So, everything was a go. Have a meeting, move on with life. Today’s agenda, in a nutshell.
Dante took a steadying breath, plastered what he hoped was a smile to his face and went up the stone steps into the old church.
At first he saw no one. Maybe, just maybe, Rafe had come to his senses…. Forget that. He could hear voices. His mother’s, high and excited. His sisters, laughing and chattering like magpies. His brothers’ low rumble. Another deep breath, and Dante headed for the small changing room where his family was gathered.
“Dante, mio figlio,” his mother shrieked, and embraced him in a hug that almost killed him.
“You finally got here,” Anna said, but she tugged at his tie and kissed his cheek.
“We’d almost given up hope,” Isabella added, but she smiled and kissed him, too.
His father gave him an inquisitive look.
“Dante.”
“Father.”
“Was your trip successful?”
Dante’s mouth thinned. “This isn’t the time to discuss it,” he said coldly, and turned to Falco and Nicolo, who grinned.
“Hey, man,” Falco said.
“Glad to see you made it,” Nick said. “Where the hell have you been, anyway?”
“Away,” Dante said.
Nick raised an eyebrow, but Rafe saved the day, grabbing him and saying, “Can you believe I’m doing this?”
Even Dante could tell the question was rhetorical. Rafe was smiling, and when he slid his arm around the waist of a beautiful, dark-haired stranger and drew her forward, the look he gave her was so filled with happiness that it put an ache in Dante’s heart.
Had his eyes glowed that way each time he’d looked at Gabriella the past week? Hers had glowed when she’d turned them on him, but it had been a lie. All she’d ever wanted was that damned ranch…
“This is Chiara.”
His new sister-in-law smiled shyly.
“Dante,” she said softly, “I am very pleased to meet you.”
She hesitated. Then she leaned in, stood on her toes and kissed his cheek.
Hell. She was starry-eyed with love, and that feeling came again, as if a hand had reached into his chest and grabbed hold of his heart. But then the organ began playing, Anna and Isabella rushed to Chiara’s side and the next thing Dante knew, he was standing at the altar with his brothers.
The ceremony was brief. The women all cried. Rafe took his wife in his arms when the time came and kissed her with a tenderness that made Dante’s throat tighten.
He swallowed hard. Gabriella had done one fine job, leaving him so confused that even he found today’s events touching.
The reception was at their parents’ home, in the big conservatory Cesare had built a couple of years ago.
Anna teased him about looking so grumpy.
“You could, at least, try looking happy,” Izzy said. “This has been like a fairy tale!”
There were no fairy tales, Dante wanted to tell her, not in real life, but he smiled, said it sure was, picked up a flute of champagne and wandered over to Falco and Nick who were standing in a corner, looking out at their father’s sea of withered tomato plants.
“Man,” Nick said, sotto voce, “I think I’m on wedding-cake overload.”
Falco agreed. “I’m glad Rafe’s happy but if he tells me just once more how it’s time I found myself a wife—”
Dante put the champagne flute on a table.
“How about we go someplace where nobody’s gonna talk about the joys of matrimony?”
His brothers grinned.
Twenty minutes later, they were in their usual booth, the last one on the left, at The Bar.
The Bar wasn’t fancy even though it was in a fancy location.
The reason was that the location had once been just a step up from a slum.
Back then, The Bar had been called O’Hearn’s Tavern and was a neighborhood hangout downstairs from the hole-in-the-wall apartment Rafe had rented. But the brothers had liked the place. The beer was cold, the sandwiches and burgers were thick and cheap, and the no-nonsense ambience suited them just fine, though they’d probably have flattened anybody dumb enough to use the word ambience to describe the atmosphere.
Then, right about the time the four of them pooled their resources and their skills to start Orsini Brothers, the area began to change. Tired old tenements, including the one where Rafe had lived, were gutted and reborn as pricey townhouses. An empty factory building became a high-priced club. Bodegas became boutiques.
Clearly, the Orsinis were about to lose their favorite watering hole.
So, they bought O’Hearn’s. Stopped calling it that, started calling it, simply enough, The Bar. They had the leather booths and stools redone, the old wooden floor refinished and kept everything else unchanged: the long zinc bar, the battered wooden table tops, the thick sandwiches and burgers, the endless varieties of cold beer and ale.