House of Payne: Rude (30 page)

EPILOGUE

Four months later

“This party is off. The. Hook.” Adam Daresey danced by with his wife Tonya, while a multicolored light ball flashed over the dance floor. The faceted glass ceiling of The Crystal Gardens displayed a cloudless night sky. Beneath the sparkling glass canopy, sheets of string white lights, strategically placed spotlights and three rotating, multicolored disco balls set up a scene that was pure magic.

The anniversary party’s theme, A Honeymoon in Italy, was a huge success, with the partygoers helping the theme along by donning Venetian-style masquerade masks to match their glittering attire. Adam wore a Henry VIII-style round flat cap, complete with white feather detailing on the brim and a black and gold half-mask attached. His wife Tonya wore a golden sunray crown that flowed into a mask that went all the way down past her nose and came to bejeweled points at either side of her exposed mouth. A month ago it had been a full Venetian mask, but after spending five minutes in it to test it out, she’d had such a bad claustrophobic attack she’d taken a hacksaw to the mouth area. Then she’d had to call Sass, Scout and Frankie over for a mojito break to recover fully.

Sass was proud to say that they’d all been more than happy to offer their immediate and unconditional support.

“Glad you guys are having a good time.” In a simple black eye mask that tied in the back, Rude held her close while shooting Tonya and Adam a smile. It had been a battle to get him into even that much of a mask, but once Scout had decided it would be an essential part of the party, he’d had to be a good sport and go along with it like everyone else.

Once Scout had taken over the party-planning duties—with the most difficult hurdles of a theme, menu and venue having already been taken care of—things had moved along quickly. Tuscany was represented in the extensive wine-tasting bar that ran along one side of the Gardens. A Lamborghini car driving simulator had been set up for people of all ages near the area dubbed “Little Italy” for the children. Younger partiers got to make their own cookie pizzas, try their hand and tossing pizza dough and were taking turns at going through operatic scales at a mini karaoke stage set up just for them. And if that wasn’t enough to keep them occupied, there was an open gelato bar, and complimentary amusement ride tickets had been given to the parents, if they wished to ride Navy Pier’s famous Ferris wheel, swing ride, or carousel.

The real operatic highlight had already occurred earlier that evening. Scout had booked a young up-and-coming operatic tenor currently going to school at Chicago’s College of Performing Arts, and all she’d had to do was twist Payne’s arm to personally give the kid a tattoo, paid for by Scout. The young man had sung Papa Bolo’s favorite song from
Madama Butterfly
, and when he’d finished
M’appari
, Papa Bolo had been wiping his eyes while Mama Coco hugged his hand to her heart.

As always, the mural of a bare-branched tree painted on plain white paper was there, covering an interior wall. Three tables had been set up nearby, and on each table a bowl of finger paint sat on top, along with rolls of paper towels and baby wipes. Each paint color was different, and the sign on the tables displayed which color belonged to whom. This year, biological and married Panuzzi family members were a deep purple; their former foster children—the strays—were a bright neon green; friends of the family were yellow. Each person attending the party was asked to leave their handprint as a “leaf” somewhere on the large family tree to record their place in the world that Papa Bolo and Mama Coco had built together over the decades. It was one of Sass’s favorite traditions, and she loved how the tree “grew” with each passing year.

It had been the first thing she wanted to do when the party officially started, but Rude had forestalled her, instead promising her they’d do it together later on. And while they had done a lot of the party’s attractions—from kissing under the mock-up of Venice’s Bridge of Sighs while in a gondola at the photo booth, to posting a video under the hashtag
BoloNCoco4Ever
to be displayed on the jumbo screen that had been rented, to enjoying the wine-tasting bar a bit too much—they still hadn’t gotten to the Panuzzi family tree.

“I think everyone’s enjoying themselves.” Swaying to the romantic crooning of Dean Martin’s “Buona Sera,” Sass barely felt her feet touching the ground as she smiled up at Rude. “I hope you are too. This is your first anniversary party, after all.”

“A hundred drunk family members packed into one place? How could I not be happy?” Grinning down at her, his arm tightened at the small of her back and lowered his brow to hers. “And I finally got you to dance with me. Thanks for not telling me to piss off this time around.”

Ugh, she’d never live that down. “I didn’t tell you to piss off.”

“In so many words you did.”

“Do you want to keep dancing with me?”

“Okay, okay.” With a chuckle, he brushed his mouth against hers, and the magic unfurled as it always did when he kissed her. The sweep of his tongue had her surrendering entirely, and she was just letting go of all thought to propriety when they got bumped. She blinked as they parted, trying to figure out how they could have been bumped when they were the only two people in the universe.

“You hear this song?” Dancing with his wife, Papa Bolo pointed to the speakers overhead. Since both he and Mama Coco wore glasses, they’d given a pass on wearing masks, though Mama Coco had a half mask designed like a cat pushed up on her forehead. “This was the very song I used to propose to your mother, can you believe it? And here we are dancing to it all this time later. Quick, check my pulse. I think I’ve died and gone to heaven.”

“I didn’t know that.” Rude raised a brow, looking surprised. “I thought ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You’ by Frankie Valli was your song.”

“That’s just the sentimental favorite.
This
song was perfect for a proposal. Even talks about getting a ring and putting it on her finger. Beyonc
é might be all that, but that young lady wasn’t the first to put that thought to music.”

Sass was impressed Papa Bolo even knew about that song. “Did you plan for this song to play when you proposed, or did it just sort of spontaneously happen?”

“Sweetie, it was so romantic, I remember it like it was yesterday.” Holding onto her husband’s shoulders and more than a little tipsy after sampling her way through the wine-tasting bar—twice—Mama Coco smiled mistily at them. “There we were in the aisles of Giancarlo’s Deli, squabbling over what sort of meat should be used in a carbonara—”

“Guanciale,” Sass and Papa Bolo said in unison.

“Jesus,” Rude muttered while Mama Coco rolled her eyes.

“Bolo, look what you’ve done, infecting our Sass with your carbonara craziness,” Mama Coco scolded while Sass grinned at her former foster father. “Anyway, there we were, squabbling over how wrong he was—because really, a nice pancetta works just fine—when suddenly he grabs my hand, brings it to his lips and says, ‘this song, it was meant to be playing at just this moment, sweetheart. It must be fate.’ I thought he’d lost his damn mind.”

“Aww.” Sass smiled, picturing it. “That sounds so romantic.”

“It gets better. He then got down on one knee, right there in the middle of the store, and sang along with the lyrics—
by the little jewelry shop we’ll stop and linger, while I buy a wedding ring for your finger
. I almost fainted. The man behind the deli meats counter began to applaud. Then he gave us free samples. It was a beautiful proposal.”

“What can I say, I’m a hopeless romantic, like my father before me,” Papa Bolo confided. “Perfect proposals come naturally to the Panuzzi men. He proposed to my mother while they were cleaning fish.”

“Oh, Bolo.” Giggling like a girl, Mama Coco gave his arm a playful swat. “When a man proposes, it’s always perfect in the woman’s mind, because there’s love there. Love makes everything perfect.”

“I think that might be true,” Sass murmured as her former foster parents danced away, still laughing at each other. “My life has never been as perfect as it has been since the night you showed up with Chinese food and kissed me stupid.”

“Kissed you stupid, huh?” A wicked smile curled his mouth. “Damn, I’m good.”

Hell yes, he was. “And to think I almost didn’t let you in.”

“That wouldn’t have stopped me. Haven’t you learned by now that I’m unstoppable once I’ve made up my mind when it comes to you?”

Oh, she’d learned. When she’d turned herself inside-out getting her latest cookbook ready for publication, he’d been supportive and patient… until he’d kidnapped her for a weekend and taken her to the Peninsula Hotel in the heart of Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. Once there, her protests vanished as she’d been treated to a salt-and-oil de-stressing scrub at the elite hotel’s in-house spa. Then she and Rude enjoyed a deep-tissue couples’ massage that lasted an hour, followed by five-star cuisine served to her in bed and with his fingers.

He’d then made sure she slept like a baby by giving her three of what had to be the most spectacular orgasms in the history of that hotel.

When Rude wanted her to relax, he found ways to make it happen.

Strangely enough, she was totally okay with that.

Despite his determination to not allow her to work herself to death, she’d gotten the cookbook manuscript in under a self-imposed deadline, and she was proud of how
Sass-Kicking Healthy Family Recipes
had turned out. Her editor felt the same, even going so far as to advance its publication date to get it out for the New Year and the resolutions that came with it.

That had shocked Sass. Usually the publication process dragged on for months, if not years, but just when she needed the book to be fast-tracked, it was. As much as she wanted to believe it was an amazing stroke of luck, she suspected her father had had some sort of say in getting her cookbook to the front of the publication line.

Considering that they were all trying to beat the clock, she couldn’t find it in her heart to resent the interference.

Her editor was also impressed with the personal touches sprinkled throughout the book, including the ridiculous picture of her teenaged self, Scout, Tonya and Rude in front of Mama Coco and Papa Bolo’s new car—with only the car looking happy about it. Within the accompanying text, she’d pointed out that the sour-faced boy with arms folded across his chest had grown up to be the love of her life. Moral of that particular story—it was never a good idea to believe first impressions were the only impressions that mattered.

For his part, Rude still wanted to burn the picture.

She’d also received a couple more photos from her father. Like the first one, they were old black-and-white ones that he said no one had seen and therefore were safe for her to use without running the risk of identifying herself as his child and, sadly, putting a target on her back. One was when her father had been a small boy, tasting something his mother was spooning into his mouth, and another of his mother, when she was much older, with iron gray hair. All three of her grandmother’s photos had been included in the cookbook, along with several of her recipes and amusing anecdotes about those dishes that her father had shared.

She had been able to see Borysko Vitaliev a handful of times since their first meeting, and only on his terms. He’d apologized for this and insisted that if she ever had any need to get in touch with him, she could do so by contacting Polo Scorpeone. But her father was determined to keep such a profound distance that she’d begun to think that once he’d met her, Borysko Vitaliev had decided he was done with her.

That had hurt. She’d had no idea how family relationships were supposed to work, but she was pretty sure they weren’t supposed to meet once, then never acknowledge each other’s existence again. Rude, however, had pointed out that considering how many enemies Borysko undoubtedly had, his caution was probably a good thing.

That was pretty much what her father had explained during their second meeting, which took place a week after Thanksgiving at their apartment. She had been getting sugar cookies out of the oven while Rude cussed the crookedness of the tree in its stand, when a knock on the door sounded. They’d looked to each other in surprise; no buzzer from downstairs had sounded, so they hadn’t been expecting anyone. Rude had answered, and as he swung the door open, she’d almost dropped the baking sheet she held when Borysko and Polo Scorpeone strolled through.

That was when she’d received the extra photos and what seemed to be a carefully worded explanation of why he had to be so circumspect in meeting with her. Basically it had boiled down to it being a matter of her “own safety.”

Since she didn’t know what sort of dangers lurked in his life—and seriously didn’t want to—she followed his lead and lowered her expectations. It wasn’t perfect, but it was still more than most people who were raised within the foster care system ever had. Better yet, since Rude seemed relieved he didn’t have to battle Borysko to put her safety first, he was downright tickled with the arrangement. He’d even invited them to stay for cookies and cocoa while he wrestled with the tree. In the end, she wound up puttering around the sweet-smelling kitchen, making another batch of cookies and serving up thick hot chocolate while the three men gave a group effort—that failed—in putting up a straight Christmas tree.