Page 55 of The Love Scam
“Doingwhat?”
“—Elena and I will work on inventory and then have a meeting with the chairman.” Sofia, he had been told on the drive over, had spent the night at Teresa’s shelter and was keeping an eye on the kids, as she often did. She was the youngest of Delaney’s little group, and Rake had assumed her days on the street weren’t as far behind her as the others’ were. Teresa’s third in command had also been plucked from the streets, and helped run the place. If he’d known baby-sitting might have let him sleep in, he would have—no. Not if it meant doing charity without Delaney. And Lillith assured him between slurps of cocoa that she’d help him do whatever it was. “Okay?”
“’Kay. Thanks for letting me finish charging my phone. When we get back tonight, I’ll try to reach out to Blake again.”
“Great!”
“That sounded suspiciously cheerful. So eager to get rid of me?” he teased.Please don’t say yes.
“No. I sort of can’t wait to see what Blake sends you next,” she admitted with a guilty smile.
“That makes one of us.” Rake drank more coffee and groaned. “He’d better be sane this time, that’s all I have to sayabout it. Um, Teresa, not to look a gift barista in the mouth, but why are there five tablespoons of sugar in my cappuccino?”
“Whoa,” from Lillith, who now had a tiny chocolate mustache, which was so friggin’ adorable, he wasn’t going to tell her.
“Aw, man.” Delaney shook her head.
Elena turned around to scold Teresa, finishing with “You will succumb to diabetes!” which, for some reason, Teresa found hilarious.
“Sono fiducioso di morte violenta sarà la mia fine. Diabete? Ha!”
Rake said nothing; he had noticed that Europeans tended to (rightly) assume most tourists weren’t fluent. Even though the other women knew he could speak Italian, they kept forgetting. And so he didn’t comment when Teresa explained that she knew she’d die a violent death, something sudden, violent, and unrelated to diabetes. Given how the others (except Delaney, who was bent over her laptop, and Lillith, who didn’t comment) agreed, he assumed they all shared the same outlook.
She drove the van right up to the former church, which, like every other building in Venice, looked like it had been built in the eleventh century, remodeled in the fifteenth, then benignly neglected ever since. It was near the St. Mark’s clock tower which, when it wasn’t so early, he appreciated as a beautiful sight. The area was mostly deserted, because Venetians were a clever and resourceful people who understood that 5:00A.M.is still bedtime. And the tourists didn’t have a clue about anything, so they were still in bed, too. (Lucky bastards.)
He walked past three pillars to the entrance, Delaney andthe others leading the way, and then they led him straight to the depths of hell: the kitchen of San Basso.
Colomba di Pasquawas a terrible fruitcakesque confection people were forced to eat at Easter. Not only that: It was tradition togivethem at Easter. What kind of deep loathing does someone harbor to give a loved one a dense terrible cake studded with orange peel?
“It’s the garbage of the orange!” he cried, then had a coughing fit when he accidentally inhaled some flour. “It’s not a gift, it’s a prank! Something you do to someone you don’t like, every single year.It is not dessert!”
He was floured from eyebrows to knees, despite the apron Delaney had insisted on tying on him. Which was fine. He was a manly man and not threatened by any apron, however frilly, and better yetoh my God Delaney’d had her arms around him while she tied it in back!Their faces had been mere inches apart! And when her pretty wide mouth opened, he wondered,Oh God what is she going to saaaay?
“Try not to hurt yourself. There’s a lot of sharp things in here.”
“Right,” he replied, because honest to God, it was all he could think of. “Thanks for the tip. No picking up knives with my mouth.” This made Lillith laugh so hard, she almost fell off her stool.
“Just don’t be a dumbass,” she said, already on her way to the meeting. “You’ll be fine.”
“Hey! I don’t wake you up in the wee hours and give you impossible tasks and then demand you change your entire personality!” he shouted after her.
“Shut up, please,” she said in a tone he was starting to love. From Delaney, that was almost “Kiss me, you fool.”
Man, do I wish she’d kiss this fool.
Then she callously abandoned him—them—to their fate, and for the first time in his life, he regretted learning Italian. It meant he was reading the recipe right. He really did have to peel dozens of oranges. He really did have to scoop up cup after cup after cup of disgusting dried fruit. He really did need a buttload of almonds, the most disgusting of all nuts, and tube after tube of almond paste, the most disgusting of all pastes. He’d cracked so many eggs, his fingers were numb as well as stained orange. He was sticky and he stank and flour was fucking everywhere and he’d been at it forhours.
“It’s been forty-five minutes.” From Lillith, who looked adorable in her giant apron, and who was as flour-splashed and orange-stained as he was.
“Don’t you hate this? Why aren’t you sulking because you can’t stare at a screen? Any screen?”
“I like you” was the simple reply. “And if you’re my dad, we have to get to know each other.”
Thatgave him pause. “Right,” he replied carefully. “But if I’m not—”
“Then I’m no worse off than I was before.”
“If you don’t mind my asking—”
