Page 82 of The Sweet Life

Gia had a feeling they wouldn’t be staying for dessert. On her way to the family table, she greeted several customers who were checking that she was all right. She obviously hadn’t been whisper-shouting as she had thought. But the majority of customers on Sunday were locals who were well acquainted with the Rosettis.

She’d noticed a slight uptick in Sunday reservations and had a feeling they were a result of people hearing they were reinstating their Sunday family dinner. They’d be disappointed tonight, she thought as she made her way to the back of the restaurant. They’d witnessed all the Rosetti drama they were going to get for one day.

While accepting her sisters’ hugs, she worked at hiding her disappointment that Flynn was noticeably absent from the table. Then her mother appeared with a picnic basket. “Go. He’s waiting for you on the beach.”

Her family and Flynn’s ushered her out the back door with shouts of good luck and some love-life advice. Gia had been wrong about not providing their customers with something else to talk about. But all thoughts about being the subject of tomorrow’s gossip emptied from her head when she spotted Flynn sitting on a blanket on the beach. She slipped off her heels, leaving them on the stairs to the family’s apartments, and after a quick hello to their customers eating on the deck, she walked down the stairs and across the beach to join him.

He came to his feet and took the picnic basket from her. “Your mom thought we’d like some privacy. Your sisters did too.” He gestured for her to sit.

She wondered if he’d gotten the same send-off she had. “I’m sorry I broke up with you over a text, Flynn,” she said as sheopened the picnic basket. “It wasn’t my finest moment. I saw you with Cami on the dock and jumped to the wrong conclusions. I should have given you a chance to explain.”

“Yeah, you should have.” He set a container of caprese skewers on the blanket. “I found the cake on the stairs. I knew what you’d seen and what you’d think, so I went to talk to you. By the time I got to your place, I’d gotten your text. I sat outside your apartment waiting for you.”

“I needed time to think. I needed time by myself.”

“Would it have killed you to send an update to your daughters? They were beside themselves with worry.”

“So I’ve been told. Funny how they don’t have the same problem keeping me updated with their lives. I’m lucky if I hear from them once a week.” She opened a container. It held spinach and Havarti paninis with an olive tapenade.

“You’re mad?”

“Yes, I’m mad. Earlier, when you came over to the table, you seemed like we were okay. But it doesn’t feel like we are so if you just want to rehash what happened and then break up with me, get it over with.” She tossed the container and crossed her arms, looking past the whitecapped waves rolling onto shore. In the distance, against the pink horizon, three sailboats raced across the water. “You didn’t call me. You didn’t text me.”

“No. I didn’t. I was angry and worried about you, and then I thought, given the way the girls reacted to us being together, maybe you were right and it was for the best. By day two, I called Jake. He had a friend track you down using your credit cards, so I knew where you were, and I knew you were safe.” He picked up a panini. “And then when you came home, youvisited with your daughters and your sisters, got yourself arrested, and again, I didn’t hear from you.” He ate his sandwich while looking out to sea.

“I thought about going to see you. I wanted to see you more than anything, Flynn. But I talked myself out of it. Aaron got into my head.” She told him what he’d said. Flynn’s eyes came to hers. He was angry, and she thought Aaron was lucky he’d left town. “I was trying to protect my heart.”

“A broken heart is the price we pay for living and loving, Gia. Sometimes you have to decide if it’s worth loving someone if the alternative was not loving them at all.”

“What would you say if I said I wanted to take the risk, with you?” She moved the containers and the picnic basket out of the way.

He lifted her onto his lap. “I’d say I’d do my best to make sure you never regret being brave enough to take a chance on me.”

“What would you say if I told you I loved you?”

“I’d say it took you long enough to realize it. I fell in love with you the day I walked into La Dolce Vita and you smiled at me.” He glanced over his shoulder and grinned. “Now you better kiss me so they can go and eat.”

She looked to see her family and Flynn’s standing on the deck, and she shook her head. “Are you sure you’re ready for this? I’m a package deal, you know.”

“I’m ready for anything as long as I’ve got you by my side,” he said. Then he kissed her to the cheers of their families.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Seriously, she can’t be sleeping. No one could sleep through that noise,” a woman said over the loud bleating of a foghorn, ensuring that her prediction came true.

Sage tried waving her hand to get the woman to stop talking and the foghorn to stop bleating but apparently her body parts weren’t taking orders from her brain.

“Renata, you know she can sleep through anything.”

“I guess I forgot. She rarely does it anymore.”

The conversation sounded weirdly familiar, but Sage’s entire body was numb, including her eyes, and she couldn’t see where she was or who was talking. The name sounded familiar and so did the voices, especially the loud one.

“Jake isn’t going to be happy she’s falling back into her old pattern of work, work, work.”

She knew that voice now.Work, work, workgave her away. Renata probably would rat her out to Jake. She had a big, annoying crush on him. Sage understood why. She loved the man, but he was still annoyingly bossy when it came to her work-life balance. If he only knew how much better she was.

“But we’re not going to tell him, are we? Repeat after me, Sage is our boss, and we are loyal to her.”

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