Read Online Bella by Lisa Samson - Free Book Online

an hour before. Sweat ran down his face. He rolled up his sleeves and wiped the perspiration away with his forearm. This was not good. Not good at all.
    This was not a good day.
    He spooned some sauce over the fish entrée he was plating. “It’s all about the presentation,” he said to Pepito. “We don’t need him. We don’t need him.” If he said it with enough confidence, maybe they’d believe him. Maybe he’d believe himself.
    José, José, José!
    Pieter, as rushed as everybody else, hurried into the kitchen, picked up a knife, and began chopping green chiles. “Maybe your mother and father will know where to find him.”
    Manny glanced sideways at his dining room manager. Truth was, Pieter, who’d never liked José, was always trying to undermine José’s popularity with the kitchen staff and never made a dent. He had a cousin in Buffalo dying to move to New York, and Pieter wanted Manny to hire him as the chef. So Pieter always cast José in a bad light to Manny, but Manny saw through it. He kept Pieter on because Pieter knew where to find the freshest ingredients and had enough connections to negotiate the best prices delivered in the shortest amount of time. Not only that— Pieter was easy to boss around. Let him try his maneuverings; Manny would keep José on because José was his family and somehow they’d make things work.
    He handed Marco the spoon. “Take over. I’ve got to make a call.”
    Marco stepped on the line. “You got it.”
    So Manny called and complained to his mother, getting her upset, trying not to make it seem like he was making her feel guilty for asking him to hire José in the first place, which was exactly what he was doing. And there she sat in her cozy house near the beach worrying.
    Truth was, he would have called her eventually, but now he had Pieter to blame. Well, good. He paid Pieter well enough for that.
    The line was quickly falling apart, food arrangements falling over as they sat on the window, runny sauces bleeding over from entrée into side dish. The beans had scorched in one of the first pots Manny had ever bought for the restaurant.
    Yes, he had a sentimental side.
    He could see José’s raised brow. Sentimental? Or cheap?
    He wanted to prove to the staff and to José that he could run this line just as well as anybody. But finally, enough was enough.
    He picked up the glaring red phone on the wall, the one with buttons the size of tea bags, and punched in his brother’s mobile number. Ringing began on the other end. Manny held up a hand as the ringing began. “Shh!”
    He cocked his head to the left, listening. The ringing . . . was in the room?
    There sat José’s mobile phone near his usual post.
    Manny picked it up, saw his own number fl ashing in the display, then slammed it down on the counter.

Ten
    N ina pulled out a ten and handed it to a clearly relieved Carla. “Thank you so much.”
    â€œNo problem.” Carla eyed José with suspicion. Nina wanted to laugh. If this baby was José’s, she wouldn’t be in the same pickle. José would take care of his responsibilities by doing something more than suggesting “halvsies,” that was for sure.
    Pregnancy kit paid for. Good.
    She turned to José. “Want to go to the park?” That was a lot better than her apartment.
    â€œOkay.”
    They stepped out into the sunlight, walked in yet more silence to the park bench. They sat down as a group of Haitian nannies, their charges in strollers, crossed the sidewalk in front of them. This mystified Nina. “I thought the point of having children was to raise them. You know the parents make enough money to support three families. They should stroll their own babies.”
    It was bad enough her father was not around because he had died. Imagine , she thought, never having your parents around and they weren’t