All I Believe Read Online Free PDF Page B

looking, he called, “Red’s a good color on you.” I was grinning just a little when I reached the elevators.
    When I got to my suite, I realized my room key had been in my leather pants, so I had to go back downstairs to get another one. Since I’d left my passport in the room and my other ID was in my missing wallet, the desk clerk wouldn’t give me a key. I ended up dropping into an upholstered chair in the lobby to wait for my grandmother and Jessie. When I tried calling them again, it went straight to voicemail. I slid down in my seat and put my bare feet up on the coffee table in front of me. An upscale couple in their twenties stared at me, so I gave them a little wave and called, “ Bel giorno .”
    Ugh. This day was going great. I shut my eyes and leaned my head against the back of the chair. On the bright side, I was over six thousand miles from home, so I wouldn’t run into anyone I knew while I was dressed like that.
    “Nico?”
    My eyes flew open and I blinked at my cousin Remy. Technically, we were second or third cousins, or something like that, but just went with ‘cousins’ for simplicity’s sake. I had a lot of relatives who fell under that title, both in Italy and back home. Remy’s grandmother and mine were sisters. Nana’s family had immigrated to the U.S. when she was a girl, but two of her sisters had moved back as adults because they both fell in love with Italian men. All the sisters had had fairly large families and plenty of grandchildren.
    Remy was in his late twenties with short, dark hair and a tidy beard. He was a stay-at-home dad, and his wife was a pediatrician. He was wearing his youngest child like an accessory in some sort of carrier that was strapped to his torso. The baby blinked at me and gave me a toothless smile. “Hey,” I said, getting up to shake Remy’s hand. I then ran a palm over the baby’s bald head and said, “Hi there, RJ.” The baby just blinked again.
    “Wow. This, um…what are you wearing?” Even though he’d been born in Viladembursa, Remy’s English was flawless. Almost everyone in my family was perfectly bilingual.
    “I didn’t go out like this. My leather pants smelled like bacon, so they were carried off by a pack of dogs with a poodle as their ringleader. Now I’m locked out of my suite, because they also took my room key. It was in my pocket.”
    “So…you were mugged by a poodle?”
    “Basically.” I sat back down, and Remy took the chair next to mine, setting a bulging diaper bag on the floor. “I didn’t know you’d be stopping by,” I said, trying to change the subject. “I thought we were meeting at your grandmother’s house for dinner.”
    “That’s why I’m here. Nonna sent me to make sure you’re all coming tonight. She’s bent out of shape because your grandmother wanted to stay in a hotel instead of her house.”
    “They talked about this. Nana and Nonna make each other crazy, and they know that, so I thought everyone was on the same page about us staying in a hotel.”
    He shrugged and crossed his sneaker-clad foot over his knee as he leaned back in the chair. “You know how it goes, Nonna loves to stir up drama. Just tell me you’ll all be there. My grandmother feels like she has something to prove since your grandmother is a big-shot TV chef, and has been cooking since daybreak.”
    “We’ll definitely be there. Nana just has a cable TV cooking show, by the way. I think the only reason anyone watches it is to see if anything explodes, and to count how many times she drops the f-bomb.”
    The baby started to fuss, and Remy produced a toy out of nowhere with Ninja-like speed. That calmed his son instantly. “Nonna thinks her sister is the next Julia Child.”
    “Not so much. She is a terrific cook, but somehow when she gets in front of the camera, everything sort of spirals out of control.” I sat up a bit and craned my neck as the handsome guy in the suit entered the hotel lobby, white paper coffee cup in