Love on the Back Burner Read online

  Love on the Back Burner

  A Tasty Romantic Comedy

  Barbara Oliverio

  Copyright 2013 by Barbara Oliverio.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Love on the Back Burner: A Tasty Romantic Comedy

  Published by Scolapasta Press Denver, CO

  720-229-0436

  [email protected]

  www.scolapastapress.com

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from Scolapasta Press or Barbara Oliverio, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

  All images, logos, quotes, and trademarks included in this book are subject to use according to trademark and copyright laws of the United States of America.

  Author Photo Copyright Cliff Lawson

  Cover Art Lisa Hertzi

  Smashwords Edition

  Licensing Notes

  This e-book is licensed for your personal use and enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or if it was not purchased for your use only, please visit Smashwords.com and purchase a copy for yourself. Thank you for respecting this author’s work.

  Dedication

  For Darby

  You’ll be in my heart, always.

  Acknowledgments

  This book may have come from my fingertips, but it is directly attributable to so many people. First and foremost, I thank my parents who gave me my life, my Catholic faith, and my blue-collar work ethic. Thanks to my big brother John, who may be the nation’s war hero now, but who has always been my own personal hero. Thanks to my earliest schoolteachers who indulged my love of reading by letting me check out more than the allowed number of library books at once. Thanks to my high school English teachers—especially Solveig-Lynn Bowers, who nurtured many a young writer’s growth. I appreciate everyone whoever said, “Hey, you should write a book,” particularly my friend Nancy, who jokingly suggested a book that commemorated my own collection of recipes. Here you go, Nancy, I did it. Margaret, I appreciate your support and early reading. Christine -- you’ll always be Chrissy to me -- never lose your enthusiasm and work ethic. Thank you to Father John Paul Leyba, who read through Damian’s character and advised me on how priests interact with their own families.

  Thanks, Polly Letofsky, for your help in navigating the world of publishing. Susan Hindman, without your editing, this would be a random collection of 26 letters of the alphabet. Lisa Hertzi, this cover rocks! Thanks to the Denver Literary Ladies who Lunch for monthly rounds of encouragement. And, mostly, thanks to the light of my life, Darby, for always believing in my talents even when I have doubts.

  Chapter One

  I don’t care if the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. At that moment, I made the decision that Raymond James needed to wear the five-pound lasagna directly on his head. Topped with a lavish tiramisu.

  “But, baby, I think this is for the best,” he said, wiping $40 of cheese, tomato sauce, and mascarpone from his face.

  “The best. THE BEST?”

  “Yes. You know that we’re not ready to move on to the next level … and you know I’m not a commitment guy … so this is better for you … and you know …

  “What? Did you just read ‘Cliché Break-up Phrases for Dummies’ before you came over? Get out!”

  I slammed the door in his face and unceremoniously slipped on the dinner and dessert. I wiped the chocolaty, tomatoey goo from my hands onto my jeans, reached into my pocket for my cell phone, and dialed my best friend, Keira.

  “Well, that’s over.”

  “What? Don’t tell me he didn’t make it through lasagna and tiramisu.”

  “No. He didn’t even dodge the lasagna and tiramisu.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’ll explain when you get here. And pick up a pizza from Tarantino’s on the way. There don’t seem to be any leftovers. And TastyKakes!!”

  I sat and pondered my recent dating debacle.

  Raymond James was just another in a series of failed relationships that I was inexplicably doomed to encounter. At first, he seemed to look “good on paper,” as my brother Anthony would say: good Italian family (for Mom), good job (for the future), and definitely good to look at (for me). But what had started as a nice, promising relationship had ended abruptly this evening.

  What was it? I know I’m not Sports Illustrated cover material, but my petite frame, short dark brown hair, and blue eyes have been known to turn a few heads. I had always had my share of dates, even though I didn’t have the blonde hair or the luscious curves of Keira, who, at that moment strolled into my place bearing Tarantino’s finest pepperoni pizza and a box of TastyKakes.

  “Good lord, Alex, it’s quite the disaster here!”

  “Well, the disaster was hooking up with one Raymond James. Here, let me mop this up and we can enjoy that pizza.”

  “Let me help you.” She twisted her long locks into a quick ponytail, grabbed some paper towels, and assisted in the damage control. That was the thing about Keira. Seeing her perfectly manicured, coiffed, and impeccably dressed, you’d think that she had grown up in a house with servants—and she did—but she was always the first to get down and dirty to do “real work.”

  A few moments of companionable cleaning removed the remains of my disastrous date from my floor and walls. I changed from my “date” clothes into a well-worn pair of pajamas emblazoned with sock monkeys sporting Hawaiian shirts, and curled up on one end of my sofa while Keira curled up on the other. “I just don’t get it,” I said, flipping open the pizza box and settling in to polish off half of the deliciously aromatic pie and at least one trio of the packaged chocolate cupcakes. “How did things go so bad, so suddenly, but with no real drama, you know? I mean there were no arguments. Just poof, tonight he says he doesn’t think things will work out. And on the night I made Mama’s lasagna and tiramisu!”

  “Quite frankly, I’m surprised you pulled out the big guns so soon in the relationship. Making your mom’s lasagna for someone you’ve only been dating two weeks?” Keira delicately pulled the pepperoni pieces off each pizza slice and ate them before eating the rest of the slice.

  “I dunno. I guess I thought this felt promising. He comes from a good family, has a good job … he …”

  “I know, I know, he ‘looks good on paper.’ Maybe you should start ignoring Anthony’s rating system and concentrate on your own.”

  “Ha. You know I don’t rely solely on my family’s recommendations, but you have to admit that Anthony was spot-on with this one. Pass me the cupcakes, please.”

  Tarantino’s, in addition to making the most authentic East Coast pizza in Denver, also imported and stocked my favorite snack treats from back East, allowing me to relive my childhood one cupcake at a time.

  “In any case, Alex, I’m not sure how he could have walked in here, seen that lasagna, and done anything but propose on the spot.”

  “If that’s the case, he should have pulled out a two- carat diamond last week when I made Chicken Piccata, or when I made Pasta Amatriciana, or ...”

  Ever since I was old enough to pull up a chair, I’d stand next to my mom and grandmother in the kitchen and watch as they produced the wonderful dinners that were such an integral part of our family life. I have always been able to re-create those Italian specialties that I love, a talent that came in handy when I moved half a continent away from my family.

  “Beside
s, Keira, I wasn’t looking for a marriage proposal, just an indication that he’d be around long enough to maybe go back East with me at some point to a family function.”

  Keira stopped chewing, and with a practiced move, gave me a whack on the back of my head. Not just any whack, but the one my Nonna Teresa must have learned in a super-secret grandmothering class somewhere.

  “Ow! Just because you’ve spent a lot of time with me back home doesn’t give you the right to pull out the patented Nonna Teresa head whap.”

  “Alexandria! You told him you were going to take him into Italian Catholic Central? It’s not enough that you have so many photos and memorabilia in this apartment that it could be the setting for a Fellini film festival? And that you rarely cook a meal that doesn’t include pasta?”

  “Hey! You LIKE my pasta!”

  “No, I LOVE your pasta, but that’s beside the point. Guys don’t want to feel that they are being wrapped in the Italian flag and tied with a red, white, and green bow when they date you.”

  I looked around at the family photos in mismatched frames that lined the mantle and side tables of my bachelorette pad, and at the cherished items handed down to me from my grandmother’s and great-aunts’ homes. Hmm. Maybe it did look more like it belonged in the Italian countryside than the hip Washington Park area of Denver.

  “Are you saying I should change my décor?”

  “No, not at all. The way you have this place decorated is adorable. And you have a lot of things here that you have picked up on your business trips that make it uniquely ‘Alexandria.’”

  We munched silently and pondered that for a moment. I supposed I could go for a more sleek modern look, but what would I do with the crocheted throws that I liked to grab at a moment’s notice when I settled in to read or watch TV? What would become of my collection of menus from my favorite restaurants that I had framed and hung on the walls? And how could I get rid of the collection of hatboxes that served as both conversation pieces and extra storage? No. My apartment was definitely “home,” and I saw no reason to make any changes.

  “Yep, it’s the food that scares them away,” Keira nodded.

  “Hey! Complain about my cooking again and you’ll have to hire a professional cook to cater for your next dinner soiree rather than rely on my amateur skills and goodwill.”

  “Calm down. For that outburst, I’m taking the last TastyKake. No. What I mean is that you might need to branch out in your culinary world and make things for THEM.”

  “What? Everything IS for them.”

  “You need to research your target market better and aim at them. See, while you are an amazing cook, sometimes I think that you don’t take the time to find out enough about the fellow’s favorites and hit him with those favorites. You rely on YOUR favorites. You know, you don’t want to be a one-trick pony.”

  I made a note to relay that back to her the next time she said she desperately needed a veal marsala for a dinner party. One-trick pony, indeed.

  She had a point, though. While I was a foodie and a great culinary experimenter, when it came to cooking for dates, I generally stuck to the safe recipes from my mom’s kitchen. Hmm. Market research and target marketing. I could do that. After all, it was what I actually did for a living.

  “Well, one good thing with this one,” she said, gathering up the empty pizza box and chocolate wrappers. “At least since they won’t be meeting him, you’ll be spared the family’s examination of him.”

  Chapter Two

  Monday morning, I settled back in my desk chair to put the finishing touches on my part of the marketing campaign for our latest product. In cubicles all around me, activity was buzzing. We were preparing for our biggest trade show of the year, and my vice president of marketing would be gathering the entire crew together at the end of the day for one of her “Making Marketing Magic” meetings. Ordinarily these “3M” meetings—as we called her whimsical term—were calm weekly affairs where the crew presented updates, but in the weeks before a trade show, they became not only more frequent, but more hectic to boot.

  “Hey, Alex, do you have three bold words I can use for the banner?”

  Elliott, our graphic designer, was putting the final touches on the booth design. He was a compact, wiry guy who refused to use the term short to describe his five-foot-five frame. His widely spaced charcoal eyes could usually be found following a shapely pair of legs appreciatively through any venue, and women fell for his boyish allure and good heart. Elliott somehow always managed to charm and date women taller than him.

  “I have three bold words for this product,” came sarcastically over the other side of my cube from Natalie, the product marketing manager. She was responsible for the public face of the entire Media Resolutions company and all of our products, and the measure of her success depended on the bottom line of the sales. Many was the time that Natalie had less than an hour to pull together a PowerPoint presentation that sizzled. Without looking, I knew that she had one pencil stuck in her jet-black chignon and was tapping the side of her chic designer glasses with another one. Her quick, acerbic tongue matched her sleek sense of style.

  “Hey, both of you,” I said, “this product isn’t that difficult to describe. Particularly if you—”

  “Experience it,” they finished for me in unison. That was our marketing VP’s favorite quote and one she ended most meetings with. We laughed together, and I popped my head up to make sure she wasn’t nearby giving us a stern stare. No need to incur unnecessary wrath before the meeting.

  “Seriously, guys, if you had come to the demo, you would know just as much as I do about this.”

  Elliott walked over, sat on the edge of my desk, and propped his sneakered feet on my trash can.

  “Uh … no. You are the only one here who can really understand all the techspeak well enough to translate what those guys in development are saying. That’s why you usually write the copy and the rest of us humbly beg you for it in English.”

  “Stop it! She’ll get a swollen head and never speak to us peons again,” came over the wall from Natalie.

  “Stay out of this, Natalie, or you’ll find yourself at the bottom of my request line for art for your next PowerPoint!” Elliott said with mock anger.

  At a small company like ours, the marketing group not only sat within close proximity, but also wore a lot of hats and helped each other with many projects.

  “I’m as quiet as a church mouse,” came the meek reply.

  “You two!” I laughed. “Anyway, let me find my notes from the demo. Whoa … what’s up with this? My system just crashed? No NO! Not today! Even my deadlines have deadlines!”

  “Oops. I’ll check back with you later.” Elliott crept back to his own desk.

  I tried turning my system on and off, unplugging and replugging—no dice! Finally I called the IT guy, who didn’t seem to be at his desk. I left a message.

  “Hey, Jim, it’s Alexandria, my brick of a laptop is down again. Can you please be a pal and come over and check it? I’ve got so many fire drills going today. Thanks, buddy, I owe you some cannoli.”

  Over Natalie’s wall came, “I owe you some cannoli,” in a simpering voice.

  “Natalie, that’s her secret! She loads Jim up with carbs and sugar,” said Elliott.

  “You guys benefit from my being pals with IT, so I’d watch it if I were you!”

  Jim the IT guy was tall, cheerful, and shaggy-haired, given to wearing T-shirts with sardonic sayings and usually never seen without a candy bar or Mountain Dew in his hand. He had taken a liking to me not long after I started at the company. One Friday I brought in my Mom’s famous cannoli, and from that point forward, somehow my computer problems always managed to make it to the top of the queue.

  While I waited for him to check his mail and get back to me, I worked on things I could, checking my e-mail on my smartphone and answering my voice mail. Natalie and Elliott leaned over my wall.

  “We’re walking down to Java Junction
for a quick latte. You in?”

  “I need to stay and wait for Jim, but bring me back a café mocha.”

  My phone rang, and I was immediately bombarded with the voices of the D’Agostino family in chorus:

  “What did you do?”

  “What happened with this one?”

  “Did he see the pictures of you with glasses and braces, and run screaming?”

  “You did remember to make those reservations for my friends at Breckenridge, didn’t you?”

  The rapid-fire questioning from my family was something I had gotten used to in-person over the

  years. But my mom and dad had now embraced technology, and conference-called me to get details about my romantic life. At least I had managed to convince them to keep the Skype calls—complete with my elderly Nonna on camera—until later in the evenings. I attempted to lob back answers to all their queries:

  “Mom, what do you mean what did I do?”

  “Pop, what do you mean ‘this one’? There haven’t been that many guys!”

  “Anthony, I think the glasses and braces joke is past its sell-by date.”

  “Damian, for the last time, yes, the tickets are already booked. Now can you all please hang up? I need to get back to my job!”

  Whew. Celebrities and politicians should train for their media blitzes by spending one day with my family.

  “Ahem.”

  I looked up and encountered an eavesdropper.

  “Hey! Why didn’t you make yourself known?”

  “Well, your conversation was so entertaining I didn’t want to interrupt,” he said with a lazy half-smile.

  “What?”

  Who was this guy? I thought I knew all the people in our small company. He must be one of the new sales crew hired on prior to the big trade show. Tall, with dark tousled hair and startlingly bright green eyes, he had that slick sales guy look about him that our VP liked to hire. Trim, dressed in a neat plum, button-down shirt and casual slacks, and wearing trendy shoes that were definitely from Aldo or Steve Madden. Yes, that was it.