home. Then, we’d been distracted by what had gone down with the baby being taken.
But as I watched the man walk around the restaurant, watched how he carried himself, how others responded to him, I picked up on the fact that my kid brother had changed.
Scratch that.
Dario hadn’t changed.
Dario was back.
There was a swagger in his step that I hadn’t seen in five damn years.
There was a smug fucking grin on his face as the cute servers approached him, offering him drinks or food or, God help him if Ma saw, themselves, and the bastard waved them all away.
He settled into one of the leather wingback chairs near the fireplace, his right wrist on the arm rest, the left holding a tumbler of whiskey. He took in everything around us—the crowd, our family, me, Maggie, the baby, Dante and Antonia drinking together at the bar, my boys and, especially, the clang of the bell over the door and the long-legged redhead that walked through it.
“Ah, Ava,” Ma said, walking right toward the woman with her arms open.
Around us, the crowd turned, their laughter dying as the woman entered the restaurant. Smiles froze on faces, eyebrows got lifted and moved in surprise.
The woman had been in town for months, but she’d kept to herself and hadn’t made any attempts to be friendly with anyone but the staff she hired to help run her bakery.
Except, of course, my men, who would only compliment her baked goods.
“So, this is her?” Maggie asked me, bringing the sweet smell of lilacs with her as she leaned in to whisper in my ear.
My grip stiffened on her thigh. I had to remind myself that I couldn’t take her right here in front of the whole fucking town in my folks’ restaurant. “I suppose it is.”
“You said she was tall.”
I glanced at the redhead, quirking my eyebrows at how Ma doted on her, how the woman and my mother hugged each other like they were old friends.
How my father grinned at her, kissing her hand as he wrapped his arm around my mother.
“And,” my woman continued, “you said she got under Dario’s skin.”
“Yeah. So he said. Why?”
Maggie nodded across the room, to where Dario had spent the past half hour schooling his expression behind a tumbler of whiskey. But there was no hiding what he thought of the redhead being here or our folks welcoming her.
“Madonna…”
My kid brother’s eyes went dark, steely and when Ma brought this Ava woman farther into the restaurant, introducing her to family, then to some of her friends, Dario stood, downing what remained of his drink, looking ready to pounce.
“Dimitri, he’s going to cause a scene, look at him.” Maggie sat up straighter, her hand clenching my wrist. “It will embarrass your mama.”
I shot a look toward my mother, then back to Dario, whose attention was on Ava. He marched toward her, his expression bunched up, his mouth drawn down. The composure he’d kept for the past weeks, that slick calm he’d always been able to maintain seemed to split apart at the seams. The closer he got toward the redhead and as Maggie’s grip squeezed harder, I realized she was right.
That asshole was about to embarrass our whole family in front of the town.
“Do something,” Maggie said, her voice a whisper.
I slipped a glance to her, loving her even more as she widened her eyes, and that panicked, worried expression moved across her face. She wasn’t a Carelli, but she understood what Dario embarrassing us would mean to our family.
“Okay, bella,” I said, kissing her temple before I stood. “Everyone,” I called, lifting my voice, my hands up to get the crowd’s attention.
My mother stopped speaking, her eyes rounding when I nodded to her.
“Everyone, please, give Dimitri your attention. He has something to say!” Dario stood behind her but stopped his approach toward the redhead when Ma spoke up. She nodded him back to his seat and waved Ava toward the table next to Mrs. Phillips.
Crisis averted, but now I had the room, and something needed to be said. Something I probably had been thinking about for two straight weeks but couldn’t find the motivation for until tonight.
Hundreds of eyes on me.
Waiting. Watching. Expecting.
Big damn gestures.
All women wanted them, right? At least, that’s what my sister claimed.
Hope mine didn’t make me look like an asshole.
“So, ah, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who came out tonight to wish me well and a…congratulate us on getting through…” I waved