Submitting to My Best Friend's Dad by Scarlett Rossi
Chapter 457 -

*Olivia*

I froze, staring at my ringing phone. My heart leaped to my throat. I felt suddenly watched, anxious. I said I'd call him, right? Dahlia raised an eyebrow. "Gonna answer?"

I took a deep breath. I was overthinking. It wasn't weird for him to call. Most dads called their children all the time. Hell, Dahlia and James had a weekly call.

I set down the paint bowls, grabbed my phone, and pressed it to my ear with slightly shaking hands. Dahlia leaned forward, eyes glimmering with interest. "Hi." My voice sounded scratchy and strange, but it worked.

"Olivia!" His voice sounded warm and easy, like it had at dinner.

I relaxed a little.

"I haven't caught you at a bad time, have I?" he asked.

I met Dahlia's eye. "I've got dinner in a bit, but I have a few moments to talk. What's up?"

She nodded encouragingly.

"Well," he said. "I was thinking about how you said we should get together soon, and how I just found this great café near me. Wanna do lunch?"

I bit my lip. I did want to see him again. I wanted to know if the dinner had been a fluke, or something about our shared genetic code always made talking to him easy. Every moment I spent out of his presence, somebody had some worry about him, and that kicked my own worries into high gear.

"Yes," I blurted.

A sharp sound like he'd smacked his own thigh crackled over the line. "Well, great! Say, one tomorrow?"

"One," I agreed. "Just send me the name of the café."

Dahlia grinned.

"Just one more thing," he hedged. "Any chance you'd bring that grandbaby of mine?"

I grimaced. That, I had forgotten to talk to Gio about.

Dahlia gestured 'what' at me.

"Um," I said. "I can, but he's still pretty young, so Gio doesn't like him going out without both of us whenever possible."

A short silence reigned over the line.

"Sal? Is that okay?" I asked.

Dahlia furrowed her eyebrows.

"Oh, of course!" he said, his voice pleasant enough that I forgot the pause almost immediately. "I want to get to know everyone in your life. After all, isn't it a dad's job to judge if his little girl's husband is a good man?"

Instincts warred inside me. Part of me, a large part, warmed instantly to the fatherly language. He cared. He wanted to make sure I was taken care of. A smaller, more suspicious part chafed a little against the proprietary language. I knew Gio was a good man. I'd picked him out myself, as I had done everything in my life without Sal.

Rather than saying any of that, I simply replied, "I'll double-check the time with him. He's a busy man, and he tends to eat when he can."

"Of course," Sal said. "I don't want to mess with your life in any way. I'm flexible, so just let me know when, and I'll be there!"

We said our goodbyes and hung up. Dahlia's eyes burned into my skull.

"What?" I asked,

She huffed. "I'm gonna keep wanting to know everything. It's like you have a new boyfriend, except it's your dad. Every 'date' is gonna have something new to discuss."

I threw my hands in the air. "I don't know if I want to take my d-Sal apart like some random guy. He's blood, even if he never turns into anything else."

"Alright." Dahlia leaned back against the couch. "I'll stop bugging you unless it's important."

"Thank you," I sighed. At least I had one person who wouldn't be all over me about Sal all the time.

"I just have one question," she said. "What'd you have to ask if it was okay about?"

The front door swung open on the squeaky hinge Gio kept promising he'd get fixed, and both of our heads shot up.

"Just me!" Alessandro called as he shut the door behind him.

"In the living room!" Dahlia hollered back.

I winced and waited for Elio to burst into tears, but thankfully, nothing came. It seemed after a year our little man was finally getting used to how the siblings communicated.

Alessandro trooped in, wearing scruffy jeans and a button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. I'd walked in on Gabriele lecturing him about how a family man should dress like the business man he was once, but it didn't seem to have stuck.

He studied the butcher paper on the floor. "New art style, Olivia?"

I chuckled. "Elio's first work, actually."

He nodded. "That'd explain all the smearing."

Gio leaned into the living room from the hallway that led to our bedroom with a squirming, damp Elio in his arms. "He's an expressionist."

I burst into laughter while everyone else chuckled politely. When my giggles subsided, I grinned at my husband, and he smiled back at me with a streak of bright blue paint on his cheekbone. Everything in the world felt right, simpler than it had been in a while.

"Dinner's in fifteen," Gio said. "Staying, Alessandro?"

He shrugged. "I got time. But I actually had something I wanted to talk to you about, Gio. Maybe after?"

"I'll meet you in my office." Gio left, and I heard his heavy footsteps all the way down the hall to our room.

Dahlia hopped up. "If we've got people over, I'm dressing up."

Alessandro shook his head. "I'm not people."

"And I'm not dressing up," I said.

"You guys are no fun." She shot us the bird and raced out of the room.

I nodded to the paint bowls. "Mind grabbing some?"

Alessandro lifted half the stack easily, not seeming to notice the way his hands instantly smeared orange and green.

"How'd it go with, uh, Salvatore last night?" he asked as we walked to the kitchen.

I peered at him. His gaze was trained steadily on the bowls, but I recognized the defensive set of his shoulders. Alessandro always got touchy about new people. He'd been the first one to dislike Elena, too. "Pretty well," I said. "I think I'm gonna see him again soon, maybe take Elio."

Alessandro's mouth hardened into a thin line. "Elio, huh? Is it safe for him to be leaving the compound like that?"

I scoffed. "He goes to the park once a week."

"I guess," Alessandro muttered. "Just... keep me in the loop, okay? Against all odds, I care about the stupid kid."

I took a deep breath to tell him to back off, but I released it. Alessandro worried because he didn't have a better way to show he cared about people. And he'd been unexpectedly tactful in his approach. If he only ever asked circuitous, suggestive questions, I could live with that.

We dropped the bowls off in the kitchen to be washed and headed for the dining room, where Gio was strapping Elio into his high chair. Our son was mercifully paint-free, but I couldn't say the same for Gio. His pants alone had escaped the carnage. The suit jacket dangling off his chair was smeared with every color I'd purchased, his white shirt could no longer be called such, and the blue on his cheek remained.

To be fair, I wasn't in a much better state. I'd pulled out a T-shirt and exercise shorts I kept dedicated for painting, so I bore not only today's stains but years of ground-in color. Even Alessandro had a little paint on his shirt from the trip to the kitchen.

Dahlia flounced in wearing a highlighter-yellow cocktail dress paneled with black piping creating a mosaic pattern. She took in the rest of our mess and pouted a little.

"I guess Elio and I are in charge of looking good tonight."

Maria came out with family-style platters of food. Tonight, it was fettuccine alfredo for the adults and plain fettuccine for Elio, who picked up handfuls of the pasta to shove into his mouth.

We ate and talked, lingering over our meal despite whatever urgent business brought Alessandro to the house. Thanks to Dahlia, the conversation didn't circle around to Salvatore once. Every time she saw it going down that route, she threw out a new ridiculous hypothetical, which Alessandro descended on with the voracity of a bear, drawing the rest of us in. By the end of the meal, I was in stitches from trying to force Gio to choose between living in Disneyland or Disney World, neither of which he'd ever been to.

He pushed his chair back from the table. "It seems, to defend my honor and my bedroom, I have to bring this evening to a close."

Dahlia, Alessandro, and I groaned. Elio smacked his hand in the remainder of his pasta, scattering bits of half-chewed fettucine everywhere.

"We can't exactly sit here until my son falls asleep at the table." He smiled softly.

"Seep!" Elio crowed.

I leaned over to Dahlia and whispered, "Can you take him for a couple of minutes? I need to catch Gio before whatever Alessandro cooked up." She nodded.

Gio stood. "I need a minute to get my paper in order, but after that, Alessandro, please join me in my office."

Alessandro nodded sharply and began helping Maria clear plates. Gio kissed me on the head, circled the table to kiss Elio, and began walking away.

I darted after him and caught him on the stairs with a hand on his elbow. Part of me nagged that this was a very exposed place to be talking, but I didn't have any secrets to share. I was just asking my husband to go to lunch with my father. That was okay.

Gio turned to me with a surprised look on his face. "Is everything okay?"

"Of course it is!" I blurted nervously. "I mean, yes. I just had something I wanted to ask you without an audience."

Gio's eyes darkened, and he took a step closer, his body pressing into my space. "And what is that, carina?"

I shook my head. "Not that sort of thing."

Gio pursed his lips and stepped back.

"Sal called," I said. "And you promised to trust my instincts."

He nodded slowly. "I did."

"He wants to go to lunch tomorrow, and he wants me to bring Elio and-"

"I will be in attendance," Gio said abruptly.

I huffed. "I knew you'd say that. I told him on the phone you would."

Gio shrugged helplessly. "I am trusting your instincts. I will go to lunch, and I will be reasonable. I simply don't think you alone should take our baby to meet any strange man."

A willful instinct rose up in me, suggesting I take Elio to meet the first strange man I came across just to prove him wrong, but I swallowed it.

"I don't go anywhere alone," I reminded him. "I always have my guards."

"I know, I just-" He ran a hand through his hair. "I would feel better if I could see him."

"Of course," I said. "I think you should go. I just wanted to make sure you remembered that, because I don't know if you're always going to be able to come."

"Always?" he asked. "So you're settled on doing this again?"

I pulled up short. I hadn't meant to say that. This lunch was supposed to be another test.

Alessandro stepped out of the dining room and looked up at us.

"I don't know yet," I said honestly. "All I know is that you can't put yourself between him and us forever if I do decide that."

I turned and walked down the stairs. Behind me, I heard Gio tell Alessandro he needed another minute yet.

In the dining room, Dahlia lifted Elio out of his chair. He looked alert and excited. He wouldn't be going down without a little playtime.

I held out my arms for him, and Dahlia passed him over easily.

"Does somebody want to go outside for a little?" I cooed.

"I do," Dahlia said. "But this dress doesn't sit great."

"Should somebody not have dressed up for a regular night in?" I asked Elio.

He clapped and laughed.

"Harsh." Dahlia shook her head. "I'll meet you out back."

I carried Elio to the back door, grabbing one of our picnic blankets on the way. My mom always said a little evening air toughened up a baby's lungs, and I wanted him to have every advantage in life.

I got him settled and started a round of patty-cake, one of his new favorite games. His eyes sparkled, and his laugh sounded like a thousand bells. I couldn't imagine leaving him, even to protect him. I would replace a way to hide us together if push came to shove.

Could I really trust Salvatore if he wouldn't make the same choice?

I took a deep breath and remembered eight-year-old Olivia crying at the back of the classroom. I kept thinking about him, kept saying I wanted more when people asked.

Elio fell over giggling, and I realized the truth.

I wanted a relationship with my dad.