Filed to story: Submitting to My Bestie’s Daddy Read Online >>???
“Wouldn’t be good.” She doodled a small flower on the edge of the page. “How’d he take it?”
I huffed out a breath. “Gio-ly. He has a ‘bad feeling’ and that definitely didn’t improve when I mentioned the mob thing. But he agreed to back off for my sake.”
Dahlia nodded slowly, dotting a yellow middle onto her flower. The silence dragged between us as Elio mixed red and green into a muddy brown. I picked up the paintbrush I’d brought out for myself, stole a little of the multicolored white, and began sketching Dahlia’s profile onto the page.
After another few moments, I started to go insane.
“Well?” I asked. “What do you think?”
She smiled a little sadly. “I was thinking I didn’t know if I should get a say about your dad because mine was always around.”
My heart warmed, and I would have hugged Dahlia were there not several feet of wet butcher paper and a sticky toddler between us.
“I want your opinion.” I smiled. “You’ve got seniority.”
Her smile evened out into something more pleased, then dropped away as she shrugged.
“I think you can’t know if he’s got some sinister intention”—she wiggled her fingers like a witch in a movie—“until he does something. Just look at Elena. Both of you did research out the wazoo, but that can’t accommodate for flukes of human nature. Somebody can be the best person in the world on paper and still screw you, and vice versa.”
I took a deep breath and let her words wash over me. She was right, of course. Perhaps that was why I chafed against Gio’s surveillance habit so much; there was never a way to know what was truly going on in someone’s head, no matter how many secret pictures you took of them. Sal either earnestly intended to have a relationship with me, or he didn’t. My only role was to let him try, if he wanted to.
“The only thing I’ll say,” Dahlia said suddenly, “is that it is a little weird he showed up kind of right after you and Gio got married.”
Instinctively, I shook my head. “It’s been over two years since then. That’s not right after.”
She shrugged. “Mob time is different than real time. With how tight-lipped Gio kept the ceremony, it kind of is. You already lived here, already shared a room. Anybody watching would have to notice the ring to figure it out, or someone finally talked.”
I swallowed down the defenses leaping to my lips and forced myself to hear her. The wedding was so long ago in real time, as Dahlia put it, that I hadn’t even considered it might’ve been on Salvatore’s radar. Honestly, in my paranoid moments, I was more worried Elio’s birthday had been the trigger. But if she was right about mob time, it could definitely be related.
“Maybe,” I said. “But maybe that’s just how he found me. Like, maybe he found the marriage certificate, or he did stumble across a caterer in his search.” I cast my mind back. “I’m pretty sure we had a few from America, and he mentioned he was looking at ex-pats.”
Dahlia carefully traced a stem under her flower. “I mean, that’s definitely an option.”
Her profile took on an angrier look. “But you don’t think so.”
She sighed. “I don’t know! And I don’t think anyone can. It just sounds like kind of a weird coincidence to me.”
I started a new painting, of Elio grinning with paint-spattered teeth. “What would you do, in my place?”
“I’d trust my gut,” she answered simply.
Elio lunged over her to reach the yellow on her far side, smearing paint on her pants and ruining the leaf she was adding to her stem. She put her hands in the air, laughing helplessly, and I lifted Elio off her lap.
“We talked about asking for things you want,” I told him seriously.
He pouted. “Lello.”
“I know Aunt Dally took the yellow. But you should’ve said, Aunt Dally, can I have the yellow, instead of making a big mess.”
He kicked his feet, trying to wriggle out of my arms. “Pay! Pay!”
I shook my head. “Not until you ask Aunt Dally nicely.”
He scrunched up his face. I positioned him on my lap, facing Dahlia, who’d begun scrubbing at the stains on her pants.
“Lello, Dally?” Elio burbled.
She grinned and handed him the bowl. “Why, of course, Elio. Thank you so much for asking.”
He snatched the bowl out of her hands and settled on the paper in front of me. I carded my fingers through his hair.
Could I really trust my gut? I’d been so angry when Salvatore first showed up, but after only one dinner, I was planning to integrate him into my life, even let him meet my son. All of Gio’s careful lessons about keeping myself safe in a world that might view me as a pawn in a bigger game flew out of my head the moment he smiled and said he was glad Mom remarried.
Part of me would always be eight-year-old Olivia, standing at the front of the class alone on Bring Your Parents to School Day because Mom couldn’t get off work. The teacher still made me give a speech about Mom’s job, and I’d burst into tears in the middle of it before running off to hide in the reading corner. I’d ended up staring at a book called Nelly Gnu and Daddy Too and wishing desperately my father would walk in the door, scoop me in his arms, and lead me triumphantly back to the front of the class.
I looked at Dahlia. She’d found me after all the speeches were done and told me she asked her dad if he could be mine, too. James, being the man he was, said yes and carried me on his shoulders into the cafeteria afterward, while Dahlia bounced around his feet and declared that she got to go next.
No matter how kind that had been, it didn’t take the sting out of the humiliation, nor the power out of the desire. I’d spent my childhood wanting a dad so bad my heart still ached with it.
I couldn’t be unbiased about this.
Gio strode into the living room. “If it isn’t my little artists!”
He scooped Elio out of my lap and cradled him, heedless of his fine suit jacket. He looked so strong and safe and goddamn sexy holding our son. No matter what else happened, Elio would have the dad he deserved.
“Are you hungry?” he asked Dahlia and me once Elio was done screaming with laughter.
“God, starving,” Dahlia answered.
Gio and I laughed.
“I’ll tell them to get dinner started,” he said. “And throw this little ragamuffin in the bath before he becomes paint.”
He spun on his heel, pulling more peals of laughter from Elio, and marched right out the door he came in through.
I sighed and began gathering the paint bowls. My worries about Sal could wait. If Dahlia was right about anything, it was that I couldn’t solve this problem without time, or without Sal.
As I loaded the last of the paint bowls into my arms, my phone rang. I glanced at the floor, where it lay face-up, and read the caller ID.
Salvatore Montgomery.
*Olivia*
I froze, staring at my ringing phone. My heart leaped to my throat. I felt suddenly watched, anxious. I said I’d call him, right?
Dahlia raised an eyebrow. “Gonna answer?”
I took a deep breath. I was overthinking. It wasn’t weird for him to call. Most dads called their children all the time. Hell, Dahlia and James had a weekly call.
I set down the paint bowls, grabbed my phone, and pressed it to my ear with slightly shaking hands. Dahlia leaned forward, eyes glimmering with interest.
“Hi.” My voice sounded scratchy and strange, but it worked.
“Olivia!” His voice sounded warm and easy, like it had at dinner.
