Jackie Braun - Saying Yes to the Boss

“The stove is gas, so it still works. I don’t have much in the fridge at the moment. I’d planned to go grocery shopping today, but…” She shrugged.

“No car,” Dane guessed.

“Exactly. So, grilled cheese and tomato soup okay with you?”

“Sure.”

She pulled a loaf of homemade bread from the old-fashioned metal box on the counter. As she sliced it, she asked conversationally, “So, tell me a little about yourself.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Let’s see…” She mulled her answer as she slathered butter onto the bread and transferred the slices to a cast-iron skillet. It was appalling, but the question she wanted to ask was if someone special was waiting for him, worrying over him, back on Trillium. She had no right to ask such a question. No right to even want to ask it.

She settled on the more generic, “Why don’t you tell me about your family.”

“I’ve got a couple of sisters, Ali and Audra. They’re twins.” He grunted out a laugh then. “Of course, they’re nothing alike in either looks or personality.”

Ree sent him a smile over her shoulder, ridiculously relieved that he hadn’t spoken of a wife and kids. “That must be nice. I always thought it would be fun to have a sister or two.”

“An only child, huh?”

“Not exactly.” She stirred water into the pan of condensed soup she’d opened. “I have two half sisters and a half brother, but…we’re not close.”

Not close? The sad truth was Ree had never even met them, and only knew of their existence thanks to an entry in a diary she’d found that had belonged to her mother.

“That’s too bad.”

She decided to redirect the conversation. “So, tell me about your sisters. Are they older, younger?”

“Younger, but that doesn’t keep them from trying to run my life.” There was a smile in his voice despite the complaint. “Ali tried to talk me out of coming over to the mainland for supplies. She wanted me to wait until the morning.”

“Smart woman,” she replied pointedly, giving the soup another stir before flipping the sandwich.

“Yeah, and I can guarantee she’s not going to let me forget it. Neither of them will once they find out I’m okay.” He cleared his throat. “Wish that could be sooner rather than later. My sisters are probably pacing the floor.”

His voice brimmed with remorse. The tone told her that family was important to him. Nothing was more important, Regina knew, and so she couldn’t help but admire Dane Conlan’s priorities. Not everyone put family first. Her husband clearly wasn’t willing to, and her father hadn’t. Or, at least, Ray Masterson hadn’t put the family Regina was a part of first.

She lowered the heat on the soup. Glancing over her shoulder again, she said, “It’s nice to have people who care enough to worry about you.”

“What about you? Who’s worrying about Regina Bellini?”

No one. The sparse reply echoed painfully through her head.

Since her grandmother’s death after a long battle with congestive heart failure several months earlier, Ree had been completely alone. And lonely. So lonely. Tears threatened now and she was grateful that, in the low light, Dane could not see her blink them away.

Even so, she turned back toward the stove, stirring furiously for a moment as she collected her thoughts. “I’m pretty much on my own,” she said at last, amazed that her voice sounded so normal.

She no longer had any immediate family—at least none that acknowledged her. Nor could she count on any close girlfriends. Maintaining meaningful relationships with other women had been difficult when she’d lived like a nomad for half a decade and then had returned to her hometown with her marriage in tatters and the only person who could be of any comfort wasting away in a nursing home bed.

Ree had moved Nonna back to Peril Pointe and hired a private nurse. Between the two of them, they had tended to the fragile, elderly woman until Benedetta Bellini drew her final breath. During those dark and painful months, even if she’d had friends, Ree wouldn’t have had time for them.

She heard both surprise and sympathy in Dane’s voice when he asked, “What about your folks?”

“My mom…died when I was six,” she replied vaguely.

Ree half expected Dane to ask her how. She wasn’t sure what her answer would be, which was strange. She’d never even told Paul the details of her mother’s death beyond saying Angela Bellini had drowned. Suicide was an ugly family secret, one she’d long chosen to keep.

But all Dane said was, “God, I’m really sorry. And your dad?”

She chewed her lower lip for a moment. Another ugly family secret, and yet she found herself sharing this one.

“My mom never married my father, so he wasn’t around when I was growing up.”

She did keep the more painful details to herself, such as the fact that the real reason Ray Masterson had not wed Angela Bellini after the scared and pregnant eighteen-year-old had showed up at his doorstep was that he was already married and the father of two children with a third on the way.

“That had to be tough.”

“It was a long time ago,” she said, trying to sound as if her father’s disavowal of Ree’s very existence didn’t still wound her to the core.

“So, who raised you?”

“My mom’s folks. Great people.” She smiled now as she dished the soup into a blue porcelain bowl and put the sandwich on a matching plate.

“Are they still living?”

“No. They’re both gone. My grandfather passed away during my senior year of college. My grandmother died last Thanksgiving.”

As she set the meal in front of him, Dane surprised her by reaching for her hand. The pad of his thumb rubbed over her knuckles in a negligent caress that still had her breath hitching. “God, Ree. I’m really sorry.”

She stared at their hands, wanting so desperately to turn hers over so she could weave her fingers through his and simply hold on. It felt so good to be consoled, and, God, how she missed being touched. Her grandparents had demonstrated their love with frequent hugs, kisses and pats to her cheek. Paul had run hot and cold with his displays of affection. When a dig was going well, he’d sometimes surprise her with an embrace. If not, days could pass without so much as a brush of fingers against her arm or a chaste peck on the cheek.

“Thank you,” she replied hoarsely. Maybe it was only because Dane was still holding her hand that she admitted, “I really miss them, especially Nonna. She was something else.”

“Nonna?”

His hand fell away and Ree took the seat opposite his at the table. “It’s Italian for grandmother.”

“Tell me about them?”

It came out a question and because he seemed genuinely interested, Ree did.

“Nonna and my grandfather came over from Naples just after the Second World War. My grandfather worked in an automobile factory in the Detroit area and my grandmother stayed home raising my mother. When my mother was a girl, they came north for a vacation and stayed at Peril Pointe. The people who owned it rented out rooms and my grandparents returned every summer after that. My grandfather decided to retire early and they used their savings to buy the house and move here.”

“Did they run it as a bed-and-breakfast, too?”

She shook her head. “No. I think they planned to. They took in guests here and there, and they loved meeting new people. But then my mom died and they wound up raising me.”

“They sound like incredible people.”

“They were. And very much in love.” She smiled at the memories that always warmed her. “When my grandfather was still alive, he and Nonna would go for a walk along the beach every evening in the summer. They always held hands.”