A Bride After All Read Online Free PDF

each other.
    Now what? Had he really been out of the game so long that he’d forgotten the rules?
    “Would, uh, would you like to meet in the cafeteria after class?” he asked her at last. “Sean likes to sit with his friends and see who can dribble the most chocolate ice cream down the front of their white karategis .”
    “Sure, that would be fine. Well, it’s that time, I guess.”
    Nick lifted his hand to give a small wave to her departing back, and then manfully fought down the impulse to find a way to kick himself all the way down the corridor to his own classroom. She had to think he was an idiot. He thought he was an idiot. And about as smooth as a centipede on roller-skates.
    “Pretty lady, Signore Barrington. Occhi molli di un Madonna. Soft eyes of a Madonna. You should, how you say, snatch her up?”
    “Thanks, Salvatore, I’ll think about it,” Nick told the squat, cheerful man who had come up beside him, still dressed in a white baker’s uniform, as if he’d come directly to class from his job. “Hey, I told you, no more cannoli. You don’t have to bring me presents.”
    “But I want to bring it for you. Two of them. And some pignolata, too. Your boy, Sean, he likes? Yes?”
    “Yes, he does,” Nick said, accepting the stringtied box because it was easier. And, well, because he liked pignolata, too . “How are your wife and the new baby coming along?”
    Salvatore’s English suffered a bit as he enthusiastically described his happiness in both his wife and his wonderful son, clearly the most beautiful wife and the most handsome, perfect baby. “And he is all-American, my boy is, one hundred and fifty percent. Now my Evelina and me, we must be one hundred and fifty percent American, too . Like our boy. And you, Signore Barrington, you are helping us. You are a good man.”
    Salvatore’s smile was so wide, his heart so large, his eagerness to make a better life for his small family so evident. And people wondered why he volunteered at the community center? Let them meet Salvatore and the others just like him, these wonderful people with their hopes and their dreams—then they’d understand.
    “Thank you, Salvatore,” Nick said, genuinely humbled. “I’m only glad I can help. And you know, Miss Ayers teaches a class in child care, if you think your wife would be interested?”
    Salvatore nodded his head furiously. “Signora Smith-Bitters, she already tell me. My Evelina, she will start with the classes next week.”
    “And the baby? Where will he be, if you’re both here?”
    Salvatore’s smile disappeared and he looked down at his flour-dusted work shoes. “She said not to say.”
    “Who said not to say? Not to say what? Salvatore?”
    “Signora Smith-Bitters,” the man said, sighing. “She say not to worry. She say to bring Stefano with us, and she will find a way.” He looked up at Nick. “What is this, this find a way?”
    Nick turned to look down the corridor, to where Marylou Smith-Bitters was standing next to the registration desk, talking furiously while artfully arranging a neck scarf around the shoulders of a beaming young woman who had probably never before thought of a scarf as anything more than protection from the wind and rain.
    One by one, and whether the person wanted it or not, clearly Marylou Smith-Bitters was out to fix—and even fix up —the whole world.
    “There’s a saying here in America, Salvatore,” Nick said, draping an arm over the man’s shoulders as they walked into the classroom. “Never look a gift horse in the mouth.”
     
    Claire stood in front of the row of sinks in the women’s lavatory and contemplated her reflection in the mirror.
    A few wisps of hair had escaped her classic French twist style, but all in all, she thought she still looked pretty well put together, hair-wise. It was simply easier to wear her hair up when she spent her days dealing with infants and small children who invariably had fists of steel when it came to