Aqua - Christmas in New York City (Aqua Romance Travel Series) (3 page)

Harry dusted the snowflakes off of Casey’s jacket and said. “I hope our children have your eyes.”

Why should she be concerned, Casey thought. If he felt this strong about her having children and being there for them, she was worrying for nothing.

HARRY STARTED cutting tomatoes into the palm of his hand. “It was my mom who taught me this trick, you know. It catches all the juices.”

Harry cut the wedges over the large bowl that he would serve the salad in. It took him back to their time on the Aqua. “You know, Chef Amber shared her recipe with me.”

“You’re setting the stakes high,” Casey teased.

Harry couldn’t remember all the parts of her salad but Amber had shared the steps with him in an email. Capturing any extra liquid that fell into the bowl added to the natural juices. Next he sprinkled sea salt and gave a good stir, then let the tomatoes sit for a few minutes so that the salt drew out the natural juices from the tomato. This was the key component to her tasty Greek salad - there wasn’t a need for lemon juice or vinegar as the natural acidic juices blended with the olive oil to make her unique dressing.
 

“I wished I would have cooked more with my mom. Learned from her.”

“You can’t do it all. You were a teenager. Life is untouchable at that age.” Harry could only think of his own mother and how he hadn’t spent enough time with her once he left Venice for the United States.
 

How long ago even the last trip to Venice seemed. Just a few months ago he sat on his mother’s balcony, reading her letters. Everything had changed since then. A door had been opened
and he had walked right through it
.
 

“Mom was always so proud of me,” Casey paused and wiped her eyes. “I always heard her talking with friends on the phone. Casey this and Casey that.”
 

Harry looked over and saw Cassandra’s head bent over the sink, her shoulders shaking. This was the woman who confidently wore a low-backed sequined red gown to the New York City Ballet’s Nutcracker the previous night, a dress that clung to the curves of her body. The same woman who strode through the crowd with such assurance still carried such pain within her.
 

It was her eleventh day Christmas gift to him, a series of artistic experiences meant to ignite his creativity. When the one-ton Christmas tree grew from twelve to forty feet high, she leaned over to him and chuckled in his ear, ‘You’ll do it a bit classier in your painting, right?’ He loved her sense of humor.

Harry walked over to her and covered her body with his till she stopped crying. Then he pulled up a chair for her. “I’ll finish cleaning up after,” he said softly. “If you want, you can help me. I know you find cooking therapeutic.” Casey washed her hands, rolled up her sleeves, sat down in front of three cucumbers.
 

Harry handed her a knife. “Slice them thin.” He then changed the subject to something neutral and told her how Chef Amber had a small garden on the Aqua, a tiny greenhouse off of the kitchen where she plucked fresh herbs from planters and grew enough tomatoes for her Chef’s Table meals.
 

When Harry saw Cassandra set into a rhythmic pattern, her shoulders dropped and her breathing slowed, he stopped talking. She was in the ‘cooking zone’ as Chef Amber called it, a meditative state where all else faded into the task of the moment. Before long Cassandra was chatting. “I have my mom’s cookbooks.” She pointed her head toward a shelf. “There are certain pages that are dog-eared, or smeared, so I know those were ones she cooked often. Sometimes, when I open those pages, I feel her right beside me.”

“I felt that when I was at my mom’s apartment in Venice. Everything there reminded me of her.”

“Why didn’t you bring anything home with you?”

“I wanted to leave it there. I’m going to keep the apartment. I figured it can be our European getaway.”

Casey liked the sound of that.
Their
getaway. Harry talked a lot about that lately -
their
home,
their
car,
their
wedding. Finally she had found the man who understood her, who was willing to share everything with her, even family holidays with her crusty father.

There was a pause and Harry waited, then started slicing the red onions. “You’re okay with that?”

She nodded. “I’m just thinking about how wonderful my life has become now that you’re in it. It’s like a dream.”

“And?”

“These days have been so wonderful, I just don’t want Dad to ruin it.”

“It will be fine.”

“It’s just so magical right now and it’s like bringing Scrooge into our midst.”

“Then maybe we can change him.”

“You don’t know my father.”

“I’ll tell you one thing.”
Harry stopped slicing and looked up at her. “Nothing will come between us.”

Harry
reached for a jar that Chef Amber had given him. She had brought it by personally for him before he and Cassandra left the Aqua, and it was filled with chocolate brownies. He and Cassandra had eaten them that evening and kept the jar by their night table before washing it as a memento of a moment. Touching it, Harry could still picture their first night, could still hear his voice whispering, ‘Cassandra. Cassandra’.
 
Her hand pulled his head toward him, her fingers reaching through his hair and for a moment they came up for air and he looked at her and whispered her name. Moments of the week together flashed before him as he finished the dressing and pressed cloves of garlic into the jar, along with chopped fresh oregano and some dried leaves. He sprinkled some sea salt and ground black pepper corns on top. He measured out the extra virgin olive oil and poured it directly on top of the spices. Then he shook the jar. This made the difference - shaking rather than stirring or whisking.
 

CASEY WATCHED Harry prepare the salad more than she helped him. Here he was, the man of her dreams, and she had to travel all the way to Italy to meet him even though they both lived in New York City. As she watched Harry clean up the kitchen and double check the settings on the dining table, her mind returned to their first port visit on the island of Crete.

Harry had laid out the food on a blanket, opened a jar of olives and sliced some fresh bread and cheese. He scraped thick honey onto two slices of the bread and handed her a piece. They made to interlink arms, just as a loving couple might to sip their wine, but the bread got in the way; honey smeared Casey’s chin, then her fingers, then she dropped hers and it stuck to Harry’s arm.

They tried to wipe it off, then scrub it with sand, but it only got stickier. In desperation they walked into the water and bent over to wash it off, when a rogue wave crashed over them. Wet and soaking they walked further into the water, Harry’s shirt sticking to his muscular arms, Casey’s white dress tight around her nipples. They looked at each other for a moment, then embarrassed, resumed their washing.
 

She took his hand and led him further again into the water until it was above their waists. She stared into his eyes, touched a hand to his chest, and slowly sank into the water, her fingers trailing down his chest, stomach and finally, his zip was tugged down and she took him in her mouth.

Her recollections were disrupted by the door bell and her body tensed as she walked to the front door with Harry. He held her face in between his hands and said, “Remember, everything will be fine,” then kissed her as he turned the door handle.

Foster stood at the door with an impatient scowl on his pale face. He was heavyset, with sparse grey strands of hair combed over from the right side of his head to cover up a bald spot.
 

His shiny leather shoes creaked as he entered the hallway without shaking Harry’s outstretched hand.

A shiver ran down Casey’s back. “Dad, this is Harry.” Her eyes darted to Harry. “Harry, this is my dad, Foster.”

Foster sized up Harry, then reached out his hand and gave him one solid, bone-crushing shake. No words were exchanged and he pointed to the tree. “Those look like the decorations we had on our tree.”

Harry piped in. “Cassandra told me about it so I gave them to her.”

“You call her Cassandra?”

“I do.”

Foster turned to his daughter. “What else do you do differently with this guy?”

“His name’s Harry, Dad.”

He waved her off. “You’re cooking.”

“I tried a turkey.”

Foster folded his arms. “He doesn’t cook?”

“Harry’s a great cook, actually. He made the salad and-”

Foster turned his big chest toward Harry and handed him his jacket. “What do you do for work, Harry?”

“I’m in the Investment business. Angel funding.”

“That’s an unstable industry.”

“Harry’s done very well for himself, Dad.”

Foster ignored Casey and kept his eyes glued on Harry who hung his jacket in the hallway closet. “I have other investments, Foster.”

“Such as.”

“Real estate.”

Foster paced the length of the living room and then picked up a drink that Casey held toward him on a tray. “Looks like you gained weight, Cass.”

She chuckled. “You always say that, Dad.” She sat down on the couch, leaving enough room for him, but Foster remained standing, squaring himself to Harry.
 

“And you left behind your supposed stable industry to be a student at Casey’s university?” he asked.

Harry nodded. “In the new arts program.”

“My daughter leaves a tenure-track professor and ends up with a student. That will be entertaining conversation at the men’s club.” Foster stretched a chubby finger toward the food tray. “What is this?”

“It’s cicheti,” Harry explained. “A Venetian tradition.”
 

“Look like tapas to me.”

Casey reached for the prosciutto wrapped around the purple skin of a fresh fig
and Foster snorted in disapproval. “Whatever happened to crackers and cheese?”

“These are some of Harry’s favorites that he made for you, Dad.”

Foster lit a cigarette and blew the smoke directly at Harry. “So what else are favorites of yours? Sports?”

“I’m a Rangers fan.”

“Kings. I’m from LA. Baseball?”

“Yankees.”

“Dodgers.”

He sat down on the sofa, unbuttoned the sweater that stretched across his wide belly and turned to Casey. ”So this is the guy you’re going to have kids with?”

She was dumbfounded and before she could say anything, Harry said excitedly, “A little Cassandra will be so cute.”

“A little me,” Foster scowled.

“We’ve looked at her baby pictures.”

“What was left of them,” Casey threw in.

Foster ignored her and turned toward Harry. “A selfish reason.” He spread his two fingers out like pinchers and clamped onto a cicheti. “Procreating because the world needs another you.” He took a bite and let the crumbs fall onto the carpet. “You think you’re that special?”

“We’re in love.” Casey jumped in before Harry had a chance to respond.
 

Foster turned to her like a lion on its prey. “You won’t be with a kid. Less sleep, less sex, less time for hobbies.”

“A child brings couples closer.”

“Check your facts, professor. Marital satisfaction rates plunge after the first child.”

Casey turned toward Foster and squared her body toward his. “You don’t care if your bloodline will stop?”
 

“You’re sounding like Hitler,” he snapped.
 

“We want children that will be with us in our old age.”
 

“That’s not why you have children,” he said smugly.

Casey’s chair scraped along the hardwood floor as she stood up. He had done it again. Turned her words around on her.

Harry stood up with the platter of cicheti. “Let’s try and have a pleasant family dinner.”

“Impossible with my dad.”

“Well it’s Christmas,” Harry held out the tray toward Foster, eyes pleading.
 

Foster slapped his hand on the table for attention. “It’s never stopped Casey before.”
 

“Me! You’re the one who always has to bring up-”

“Is there some funny memory you have of Christmas?” Harry was grasping at straws to lighten the air.

“Only when Mom was around.” Casey’s voice almost faltered at the end, as if tears were imminent. It was met with silence by Foster.

“Let’s think of something to be grateful for,” Harry suggested.

“That this is only once a year!” said Foster.

Casey’s head was in a daze. For some reason, she couldn’t stop reacting to her father. He knew how to push her buttons. At least, she wasn’t giving him the satisfaction of a continued argument and left the room.

It would never end with her father. Even when she landed a good University job he always found something to criticize. First it was that she didn’t have a full-time job, then her own office, then that she didn’t have tenure. Even now, he was holding off any praise for her Research Chair position till she finished the term. ‘We’ll see if you can do it’, he had said.

BY THE time she returned, Harry had cleared the antipasto dish and Foster was slurping loudly on the vegetable soup.

Harry got up to pull out Casey’s chair.
 

Foster laughed out loud, his tobacco-stained teeth moving with each ha-ha. “She’s not into a man that caters to her.”

Harry glared at him. “Obviously, she is.”

Soup dripped down his chin. “I know what my daughter needs.”

“Like changing oil on a car?”

“She’s done well for herself.” Foster ran a napkin along the hard outline of his mouth. “Until now.”

“So her dream of being a writer doesn’t matter?”

“Dreams don’t count. A secure job does.” He slid the bread basket toward Casey but she refused to touch it.
 

“Have you ever read her writing?”

He dug his hands into the bread basket. “I’ve seen her marks.”

“Before or after you had cut off her funding?”

Foster’s wrist straightened for a moment and then he snapped the crostini in half. “She had a job.”