Educating Gina
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Debbi Rawlins
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1
“NICE LEGS. Is she new?”
Mike Mason shook his head in disgust. “Have you heard anything I’ve said?”
His friend and co-worker, Robert Scarpetti, kept his attention on the tall blonde at the water cooler outside Mike’s office. “Maybe she’s a sales rep for one of our distributors. I haven’t seen her before, have you?”
“Rob.”
Robert looked at Mike. “I heard every word you said. You think California wine sales are up on the West Coast because gas prices are up and it costs too much to ship our wine across the country.” His gaze went back to the young woman who’d briefly stopped at their secretary’s desk. “Good. Cori should know who she is.”
“Dammit, Rob, if you weren’t the boss’s son, your ass would be fired by now.”
Robert slid off the edge of Mike’s desk and flashed him a big grin. “Not when I have you to make me look good.”
Mike grunted. He was tired and hungry after missing another lunch hour. Normally Robert didn’t annoy him. After fifteen years of friendship, he’d learned to take the overgrown kid with a grain of salt.
They’d met during their sophomore year in high school soon after Mike’s mother had started working for the Scarpetti family. The company distributed wine in the States from their vineyard in Italy and she had been their bookkeeper. The job had been a godsend. A recent layoff had left her unemployed and penniless. Mike’s father hadn’t been in the picture for ten years, ever since the bastard had walked out on them.
“Don’t worry, bro.” Robert clapped him on the back. “I’ll talk to Pop about looking into Daly City as a possible site for a distribution center. It’s near enough to San Francisco but not so high rent that it’ll inflate Pop’s blood pressure.”
“You checked it out already?”
Robert snorted. “Hey, I’m not a total waste. Want to go have a beer?”
“It’s only four-fifteen.”
“Your point being?”
Mike rubbed his eyes and loosened his tie. “I still have another couple of hours of work to finish.”
“Damn, Mike, I wish you’d relax. This company’s been around for over a hundred years. It ain’t going anywhere.”
“Right.” Easy for Robert to say. He was a Scarpetti. Automatically entitled to a secure position in the family business.
As great as they’d all been to Mike, giving him a job, even contributing to his college education after his mother’s death, he was still not one of them. It didn’t matter how hard he worked or how many holidays he spent at their table, he would never be a part of the inner circle.
Robert and Antonio would both deny it if questioned. Not that Mike would ever broach such a subject. He was grateful to be the only non-family member in management, and he knew he had a good chance to head the West Coast operation someday. They already trusted him to handle a major part of the business.
At twenty-eight, he had no student loans to pay off, and he made a damn good salary. More than most guys his age. No question he owed them big time. But he could never shake the need to belong, to have their unconditional acceptance.
“If you change your mind about that beer, Joe and I will be down at Angelo’s.” Robert stopped at the door, checking his reflection in the glass inset, and then pulled out his comb. “But I’ll only be there until five-thirty. I’ve got a date with Melanie tonight.”
A date. Mike couldn’t remember the last time he’d had one. He’d caught a couple of movies and late dinners with Daphne from the real-estate office upstairs last year. But she thought he was too work-obsessed, and when he’d called a couple of months ago, she told him she’d be washing her hair for the next year or so.
“Count me out today.” Mike opened his middle drawer looking for chips or anything to quiet his noisy stomach. “I still have the quarterly budget to work on.”
“Screw that. Work on it tomorrow.”
Mike found an open package of cheese crackers and sniffed it. Smelled okay to him. “I want you to review the figures before you go on vacation.”
An incoherent bellow interrupted them.
Mike looked up.
“Dammit, I gotta go.” Robert threw a disgusted glance down the hall. “The old man is hollering for me. How many times have I told him to use the intercom?”
“But you’re not in your office.”
“That’s not the point.” Robert stalked off, muttering under his breath.
Mike smiled as he tore into the cheese crackers. The Scarpettis sure were a boisterous bunch, especially Antonio. He’d left Italy thirty years ago but still clung to some of the old ways, personally and in business. Good thing the company was so well established and making a lot of money. But then again, there was a downside to their fairly easy success. No one seemed particularly interested in expanding or modernizing.
Except Mike. Once he got the West Coast operation into action, he knew he could double the company’s profits. Wouldn’t that make him nice and cozy with the family?
The blonde walked past his office again, this time slowing to smile at him. He nearly choked on the stale cracker. He had to admit, she did have great legs.
Hell with it being a long time since his last date. It had been a century since he’d gotten laid.
“JEEZ, POP, that damn cigar is stinking up your whole office. Put it out.” Robert waved a hand through the smoky air. “Disgusting.”
“This is my office. I do what I like in here. Sit down.”
Robert opened his father’s window, ignoring the humid August air that rushed in. Traffic noise from the street below the three-story Brooklyn office rose to compete with their conversation.
“All right, all right,” he grumbled over the din. “I’ll put out the cigar. Now close the damn window.”
Robert gladly shut out the warm air and noise. But that was the least of the problem. His father smoked too much, ate and drank to excess and stayed out late every night, a pattern that began after Robert’s mother died last year. It worried the hell out of him.
“What did you want, Pop?” He took a chair across the old scarred desk that belonged in a junkyard.
“Your cousin Gina is coming from Italy in three days.”
“Gina?” Robert frowned. He hadn’t seen her in eight years. Not since his last trip to Tuscany. She’d happened to be home from Catholic boarding school in Milan, shy, quiet, the perfect convent-school student. “Why?” Robert couldn’t imagine his timid cousin flying across the Atlantic alone. “Not that it won’t be nice to see her, but…how old is she now?”
“Twenty-three. She’s just finished all her schooling and your aunt says she’s been a little rebellious lately.” Antonio shrugged expansively and muttered something in Italian. Robert knew only a few choice words. “You know your aunt Sophia, the drama queen.”
“Is she coming alone?”
Antonio sighed and mopped his forehead. There seemed to be more and more of it each day, and Robert shuddered at the thought his hairline would one day recede like Pop’s.
“Unfortunately, yes, and she’ll be here for a month.”
Robert started to get a bad feeling. “I still don’t understand why Gina would come here.”
“To cut loose.” Antonio waved a hand. “That’s how you say it, right? You know, get the wildness out of her system.”
“Oh, brother.”
“What’s this?” Antonio scowled. “You suddenly don’t have time for family?”
“Me?”
“Who else should I ask to escort her around the city?”
“Oh, no.” Robert abruptly stood. “I’m on vacation starting this weekend, remember? I already paid for the cruise. Two weeks. Me, Melanie, lots of sun and piña coladas. I’m not baby-sitting anyone.”
“I will reimburse you for the cruise.”
“No way.” Robert backed toward the door. “Melanie pulled a lot of strings at work to get two weeks off.”
“Roberto.” Antonio slammed his palm on the desk. “This is family. This is important.”
“I understand.” But Melanie sure wouldn’t. “I’ll only be gone two weeks. Let Mike show her around in the meantime.”
“Mike?”
Robert mirrored his father’s expansive shrug. “He’s practically family, right?”
Antonio frowned. “Practically isn’t good enough. He’s a male, and she’s a female. You do the arithmetic.”
“Yeah, but we’re talking about Mike.”
“I’m talking about hormones or testosterone, or whatever those things are.” He shook his head in that stubborn way Robert hated. It meant the subject was closed. “You will pick Gina up at the airport and stick to her like glue. End of discussion.”
“Pop, don’t make me say something I’m gonna regret.”
Antonio narrowed his dark eyes. “What?”
Panic assailed Robert. He couldn’t cancel this trip. He and Melanie had been planning it for six months. What a damn mess! “It’s about Mike.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s confidential.”
“Roberto, I remind you.” He picked up the cigar he’d put out. “You brought up the subject.”
“You can’t tell anybody, Pop, including Mike. This is a very sensitive issue.”
“All right, already.”
Robert took a deep breath. He really hated involving Mike, but what else could he do? “It’s no problem if he accompanies Gina around the city.” He cleared his throat. For this lie, he would surely go straight to hell. Not to mention Mike was going to kill him. “Mike bats for the other team.”
Antonio’s bushy brows drew together. “What are you talking about?”
“You never heard that term before, Pop?”
“I know what it means.” He looked uncertain. “It means he could be an interior decorator or something. Am I right?”
Robert choked back a laugh. “I guess you could say that.”
“But Mike? I’ve known him half his life. He’s not that way.”
“When was the last time you saw him with a girl?”
Antonio toyed with the cigar as he thought for a moment. “Last year, Thanksgiving, he brought that short redhead to dinner.”
“That was three years ago, she was his neighbor’s daughter and she was fifteen.”
Antonio frowned. “How come he doesn’t look like one of those kind?”
“Pop, don’t be so old-fashioned. He doesn’t have to look any particular way. The important thing is, he can show Gina around the city without you worrying.”
Antonio chomped on the cigar, his bushy brows drawn together as he thought. “Okay, tell him to get in here.”
“OH, MAN.” Mike winced at the brass clock on his desk. She’d be here in less than an hour and he still had two reports to fill out for customs and a stack of invoices to approve. Of all the jobs the Scarpettis had asked of him, baby-sitting had to be the lowest. He’d almost told them to kiss off on this one, but then he had a staggering realization. The trust Antonio had placed in him was pretty damn remarkable.
Most of the older Scarpetti men were still old-fashioned, especially about their women, and that included Antonio. They liked their women pretty, obedient and chaste. Trusting Mike with the care of his niece was the closest Mike had ever gotten to the inner circle. In a way he felt as if he’d finally been given the keys to the house.
Too bad all his work wouldn’t resolve itself while he was playing nursemaid. He pushed the stack of invoices to the side to make room for his day planner. The way he figured it, he could still come to work early in the morning and late in the evening. Even though Antonio had instructed him that Gina was to have close supervision, Robert had given Mike a heads up on what to expect.
From what Rob remembered, Gina was a bookworm who was just as happy to spend her day in a library or sitting in front of a computer as she’d be sightseeing. She’d flip over the New York Library. Mike figured that alone would keep her busy for half her stay.
He studied his day planner, arranging and rearranging his priorities for the next week and listing them in the order they required his attention. The intercom rang, surprising him. The company’s two secretaries were at lunch, Robert was picking Gina up at the airport, and none of the other three Scarpettis working in the office bothered to use the device. When they wanted someone, they just opened their mouths and let it rip.
“Mike, Robert’s back with—” Clicks and static interrupted Antonio’s voice, and then the connection was back and he muttered, “How the hell do you work this thing?”
“Keep this button depressed.” Robert’s voice came through. “Go ahead, talk.”
“Mike?”
“I’m here.”
“Would you come to my office, please?” His abrupt change in tone, obviously for the benefit of his niece, had Mike grinning all the way down the hall.
It never failed to amaze him that the company ran profitably. Antonio was a shrewd enough businessman who kept close watch on the operation and the finances, but his refusal to modernize came at a cost. Robert understood that, but he wasn’t ambitious enough. If Mike could only get a foothold, he knew he could make some innovative changes that would make them all take notice.
Rob passed Mike as he left his father’s office and gave him an apologetic smile. Antonio’s door was already open, but Mike gave a brief courtesy knock before entering.
“Ah, here he is.” Antonio gestured him inside.
Antonio’s desk was the neatest Mike had ever seen it. Even the papers in the In box in the corner were in a tidy stack. The nude painting that usually hung on the wall behind the boss had been removed.
Mike cleared his throat to disguise a laugh. It was a perfectly tasteful and expensive painting. This Gina had to be some prim and proper—
Then he saw her. Sitting at Antonio’s conference table, bundled up in a big, bulky tan coat, her hair stuffed into an ugly knit cap. She must be roasting in this August heat, Mike thought.
“This is my niece, Gina Ferraro.” Antonio made a sweeping motion with his hand, urging Mike inside. “Mike is our distribution manager.”
“Hello,” she said in a throaty voice, her sultry accent wrapping around Mike like a cashmere blanket. She sent her uncle a quizzical look out of almond-shaped brown eyes. “I thought that was Roberto’s job.”
Antonio looked as surprised as Mike that she’d asked the question. But he only shrugged. “They share the title. But Mike does most of the work.”
Gina switched her attention back to him, but Mike was still reeling from Antonio’s surprising but astute remark. He hadn’t realized Antonio was aware of the situation.
“And now you have to baby-sit me,” she said, her lips pursing slightly in a pout as she extended her hand. “I have explained to everyone that I do not need an escort.”
“This is a big city, cara.” Antonio gave his niece a patient smile. The kind he reserved for nice Italian women from whom he expected obedience.
“Yes, Zio,” she said meekly, looking directly into Mike’s eyes as he accepted her hand. Small. Incredibly soft.
“It’s really no trouble. We have a terrific library in—”
Annoyance flickered in her eyes, and she withdrew her hand. “I have made a list of places I would like to visit.”
“Oh, okay. Sure.”
“Have you had lunch?” Antonio rubbed his meaty palms together. “Either of you?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Let’s all go to Angelo’s. You two can get better acquainted over a nice bowl of linguini and clams.”
Gina made a slight face, but then said, “Yes, Uncle.”
Mike stepped aside and waited until she stood. She was petite, about five-three in sensible black-laced shoes, the kind Mike’s grandmother used to wear.
Antonio gestured for them to precede him out the door. “After we eat, Mike will take you to my apartment so you can unpack and rest awhile. Later, if you aren’t too tired we’ll have dinner together. Okay?”
“Whatever you say, Uncle Antonio.”
“And take off that coat before you die of heatstroke and your mother makes meatballs out of me.”
She touched the top button with reluctant fingers and then slipped it free. By the time she got to the third one, the sudden tension that had coiled in Mike’s gut about knocked him over.
What the hell was wrong with him? He didn’t have time to analyze this odd reaction. She was on the last button.
She pulled the lapels apart and shrugged the bulky fabric off her shoulders, revealing an unattractive, shapeless black dress over hose that were too thick.
Mike let out a disappointed breath and took the coat from her. But the smile she gave him made his insides tighten again. It was the almond-shaped eyes and full lips. He was a sucker for both. Good thing she wasn’t his type. As if he had one after such a long dry spell.
They all got to the hall and Antonio bellowed for Robert to join them. So much for the intercom.
The restaurant was crowded for midafternoon, but Antonio’s regular table was reserved and they were waited on quickly. Everyone ordered pasta but Gina. She wanted a cheeseburger and fries.
As soon as she excused herself to go to the ladies’ room, Antonio chuckled. “A cheeseburger.” He muttered something in Italian. “This is the rebellion my sister is so worried about.”
Robert shook his head. “I kind of feel sorry for her.” His gaze followed Gina. “She’s twenty-three and she looks like forty dressed like that. Maybe Mike should take her shopping.”
Mike snorted. “Yeah, right.”
Antonio tore off a piece of bread from the loaf in the center of the table and then peered at him with open curiosity. “You guys know how to do that kind of stuff, right?”
“Pop.”
Mike caught Robert giving his father the eye. “What do you mean?”
Antonio shrugged and busied himself with slathering enough butter on his bread to clog an artery. “I don’t want her to get crazy, but maybe a nice pink dress would be good. Black is so old-fashioned.”
Mike and Robert exchanged amused looks.
“It’s Sophia. My sister still thinks she lives in the nineteenth century. Black is for mourning.” He looked up and nudged his chin at Mike. “Help her find a nice pink dress. Just not too short, okay?”
Mike grabbed a hunk of bread before he said something he’d regret. Robert damn well better be right. Gina had better prefer spending time at the library or computer, and not Bloomingdale’s and Bergdorf’s. If she wanted to shop, she could find just about anything online.
Robert signaled the waitress for another beer. “Gina went to Catholic boarding school all her life. I’m sure the nuns had a lot of influence on her choice of clothing.”
“Here she comes. Stop talking about her.” Antonio reached for a second piece of bread, and Robert deftly grabbed the butter.
“Come on, Pop. Too much of this stuff isn’t good for you.”
“You, who ordered a second beer in fifteen minutes, is telling me this?”
Mike let the familiar argument fade into the background as he watched Gina approach the table. As conservatively as she was dressed, she didn’t have a timid way of walking or carrying herself. As unbecoming as her hairstyle was, the severity of it accentuated her exotic eyes and full lips, and a couple of heads turned when she passed a table of four men.
Antonio stood when she got to the table, and he gave Robert and Mike the evil eye until they gave in and followed his lead. Gina reclaimed her seat, pressing her lips together as if trying to hide a smile.
She caught Mike watching her and quickly looked away. When Antonio tried to take the butter, the other two started in again. The genuine affection between father and son always impressed Mike, and he barely paid attention to the petty squabbling.
Apparently Gina didn’t, either. She glanced around the restaurant, her hands folded primly on the table, yet barely able to contain the excitement in her eyes.
Poor kid. Had she really been hidden away at a convent school all her life? Mike didn’t doubt it. The Scarpettis clung to some odd traditional values. Even Antonio had his quirks in that department, although he’d never admit it.
Mike continued to watch how her eyes widened with interest as she took in the rowdy but good-natured interplay at the bar. The TV positioned high on the corner wall was showing a baseball game, and some fevered cheering escalated the noise level.
When Cindy, a cocktail waitress in a black miniskirt and a tight blouse endorsing the Mets walked by with a tray of mugs, Gina’s eyes widened even more. She watched the woman deliver the beer to a table and blinked in astonishment when the redhead leaned over to unload the tray. The way the skirt rode up, not much was left to the imagination.
“So, Gina, what kind of things do you like to do?” Mike asked to distract her. And himself.
Her gaze settled on him. “Me? Well, I read a lot.” Her shrug was apologetic. “I sew and I spend time on the computer. I am afraid I do not have a very exciting life.”
“Nothing wrong with that. Mine isn’t all that exciting, either.” Unfortunately that was the truth. All he did was work.
“But this is a city full of fun and excitement and…” Her voice rose with excitement, drawing her uncle and cousin’s attention. She gave them a serene smile.
Antonio gave her a patronizing one back.
Mike sighed. Poor kid. It wouldn’t kill him to show her the sights a little. He’d have to check the entertainment listings. Maybe The Lion King was still on Broadway.
