Scorched (Sizzle #2) (12 page)

“Lo siento,
abuela,” Mannie apologized remorsefully, hanging his head as his own Spanish
accent grew more pronounced. 

“I’m sorry as
well, Mrs. Delancy,” Nick added respectfully.  “I forgot myself for a moment. 
I shouldn’t have said anything with a child in the room.”

Rolling his
eyes, Devil shook his head at his employee.  “Hey!  Your future groom started
it, man,” he consoled Nick, clapping the man on the shoulder.

“Devil!”
Molly hissed when Mannie’s eyes bulged.

“Judas!”
Mannie hissed at Devil.  “I
knew
you were on
his
side!  You are
traitor, Devil Delancy.  I wonder if
Nicholas
will arrange your schedule
just the way you like it.  Perhaps
Nicholas
will make sure that you
always have your favorite coffee in the morning.  I bet
Nicholas
will
run interference between you and all those ex-hoes that flutter around you….”

“Excuse me!”
Molly yelped, turning sharply to face her husband.  “What ex-hoes?”

Shifting his
attention from his irate wife to a hapless Nick, Devil ground his teeth
together.  “Do you absolutely have your heart set on
this
guy, man? 
‘Cause I gotta tell ya, he’s living on borrowed time if another stupid comment
like that comes out of his trap,” Devil threatened before focusing on his
wife.  “Baby, I promise you’re the only hoe in my life,” he attempted to sooth.

“Somehow I
don’t think that remark is going to help you, Dev,” Nick muttered under his
breath.

“It won’t,”
Molly agreed, before lifting her chin and squaring her shoulders.  “We’ll be
discussing your hoes later, Devil Delancy.”

“You are so
going to pay for this,” Devil hissed at an unconcerned Armando.

“My boss pays
very well.  I can afford it,” Mannie returned, blinking owlishly at their
irritated host.

Clearing her
throat, Molly interrupted, “For now, I think our company has arrived,” she
informed the group, gesturing with one hand at the Cadillac pulling into their
driveway outside the house.  “Nana, would you mind taking the baby upstairs to
the nursery and staying with her.  I don’t want her little ears to fall off
from the things she might hear this afternoon.”

 “What
company?” Mannie asked with a suspicious look at Molly.  “You said that Vivian
and Sami had other plans,” he continued as Nana passed him on her way up the
stairs.

“Mannie, you
know how you’re forever telling me that it is so much easier to ask for
forgiveness than to beg for permission?” Molly asked as the doorbell pealed in
the foyer.

“Si,” Mannie
answered slowly.

“Well, I
finally understand what you mean, sweetie.”

Molly

Hurrying past
a confused Armando and an uneasy Nick, Molly followed after Devil.  She pasted
what she hoped like hell was a welcoming smile on her face and walked into the
foyer to greet their guests.  “Hello,” she greeted the older couple that stood
on their threshold.  “You must be Mr. and Mrs. Santino.  I’m so grateful that
you accepted our invitation.  I’m Molly Delancy and you’ve already met my
husband, Devil,” she said pleasantly, extending her hand.

“Yes,” Sofia
Santino replied, somehow managing to look down her nose at Devil even though
she was several inches shorter than him while shaking Molly’s hand.  “I met
your aptly named spouse several years ago.  He doesn’t appear to have changed
very much,” she continued haughtily, looking Devil over with an exacting eye.

“Oh, now,
Sofia.  I’ve changed.  I’m a whole lot less patient with rude folks that ought
to have learned better manners given their social standing,” Devil returned
icily.

“Oh, good! 
We’re already on a first name basis with each other, too,” Molly tittered. 
Dropping Sofia’s hand, she reached for Gino Santino next.  “And you must be
Nick’s father.  Gino, isn’t it?” she questioned quickly before her husband
could continue insulting Sofia.  The old witch deserved it, she thought angrily,
but they were here to try and repair Nick and Armando’s relationship.  These
two uptight assholes were part of that pivotal plan whether they wanted to be
or not.  Therefore, she couldn’t allow her husband to decimate those thirty
seconds after arrival before the meal and peace talks even got underway.  Maybe
by dessert, though, if their attitudes didn’t improve.

Gino took
Molly’s hand in his, shaking it gently and smiling.  “It is a pleasure to meet
you, Mrs. Delancy.  My son told us that Devil had married, but he neglected to
tell us how beautiful you were.”

Probably
because I don’t have a penis, Molly thought silently even as she blushed and
smiled at the older man.  He didn’t seem quite so bad.  Perhaps, there was a
bit of hope on the horizon.  “Thank you, sir.  And please, call me Molly.  And
come in.  Welcome to our home,” she continued, gesturing for them to precede
she and Devil into the formal living room.  “Nick and the others are waiting
inside for us.”

“By others,
you mean….” Sofia broke off meaningfully.

“I mean that
he is waiting with his fiancé, Armando,” Molly acknowledged softly, carefully
keeping her face expressionless as she stared down the older woman.

“I will thank
you
not
to refer to
that man
as my son’s anything,” Sofia ordered
sharply, stiffening as she glared at Molly.

Sighing
heavily, Gino looked at his wife.  “Sofia, we spoke of this already.  You will
be civil and not offend our hosts with rudeness.  Let’s just go inside and hear
what our son has to say,” he suggested reasonably, placing a guiding hand on
his wife’s lower back.  “How can I convince you to remain quiet for long enough
to get the facts, wife?”

“Might I
suggest a muzzle,” Devil offered with a graciousness that pulled a faint smile
to Molly’s lips even as she painfully pinched his side in warning.

“Will you
please behave?” Molly beseeched her husband as she turned to hiss against his
ear.  “We’ve got one chance to get this right or Mannie lives in our guestroom
indefinitely!” she reminded him in a violent whisper as the other couple walked
ahead of them into the other room.

“Fine!  I’ll
rein it in, but you should know that holding back is definitely
not
good
for my digestion,” Devil complained in a low voice.

“Think about
what having Armando as a permanent houseguest will do to it,” Molly volleyed
back menacingly, lifting both her eyebrows as she shot her husband an eloquent
look.

Molly ignored
whatever her husband continued to unhappily mumble and sped into the living room,
relieved to find that there hadn’t been any bloodshed.  Of course, the
afternoon was young, but she was making a choice to remain positive. 

“Mother. 
Father.  I’m pleased you made it here safely,” Molly heard Nick address his
parents as he turned to face them, blocking Mannie from Sofia’s fuming gaze. 

“Estos son
tus padres?” Mannie questioned Nick in horror.  “You brought them here, su
madre y padre?  Por que?” he asked frantically.

“If it
wouldn’t be too much of an imposition,” Sofia Santino began snidely, “Would you
please ask your….
friend
to use English?  He
does
know English,
doesn’t he?” she asked, making no attempt to hide the mockery in her tone. 
Clearly, she believed Armando to be beneath her.

Witnessing
Nick’s now flushed face and his clenched jaw, Molly jumped in.  “Of course, he
speaks English!  Our Armando graduated from Penn with a degree in business
administration.  He just vacillates between Spanish and English when he’s
nervous or stressed,” she defended her friend sharply.

Not bothering
to even look at Mannie, Sofia lifted her chin.  “Oh, really.  I was under the
impression that he was a
model
,” she returned, spitting out the word
‘model’ like it was poison.

“Modeling is
how I worked my way
through
university,” Mannie responded with quiet
dignity.

“Mother, I
warned you on the phone, you
will
be civil or leave.  It’s your choice. 
One more rude remark to the man I intend to marry and I will personally see you
out,” Nick warned, his shoulders stiffening as his dark eyes bored into his
mother.

“Yes, Sofia,”
Gino added, glaring at his wife, “And I, for one, want to understand what the
hell is going on here.  For the sake of our boy, Sofia, just open your mind and
….”

“I think it
is obvious what’s happening here,” Sofia countered, looking from her son to the
man she held responsible for her family’s current woes.  “This…. This
person
has obviously brainwashed our son.”

“Alright,
Mother, let me try to explain this to you in terms that you’ll understand,”
Nick began tightly, balling his fists at his side even as Molly witnessed
Armando placing a calming, supportive hand at his shoulder.  “To be brainwashed,
this would mean that I had no control over my choices or actions.  I assure
you, it was my
choice
and my
honor
to love and be loved by this
man,” he stated in a voice brimming with pride and dignity as he took Mannie’s
hand and tugged him to stand beside him.  “The way I choose to live my life and
my sexual orientation is NOT a choice!  However, I do
choose
to see it
as a gift from God that I received before I even left your womb.”

“A gift!?”
Sofia echoed, scandalized and angry as she looked at her son as though he were
a stranger to her.

“Absolutely,
Mother.  Because without being born this way, I’d never have had the privilege
of loving and being loved by this wonderfully funny, caring man,” Nick
concluded, his shoulders straight and chin high.  “I suppose for that I should
thank you

“To be
brainwashed would mean that I had no control over my choices,” Nick replied
firmly but with dignity.  “My choice is to be with the man that I love.  My
nature is not a choice, however, but is what God gifted me with from the
beginning of my life.”  He paused for a moment, then added with a grim smile,
“I guess I should thank you for that.  So, thank you, Mother, for giving birth
and bringing me into this world to find the love of my life.”

“Ohhhhh,
Nicky,” Armando whispered, sounding as choked up with emotion as he looked,
“That is the single best thing anybody has ever said about me in my life.  You
do
love me!”

Ignoring
Armando’s statement of the entirely obvious, Molly winced as she noted Sofia’s
dropped jaw and stiffened posture, obviously heralding that she was preparing
to wage a bloody battle.  She could only pray that her nearby hutch holding her
wedding china was as sturdy as it looked.  There was carnage coming… she could
smell the fury burning in the air.  Damn, she had really loved that china
pattern, too, she thought, giving the heavy, oak hutch a long mournful look.

“May I point
out that we haven’t even sat down at the dining room table yet?” Devil asked,
jerking his head toward the adjoining room where the chef Molly’d hired for the
day had set the gorgeous mahogany table with elegant table settings and was
placing food on it as quickly as she could.  Molly didn’t blame her, she’d flee
this house of horrors, too, if she could.

“The
last
thing I have a desire to do is to break bread with
you,
Mr. Delancy,”
Sofia bit out.  “You’re responsible for this, aren’t you?  Before you showed
up, determined to seduce our son away from us, he had a perfectly normal
lifestyle.  He dated
girls
.”

“Look, lady,
I didn’t exactly have to beg to get your son to sign on with Delancy
Industries.  I simply offered him a job.  He’s the one that left skid marks
getting the hell out of Boston and the hell away from you and your
hypercritical running commentary on his life… or lack of one as the case was at
the time.  Because trust me, woman, that boy was barely breathing before I
helped him escape Boston.”

“And for the
record, I didn’t date those girls you refer to, Mother.  I used them as human
shields.  I had to do it,” he said with a quick look at Mannie.  “I did,” he
whispered to the other man now standing at his side and holding his hand
tightly.  “She would have made my life a misery if she’d even suspected I was
gay then.  I’m not proud of it, but I used those girls.”

“As somebody
who’s done sort of the same thing,” Devil began, remembering how he’d dated his
fair share of women in an effort to keep him from acting on his feelings for
Molly, “I get it, Nick.  You did what you had to do then to get through the
day.”  Looking at Sofia again, Devil shook his head in disgust.  “Look, Sofia. 
Gino.  Nick coming here and working for me was almost entirely your own doing. 
You want somebody to blame, look in the fuckin’ mirror.  Neither one of you
would let the guy be who he was.  He had to move somewhere where he could just
be free to live his life without judgment.  And for the record, when he found
Mannie, it looked like he found his other half.  Why don’t you try being happy
for him?” Devil growled, determined to defend his friends.  He only went silent
when Molly grabbed his hand and threaded her fingers through his.

“That will
never
happen,” Sofia denied, casting Nick and Armando a disparaging look of
contempt.  “And I will thank all of you not to blame my son’s horrible,
deviant
lifestyle on me!  I had nothing to do with him becoming an affront against
nature and all the things his father and I hold dear,” she snapped out
bitterly, each word fraught with anger and disgust.  “I can only be thankful
that the people that know us in Boston do not have to be subject to this
ridiculous life choice. “  Pausing to take a deep breath, she focused her
attention entirely on her son.  “You, my son, have a choice to make.”

“A choice,”
Nick scoffed.  “Have you listened to a word I said?  This
isn’t
a
choice, Mother!” he shouted, taking an angry step toward the woman that gave
birth to him.  “It has never, not once, been a choice.  It’s WHO I AM!” he
roared, his body jerking when Armando caught his arm when he would have charged
across the room toward his parents.   “I’m sorry if I’m not the son you wanted,
but this is what you have!”

“Calm down,
mi amor,” Armando soothed against Nick’s ear as he rubbed Nick’s heaving
shoulders.  “Calm down, Nicky.  You don’t owe anyone an apology.  Least of all,
somebody that could make you feel like this,” he added with an irate look at
Nick’s mother.

Barely
noticing Armando, Sofia’s eyes narrowed.  “You have a choice to make, Nicholas. 
You can stay here and live a life that our God considers an abomination….”

“Wait a
second!” Molly finally interrupted, holding up her hands.  “Our God?  Is that
what you said?  Our?”

“That’s
exactly what I said,” Sofia retorted, her eyes flashing.  “Surely you can see
that this is a sinful union that our Lord would never sanction.”

“Well,
my
God doesn’t judge.  
My
God would NEVER condemn two men for loving each
other.  He would never cast them aside for a choice that was never theirs to
begin with.  This is your SON that you’re trying to condemn to Hell!  How can
you do that?” Molly asked, horrified by the callousness that Nick’s mother was
showing him and Armando.

“Don’t bother
wasting your breath, Molly,” Armando interjected softly.  “People like her will
sit in judgment of people like us until the end of time.  You’ve got a better
shot at stopping time than changing her mind.”

“Well, that’s
one thing we can agree on,” Sofia barked at Armando.

“Due respect,
Mrs. Santino,” Mannie’s heavily accented voice replied, “But I pray that it’s
not the
only
thing we ever agree on.  You and I… there is little common
ground to be found, but I love your son.  He has my heart.  My soul. Does that
mean anything to you?”

“Very
little.  Your relationship goes against everything I believe to be right.  I’m
sorry, but you are not for my Nicholas,” Sofia replied.  “As I was saying, Nicholas. 
You can have this immoral relationship with
him
, or you can have a
relationship with your family.  Come home.  Let your father and I get you some
help for this….this….sickness.”