Tonight, though, he found himself playing for Ella.
"That what you had in mind?" he asked when he'd hit the last note.
"Perfect," she said. "I wish you could sing me to sleep some nights."
"Anytime."
Ella smirked and glanced away. "Flirt."
"Sorry. Can't help it, I'm afraid. My father was an incorrigible flirt. It's in the DNA. No cure."
She laughed softly and shook her head. "Oh, well … in that case you're forgiven."
The last of the stragglers were heading for the door and the staff had started to set up for the next day. Ella glanced toward the kitchen, probably thinking she ought to be overseeing the activity back there. TJ wanted to remind her that the chef and his people knew what they were doing-it was all washing dishes and prepping for tomorrow-but he kept his mouth shut. It was none of his business.
"I guess we all ought to be heading home, huh?" Ella said, glancing at the trio of coffee drinkers as they finally made their exit.
"Not me. I told my mother I'd crash at her place tonight."
Ella leaned back in her chair, took a sip of her drink, and gave him a dubious look. "Your mother?"
TJ shrugged, his hands idly toying with notes on his guitar. "She's an old lady-though she'd punch me if she heard me say it. If the power goes out, I don't want her to be afraid, y'know?"
"That's really sweet."
"Nah. I'm her son. It's what you do."
"Not what all sons do," Ella said, getting up from the table. "You're a good guy, TJ."
She kept her glass with her-she wouldn't have left it on the table for anyone else to pick up-and started to the kitchen.
"You should get going," Ella said. "Bring your mom in for dinner some night. My treat."
"I'll do that," he replied. "But I'm not in a rush. She's not expecting me for a while yet and she's only gonna want me to watch the Food Network with her or something. You mind if I keep playing till it's time to lock up?"
Ella glanced back at him. "As long as you want to play, you'll never hear me telling you to stop."
She hurried away to the kitchen. TJ smiled as he watched her go, wondering if he might not be the only flirt in The Vault tonight.
Allie Schapiro stood vigilant by her microwave oven, listening to the kernels pop inside. The microwave gods had a cruel sense of humor, putting the little button labeled POPCORN right on the front of the machine. After burning bags of popcorn over and over she had finally learned that just pressing the button and walking away led to scorched kernels and that horrid smell. So while the movie played on in the living room-she had refused to let Niko pause it for her-she listened to the popping until the intervals began to seem like pauses, and then she took it out.
Opening the steaming bag, she found the corn popped to perfection, the buttery scent wafting through the kitchen. Allie gave her microwave nemesis a smirk and a soft "hah," and then separated the popcorn into two plastic buckets she'd retrieved from a cabinet.
When she returned to the living room, Marty McFly was eluding Biff on a skateboard in 1955. Back to the Future was one of Allie's favorite movies and she'd been shocked to discover that Niko and his daughter, Miri, had never seen it.
"That smells good," Niko said. Beside him on the sofa, eleven-year-old Miri shushed him, totally under the movie's spell. Her copper eyes were bright, framed by a lovely tangle of curly brown hair.
Allie's kids-sons Jake and Isaac-lay on their bellies on the floor, chins propped on their hands, staring at the giant flatscreen. At twelve, Jacob was two years older than Isaac, but they were similar enough that people sometimes mistook them for twins. Allie didn't see it, really. Jake had darker hair and nearly always wore a serious expression, while Isaac never lacked a grin … not to mention that he was four inches shorter than his older brother. She figured it was something in the way they connected, the way they sometimes spoke at the same time, each filling in missing words in some tale they were concocting. And, like their mom, they loved movies.
She set one of the buckets between them and Jake grabbed it immediately and pulled it in front of himself.
"Jacob," she said, not quite sternly. "Share."
He didn't look up, just slid the bucket back to the space between them. Isaac had never taken his eyes off the television. When Biff crashed his car into the back of a manure truck and ended up buried in shit, both boys laughed. So did Allie. Watching this movie was like coming home in some strange way, and sharing it with Niko and his daughter tonight was something special, the two families together.
Strange, but wonderful.
She settled onto the sofa on Niko's left and tucked her legs beneath her, handing him the popcorn.
"Thanks, love," he said, kissing her cheek as he dug out a fistful, then held out the bucket to Miri.
The little girl seemed entranced by the movie, but Allie had long since gotten the impression that Miri noticed all sorts of things when she didn't seem to be paying attention. Not so little a girl, Allie thought. At eleven years old, Mirjeta Ristani was a hell of a lot more sophisticated than Allie had been at that age.
Now Miri glanced up at her father, took note of the kiss that had just occurred, and smiled at Allie.
"Thanks, Ms. Schapiro."
"We're not at school, Miri. You can call me Allie."
Miri nodded and dug into the popcorn, noncommittal on the subject of calling her former teacher by her first name. The boys, of course, had no problem calling Niko "Niko," but that familiarity did not mean that they accepted him just yet.
This night had been planned for weeks as the beginning of an effort to change that. The boys' father had been killed seven years past, in combat in Afghanistan, and for a long time she'd resisted the urgings of her friends to date again. When she'd finally given in, she had gone on a brief flurry of awful first dates and exactly three disappointing second ones. After the last of these, she'd been sitting alone at a table in Krueger's Flatbread and had just started to laugh. She had covered her mouth, hiding her grin and stifling her laughter until it subsided, and only then had she realized that she had begun to cry.
Niko had been eating at the bar with Miri, then in the fourth grade. They knew her, of course-the year before, she'd been Miri's teacher, and Allie had certainly noticed Niko. It would have been impossible not to, handsome as he was with his regal, sculpted features, olive skin, and eyes the same copper as his daughter's. And here she was making a public spectacle of herself. Hideously embarrassed, Allie had risen and made a beeline for the exit, smiling politely as she passed them at the bar.
"Ms. Schapiro," Niko had said, in that silky voice that made her pause.
"Mr. Ristani," she had managed.
He had not smiled, not attempted to placate her. Instead, he had said three words that had alternately infuriated and inspired her for more than a week afterward.
He had said, "Laughter is better."
Troubled, she had mumbled something and departed and for a week had avoided even looking at Miri in the halls at Trumbull Middle School. And then she had dug through the school phonebook and called him out of the blue on a Friday night and asked him if he remembered what he had said to her in the restaurant. It had surprised her that he did.
"I wanted to thank you," she said. "And to tell you that I agree."
They had been dating for more than a year. Darkly handsome, kindhearted, and staggeringly good in bed, he was everything she could have hoped for. Her mother ought to have been ecstatic that Allie had found a man who loved her. The woman had always wanted her to date a doctor. But, as she had made very clear, she had meant a Jewish doctor, not an Albanian one. Fortunately, Allie had stopped giving a crap what other people thought of her choices on the day she became a widow.
Things weren't quite so simple for the boys, or for Miri. It was for their sake that she and Niko had kept their relationship fairly quiet, wanting to spare their children the gossip at school and to save Miri from being interrogated by her mother, Niko's ex-wife, Angela. Tensions still lingered between Niko and Angela, who was a nurse at the hospital where he worked.
"Hey," Niko said, giving her a nudge. He searched her eyes. "I thought this was your favorite movie."
Allie took a handful of popcorn from the bucket on his lap. "One of them."
"You seem far away."
"No," she said, smiling. "I'm here."
She kissed his cheek out of reflex, just a bit of reassurance that all was well, and saw that Miri had been watching the exchange closely. Allie arched a querulous eyebrow and Miri gave her a shy smile and returned her attention to the movie.
A gleeful flutter touched her heart; Miri was onboard! Several of her friends had told her that she needed to focus on her relationship with Niko, that the kids would just have to deal with it because eventually they'd all be grown up and off to college and she couldn't let their needs dictate her life. But she wanted Miri to like her, to feel comfortable with her, and she wanted-no, needed-Jake and Isaac to feel the same about Niko. If she and her handsome man had any chance at a future, it had to include their children.
Tonight had been the beginning of an effort in that direction, carefully planned. Dinner and a movie, in and of themselves, were not a big deal. But the night would end with Miri and Niko sleeping over, with Miri in the spare room and Niko in Allie's bed. She had to fight back her own awkwardness at the thought of it so that the kids would not read it in her face and think she and Niko had anything to feel awkward about.