“Buy it!” Nonna scoffs, smacking her fist onto the thick pile of dough on the counter. “You no-a buy garlic bread! You bake-a it!”
“So, you’re baking garlic bread?” I ask again.
“It’s time consuming!” Mom slams the fridge shut and pours a glass of wine, splashing some on the counter as she does. “Buy it! I’ll concede to the lasagna, Liliana, but the garlic bread is ridiculous.”
“No! Buying it is-a ridicolo!”
“Hey!” I yell over them both, slamming my hand on the kitchen table.
They both stop and look at me.
“Nonna, are you making garlic bread?”
She blinks heavily mascaraed lashes. “Si, Noella.”
“Mom, let her make the bread. I love that stuff.”
Nonna smiles smugly, cutting the dough and rolling it into baguettes. Mom frowns at me as I pour myself a glass of her wine.
“Noelle, you’ve never complained about store-bought stuff.”
Nonna opens her mouth to, presumably, tear me a new one, but I hold up my hand.
“Mom, don’t drag me into this. After twenty-eight years, I’ve accepted that y’all ain’t ever gonna get along, but don’t use me to point score. I love you the same.”
“Twenty-eight!” Nonna tuts as if I just reminded her how old I am. “Hai un appuntamento con un bel ragazzo cattolico italiano ancora?”
“No, Nonna. I do not have a date with a nice Catholic Italian boy yet. I’m pretty busy finding a murderer, or did you forget that?”
“A marone!” she exclaims, shaking her head. “No wonder you have-a no date!”
“I have no date because there is no one I want to date.” Not least the man who manhandled me on my desk earlier today. Whose kiss I might be replaying a few times in my head.
“You need-a man!” she continues, ignoring my protest. “None of this-a silly gun business! No-a killers! No-a cheaters!” She turns, waving her basting brush at me. “God-a judges you!”
Oh, Nonna. If only you knew.
“Not as much as he judges you for enforcing your will onto me.”
She gasps, clasping her hand to her throat and clawing at her pearls. “Noella! Si prende quella schiena!”
“I ain’t takin’ that back!” My twang kind of stands out when I’m angry. “God is happy for me to shoot Lucifer’s minions. He told me over wine and cupcakes.”
“Noelle,” Mom warns, but I hear the laughter in her voice.
Nonna gasps again and repeats her previous statement.
“Are you gonna stop tryna set me up with your boy toys?” I ask, leaning against the counter and sipping my wine.
“I take-a you to confession on Sunday!” she threatens, slamming the over door with gusto. “You can tell-a Father Luiz about your-a sins!”
“Oh, goodie. You should warn him it’ll need to be a private session.”
Her eyes bug. “You have-a sex outside marriage! I knew-a it!”
I roll my eyes. “Okay, Nonna, seriously. To do that, I’m gonna need a boyfriend. I don’t have one of those. You should talk to Devin about sex before marriage. Not your angelic, single granddaughter.”
She grips her pearls again. “Devin! He have-a sex?”
“He’s been with Amelia for five years. Of course he’s havin’ freakin’ sex!”
Mom puts her fingers in her ears. “La, la, la, la.”
“You should-a be more like-a Trent!” Nonna comes toward me. Brandishing that fucking basting brush. “Married, babies! Settled! No guns!”
“Trent has a gun!” I protest.
“He-a cop!”
“I’m a private investigator. I need a gun.”
“And it got-a your house-a broken into!”
Well, she does kind of a have a point there.
I look at Mom. “Where’s Dad? I can’t take this anymore.”
She smirks. “In his workshop. Cleanin’ his guns.”
“Thanks.” I grab my wine glass and make for the back door.
“I bet you wish you’d sided with me on the garlic bread now, huh?”
“Shut up.”
Forbidden. What did Drake mean when he said that he was a sucker for the forbidden?
Did he mean me? Because I’m pretty sure I don’t have a barbed-wire fence surrounding me. I mean, sure, he’s a close friend of all my brothers—probably Trent’s closest friend—but that isn’t a reason to be forbidden. We’re not freakin’ teenagers.
I can make out with whoever I want.
Not that I actually want to make out with Drake. I mean, he renders me almost catatonic before he makes his move, so I don’t actually have a choice about it. I just have to go with the flow. Like Jell-O.
Jesus. Now I’m putting sugar and Drake in the same thought train. I need to solve this murder, and soon if I want to retain any sanity. I’d really like to go back to unequivocally hating the man. It made my life much easier than what it is right now.
Because as nice as the random kissing thing is, he’s still an asshole.
An asshole who brings me cupcakes, granted, but so are my brothers.
“Brody just called,” Dad says as soon as I walk into the kitchen. “Daniel’s funeral is tomorrow.”
“Oh, it’s a happy week in Holly Woods,” I mumble, grabbing a mug down from the cupboard and putting it in the coffee machine. “Same place as Lena’s?”
“Yes. And he said to call him when you wake up.”
“Got it.” I set my phone on the counter, dial his number, and put it on speaker.
“Hello?”
“How’s my favorite brother?”
“How’s my least favorite sister?” he retorts.
“I’m your only sister, idiota.”
“Unfortunately,” he drawls, the sound of a car door closing echoing down the line. “You called just at the right time. I just got to the station.”
“Why did I need to call?”
“Dad told you about the funeral?”
“Yes. What’s up?”
“We think Lena might have been divorced from Dr. Gentry after all.”
I meet Dad’s eyes across the room, and he raises his eyebrow. “Don’t go anywhere. I’m coming down.” I hang up and slide my full coffee cup to Dad along with a travel mug and a sweet smile.
He shakes his head but uncaps the travel mug anyway, and I kiss his cheek as I run out of the kitchen and to the stairs.
I take them two at a time, the sound of my bare feet slapping against the bare wood sharp. Nonna opens her bedroom door just as I close mine, and I breathe a sigh of relief. No one approaches her before she’s had her coffee on a morning. It’s akin to approaching a hungry lioness and twerking.
How could Lena have been divorced?
I quickly shake the question out of my mind, lest I end up standing in the middle of the room and mulling over possible ideas instead of getting dressed and going to find out the real explanation. I dress as fast as I just ran up the stairs and apply the bare minimum of makeup. Reasoning that I’m going to the police station and don’t need my gun attached to me, I slip it into my purse and pull out my lace-up, military-style, heeled boots and tuck the bottoms of my jeans in.
Satisfied that I look halfway human, I brush my hair on the way out of the door.
“You can go home tonight! Your mom told me about Nonna’s grillin’.”
“Thanks, Dad.” I kiss his cheek and grab the travel cup full of my coffee. “I’ll get my things later.”
“I’ll be here,” he replies, waving as I close the door behind me.
I slide into my new car and set my purse on the passenger’s side, putting the travel cup in the center console in the cup holder. After a sip though. I need at least a tiny bit of caffeine running through my veins before I can be trusted with something as powerful as a damn car.
Unfortunately, in the car, my brain whirrs back to the fact that Lena could have been divorced. This case just keeps getting more and more fucked up. I could understand it in a city, maybe, where everyone is anonymous. You can hide anything in cities as long as you leave it there.
I know. I have plenty of secrets left in a big city.