And if they didn’t, Luca would see if there was something he could do to fix the problems. He knew his way around a home, a kitchen, and everything in them. Not an expert, but he’d done a fair amount of tinkering in his years.
“Put me to work,” he told her.
She started walking down the long hall. “The master bedroom closets need paint.”
The “Dad” smell she spoke of grew stronger as he followed her.
She showed him where the supplies were, and he took over.
“I’ll be in the garage if you need me.”
Luca watched the soft sway of her hips as she walked away.
The woman really did have a nice . . .
He shook the thought from his head and focused on the work he was given.
Two hours later, the closets were finished, and the back room was heating up.
Brooke sat in the middle of the garage in an old folding chair, her back bent over a file cabinet with a garbage can to the side.
“No electrician yet?”
“Hey.” She looked up, dirt smudged on her cheek. “Not yet. The air people called and said they’re on their way.”
He looked around the garage, glanced up. “Is everything in here going all right?”
“Yeah. I have three piles.” She pointed. “Goodwill, dump, and keep.”
“The garbage pile is getting big.”
“I know. Once the workers get here, I was going to run by the home improvement store. There’s always a guy there with a truck that says he’ll haul trash. I might just have him take it all. The useful Goodwill stuff he can either sell or dump.”
“I’ll go by now, see if I can find the guy. Do you think you’ll get through all this by what, five? Six?”
“Let’s say five.”
“You got it.”
Brooke tossed the paper in her hand in the trash can, sat back, and smiled at him.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“No, no, bella . . . that look meant something.”
She sighed. “Thank you for being here.”
Luca stepped forward and reached out and touched her face. His thumb removed the dirt from her cheek. “You’re even beautiful with soot on your skin.”
He removed his hand . . . slowly.
“Let’s see if you’re saying that by the end of the day.”
“Oh my God, Carmen. He was standing at his car first thing this morning. Like ‘Hop in, bella, let’s get shit done today.’ Who does that?”
Brooke had picked up the phone as soon as Luca was off in search of a dump guy.
“We’re talking about the single, hot, Italian dad, right?”
Brooke rolled her eyes. “Yes. Luca.”
“Oy, oy, oy.”
“Stop it. I need advice. And I need it before he gets back.”
Carmen stopped teasing. “You don’t need advice. You need to relax. He sounds like one of the good ones. Let it happen.”
“Let it happen,” she mocked. “I don’t ‘let’ things happen. Shit happens to me and it’s never good.”
“You didn’t used to be such a pessimist.”
“Once upon a time the glass was half-full. Not these days.”
“Okay, Debbie Downer. You want my advice . . . here it is. Keep doing whatever it is you’re doing.”
“I’m not doing anything. Zero effort.”
“Really?” Carmen didn’t sound convinced. “Makeup . . . a nice dress?”
Brooke hesitated. “Maybe . . . a little last night, but that was it.”
Carmen chuckled.
“Carmen!”
“Sorry. Okay . . . any red flags?”
Brooke thought about that. “He loved his ex-wife.”
“That’s a red flag?”
“I guess not.”
“Is he good to his mom?”
Brooke looked back on the dinner the night before. “To the whole family. He takes being the oldest brother quite seriously.”
“And his daughter?”
All Brooke could do was smile. “Great dad. We should all be so lucky.”
“He’s Italian, does he smoke?”
“No.”
“A lot of Italians smoke,” Carmen pointed out.
“In Italy. The San Diego variety are less in that wheelhouse.”
“That’s good.” Carmen sighed. “I don’t know what to tell you, Brooke. How does he kiss?”
“He hasn’t kissed me,” Brooke nearly yelled.
“Now then . . . we have a problem.”
“There hasn’t been . . . I don’t even know if—”
“Stop right there. He did not drive your sorry ass all the way to Upland to do grunt work all day if he wasn’t interested in kissing you, bellllaaa. More than that, you want him to.”
Brooke closed her eyes, and even in her own head she couldn’t convince herself that Carmen was wrong.
“Let it happen. You deserve some happiness, Brooke.”
The van with the air conditioning repair guy pulled into the driveway.
“I gotta go.”
“I want a kissing update the next time we talk,” Carmen teased.
“Love you,” Brooke said with a laugh.
“Back at ya, boo.”
She hung up.
Her best friend was such a dork.
Brooke’s father didn’t throw anything away.
A conclusion Luca came to as he watched Brooke comb through countless files that the man had collected over the decades.
Luca returned from contacting a trash hauler and scheduling a pickup to find both the electrician and the air conditioning repairman working.
The pile in the center of the garage grew as he removed dusty boxes from the rafters and opened them to find even more paperwork.
“I’m half tempted to throw it all away, sight unseen,” Brooke threatened sometime after noon.
“I don’t blame you.”
No sooner had she said that than the air guy asked them to follow him to the control panel for the thermostat.
“I was looking for a plug and thought you might want to see this,” he said as he pointed at the bottom of a hall closet.
Brooke glanced inside. “I emptied it out.”
“Not all of it, lady. Look at the bottom.”
She dropped to her knees and gasped.
Luca leaned down beside her as she reached into a dark space and pulled out a jar of coins.
Not just a jar, but a restaurant-size peanut jar that was an effort to lift.
“What the hell, Dad.” She scooted the jar out, reached back in.
“There’s more?” Luca asked.
The air guy laughed and walked away.
Brooke handed Luca the next jar and reached in again. “You would think”—she grabbed another—“that my dad would have told me about these.”
“Maybe he forgot.”
She reached back in, and by the time she was done, they counted fifteen jars in various sizes. All filled with coins of every denomination.
Brooke looked at the money. “I guess I can’t throw things away without looking at them first.”
“This is insane.”
She wiggled to sit up from her cramped position on the floor.
Luca reached out to give her a hand.
He didn’t let go right away, and she looked up.