Wait for Me Read Online Free PDF

stubborn man,” she said, stepping out of the rest room. She couldn’t stop the hand that reached out to touch him. “If you don’t let me do this for you, all of it, the whole bill, I’m going to tell my brothers that you’re here.” She made it sound worse than facing a firing squad. “I was going to spare you that. They’re full-blooded Italians and very emotional, and they love me very much. Your worst nightmare won’t compare to the stink they’ll make over you for saving their favorite girl’s life.”
    He grinned and let her turn him back through the kitchen toward the restaurant.
    “You’re your brothers’ favorite girl?” he asked, intrigued by the wording.
    “The family’s token girl,” she said, lighthearted, tucking her arm into the bend of his as they walked. “Marie Spoleto is my foster mother, and four of my brothers are actually other children she adopted and raised alongside her own six boys. Let’s see, does that make eleven of us? Yes. I was the last one she took in, and, of course, the joke at home goes two ways—either I was the girl she’d been wanting all along, or once she got me, she couldn’t tolerate any more children.”
    He chuckled with her. “Were you a little handful?” he asked, thinking she must have been. Wishing he knew firsthand.
    “No. I was shy and quiet most of the time.”
    “Who is this you’re talking about?” Tony asked, coming into the kitchen from behind them. “Not yourself, I hope. She lies all the time,” he told Oliver with a twinkle in his eye. “She was the worst. A terror. My mama turned gray overnight.”
    “She was gray when I got here, from raising you.”
    He nodded the sad truth to Oliver, saying, “My mama is a crazy old woman. She raises her children, gets sad when they leave her, and goes out to find five more to raise. Me?—I want to kill my two children twice a day. Who is this?” he asked, turning abruptly back to Holly.
    With an evil smirk on her lips she looked questioningly to Oliver, who gave her a sharp quailing stare.
    “This is a friend of mine from San Francisco, Tony. Oliver Carey, my brother Antonio Spoleto. Bobby is around here too someplace, but Tony doesn’t get quite so personal with his interrogations.”
    “Interrogations?” Tony looked shocked. “What she means is that I’m never anything but pleasant and charming with my inquiries,” he said calmly. “So, what kind of a friend from San Francisco are you, Oliver Carey?”
    “You have the right to remain silent,” Holly said. “You have the right to an attorney...”
    “Okay, okay,” Tony said, laughing. “No questions. She confuses our loving concern with being nosy.” He poinked her on the nose. “Growing up in our family hasn’t always been easy for this girl.”
    “It was always easy,” she said. “But annoying sometimes.”
    “Holly’s very proud of her family,” Oliver said. “You can tell when she talks about you.”
    “Awk”—he covered his ears as if they had suddenly caught fire—“I can hear her now,” he said, then added, “You take your friend’s bill, okay? He eats on the house. And now I’m going to find my big brother Roberto, to tell him we have a friend of our girl in the restaurant.”
    “You better hurry, Oliver. Bobby’ll want to know everything from your social security number to your intentions toward me.”
    “It must be nice to be loved by so many.”
    “It is.” She pushed him through the kitchen door into the restaurant. “One thing I know about is love.”
    “I like your brother.”
    “Me too,” she said, pushing him toward his table.
    “Are they all like him?”
    “Yes. Some are worse.”
    He turned and wouldn’t let her push him any farther.
    “Thank you for dinner,” he said formally, then more personally he went on, “Thank you for the plane ride. Thank you...” just for being here tonight, he was about to say. “Well, just thanks. I won’t forget you.”
    “I know you