Chapter Two

April

Nick Manning glared in annoyance at the man seated across from him as they waited for their lunch to be served. “Jesus, will you snap the fuck out of it already, Dan? It’s been over two months, for Christ’s sake! When was the last time you ever mooned over a woman for this long? Correction - when have you ever mooned over any woman for even a day?”

Dante sighed, taking a sip from the glass of Pinot Noir he’d ordered to accompany his meal. “Never,” he admitted reluctantly. “But then I’ve never had a relationship that lasted more than a couple of months, much less almost a year. And there’s never been anyone who could hold a candle to Katie. She’s - special, Nick. And I was so sure she was the one. It’s going to take a long time to get over her.”

Nick made a sound of disgust, refilling his glass from the bottle of Pellegrino water he’d ordered. “Why? Because she stabbed you in the back and chose her career over you? A career, by the way, that’s gone nowhere for ten years until now. I’m willing to bet this sitcom of hers is going to bomb, and that Katie will come running back and beg you to forgive her in that sweet little girl voice. Did I ever tell you how annoying that voice of hers is?”

Despite his bad case of the doldrums, Dante couldn’t help grinning at his friend’s unabashed candor. “A few times, yeah. You aren’t exactly known for holding back, Nick. And you’ve made it pretty obvious that you didn’t like Katie very much.”

Nick shrugged. “She was okay. I mean, she seemed to make you happy, and that’s really all that matters, right? Except now, of course, when you’re starting to embarrass yourself by the way you keep mooning over her. Even Angela told me you need to snap out of it. And this is coming from a woman who was in a funk for over two years after I broke up with her.”

Dante took a slice of sourdough bread from the basket, then dunked it into the mixture of olive oil and balsamic vinegar he’d poured into a small dish. “You treated Angela like shit when you were together,” he commented matter-of-factly. “I was speechless when I learned she actually agreed to give you another chance. And I hope you say a prayer of thanks every single day that she decided to take your sorry ass back.”

A smirk crossed Nick’s darkly handsome features. “I’ll leave the praying up to you, Catholic school boy. But I make sure to let my woman know how much she means to me on a regular basis, and that I still have a lot to make up for. You don’t have to remind me how much of an asshole I was to her. But frankly, Katie didn’t always treat you very well either.”

Dante’s dark eyes narrowed dangerously. “What the hell do you mean by that? Except for the way she broke up with me two months ago, my relationship with Katie was just about perfect.”

“If you say so,” drawled Nick. “And, hey, you know the old saying - ‘no one knows what goes on behind closed doors’. But from what I could see your sweet little Katie knew exactly how to play you, Dan. Did you ever bother to total up how much you spent on her over the last year? Between the four-star restaurants, the exotic vacations, and an entire designer wardrobe, I’m betting it was a pretty penny. Oh, and I forgot about the brand new car you bought her for Christmas. I’m just assuming she didn’t return that to you when she flitted off to Hollywood to quote unquote ‘pursue her dream’?”

Dante could feel his cheeks grow warm, and he fidgeted awkwardly in his chair. “No,” he acknowledged sullenly. “And why would she? The car was a gift, like all the other things I gave her. Things that any man with the means would give to the woman he loved. And I resent your implication that Katie was just using me for material gain. She wasn’t like that, Nick.”

“Yeah, whatever,” replied Nick dismissively. “The bottom line, my friend, is that you’ve got to snap out of this funk you’ve been in since she took off and start living again. You need to start dating, enjoying your life, and moving on. You’re too young to start acting like a hermit.”

Dante sighed. He’d heard this same lecture from Nick before - as well as from his business partner Howie, his mother, his grandmother, his brother, and half a dozen other friends and family members. And each time the message was more or less the same - Katie wasn’t the one for you; she didn’t appreciate what a good man she had in you; you’ll find the right woman one of these days.

“I know,” he agreed quietly. “Problem is I don’t want anyone else but Katie. Every time I start thinking about asking someone else out - not to mention going to bed with them - all I can see is her face. And anyone else would just be a poor substitute for the real thing.”

Nick scowled. “Does this woman have an enchanted pussy or something? Come on, Dan. I mean, even though Katie wasn’t exactly my type, I’ll admit she was a real looker. But there’s a lot of beautiful women in this city, and you’ve never had a problem getting as much action as you wanted. So forget about Katie, hit up one of the clubs or bars you always used to hang out at, and find someone to help you forget about your fucking broken heart for awhile. Otherwise, we’re going to start conducting our monthly reviews by phone from now on, because you’re depressing me every time I have to stare at your sad mug.”

The retort Dante would have made was halted by the arrival of their lunch. Once a month, the two men would convene in Nick’s office at the stock brokerage firm of Morton Sterling to review the extensive investment portfolio he managed for Dante. The meeting was almost always followed by lunch at one of their favorite restaurants.

Tactfully, Nick steered the subject away from Dante’s broken heart as they ate. The two men were close friends despite their very different personalities - Dante was easygoing, charming, and friendly, while Nick was, by his own admission, a cold-hearted SOB who was intensely private and disliked most of the people he met. He’d begun to change for the better in small, subtle ways, however, ever since Angela had come back into his life, and Dante liked to joke that there just might be hope for him after all.

But despite their different personalities they had a lot in common, especially their careers in the financial industry - Nick was one of the top stockbrokers in San Francisco, while Dante co-owned one of the most successful venture capital firms on the West coast. Additionally, they had both played collegiate sports - Nick for the Stanford football team, and Dante on the soccer team at UC Berkeley. Their respective universities had a long-standing rivalry, and the two men ribbed each other mercilessly when their alma maters played the other, no matter what the sport was.

And until Nick had met Angela, and Dante had fallen hard for Katie, the two friends had both been rather notorious womanizers. Nick in particular had never been one for long-term relationships, and more often than not the women he’d slept with had been one-night stands, never to be seen or heard from again. Dante on the other hand had always managed to end his relationships on good terms, and had even kept in occasional contact with some of the women, at least until they got too pushy or clingy. This breakup with Katie had been one of the very rare exceptions. He’d forced himself not to email or text or call her, having far too much masculine pride to lower himself to that level. As much as he longed to hear her voice again, there was no way he was going to grovel and beg her to take him back. No matter how crazy he was about Katie, he had too much machismo - a trait inherited from multiple generations of strong Italian male relatives - to beg any woman to come back to him.

The close relationship Dante enjoyed with his extensive family had always been something of a sore spot with Katie. And while she’d never actually made him choose between her and them, or outright complained that he spent too much time with them, it had been obvious to Dante that she would have preferred if he’d cut down on his weekly visits to his family. He’d justified her lack of enthusiasm in accompanying him on those visits to her own vastly different upbringing.

Katie was the adopted only child of an older couple who had been so grateful to finally have a baby that they had spoiled and indulged her to excess. Katie’s adoptive parents were both highly intellectual individuals - her father a law professor, her mother a biochemist - and more than a little old-fashioned and a bit on the nerdy side. They had adored their pretty, popular daughter, and had willingly given her whatever she’d asked for. They had been disappointed when she’d chosen not to go to college, and instead pursue a career in acting and modeling. Their disappointment in her chosen career, however, hadn’t prevented them from paying for acting classes, modeling school, regular sessions with a photographer to keep her portfolio updated, designer clothes, and all manner of other indulgences. And even though they lived less than an hour from San Francisco, Katie had seldom visited her parents during the year she and Dante had been together. She’d claimed that she was just too busy to go see them, or that they had such little in common anymore that talking to them on the phone was pointless.

Unlike Dante, who kept in constant contact with his family, whether it was exchanging texts with his sisters, calling his widowed mother, hanging out with his brother who also lived in San Francisco, and especially going to lunch at his grandmother’s house every Sunday afternoon after church, where the place would be bursting at the seams with so many family members present. They were happy, relaxed occasions, filled with good food and wine, conversation, and always lots of laughter. The fact that Katie had never seemed to enjoy herself during those times, and had always seemed aloof when it came to his family, had certainly given Dante cause for concern. But he’d explained his unease away by assuring himself that everything would be different once he and Katie were officially engaged, that she would make more of an effort to get closer to his family, and that they in turn would accept her as one of them.

Instead, he’d had to break the news to them that he and Katie were over with, and that she had moved back to Los Angeles to pursue her career. His grandmother - a tiny but fearsome woman of eighty-four who was the undisputed head of the family - had given a little “hmpff” of disgust upon hearing the news, and as usual hadn’t hesitated to speak her mind.

“You’re better off without her, Dante,” Valentina Sabattini had declared loudly, not giving an apparent damn who else in the room heard her. “She was not the right woman for you, I always said so. She didn’t eat bread, she didn’t eat pasta, she didn’t eat my delicious braciole. She looked like a good strong wind would blow her over she was so skinny. And always fixing her makeup or checking her phone instead of joining in the conversation. No, my boy, it wasn’t meant to be. But trust your Nonna, hmm? The right girl will come along for you one day. I have a feeling that something good is going to happen to you very soon now.”

Wisely, Dante had chosen not to argue the point with his very stubborn, very opinionated Nonna. Even before his grandfather Pietro had passed away some seven years earlier, Valentina had been a force to be reckoned with, and was widely considered to be the head of the family. Since Pietro’s passing, she had taken her role as matriarch very seriously, a role that apparently included giving her blessing to the prospective spouses her numerous grandchildren brought before her. And if Valentina Sabattini didn’t approve of someone - well, she didn’t bother to hide her feelings.

At least his mother had been far more diplomatic in regards to Katie, even though Dante had always sensed that she wasn’t entirely pleased with his choice, either. Jeannie Sabattini was a woman of quiet strength, not nearly as outspoken and opinionated as her domineering mother-in-law, but not a woman you wanted to piss off or get on the bad side of regardless. She’d had to prove her mettle at far too young an age, having been widowed when she was in her early thirties with four children to raise. Dante had only been eleven when his beloved father Dominic - a dedicated firefighter - had been killed in the line of duty fighting a three-alarm fire. Overnight, Dante - as the eldest - had become the man of the house, though both sets of grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins on both sides of the family, along with neighbors, friends, and co-workers of Dominic’s had all gone out of their way to support Jeannie and her four fatherless children. It was just one of the reasons why Dante’s loyalty to his family was so steadfast and long lasting. They had all been there for him and his mother and siblings at the time of their greatest need, and he would never forget everything they had done for them.

Since his business had become so successful, the gratitude he felt towards his family had been expressed in financial terms as well. Aside from extensively remodeling his mother’s house, and helping his siblings with college expenses, Dante had also financed an addition and renovations to the Italian restaurant that had been owned and operated by his father’s family for well over a hundred years. Sabattini’s was a veritable landmark in his hometown of Healdsburg, located about seventy miles north of San Francisco in the Sonoma Wine Country, and nearly every employee at the expansive restaurant was a member of the family. Jeannie had been the hostess during the lunch hour for more than two decades, and Valentina stopped by the restaurant nearly every day to make sure everything was running like a well-oiled machine.

There had been other relatives that Dante had helped out as well - loaning one the money he needed to start a small business, helping another out with some medical expenses for her mother, and always buying generous gifts for birthdays, weddings, christenings, and graduations. Family should always look out for each other had been his motto for a long time, and since he had more money than he could possibly spend in twenty lifetimes, Dante figured it was the least he could do to spread some of his wealth around among the people who meant the most to him.

The subject of Katie didn’t come up again during his lunch with Nick, the two friends instead discussing recent developments in the financial markets and how they might impact certain investments. Dante was always left a little in awe of what a truly brilliant financial mind Nick had, and how his friend seemed to have the golden touch when it came to investments. While the venture capital firm he co-owned with his old college roommate Howie Erlichman was certainly successful and earned both men an extremely lucrative salary, it was Dante’s personal stock portfolio that had really vaulted him into millionaire status. And it was because of Nick’s investment advice and suggestions over the past seven years that Dante’s net worth had skyrocketed. When Dante had first met Nick at a forum featuring the U.S. Treasury Secretary as the guest speaker, he’d thought the retired NFL player an arrogant ass and had nearly tossed aside the business card Nick had given him. Fortunately, Dante had kept the card, taken Nick up on his offer to meet for lunch one day, and both a friendship and a professional relationship had been firmly cemented. The two men frequently referred clients to the other as well.

Nick waved Dante off when the bill arrived, plunking down his own AMEX Centurion card first. “My treat,” he declared. “Even I’m not enough of a bastard to make you pay for lunch when you’re this depressed. It’d be like kicking a puppy or something. And I swear to Christ I will kick you – hard - if you don’t snap out of this goddamned funk you’re in. You need to get laid, Dan, and quickly. So do both of us a favor, and boink the next woman you meet. Or call up one of your former girlfriends. After all, you’ve always bragged about how you pride yourself on parting on good terms with your exes. I’m sure any number of them would be all too happy to make you forget about Katie.”

Dante opened his mouth to remind his friend yet again that he didn’t want to forget about Katie, didn’t want to move on and have meaningless sex with some random woman, but then glimpsed the scowl on Nick’s devilishly handsome face. “I’ll think about it,” he conceded, too dispirited to debate the matter further at the moment. “And thanks for lunch. My treat next time - when I promise to be in a better mood.”

Nick’s dark eyes narrowed skeptically. “Let’s hope so. And be sure to get those forms I gave you earlier signed and back to me by tomorrow. The IPO releases in less than a week and I don’t want you to miss out on it. You’re going to make a killing on it.”

Dante grinned. “All because of you, mio amico. You’ve got the Midas touch, Nick, always have.”

Nick shrugged carelessly as he signed the credit card receipt with his usual bold scrawl. “Give the credit for this one to Angela. She’s known the investment banker since they were classmates at Stanford, so they refer a lot of business to each other. And when she brought this one to my attention I knew it would be a good fit for your portfolio.”

“I’ll send her some flowers to express my gratitude.”

Nick waved his hand dismissively. “She’s not really the flower loving type.”

Dante arched a brow in disbelief. “I find that hard to believe,” he protested. “Maybe that’s just what she wants you to think because her asshat boyfriend never brings her any. In my vast experience, all women love flowers. So try real hard to act just a tiny bit romantic once in awhile and bring her some, hmm?”

Nick scowled. “Okay, Lover Boy. Any other sappy romantic ideas you want to share?”

“The flowers will do for a start,” replied Dante cheerfully. “Let’s see how that goes and we can progress from there.”

“Why don’t you concentrate on your own love life - or lack thereof - and let me worry about my relationship with Angela?” suggested Nick sarcastically. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not the one who looks like he forgot to take his anti-depressants for the last month. Go get laid, okay?”

Despite his otherwise glum state of mind, Dante couldn’t help chuckling just a bit during the short walk back to his office. Nick might be the most unsympathetic, cold-hearted bastard on the planet but his blunt, straightforward way of speaking did make a person sit up and take notice. And while Dante knew his friend was right about forgetting Katie and moving on with his life, it was going to take some more time before he could actually follow that advice.

As it turned out, however, that particular timeframe was accelerated in a major way later that evening.

‘Sometimes it’s not so bad being single,’ thought Dante as he settled himself on the plush black leather sectional sofa, and reached for the TV remote.

On the glass topped table in front of him rested a takeout box of one of his favorite styles of artisan pizza - a Napolitano with fresh tomatoes, anchovies, capers, and olives - and a bottle of craft beer. He was wearing a ratty pair of jeans, an ancient UC Berkeley T-shirt, and was blissfully barefoot. He was getting ready to watch two basketball games back to back, and overall he considered this to be a pretty damned good end to his day.

In between bites of pizza, sips of beer, and closely following the action of the first game, he exchanged texts with his younger brother Rafe and answered an email from his baby sister Gia. Dutifully, he’d called his mother upon arriving home earlier, and expected he’d hear from his other sister Talia before the night was over. They were close that way - he, his siblings, and their mother - bonds that had been strengthened and deepened when they had lost his father so tragically. And despite the fact that his siblings now ranged in age from thirty-year-old Talia to twenty-five-year-old Gia, Rafe being sandwiched in between his sisters, Dante still felt responsible for them, still considered himself their surrogate father. He’d been the one to give Talia away at her wedding two years ago, the one to bail Rafe’s sorry ass out of jail after a drunken frat party, the one who’d shed more than a few tears when little Gia had boarded the plane that would take her to the other side of the country so she could attend college at Dartmouth. And it had been his siblings and his mother who had helped him the most these past couple of months to cope with the breakup, even if at times their advice wasn’t always welcome.

He was on his second beer, and flipping channels on the enormous flat panel TV that took up most of one wall of the living room when he froze, unable to believe what he was seeing on the screen. Hastily, he set the beer down, then rewound the program several seconds before freeze framing it.

The program was some sort of entertainment news show, one that Katie had always loved to watch because it included lots of gossip about TV and movie stars and other celebrity types. It hadn’t really been Dante’s sort of thing, and he’d paid the show little heed - until now when Katie herself was being featured on one of the segments. Or, more accurately, the handsome, well known actor who had his arm wrapped tightly around Katie’s waist was apparently the focus of the segment and she was simply along for the ride. And the free publicity that she was undoubtedly receiving as the bastard’s date.

The pizza that had tasted so delicious a short while ago was now churning acidly in Dante’s stomach, and suddenly the beer in front of him was nowhere near strong enough to dull the burning ache he felt at seeing Katie smiling and laughing happily with the man at her side. He stalked over to the built-in wet bar located midway between the living and dining rooms, took out a crystal shot glass, and a very expensive bottle of tequila.

In between shots, he replayed the footage of Katie and her celebrity lover over and over again, until he abruptly turned off the TV, no longer in the mood to watch the other game.

What he was in the mood for, he decided with a slowly simmering anger, was to finally forget the traitorous, disloyal blonde he’d been making an ass of himself over. It had taken seeing her in the flesh again, albeit on a television program with her new lover in tow, to snap him out of the gloomy mood he’d been in since she had left two months ago. He was going to follow all of the advice his friends and family had been giving him for weeks now - to get out there, meet some new girls, and have a good time. Rafe’s cheerful but rather crude words in particular came to mind at this moment - ‘flirt with ‘em, fuck ‘em, and forget ‘em’.

“Well, little brother,” declared Dante out loud. “For once the shoe will be on the other foot and I’ll be the one following your advice. Starting tomorrow, I’m back in the game, and I’m going to ask out the first attractive female I see. And given the mood I’m in right now, I hope she can handle me.”