The Promise
Page 92

He then turned to Cal. “I wanna meet my cousin.”
Cal came to him and stopped two feet away. He looked down at this daughter and said, “Angie, Benny.” He looked to Ben and finished, “Ben, my baby girl, Angie.”
Benny waited and started chuckling when his cousin just stood there and didn’t offer up the baby.
“You gonna let me hold her?” he asked through his laughter.
“You know how to hold a baby?” Cal asked back.
“Uh, yeah. Carm’s had three, and at one time, they were all babies.”
Cal hesitated. Ben stopped chuckling and started laughing, hearing himself joined by four women.
Kate pushed in, got close, and took control, gently taking hold of Angie and turning with her toward Benny.
“That’s my baby, baby sister,” she declared, handing Angie to Benny.
Ben wrapped both arms around her, cradling her against his chest. Her mouth was puckered and her eyes lazily opened, then closed and stayed that way when Ben settled her close.
Staring down at her, he saw Frankie was right. She was so beautiful, he couldn’t believe.
“I’ll get you a beer, Benny,” Keira called, then asked, “Frankie, do you want Joe to open you some wine?”
“That’d be great, honey.” He heard Frankie reply as he moved to an armchair and sat down.
“Joe, that’d be your cue to get Frankie some wine,” Keira prompted, and Ben looked up to see Cal scowling down at him, legs planted, arms crossed on his chest.
“She’s safe with me, cugino,” he assured his cousin, fighting back a smile.
“He’s that way with everybody,” Kate said, going to sit at her mother’s feet and promptly picking them up and putting them in her lap. “I thought he’d belt Granddad a good one when he hogged Angie.”
Ben could believe this. Not because Cal was insanely protective of his brand-new daughter. Because Cal had been insanely protective of his son, he was a man who took protecting his loved ones seriously, and he’d lost Nicky when he wasn’t around to keep him safe.
Ben figured anyone around Angie was going to have to deal until Cal worked that out.
“Joe, I could open a bottle of wine,” Keira offered.
Cal’s body jerked and he turned her way. “I got it, Keirry.”
Ben looked from his cousin to Vi and said quietly, “You did a good job, honey.”
She grinned proudly, her eyes dipping to her daughter in Ben’s arms before she looked back at Benny and stated, “I know.”
Ben looked meaningfully at his cousin in the kitchen with Vi’s daughter and back to Vi before he repeated, “You did a good job, honey.”
Her face got soft and her grin went sweet and she, too, repeated, “I know.”
Ben smiled back before he sat back and turned his attention to the baby he held in his arms.
He felt Frankie sit on the arm of his chair and he didn’t have to bother looking up because she bent over. He smelled her hair, her perfume, and felt the side of her tit press against his arm as she got close and peered at Angela.
Her head turned and her eyes caught his. “What’d I say?” she asked quietly, eyes so warm, he could feel their tenderness on his skin.
“So beautiful, I don’t believe,” he answered.
She smiled.
Then she bent deeper and kissed Angie’s little hat. She moved and kissed Benny’s jaw. After that, she sat up, turned to Vi, and asked, “What’s for dinner and can I help?”
“Shanghai Salon,” Vi answered. “We’re bein’ lazy.”
“Perfect,” Frankie replied.
“I’ll get the menu!” Kate cried as she slid out from her mother’s feet and dashed to the kitchen.
This was when Keira came in, holding a glass of wine she gave to Frankie and a bottle of beer she set on a coaster on a table beside Ben.
And this was when Cal moved to his woman and didn’t sit at her feet. Like she was crystal, he lifted her in his arms, turned, sat, and adjusted her so she was ass and legs to the seat, the weight of her upper body resting against Cal’s chest, his arm around her ribs.
Vi’s head fell naturally so the top was tucked in Cal’s neck and her eyes fell on Ben with her daughter.
Taking in Cal with Vi, holding the love he saw on that couch in his arms, Ben looked back down at Angela, wondering if she’d ever know in the miracle that was her, what a miracle she was.
He wondered it.
But he hoped not.
* * * * *
Ben felt every muscle in his body turn to stone.
Somehow, though, he managed to get his mouth to move in order to say, low and slow, “What?”
Frankie was next to him in her kitchen. It was Saturday morning and they just got back from the bakery, a place called Hilligoss. A place Vi shared had the best donuts perhaps anywhere in the world. A place Frankie took Benny frequently when he came down to see her.
He’d had some good donuts, but Vi was right. Hilligoss was worth considering opening a second Vinnie and Benny’s Pizzeria right next door.
Now, Frankie was opening a white box that contained a dozen donuts they would hoover through in the next two days, wishing they had more.
She was also talking.
“I know. Crazy. Murder. Killed in his own house. Shot right in the head.”
Ben did not have a good feeling about this, mostly because he never had a good feeling about murder.
He also didn’t have a good feeling about this because Frankie just told him an employee at her company had been murdered, and Frankie was a magnet for drama. It wasn’t her that did anything, unless she was crazily following some goons who’d kidnapped three people a state away.
That didn’t mean she didn’t attract more than her fair share just by breathing.
People went their whole lives without, say, their boyfriends getting whacked. Or themselves getting shot. Or working at a place where someone took a bullet to the brain.
Frankie had all three.
And then some.
“The thing is,” Frankie went on, “I’ve got a weird feeling.”
This did not make him feel any better.
“A weird feelin’ about what?” he asked as she plucked a powdered sugar, chocolate-cream-filled donut out of the box and turned to him.
“Dr. Gartner getting murdered.”
“Babe, he was murdered. That’d give anyone a weird feeling.”
She took a bite, chewed, and swallowed, and he reached for a glazed as she continued.
“He was lead on a big product we’re launching. It doesn’t go live for a while. They’re designing packaging, brochures, leaflets. Organizing presales talk ups through the reps. Shit like that. But his boss, the big cheese of research and development, gives me the heebie-jeebies.”