Prayer

PRAYER

The Pagano Family Series

Book FIVE

Susan Fanetti

THE FREAK CIRCLE PRESS

Prayer © 2016 Susan Fanetti

All rights reserved

Susan Fanetti has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this book under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

ALSO BY SUSAN FANETTI

The Pagano Family Series:

(Contemporary Romance/Family Saga)

Footsteps
, Book 1

Touch
, Book 2

Rooted
, Book 3

Deep
, Book 4

The Night Horde SoCal Series:

(MC Romance)

Strength & Courage
, Book 1

Shadow & Soul
, Book 2

Today & Tomorrow
, Book 2.5

Fire & Dark
, Book 3

Dream & Dare
, Book 3.5

Knife & Flesh
, Book 4

Rest & Trust
, Book 5

Calm & Storm
, Book 6

The Signal Bend Series:

(The first Night Horde series)

(MC Romance)

Move the Sun
, Book 1

Behold the Stars
, Book 2

Into the Storm
, Book 3

Alone on Earth
, Book 4

In Dark Woods
, Book 4.5

All the Sky
, Book 5

Show the Fire
, Book 6

Leave a Trail
, Book 7

For my sons—artists, thinkers, and dreamers all, each in his own way.

Never settle, boys.

Note: As part of a Freak Circle Press collaboration on our blog during Christmas 2014, I wrote “Tokens,” a short story about Christmas Eve dinner with the Pagano family, in Nick’s POV.
Prayer
opens a week after the events of that story, so, for those readers who have read the Pagano Family series but have not read “Tokens,” I’m including it here.

TOKENS

Love shall be our token,
Love shall be yours and love be mine.
Christina Rossetti, “Love Came Down at Christmas”

“Thanks, Sam. Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas, don.”

Nick slapped Sam on the arm, and his driver and guard went back to climb into the dark SUV and drive off. He walked past his mother’s Cadillac and the caterer’s van. As he stepped onto the porch, the front door opened with such force that the large, elaborate pine wreath swung. Elisa bolted through the door, Cuddles padding after her. Nick could hear Christmas carols playing. Perry Como—he knew it well from his own childhood. His mother had apparently made the selection.

“Papa! Lia is climbing on the bannister again!”

Nick bent down and picked his eldest daughter up. “Hello to you, too,
signorina
. Where’s Mamma?”

“She’s cooking with Miss Ashley and Miss Gina and Nonna is upstairs with Carina and Lia is climbing on the
bannister
and you said
never
climb on the bannister because we can fall and get hurt and cry and I
told
her but she did it
anyway
!”

“Okay. Let’s go in.”

Once inside, they found Lia sitting quietly on the bottom step, holding Thelma, one of her grandmother’s Yorkies, in her lap. Louise, the other, lay a few steps up. Both dogs had glittery red bows in the fur on top of their heads. When Cuddles came back in, Thelma struggled for freedom and then, achieving it, yapped and ran with her sister down the stairs and toward the back of the house, both stopping midway to yap again. Cuddles just stayed where he was until they gave up and went on without him. Nick had the sense that his daughters’ golden retriever thought his Yorkie cousins were generally pains in his ass.

“Hi, Papa,” Lia said, smiling sweetly.

Nick put Elisa back on her feet. “Hi,
gattina
. Were you on the bannister again?”
 

She widened her eyes and shook her head, the picture of innocence. “No.”

“Papa, she was!”

“Was not!”

“Were too! You’re a big liar!”

“You are!”

“Girls! I just walked in the door. If I put Rudolph on downstairs, will you sit together without fighting and watch?”

Elisa, ever the hall monitor, said, “Mamma doesn’t want us downstairs. She said she wants us where she can see us.”

“The family room, then.”

“Nonna’s music is on.”

“Nonna can listen to her music later. Come on. I’ll get you set up with Rudolph.”

“We saw Rudolph this morning. Can we have Frosty instead?”

Lia interjected. “Frosty’s boring. I want Barbie Christmas.”

“It is not! Barbie Christmas is dumb. Teresa said so. I want Frosty.” Elisa put her hands on her hips, ready again to go toe-to-toe with Lia over the matter.

Nick was tempted to call Sam back and go back to the office. The problems there were comparatively easy to solve. But when it came down to it, this solution was not terribly different. Set the terms. Find the thing one’s adversary values most, and put it on the block. With a sigh, he drew his brows in and gave them a stern look. “Girls, pick a movie right now, or I’ll tell Santa you were fighting on Christmas Eve.”

Elisa and Lia both stopped in mid-squabble and turned to him, their mouths open with shock. Elisa broke first. “Papa, no! We’ll be good, we’ll be good! We can watch Barbie Christmas!”

Lia simply nodded, agreeing with her older sister at last—because she’d gotten her way.

He held out his hands, and Elisa and Lia laid theirs in his. “Come on, you two. It’s time for Barbie Christmas and some peace and quiet.”

~oOo~

The older girls thus distracted, and the baby apparently upstairs with his mother, Nick went to the kitchen. He was concerned that Beverly hadn’t come out to greet him; she always did. But they hadn’t been getting along all that well the past few days. Maybe he’d gotten in trouble while he was away at work. It was possible: she had been tense and distracted lately, since she’d begun in earnest her preparations for this dinner, and the mood had blindsided him. Beverly loved Christmas and was normally even sunnier than usual at this time of year.

Somehow, she had managed to get his cousins to abandon their own family tradition and have Christmas Eve dinner here instead of at their house. Nick had no idea how she’d done it; he had not been any part of the decision. When she’d raised the thought with him, he’d said that their holiday traditions were iron-clad and there was no way they’d change them to have dinner here.

Nick’s smaller part of the family had had traditions of their own—they had spent Christmas Eve and Day with Uncle Ben, Aunt Angie, and his mother, and they’d gone over to the cousins’ for a while on Christmas afternoon. But Angie had died just after the previous Christmas, and Ben had followed her in the summer. Nick was don now, and he and Beverly had three children. She wanted to start a tradition of their own.

He’d shot her down when she’d first brought it up. And then, right after Thanksgiving, Beverly had announced that they were hosting Christmas Eve dinner, and that the entire family and some dear friends would be joining them. Twenty-four people in all. Twenty-five, counting Carina, almost six months old.

Christmas Eve dinner was a traditionally important meal in all the Pagano homes, and in all the Italian homes Nick had ever known. More important than any meal on the next day, although those were elaborate as well. Before Midnight Mass, they abstained from meat, so the meal was fish-based. In Nick’s memory—and he knew it was true for his cousins, too—the tradition had been relaxed in the family over the years, and the fish had been restricted to the entrée. Beverly, however, had decided that, since she had been granted what she saw as a true honor, she would serve the very traditional Feast of the Seven Fishes.

She wasn’t Italian. She wasn’t Catholic, though she attended Mass with him and the girls. She was a good cook, but a much, much more casual cook than this meal she’d chosen made room for. His wife had taken on a great deal more than she could handle, he thought, with three daughters to raise, a house to manage, and a business to run, but pointing that out to her had earned him a very cold night indeed.

She’d gotten one key thing wrong. She had invited his family as guests, rather than assume that they would all come early and that the women would be part of the preparations. When he’d mentioned that she’d have all the help she needed, she’d waved him off with a WASPy hand, saying she couldn’t possibly invite people and expect them to work for their supper, totally disregarding the fact that she routinely and happily helped out when they went to family for a holiday.

When he’d come home one evening to find her sitting at her kitchen desk looking stressed and weepy, scheduling tasks to the minute on the whiteboard she normally used to keep track of the girls’ activities, Nick had insisted she hire help, since she wouldn’t consider taking the free help available. Hence “Miss Ashley and Miss Gina,” from the catering service at Dominic’s.

Now he stood at the entrance to the kitchen and watched, unnoticed for the moment. The three women were bustling about, and it felt almost like the kitchen at Dominic’s. The smell of the mingled fishes was strong but not unpleasant—of course, living on the Rhode Island coast, the smell of fish was a familiar, homey scent.

Clams, anchovies, mussels, salt cod, shrimp, lobster, and eel. Baked, roasted, grilled, sautéed, tossed with pasta, served over vegetables. For dessert, cannoli and struffoli. He’d seen the menu repeatedly over the course of the past couple of weeks. Nick thought Beverly must have read up on every conceivable iteration of traditional Italian holiday foods, and she was trying to put on a spread that hit every note.

There was no way Lia was eating anything on this menu. Except the struffoli. If every other large family meal was any indication, their pathologically picky middle daughter would have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on her china plate. Or possibly some plain linguine with butter—if Beverly insisted that she at least approximate the family’s meal.

As he thought of the sweet little monster that was Lia, Nick grinned and stepped in, ready to make himself known. At just that moment, Elisa ran in from the family room entrance.

“Mamma! Lia won’t quit making the movie go back and forth!”

Beverly slammed a wooden spoon onto the island and wheeled on their girl. “Elisa! Would you stop tattling! Just stop! Handle it your fucking self!”

The whole room froze. Even Ashley and Gina stopped, glancing at each other and stepping back, out of range of the family triangle.

“Beverly!” Nick wasn’t sure whether the swearing or the tone itself had shocked him more. Beverly’s parenting style was almost maniacally gentle and positive. She had been raised by a hypercritical mother, and she was trying to be as different from Jane Maddox as she could be. She saved her irritation, frustration, and weariness for their quiet moments together, when she could get it off her chest without getting it on their children. Nick didn’t think he’d ever heard her yell at the girls, except simply to be heard over their din.

And Elisa was a quiet, extremely sensitive child. She would take this moment to heart for weeks.

Elisa, in fact, looked devastated and terrified. She stood with her eyes and mouth wide, and then turned abruptly and ran past Nick, down the hall, and up the stairs, wailing at the top of her lungs.

And that was when Beverly saw Nick. Her face crumpled, and then she ran from the kitchen in tears, too—heading around the corner, to his study.

Alone now with the alarmed kitchen staff, Nick turned to them. He didn’t bother to smile or do anything to ease their minds. “Can you carry on without her?”

Gina nodded. “Yes, sir.” Both girls worked at Dominic’s, so they knew him well enough to know what kind of respect he commanded.

“Good. Do so.” He turned and went up to follow after his firstborn. Her crisis needed the most immediate attention, and he was as angry at Beverly as he was worried about her. He’d do better to wait to sort her out until the anger had cooled.

His mother was at the top of the stairs, about to head down. “Nicky—is everything all right?”

“Just a little meltdown, Ma.” He kissed her cheek.

“She shouldn’t be doing all this by herself—that’s what family’s for! I tell her, but she won’t listen.”

“I know, Ma. But this is the first time we’ve had family here like this. She’s wrapped up in making it perfect.”

His mother huffed and shook her head. “Family is what makes it perfect.”

Not the first time in the past few weeks he’d heard this from his mother. She and Beverly got along beautifully and loved each other deeply. This was, as far as he knew, the first time they’d clashed. He changed the subject. “The baby’s okay?”

“Down for her nap, finally.” Carina was a distinctly fussy baby. Beverly was convinced her discontent was due to their decision to supplement breast milk with formula. Nick thought maybe his littlest angel was simply impatient and disgruntled with her helplessness. She was almost never still—even in sleep, she’d been moving around in the crib from the time she was only a few weeks old. He thought her temper would cool when she could get about on her own more.

“Thanks. Will you go down and keep an eye on Lia and the kitchen while I sort this out?”