Page 4 of The Mafia's Surprise Gift

“Mae!”

A familiar female voice drifted through my dream, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy. Rocco Adami hovered above me, and when his mouth opened to speak, that female voice came forth once again.

“Mae!”

I blinked in my dream, and when I opened my eyes, Rocco was gone. He had been just a dream. Damn it.

“Mae!” My mother’s voice drifted faintly through the door, so I propped myself up on one elbow and yawned.

“I’m up!” I called back, hoping my voice was loud enough to reach her downstairs. “I’m up.”

Fuck.

Rocco Adami was in my dream? I hadn’t seen him in over seven years, and I’d done my best to put him out of my mind despite the lasting gift he had left me that night. That graduation party had been one of the best nights of my life, and the sex had been so mind-blowing that no one else had ever compared.

But Rocco Adami was nothing more than an asshole and a dream.

Sliding my legs from the bed, I yawned widely once more and pulled myself up. Heading for the bathroom, my mind lazily replayed a few events from that night, coupled with the strange closeness I’d felt to him in my dream. I haven’t seen Rocco since that night, and it was so long ago that I don’t remember it as clearly as I used to.

It was a turning point in my life, even more than the move to New York City for a fantastic job opportunity that fell through within a week of securing my NYC apartment.

I stripped off my pajamas and stepped into the shower, burying my face in the hot spray and letting the water wash away the dream and any lingering, unresolved feelings that I had for Rocco. Being back in my hometown of Baxton was clearly unlocking a lot of reminders since I hadn’t been back here in years. Once I moved to NYC, my parents had always come to visit me in the city since it was much easier for them to travel, given my situation.

That all changed four years ago when a carjacker took my father from us. My mother had refused to set foot back in the city ever since, and I couldn’t blame her. Three years of not seeing her and her upcoming fiftieth birthday had finally prompted me to save enough money for a trip back home, so here I was.

Freshly showered, I slipped into jeans and a plaid shirt and hurried downstairs to the warm smell of baking while throwing my damp hair into a bun.

In the kitchen, my mother stood up to her elbows in flour while the gift that Rocco left me stood on a stool beside her, thumping his tiny fists against a small ball of dough.

Zack. My adorable six-year-old son.

“Mom!” Zack threw his hands in the air. “I made dough!”

My mother sent me a glance that told me all I needed to know about who really made the dough, but I wasn’t going to let her take that excitement from him.

“Well done, baby.” I smiled brightly at him as I passed, leaning down to kiss the top of his head. Then I ruffled his wildly curly auburn hair and made a beeline for the coffee pot.

“Good nap?” Mom asked, her eye on me as I moved around the kitchen.

“The best.” Not because of the Rocco dream, though. “The drive down was long. Thankfully, some of us slept right through it, didn’t they?” I cast an affectionate eye to Zack who, thankfully, had been as good as gold on the drive down here.

Though, to his credit, Zack was a pretty good kid. He was very shy and quiet, though I was doing my best to nurture that out of him at a rate he was comfortable with. That was a work in progress.

“He certainly doesn’t get that from you.” Mom chuckled wearily. “You would kick and scream for hours when we put you in a car seat.”

“Maybe you should have gotten a better seat.” I snorted, pouring myself a large cup of coffee. Warming my hands on the mug, I moved around the island counter to check out what they had been making. Two trays were already filled with freshly baked cookies, and they seemed to be working on a third.

“Well, they don’t make them like they used to, do they?” Mom said.

“I won’t complain.” I sipped my coffee. “Anything that keeps this little tyke quiet for four hours is a blessing, in my book.”

“You shouldn’t have driven through the night.” Mom dusted the flour from her hands. “It’s dangerous.”

I bit the inside of my cheek. Raising Zack in the city had come with the blessing of raising him my way, away from my mother’s influence, but her judgment was always clear through emails, phone calls, and visits. Since my father passed, she’d been fighting to get me to move back home to Baxton, but I couldn’t. There were too many memories and too many unresolved childhood issues.

“I had work,” was all I offered in the way of explanation. “And he slept the whole way, so it worked out.”

“And if he doesn’t sleep tonight?” Mom fixed me with her trademark cool stare, and it took all my energy to keep the smile on my face.

---