Page 22 of Best Man
“Aw. He’ll figure it out, hon.”
“Yeah, he’ll find someone.”
“He’s still young,” Piper added, opening the restaurant door for her friends. “Jax was wild at his age, too. Trust me; I should know. I had to shield him from more gold diggers than I can count.”
Paulina hung back and let the other girls enter ahead of her.
Katerina is the only family he has left?she wondered, intrigued.That’s so sad. I wonder what happened.
Again, if they were trying to make Paulinalessinterested in Niko, this entire conversation had completely backfired. All they’d done was make her even more interested in him.
9
Niko
After a pit stop at the gas station to refuel, Niko and Jax were the last to arrive at the restaurant. The fifty or so other guests had already arrived and were seated at two long tables. One table had filled up with the Devils players and their wives; the members of Jax and Piper’s family sat at the other table.
Which table Niko belonged at was obvious—not with the aunts and uncles and cousins, but rather with the rowdy athletes. The Devils were flush-faced from their ride on the boozy party bus and were already throwing back even more drinks at the restaurant.
“You mind keeping the boys entertained?” Jax asked, pointing at the hockey table. “I’m going to sit with the fam. Don’t get to see everyone together like this too often.”
“Of course,” Niko answered.
“Thanks, bud,” Jax said, and their paths forked.
The Devils jeered when Jax chose to sit at the other table. “Booooooo!”
“Sorry, boys.”
“Whip-pah!”Jean-Gabriel Parisi cracked an imaginary whip in the air at Jax, international gesture for pussy-whipped. “Whip-pah!”
“Really, Frenchy?” Jax countered. “And here I thought you’d be grateful I brought you to eat your people’s food.”
“For fuck’s sake!” Parisi groused with a wily grin. “How many times do I have to tell you guys? I’m not French, I’m French-Canadian.”
“Oh, ya,” Niko teased as he took his seat next to Parisi at the hockey table. “Bigdifference.”
“What doyouknow about it, comrade?” Parisi fired back. “Go wrestle a bear or whatever it is you do back in Mother Russia.”
Niko laughed right along with the rest of the boys. He picked up the menu and pored over a list of dishes with names he couldn’t begin to pronounce. Worse, the dishes didn’t have any descriptions, either. He turned to Parisi for help. “I don’t know what any of this means. What should I get?”
“Well, what do you want?” Parisi asked, quickly adding a jab, “Just a heads-up, the French don’t do that awful swill you callborscht.”
“I want a pasta or something. With chicken.”
Parisi pointed right away at a certain dish. “Oh, okay. You want this one.Moules Marinières. For sure.”
Niko had a bad feeling. There was a certain danger in trusting the team clown. “Really? You swear? This is chicken pasta, right?”
“Yes! You will love it!”
“You’re not going to fuck me, are you?”
“No.”
“Because if you’re lying—”
“I’m not lying.” Parisi brought a glass of red wine to his lips and drank. “You’ll love it, Niko.”
