Tutti Italia: A Novel by Deena Jordan Read Free Book Online Page A

joke, he’d still called her out on it.  She made a mental note not to
leave his side again.  She started to keep him in front of her so he was always
in her sight.  The group went in, and an older woman came forward, chattering
on in Italian.  Their chaperone kept a rapid banter going with her for a few
minutes, before the older woman switched to English.
    “Welcome!  We have a room ready for you and we have the
menus waiting.  There are two choices for each course, and you can practice
your Italian when you order.  Follow me please!”  She breezed through a hallway
to what had to be the banquet room.  There was a long table in the shape of a
horse shoe, and the chairs were ringing the outside.  The waiters were in the
middle of the horseshoe, little pads of paper ready with pens poised above them. 
Rachel felt like a princess.  There was an entire wait staff here for their
small group of maybe twelve people.  There was definitely something to be said
for Italian hospitality.  Jason sat next to her, and the two perused their
menus. 
    “What if we each order a different meal for each course? 
That way we can try everything.”  Rachel brightened.  That was an excellent
idea.  She had to give Jason some credit for his bright idea.  She was just
thinking that she was going to be missing out on half of the food and was sad
about it.
    “That is the best idea ever!  Ok, so we’ll order, eat half,
and switch plates.  Sound good?”  Jason thought about it for a second and
grinned, giving Rachel a thumbs up.  That was all she needed to dive into the
menu.  Like Jason, she was very hungry, and she wanted to know what was coming
to her.  The menu was in both English and Italian so she could read it.  The
courses were laid out in a lot of detail and they quickly decided that Rachel
would order all the first choices, and Jason would order all the second
options.  They gave their order to the waiter, and true to his word, Jason
didn’t even bother trying to order in Italian, he just pointed.  Rachel could
see that the waiter was a little miffed with him because of it.  She wracked
her brains for all the Italian she’d taught herself out of the Italian/English
dictionary that her parents had given her as a going away present, and
apologized for him before putting her order in.  The waiter smiled at her and
struck up a conversation…in English.  When the waiter left to put their orders
in to the kitchen, Jason stared at her until she looked back at him. 
    “What?  You’re looking at me like I have a second head or
something.”  She looked back at him with a half-smile.  He shook his head.
    “No, it’s not that.  I just didn’t know that you spoke
Italian.  I should have just let you order for me, too.”  Rachel blushed a
little at the praise, and modestly denied it.
    “I don’t speak Italian, I just studied the dictionary that
my parents gave me.”  He gave her an odd look.  “What?”  He looked like he was
trying to come up with a delicate way of putting into words what he wanted to
say.
    “You…lived with your parents before you came here?  How old
are you?”  Rachel could tell that he viewed her as being a mama’s girl or
something for living with her parents.  She immediately went on the defensive. 
    “I lived at home because I went to community college.  It
happened to be literally five minutes up the road from our subdivision.  I went
to school fulltime and I worked fulltime.  Yes, I was living at home because it
was cheaper and convenient.  Is there something wrong with that?”  Her eyes
were hard and shiny like pieces of flint, and her chin was raised in defiance. 
She was challenging him to say something to her, demean her in some way because
she lived at home until she was twenty.  Rachel decided not to mention how old
she was.  He didn’t need to know that if he was going to be an ignoramus about
other ways of life.  He threw his hands up in a