that would only keep them in front of the restaurant longer.
“Listen,” Dom said, keeping his voice low, and backing her up from the center of the fray. “Why don’t you go inside? Put the bags down. Maybe ask Carlo to come get this box. Let me see what I can work out with this schmuck, huh?”
Sara was about to tell him she didn’t need to be rescued, but then she saw the second person in the truck. A woman who was staring at Dom as if she’d like to order him for lunch.
“Fine. But if he doesn’t budge, I’m going to look up every single possible violation I can call on this guy and I’m going to make him sorry as hell.”
“Good idea. Now go. We’ll get this straightened out.”
With one last vicious glare at the guy and his Dom-struck sidekick, Sara walked inside the restaurant, desperately wanting to drag the growing line of customers behind her. Instead of going to the kitchen, though, she stood at the window. Watching.
A moment later, Jeannette was at her side. “Look at the coglioni on that guy. He keeps this up, it’s gonna put a big dent in the week’s revenue.”
“My parents are on their first vacation in forever, and he decides to stake a claim outside our door.”
Jeannette took one of the bags, then turned around to the counter and shouted for Carlo. One of the other waitresses, Natalie, was taking phone orders.
“What’s Dom doing?” Jeannette asked.
“Trying to work something out. Notice the woman who can’t take her eyes from him.”
“That could work,” Jeannette said.
“Maybe.”
Carlo rushed past them, out the door, took the box from Dom as if they’d planned the maneuver, then hurried back inside.
Dom didn’t even lose a step. For a minute it looked as if the food truck owner was going to do something drastic. In fact, he flicked something at Dom, who stepped aside, shook his head, then kept on talking, looking calm as could be, as if nothing had happened.
Not two minutes later, the owner, the woman, Dom and several customers were all laughing.
Sara exchanged a look with Jeannette, who just shrugged. Then they looked back at the silent show. A few more words, a nod, followed by a handshake.
A goddamn handshake?
Several people at the end of the line peeled away to follow Dom, who held the door open for them. They all seemed pleased to be following their new guru, and surprisingly, she didn’t recognize a single person.
Jeannette hustled to get behind the counter, where they really needed Sara, but she couldn’t leave yet.
“Okay. We’ve settled things, and Rocky won’t be coming back to this spot again.”
“Rocky?”
“I gave him a tip on a better location,” Dom said, shrugging.
The relief was instantaneous but riding on its back was a slice of resentment that Mr. Big Shot was able to swoop in and save the day. He just fixed everything with his smile and that ridiculous charisma. Must be swell to be Dominic Paladino.
“Wait,” he said. “Did I do something wrong?”
Well, no, how could he?
She closed her eyes, ashamed that she’d let anything other than gratitude show. That she’d lost her temper in front of him. In front of anyone. And that in the end, the biggest shame of her life—the article she’d written—was but a fleeting memory for him. Even though it had haunted her for years.
“No,” she said, pulling it together. “You haven’t done anything wrong. I’m very grateful this mess won’t have to trouble my parents when they get back. Thank you.”
“It wasn’t a problem,” he said, but the tone in his voice had changed. So had the way he was looking at her.
She didn’t blame him. Especially when she noticed that his shirt had a big splotch of tomato sauce on the sleeve. The shirt he was supposed to wear to his interview.
“Next five pizzas are on the house,” she said, trying to ease the strain.
“I didn’t do it for the pizzas,” he said, turning to leave.
She caught his arm. That big, muscular arm that tensed even more beneath her hand. “I mean it,” she said. “What you did was really kind.”
“No sweat,” he said, although the easy camaraderie they’d had on their walk had vanished as if it had never existed.
FOR THE FIRST time Dom could remember, he’d shown up early for a family dinner. He stood at the living room window of the home he’d grown up in, the same house where his dad had been raised, and where Dom’s granddad and great-granddad had been born. The place was a lot bigger now. A room for Nonna, a den with an elaborate sound system, a small backyard where his mom could grow her tomatoes. The patio off the dining room where his father was King of the Grill. And of course their remodeled chef’s kitchen—the beating heart of the Paladino family.
Tonight wouldn’t be a typical meal. They were going to have an important meeting, which wasn’t something that happened often. The last time they’d met in an official capacity had been to discuss Tony taking over the business after their dad’s second heart attack. The agenda this evening was to discuss the Paladino Trust. Find a way to make it more relevant to the massive changes Little Italy had undergone since the trust’s inception several generations ago.
It had been an inspired idea, one that had been woven into their lives. In a nutshell, the trust was the original rent control, established years before the government had settled on a similar system. But the goal, which had been to help keep the once tight-knit immigrant community close, affordable, safe and thriving, had eroded year by year as the world had evolved. Now, Little Italy was more of an idea than a place: a few blocks, a few stores, a few dozen families who’d descended from the first immigrants was all that remained.
He couldn’t see Moretti’s three blocks down but that didn’t stop his thoughts from going to Sara. Man, had she changed, and not just physically. She’d proven she had a fire inside her back in school when she’d taken the whole faculty to task. Everyone had been stunned by her fierce eloquence, but no one had looked more shocked than Sara herself.
After that day she’d faded into the background again. Although that might have been a reflection of his busy senior year. She’d sure gotten his attention two months later when she’d implied he was the most egregious example of why high school athletics was a complete waste of time and money. That op-ed piece, filled with inflammatory rhetoric, had pissed off a lot more people than him.
Three weeks after that he’d graduated and hadn’t thought about her at all. Before going off to college he’d eaten at Moretti’s a few times. But Sara had been nowhere in sight.
He pictured her at the order window of the Spicy Meatball, struggling to keep her temper to a controlled roar. Knowing what she could have done without the need for discretion, he respected her effort.
What he didn’t understand was her reaction to his assistance. He hadn’t been trying to dis her in any way; surely she must have known that. He’d just wanted to ease the situation, turn the argument into a win. There was no reason for her to have been so prickly about it.
Right in the middle of his interview, he’d thought about the resentful way she’d looked at him when he told her about the solution. He’d snapped out of it quickly, but damn. He couldn’t afford to have that kind of distraction.
He’d left Edelman with the promise of a follow-up interview, but he didn’t have enough of a feel for the big PR firm to know if he’d move