Happy Ever After
Page 21

He turned off the main, putting with traffic before swinging into a minuscule parking spot. He pulled his helmet off as he turned to look at her.
“Hungry?”
“I guess I am.”
“I know a place here that serves the best pizza in Connecticut.”
“Then you haven’t tasted Mrs. G’s.”
“Maybe I’ll get lucky there, but in the meantime . . . You can let go now.”
“Oh.”A little flustered she hadn’t realized she still had her arms around him, she pulled back, climbed off.
He hooked the helmets on the bike. “It’s not far. Just enough to stretch it out a little before we eat.”
“I don’t mind a walk,” she began, then flipped open her purse at the signal. “Sorry, that’s voice mail. I’d better check.”
“How many?” he asked when she muttered a curse under her breath.
“Three.”
“Do they ever give you the night off ?”
“It happens. Rarely, but it happens. People planning a wedding, or a big event like an important anniversary, it becomes their world for a while. Every idea or problem or decision can take on enormous magnitude.”
She started to slip the phone back into her bag, thinking she’d duck into the rest room first chance and handle whatever she could.
“Go ahead and do the callbacks.”
“That’s all right. It can wait for a bit.”
“You’ll be thinking about them, and thinking how to duck away to deal with them. Might as well just do it.”
“I’ll make it quick.”
He slowed the pace to a saunter, listening while she spoke to someone named Gina about chiffon versus taffeta. They agreed Parker would meet her to check out both samples.Then she discussed a Cinderella coach with a Mrs. Seaman. Parker promised to arrange one as she pulled out a notepad and wrote down the specifications. Finally, she assured somebody named Michael that both he and his fiancé, Vince, still had time to learn to swing dance, and rattled off the name and number of a dance instructor.
“Sorry,” she said to Malcolm as she slipped the phone back into its pocket. “And thanks.”
“No problem. Okay, I don’t care about chiffon or taffeta, or the difference in weight and sheen, but where the hell do you get a Cinderella coach outside of Disney?”
“You’d be surprised what you can get, especially if you have the right resources, and in this case a virtually unlimited budget. Mrs. Seaman—that’s Seaman Furniture—wants her daughter to arrive and depart in a Cinderella coach, I’ll make that happen. After I check with the bride to make sure that’s what she wants.”
“Got it. Now, why do Michael and Vince need to swing dance?”
“They’re getting married in February, and finally decided on a Big Band-era theme.They’re wearing zoot suits and spats.”
He took a moment to absorb it. “You’re not kidding.”
“No, and I happen to think it’ll be fun. So naturally, they want to swing, and particularly well for their first dance.”
“Who leads? That’s a serious question,” he said when she gave him a bland stare. “Somebody has to.”
“They can flip a coin, I suppose, or leave it to the instructor. I think Vinnie because Michael’s the one who’s worried about it, and Vinnie’s pretty gung-ho.”
“Then maybe . . . Wait a minute. February? Is it Vinnie Calerone?”
“Yes. Do you know him?”
“Yeah. Knew him when we were kids. My ma’s friendly with his.When he heard I moved back, he came to see me. I service his Mercedes. He said he was getting married in February, said he’d get me an invite.”
“Were you close?”
“Not especially.” He glanced at her, then decided to finish it out. “He was getting the shit beat out of him back in the day. It looked to me like he’d have held his own one-on-one, but there were two of them. I evened the odds. And I was right. He held his own. Vinnie’s wearing a zoot suit.” His grin spread with easy humor. “I can actually see that.”
“You got into a fight for him?”
“Not for him, especially. It was more the two-against-one deal. Beating somebody up because he’s g*y is ignorant. Ganging up to do it? That’s cheap. Anyway, it only took a few minutes.This is the place.”
She stared at him another moment, then turned to look at the restaurant. Despite its situation on the inlet, it was little more than a hole-in-the-wall with faded clapboard siding.
“It doesn’t look like much, but—”
“It looks fine, and I’m in the mood for pizza.”
“That makes two of us.”
CHAPTER SIX
THEY KNEW HIM, PARKER NOTED, WHEN A COUPLE OF THE STAFF called him by name.The pizzeria may have been small and on the shabby side, but the scents circulating in the air from the open kitchen and the jammed tables told her Malcolm knew his pizza.
They squeezed into a table preset with paper placemats depicting Italian landmarks.
“You want to steer clear of the Chianti,” Malcolm told her, “but you can get a pretty decent carafe of Cab.”
“That’ll work.”
A waitress bopped over. She had improbable red spiky hair and a nose as perky as her br**sts. She might have been just old enough to order the Cab for herself.
“Hey, Mal!”
“How’s it going, Kaylee?”
“Oh, you know.” She slid her gaze toward Parker, and away again, but the glance lasted just long enough to show Parker the disappointment and miff. “Get you a drink?”
“The lady’ll have the Cab. You can bring me a Coke. Luigi’s tossing tonight?”
“You got it.You want your usual?”
“We’ll think about it.”
“Okay. I’ll get your drinks.”
Parker cocked an eyebrow as the girl walked off. “She’s got a crush on you.”
He leaned back, leather jacket open, a day’s scruff on his face, green eyes lit with cocky humor. “What can I say? Women flock to me.”
“She’d like to break the carafe of Cab over my head.”
“Maybe.” He leaned forward again.“She’s seventeen, just started her first year at community college. She wants to be a fashion designer. Or a songwriter. Or.”