Head 01 Hot Head (10 page)

“SKI SHIT” to count to a thousand.

Had Dante been serious about going back to the porn thing again? It seemed too crazy to be real, but then again Dante
was
too crazy sometimes. He wouldn’t let that Alek guy touch him, right? Dante wouldn’t actualy have the bals to….

Yes, he did. Jesus. Of course he did. Dante had
plenty
of bals.

Griff was a coward, but Dante had no fear and no shame. Hel, he’d flashed his pecker at his English teacher in high school just to hear her shout. Detention

be damned. And everyone knew he always wandered around his house bare-assed; he’d been the same way as a teenager. Mr. and Mrs. Anastagio had fits

making sure he wore pants when people came to visit. Thing was, Dante knew how fucking gorgeous he was—that sleek muscle, that tawny skin, the crow’s-wing

curls, and those eyes glinting black-black-black like the ocean at night.

Griff had another erection.
Great.
He pinched under the head to make it go down.

Jealous. Horny. Ashamed. Weak. E) All of the above.

There had to be a catch in the HotHead deal. That website wasn’t going to just fork over thousands of dolars for Dante to jerk off over and over the same

way. What if this Alek pushed for more? What if Dante agreed? Dante yanking it for some Russian was one thing, but what about al the guys watching from al

over, members of HotHead.com who’d log on to type pervy shit to him and encourage him and dare him to go further?

And Dante would. Griff didn’t doubt it for a second. The dare was too tempting, like a burning building. He’d just run in without thinking. Dante would say

yes and give in to those Internet dirtbags to prove he had the bals.

Suddenly Griff was so jealous he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t sit stil. He stood up and wiped his hands on his cargo pants, not caring if he left dusty streaks.

He wanted to punch something, maybe something Russian.

Asshole
.

Not sure if he meant Alek or himself, he scooped up the wine and beer and stomped back upstairs, making enough noise that no one would be surprised and

Loretta would have time to finish al her high notes.

IN THE kitchen, Loretta was chopping some kind of leaf and had almost stopped hyperventilating. That was a good sign. Maybe she was just lonely and bored

tonight, trapped at home with her man on the other side of the planet, trying his best not to die in the desert. Griff could sympathize.

Nicole was seated on the counter carefuly puling parsley apart and sprinkling
most
of it into the pot with her tiny fingers.

-
Thwack
-

Dante cleavered a crab into perfect chunks, puling the white meat free of the iridescent shel and plopping it into the simmering pot. “This is lazy man’s

cioppino. Now that it’s cooked down, we get rid of the shels so little sea monsters won’t choke. No tools required.”

-
Thwack
-

Dante winked at Griff and nodded that everything was okay. “It’s a mix. And the fish has to be fresh—real fresh, like just-off-the-boat, flopping-around

fresh. Which means local. I go up to the Fulton Fish market. They moved it uptown but the place in the Bronx is
way
cleaner than South Street Seaport. You can even buy barracuda
from a couple stals. Barracuda!
RRawwrrr-rraurrrr
.” He bared his lower teeth to Nicole, who giggled at his growls.

-
Thwack
-

The thought struck Griff that his best friend would make an amazing dad if he’d ever let himself grow up enough to have a kid. Griff looked over at Loretta

leaning against the pantry door and knew she was thinking the same thing as she watched her brother cook, a crooked smile on her face.

-
Thwack
-

Dante looked handsome and happy in the steamy light, as if he should live right here in this kitchen making cioppino for the rest of time.

Griff had to swalow, and then he was thinking about the goddamn website again. He jerked the fridge open and cracked a beer before he started to get

angry.
HotHead-dot-com, my ass
. Where could he come up with a couple thousand dolars that fast? Maybe he could get a loan at the bar?

He plunked onto one of the high breakfast stools, which let him watch the kitchen and kept his traitorous anatomy out of sight.

Moving around the kitchen with efficient grace, Dante kept chopping and growling and chopping and growling until he finaly got his niece to grimace, showing

her tiny baby teeth and growling back at him.

“Ba-rra-cu-da!” Dante crowed in triumph and shoveled chopped cilantro into the pot with his knife.

“
Rrrr
. Bahcuda.” Nicole was growling through her teeth and climbing onto her knees on the scarred wood of the counter, trying to see what fascinating

weirdness Uncle Dante was up to across the kitchen.

Loretta scooped up her snarling darling and roled her eyes at her brother. “Knock it off, fathead. She gets enough bad habits from me.” She looked to Griff

for support.

Griff shook his head in sympathy. “Feel lucky. At least he ain’t teaching her to swear or shoot tequila.”

But a baby barracuda had been born. Nicole and Dante continued to growl at each other as he chopped and fed her garlic and sips of broth off a battered

spoon.

“Umm-grrood.
Rrrarrrrr
.” Nicole’s little face squenched up with pleasure, loving her funny uncle.

“Told you she’d eat seafood.” Dante pointed at Loretta with his spoon. “
Graawrr
.” He turned back to strain the pot of fish heads and crab shels, pouring the aromatic broth into the cioppino.

“
Grauwr
,” Nicole growled back and laughed, then growled again for good measure at the other boring grownups who weren’t her uncle.

Loretta ignored her brother and the teasing, but for once there was no opera in her eyes. “Griffin, you must be cooking these days?” She’d always hated

Leslie for some reason.

Griff shook his head with a grimace. “Nah. I mean, I can do pancakes and macaroni, but mostly I defrost. The guys are always bummed when it’s my turn at

the station.” Griff could tel she’d punched a hole in her panic and smiled. “I am a
champ
at washing up.”

“And chili.” Dante appeared at their elbows with a spoon for Loretta to taste.

“Yeah, I can do chili pretty good. Meat. Packet. Onions. Course that’s a recipe for a building with fifteen guys farting al night. Oh! Sorry.” Griff glanced to Nicole with an apology to her mom, but everyone seemed unfazed.
Guess that’s normal too
.

Dante stirred the pot firmly. Without turning his head to look at his sister, he spoke quietly. “If you need to crash tonight, I got plenty of room. With floors and wals even!”

Loretta laughed and shook her head. “I’m fine. I’m just a pain in the ass.”

Griff hoped he wasn’t the reason. “You should, Loretta. And I’l get going after supper.”

“G! It’s not even seven. What’s your damage?” Dante looked offended at the idea that Griff might feel unwelcome.

Griff shrugged at the cioppino and his stomach rumbled again. “Or I’l stay.”

“Good. Good thing someone’s hungry.” Dante stirred the pot one last time and nodded. “Soup’s on! Rahhh!”

On the counter, Nicole reached for Griff, and he picked her up and set her down on the floor. She wobbled around at their knees, growling at Dante and

occasionaly stopping to have conversations with her hands, like they were puppets.

Kids. Weird
.

Griff opened the cabinets and puled down the big stew bowls Dante kept high on the fourth shelf. They looked deep enough for Nicole to drown in. He

grabbed a smaler dessert bowl for her.

“Thanks.” Loretta took al four bowls and swiped up stainless from the drawer. Her hands had stopped jittering, and she was keeping it together. “I got the

table.”

Dante bent to hand Nicole napkins and the pepper for the table, saluting her. She roled her little girl eyes at him, completely opera-free, and headed for the dining room to supervise her mom. Obviously, she was no dummy.

As soon as they were alone in the kitchen, Dante gestured Griff close and muttered an explanation. “Phone fight with Frank out in the goddamn desert and he

hung up on her. She’l get over it. I think he was right and she knows it, and she just wants to be mad for a while.” His breath was warm on Griff’s neck.

Griff nodded and stepped back and tried to figure out if there was anything he could carry. There was nothing but the cioppino left.

Dante slipped the apron over his head and hooked it inside the pantry door and held up empty hands. “I got nothing for ya, mister.” He dropped an arm over

Griff’s meaty shoulder and squeezed it. “Let’s go get you something to eat.”

“WHO is she?”

Dinner was done and Loretta Anastagio didn’t waste one second. Dante had taken the kid into the kitchen for something sweet. The minute his sister had

Griff alone in the dining room, she griled him like a thick T-bone.

Griff didn’t say anything; he kept his face blank like he hadn’t heard her ask him what he knew she was going to ask because she knew him so wel. She’d

known him his whole life and had calmed down enough to notice his silence.

The pause got long enough to be weird. Griff squirmed and pretended to be listening to Dante clanking in the kitchen in the hopes he could bluff his way out.

“Who?”

Loretta smacked his head, smiling. “What am I, an idiot? The girl! You got some piece you can’t stop mooning over.”

“You’re crazy.”

“And you’re stupid, but you’re so good-looking we al have to forgive you.” Her nails tickled his beefy forearm. “I know that look, Griffin. Al through high

school I hoped you’d give that look to me, so I always knew when you were getting goofy over somebody.”

Griff shifted his butt in his chair, not sure what to say.
Yeah, only this time it’s your brother
. “I’m not goofy.”

“Al wounded and hopeful. Shit.” Loretta roled her eyes, grabbed her big purse, then tossed it into the parlor like a scorpion. “I want a cigarette so bad my

lungs hurt. But Dante would kil me.”

“Because of Nicole?”

“Nah! ’Cause of his floors. These took him, what, a month? Brazilian cherry.”

Griff remembered that. It had taken so long because they’d done it in pieces. Other guys from their firehouse had come over whenever they weren’t with their

families or girlfriends, passing through after tours to help Dante out.

Griff had spent every day helping where he could, and it had almost broken him—Dante in cutoffs offering him a bottle of lemonade; Dante on al fours with a

malet pounding the boards into place; Dante, covered in stain and glue, stripping in the hal for a shower and holding his junk protectively with both hands. By day three, Griff was jerking off in the downstairs bathroom just to keep his shit together.

“There!” Loretta was suddenly right in front of him with her wild curly mane. “You’re doing it again. Your eyes get al gooey-silver when you think about her.

Sheesh! Where there’s smoke there’s fire.”

Griff fled for the front room, wishing there were more dishes for him to clear so he could escape to the kitchen, away from Loretta’s affectionate probing. But she just ambled after him, her nose for drama twitching. This was the way to crack criminals: sit them down for fresh cioppino and talk gently to them til they begged for mercy.

He looked out the window. “I should get home. My dad is probably waiting.”

“Bulshit. Your dad? C’mon, Griffin, be straight.”

Yipes
.

Griff could barely move, even though he knew what she’d meant. He sat down before he said something dumb.

Loretta’s eyes shone caramel-sweet at him. “I want to be happy for you. You’ve been so lonely since Leslie left. Before she left even.”

“You never liked Leslie.”

“She never liked you. So who’s this girl? She likes you, huh.” Loretta nodded knowingly.

Griff stood up, wanting to escape the tender inquisition. Loretta folowed him into the parlor and onto the couch and stared til he spiled.

“Not like that. I don’t think it’s anything. At least, if it is, I’m crazy and it can’t ever happen.”

“She married?” Loretta reached down to pick something up under the coffee table, a bent nail. She spun the nail, her eyes locked on his. “Is she a cocktease?”

“No!” Griff spread his sturdy hands, smoothing the air between them. “Look, there’s no girl. I promise. I’m just happy right now.”

“You don’t look happy. Wel you do, but happy-miserable. Like a hero in an opera, kiling himself over some diseased hooker.”

That made him laugh, hard enough that she looked confused. He didn’t even try to explain what he’d been thinking when she arrived looking like a Staten

Island Valkyrie. He just laughed because it felt good, and then she joined him even though she didn’t know what was so funny.

Family.

As they fel quiet again on the couch, Loretta’s eyes scanned his face so closely that for a second he was afraid she would be able to read the truth there

under his skin. As if his longing for her brother were written in raised letters on the bones and the muscles.

“Loretta?” Griff looked through the dining room toward the kitchen. He could hear the sounds of the tap running and Dante chatting baloney with the baby.

He smiled at Loretta, and his heart felt hot under his sternum.

She play-poked at him with the bent nail. “We worry about you. My brother especialy.” She tipped her head toward the sound of Dante crooning. “We al

want you to be happy. If you can’t be selfish for yourself, be selfish for us.”

“I wish I could be.” Griff felt even worse teling her these near-truths than just lying outright, if such a thing were possible.
Ugh
.

Loretta wasn’t buying it, not totaly. She knew him and he knew it. “Whoever she is, she doesn’t deserve you. If I wasn’t such an asshole, I would’ve built a