Page 16 of Just For Me
I still didn’t believe in love at first sight, but I was now a firm believer in falling hard and fast. Sure, it would take a long time to build the kind of relationship I wanted, the kind my parents and my grandparents had, but there was no question in my mind that we would get there. Kat was my perfect match, and I was doing my damnedest to be hers, too.
Her eyes softened and she nodded slightly, letting me know she was doing okay. I’d told her if she felt at all uncomfortable, we’d make our excuses and leave, but she seemed to be genuinely enjoying herself. I’m certain the embarrassing stories they told, the ones involving me specifically, had something to do with that. I didn’t mind. I’d gladly sacrifice my pride if it eased some of her anxiety and made her smile like that.
“Super Boy?” she mouthed, and I could see her eyes sparkling.
I smiled and shrugged while my brothers snorted. What little boy doesn’t use his mamma’s fine linen tablecloth as a cape and run through the family restaurant in his Underoos?
I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.
“Looks likeNonnowas right again,” Val said. “So, when’s the big day? You are gonna let me do your hair, right? And Uncle Carmine can do the flowers. Uncle Al just got a great deal on a limo, too.”
The table went strangely silent. Kat looked at me, her expression now questioning (and maybe just a little panicked).
“Nice, Val,” Paulie muttered.
“What, you didn’t tell her?”
“Tell me what?” Kat asked.
“Nonno’s never wrong.” Val said matter-of-factly.
“Val, stop talking.” Shefinallyshut up but turned around and smirked at me.
“And?” Kat prompted.
“And,” Lucia continued, picking up the thread, “Nonnosaid you and Nicky were perfect for each other ages ago.”
“Did he now?”
I couldn’t read Kat’s expression, and that worried me. I opted for cautious honesty and nodded. “He did.”
We held each other’s gazes across the table, marginally aware that everyone else was watching, too. Then I saw it: the slightest quirk at the corner of her mouth.
“Well, he wasn’t wrong.”
Ramona squealed, and that quirk became a full-blown grin. Relief rushed through me with the force of a tidal wave, and I grinned back. “No,” I agreed, “he wasn’t wrong.”
Epilogue: Kat
“I’m sorry about that.”
Nick put his hand over mine as we drove back to my place. I’d seen the worry in his eyes when Valentina spilled the beans. Oddly enough, I wasn’t upset, not really. A little surprised, perhaps, but that’s all. Maybe it was because subconsciously, I’d felt the rightness of it. Mr. C’s declaration was really just a confirmation of what my heart was already telling me: this man was my future.
“I’m not,” I told him honestly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He laughed. “Tell you what? That my grandfather likes to play matchmaker? That he pulled me aside one day and said, ‘Nicky, I found the perfect woman for you’?”
I laughed, too. “He actually said that?”
“He did.”
“Is that why you started stalking me?” I teased.
“I was already stalking you,” he said, surprising me. “The first time I saw you wasn’t at the bookstore, Kat. It was in that little café on the ground floor of your office building. My brother Paulie has an office on the sixth floor, and I was meeting him for lunch. You were in the coffee line. You smiled and laughed at something the barista said, and... well, let’s just say I couldn’t take my eyes off of you. You, however, walked right past me without so much as a cursory glance.”
“The second time I saw you,” he said, cutting me off before I could comment, “was at the farmer’s market a few days later. I was helping my cousin Tony with his produce stand, and you stopped by and bought a bag of apples. You didn’t notice me, but you smiled at Tony and I wanted to punch him right in the face.”
“And thethirdtime was at my grandfather’s bookstore. That was three times in a week that our paths had crossed, and I began to think maybe fate was trying to tell me something. After you left that night, that’s whenNonnotold me that you were the woman for me, but by then, I already knew.”
