Page 28 of My Fearless Fake Fling

Eight:

Before driving us back to his apartment, he turned down streets I didn’t recognize in a section of the city I’d never been too. An older section with a few broken-out streetlamps, boarded-up windows, uneven, cracked sidewalks, and the sour aroma of trash filled the cab of the truck.

I wrinkled my nose. “Uh, Len… I think you took a wrong turn.”

“You said you wanted pizza. I’m getting pizza.” He clicked on his blinker and turned one more right.

“I said I wantedpizza. Notsalmonella.”

“Whoa, slow down there, Ms. Judgy Judgerson. Books. Covers. Ring any bells?”

“I judgeallmy books by their covers. Cover, back blurb, first page. In that order.”

He snickered as he drove one car length past an open spot, cut the wheel hard, and backed in. He pulled forward to straighten the frontend out and cut the engine. Len even made parallel parking look easy.

We parked across the street from a storefront with an awning straight out of the 1940s. Red-and-white awning with the wordNapoliwritten in green font.

“I’ve been coming here for years,” he said. “They make the best pizza anywhere, and I’ve been all over the world.”

“That’s high praise.” I slung my purse around my shoulders and opened the door because if he thought he was leaving me to sit out here, he was cracked in the head.

Len met me around the truck and took my hand. We looked both ways before crossing, though ours was the only car in sight.

A bell dinged when he pulled open the door and so much better than the trash smell outside, we were hit with the pungent, tangy aroma of onion, oregano, and parmesan. Oddly enough, no garlic.

“Leno,” the little old man behind the counter greeted Len. He couldn’t be more than 5’1" if just and he had class one, Shar-Pei puppy-level wrinkles over his head, face, and neck. So much that the skin drooped over his eyes so I wasn’t sure how he actually saw anything. Although totally bald with liver spots, he had the thickest salt-and-pepper eyebrows probably of any human alive.

“Hey, Mr. Napolitano,” said Len. “How are you?”

“You bring pretty girl to see me?” The old man gestured to me with his hands but seemed to put his whole body into it.

We walked up to the counter where Len’s hand moved from mine to around my waist. “Yeah, this is my girl, Kami.”

“Your girl?Mama Mia.” The old man kissed his fingers and shot them up in the air like he was sending a kiss to heaven while speaking some super-fast unintelligible (to me) Italian. “You never bring girl.Rita,” he called then to someone not in the room with us. “Come. Leno brought his girl.”

A thin woman with silver hair walked from the back, wiping her hands on her apron. Her olive skin tone and fine wrinkles made her appear fifty years younger than the man. “What you mean he broughta girl?”

She turned to look at Len, then cut her eyes to me. “So pretty. Leno, she’ll give you beautiful bambinos. I can tell.” And she winked at him.

Beautiful bambinos?Awkward…

Again the blush crept over my cheeks. I felt the burn even as I wanted to laugh. If she only knew how fake this whole thing was.

But I went along with it. After all, I’d never see these people again.

“Does this girl mean you stay instead of taking that boat out?”

“Nope. She’s going with me.” Len squeezed my waist and dropped a kiss to the top of my head for effect.

It worked. The effect from his little kisses and touches mademestart to believe it was real. And I knew the truth.

Not knowing what else to do, I held my hand out. “Hi, I’m Kami.”

The little old man, or Mr. Napolitano, shook my hand, gripping it firmly. “So good to meet you,bella.”

“It’s Kami, actually,” I corrected him.

“No, fearless…” said Len. “‘Bella’ means ‘beautiful’ in Italian.”

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