Page 57 of Smitten with the Single Dad

“Pizza?” Griffon asked.

Wyatt chuckled. “Yes, pizza.”

Jake was on the other side of Vica and slipped his hand into hers, glancing up at her with soulful hazel-blue eyes. “Thanks for playing along too. Was that weird?”

Vica shrugged. “Maybe a little bit. But it was also fun. We have to take care of our elderly. They’re where we came from.” She gave his fingers a playful squeeze. “Without your grandpa, you wouldn’t be here. So I am very grateful to him for that and am happy to pretend to be someone else for a little bit if it makes things easier for him.”

“Dad wouldn’t be here either. Are you grateful to Grandpa for Dad too?” he asked.

Vica and Wyatt exchanged looks as they approached his truck and something far beyond friendship passed between them.

“Yeah, kiddo. I’m grateful to your grandpa for your Dad too.”

More than you could ever imagine.

CHAPTER TEN

They were on the last ferry back to the island.

After pizza, the boys wanted to go to the Space Needle, and the aquarium, since they “rarely left the island and did anything fun” as Jake put it.

Both kids were exhausted and fast asleep in the back of the truck. Vica and Wyatt quietly chatted in the front seats of the truck waiting for the ferry to arrive at the terminal with the last load of passengers off the island.

“Tell me more about your parents,” Wyatt said. “We need to talk about our pasts, about our lives, for the immigration interview when it happens.”

Sipping on the watermelon-mint lemonade they grabbed at an adorable little bistro called the Lilac and Lavender, Vica smiled. “Well, my parents were both Italian, obviously. My mother was catholic and my father Jewish, which was a huge scandal in her family—and his. So they were pretty much disowned by their parents. But they didn’t care. They were madly in love.”

“How’d they meet?”

“In college. My dad was an architect, my mother studied economics. According to him, it was love at first sight. My mother said she found him annoying and never understood why she agreed to a second date because it took until the third date for her to find him charming.”

Wyatt chuckled and sipped his own lemonade. “Your mom sounds like a funwoman.”

“She was. She loved to sing and dance. She always had music on in the house, especially when she was in the kitchen cooking. My father would come home from work and the two of them would dance, with her in her apron and him in his nice dress shirt and pants. Then they’d press their foreheads together when the song ended, and he’d tell her how much he missed her smile.”

“A genuine love story.”

Vica smiled as her throat grew tight. “It really was.”

“How did she die?”

“We were out of town on a family vacation and too far from a hospital. She had diabetes from childhood and for whatever reason, she ended up suffering from an insulin overdose. We couldn’t get her to the hospital in time. She died in the car on the way.”

“Oh, Vica,” he reached for her hand, “I’m so sorry.”

“I was six. Lorenzo was almost nine.” She smiled through the threat of tears. Even though it’d been nearly three decades since her mother had passed, the memory of that night still caused her a lot of pain to relive. Sitting in the backseat of their family station wagon as her father drove wildly down the twisty back road, panic in his eyes as he glanced in the rearview mirror. Lorenzo held Vica the whole time and just kept kissing her forehead telling her everything would be okay. That “Papa would save Mama.” That it would all work out.

They were still holding hands in the cab, and as the emotions flooded her, she really hoped Wyatt wouldn’t let go.

Clearing his throat, he drummed his free hand on the steering wheel. “Okay, favorite color?”

She smiled, grateful for the change of subject. “Green. But not just any green. Green like color of the trees when you walk through the forest. Like dark-green.”

“Mine’s blue. But not just any blue.”

She smiled at his imitation of her.

“Blue, like the Pacific Ocean. Dark and deep.”

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