Boss I Love to Hate: An Office Romance(66)

I gave him the lowdown on each of my aunts, Aunt Chelsey being the loudest and sweetest chick of the litter, and before I knew it, we were in front of the house.

“Anything else?” He turned off the engine, reached for the door handle, and pushed open the door. One foot was already out of the car.

“Oh, and my father hates you.” I shrank into myself. It was mostly my fault, being the child who shared almost every detail of her life to her parents.

Brad scoffed and then shut his door. “Why?”

I tried to shrug, though my face flushed pink. I could feel the warmth, as though a heating pad were placed on the apple of my cheeks. “Because I complain about you nonstop, and you’re kind of a dick to me.”

“Which is exactly why I’m trying to change,” he pointed out.

I sighed. Maybe it was a good thing he wanted to better himself. I just hoped it had nothing to do with me.

“Duly noted.” I opened my door and couldn’t jump out of the car fast enough.

We strolled to the front door, and his hand awkwardly fell to the small of my back as I rang the doorbell. The noise and commotion of people talking and laughing could be heard from outside.

I pushed his hand off my back and patted his shoulder. “Good luck. If you survive this, I’ll marry you,” I joked, embarrassed that had fallen out of my mouth. If I wanted normal, I couldn’t be joking like this. Am I flirting? Shit, maybe I was still drunk from two days ago.

The door flew open, and my mother’s smiling face greeted us. “Sonia!” She pulled me into an embrace so quickly that I tripped over my own two feet.

Seriously? I’d just seen this woman last week.

She held my cheeks between her two hands and squeezed, making my lips puff out like a fish, before leaning down to kiss my cheeks.

My mother was a big woman with hips that didn’t lie and hair that was short and with curls that were teased like we were still in the eighties. She’d been stick skinny in her younger years, but she had grown into her skin, the more children she had and the more pasta she’d made.

When her head tilted up to take in Brad, her eyes lit up. “Hello, boss man turned boyfriend. Come on in.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I groaned.

She ignored me and pulled him in, holding his cheeks so that his lips puffed out like a puffer fish, too. “Such a skinny man. Does your mama feed you?” She pressed her cheek to his cheek. Then, she started feeling his biceps for more meat and frowned. “You need to be eating more pasta, but don’t you worry; I have cooked a feast for tonight.”

When she linked her arms around his, I left him to the wolves. Maybe this would cure the weirdness between us.

“I’m Lydia, and let me introduce you to our clan.”

“Sonia!” Rosa and Stella rushed toward me. They were Irish twins, born eleven months apart. There were days when I couldn’t tell them apart with their silky, shoulder-length brown hair, their same brown eyes—my father’s—and their similar choice in clothing—Hollister hoodies and Vans.

“We made the school play.” Stella leaned against the couch and crossed her ankles.

“And I’m second chair,” Rosa added, almost jumping up and down.

Stella grabbed my hand and pulled me to the couch, and they began to tell me about the play, who had gotten cast as whom, about their hot-to-trot theater teacher, and all that was high school drama–related.

Like me, they were late bloomers and weren’t dating anyone seriously. Must be a Russo thing.

When I peered over at Brad, all the aunties and my mother were grilling him.

Aunt Kim went up on tiptoes to touch his hair. “Is that a natural curl?”

“Doesn’t he look like a young John Travolta and James Dean mixed into one?” Aunt Clara asked beside him.

They were studying him like a new animal they’d never encountered.

A part of me debated on saving him, but when he caught my eye and smiled, I shrugged and decided he was a big boy. Plus, a little revenge wouldn’t hurt.

“You guys make the cutest couple,” Aunt Clara said.

I shouted back, “We’re not together!”

They completely ignored me and prattled on about how adorable our future children would be.

“Like I said, we are not together.” I rubbed at my forehead, feeling exasperated already.

“That’s not what it looked like at the wedding,” Aunt Chelsey added. Then, she proceeded to whisper to her sisters so I couldn’t hear her.

“It’s called too much to drink and just a date and nothing serious,” I muttered, ambling to the kitchen.

The thing about my aunts was that they were relentless, so I gave up. Temporarily.

I went straight to the fridge where I knew our boxed wine was waiting for me.

My mother was a fan, a lush for boxed wine. Any kind of wine actually, but because she liked it cold, she’d get the boxed kind because she was convinced the taste lasted longer.

“Poor guy. He’s never going to make it out of there alive.” Marco sat at the kitchen island, eating a slice of tiramisu.

Out of all of my siblings, Marco had the biggest sweet tooth, yet he was stick skinny. He’d been a lanky teenager and never changed as he grew into adulthood. You wouldn’t have guessed that the skinny gene ran in our family, judging by the size of my father’s Santa Claus belly. Or maybe it was because my father had married an Italian woman who thought pasta was God’s gift.