charming Tad emerged from his drunken cocoon and went back to his daily business.
Except this year he had an actual business to run and people who relied on him. He would have to find a way to manage the pain without it affecting anyone else.
His gaze locked with Frankie’s and he tried to draw from her strength for the hard times ahead. She had made cancer her bitch a couple of years back and he had never met a more tenacious woman. He opened his mouth to say that and a million other things but was interrupted by another knock on the door.
“Tad,” Kennedy, his manager, called from the other side. “People are asking for you.”
“I’ll be right there,” he called back.
As he stood, Frankie moved up with him, choking the knot on his tie. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she started wiping non-existent smudges off his cheeks.
“I’ll give you a moment, but do not take too long.”
Five minutes and a shot of grappa later, he crossed the threshold from back to front of house and scanned the bar. His wine bar, his dream finally come to fruition. Frankie was right: itwasan accomplishment. The wood gleamed, the glass shone, the wine flowed. Derry’s bacon-wrapped fig and thyme appetizers seemed to be a hit with the fashionable crowd.
No one had spotted him yet so he took a moment to soak and enjoy before he had to turn on Smiling Host Tad. Practically every DeLuca in the Chicago area was here to support him. Cara had done an excellent job organizing the opening and now she presided over Shane’s triple-tiered cupcake creation, shaped to look like a champagne fountain. Clever, clever. Off near the far end of the bar, Jack and Tony stood in companionable conversation.
They’d had a rocky start, but Jack had insinuated himself intola famigliaremarkably quickly, becoming as good as a son to Tony. Tad couldn’t help the thread of jealousy that ran through him whenever he witnessed Tony’s easy relationship with his sons-in-law.
But tonight was not a night for petty jealousies. It washisnight, the start of the rest of his life.
He stepped forward into the room, then stopped cold when his gaze crashed over a blond, green-eyed beauty—and her sharply dressed, very tall, clearly appreciative date.
* * *
“Nice speech,” Shane said with a smirk, when Tad finally wended his way back to Cara and Shane. He couldn’t remember much about it. Something about wine and coming together and making new friends. And then something else about wine.
“Thanks,” Tad muttered, trying to put a good-natured spin on it when really he was ready to punch something.Take a couple of deep breaths.Over at the bar, the sharp suit laid a hand oh-so-casually on Jules’s arm and Tad’s body went into a full-scale lockdown.
“Who’s that guy?” he asked Cara, who seemed to be running Operation Get Jules Bedded.
“Darian Fuentes.” She let out a breathy giggle. “DoctorDarian Fuentes, actually. He’s a friend of mine from Lurie Children’s Hospital.”
Cara did volunteer work at the kids’ hospital downtown and it put her in contact with all sorts, including guys that mothers wet-dreamed up for their daughters.
