Chapter 22
Every day of the last three days before they left Shanghai, Sasha was out and about all day, going from one place to the other in the city, from office to warehouse to factory and even to the port one day, organising shipping and deliveries, and checking and rechecking every transaction and every form, receipt and document, to make sure her purchases were accurately labelled and addressed and everything else, so that they would be sure to land as they were intended to, on time and intact in Miami.
For the entire stay, Lionel’s days had been full, too, and so were parts of his early mornings, given the time difference between the west coast and Shanghai. He was handling more and more of the running of Leonello M’arello, and was working full out all day every day. His father had taken a huge hit with Mario’s accident. He seemed to have become a different man in many ways. He had pretty much handed the firm over to Lionel during the first couple of weeks when they were all practically living in the hospital. But now, even though Mario was on the mend and recovering nicely, Pierpaolo had kept up his new schedule of going to the office only every other day or so, and was also now directing people to refer to Lionel when they needed a decision made.
On the flight back to the US, Sasha and Lionel sat next to each other in one of Cathay Pacific’s Q-suites. They had hardly slept at all during their time in Shanghai, and the last three days had been especially active and full, so Sasha had opted for an upgrade that would allow them some privacy and reduce the distractions so they could get some sleep. She wanted to land at LAX with all her faculties sharp and in good condition, fully prepared to meet this group of very strange people of whom Lionel had spoken. She didn’t not for a second doubt that they were all wonderful people, but she would be walking into entirely unfamiliar territory in every sense of the word, so she was taking no chances whatsoever.
Their individual feelings about landing in Los Angeles on this trip, were reversed compared to what they had been a few weeks before, on that earlier trip that they both now acknowledged seemed like the hand of fate. Lionel was excited and Sasha was excited, but apprehensive. Lionel couldn’t wait to arrive, Sasha wished the airplane didn’t fly so fast.
“You’re gonna love them,” Lionel told her about his family. “Even Pierpaolo is pretty cool. I think he is going to fall in love with you the minute he sets eyes on you. And then, my mom is going to do everything she can think of, and cook and bake everything she imagines you would like, to try and fatten you up. The boys are ok. They’re the coolest dudes ever. It’s the girls you have to look out for. They will hound you until they find out everything single thing about us. They will ask you the strangest kinds of things; they will want to know every word we have ever said to each other since the minute we first met.”
“But, Antonella and I have got along fine. She wasn’t like that.” Sasha was feeling more and more uncertain by the minute.
“Oh! That was before you agreed to become my love, you see. But, you will get along fine with both of them. Nella likes you a lot and Cesca is going to as well. You and her are alike in some ways. She dresses kind of like you and as I told you, she also runs her own business. She started it on her own, just like you did. It’s just that my sisters are nosey and feel they’re entitled to know everything about everybody. They will want to know everything about you, and about you and me. And they never give up. They’re relentless. But, I’ll protect you. You got nothing to worry about.” He smiled and gave her a gentle squeeze.
She lay her head on his shoulder and tried to sleep. He was awake watching movies throughout the flight. He must have dozed off and slept for some of the time, he believed, but he also was sure he heard everything that happened in the cabin and saw every passenger who had moved about at any time. Unable to fully settle, he kept moving his body about and waking Sasha until finally, she retrieved a pillow that had fallen onto the floor, repositioned her body and managed to get some quiet time.
Sasha and Lionel were met at the airport by Antonella and Francesca. Antonella greeted Sasha with a hug and Francesca did the same, which surprised Sasha a bit, since this was the first time they were meeting. They hugged their brother and joked around with him and brought him up to date on their brother’s condition. Lionel was animated and talkative on the ride into the city and Francesca and Antonella were fairly buzzing with questions for Sasha. They wanted to know everything about the week in Shanghai, and then Francesca specifically wanted to be brought up to speed on all the details of how they had got along since the very first time they had spoken on the phone. Lionel tipped his head and glanced at Sasha as if to say, See? I told you. She smiled bravely back at him.
Sasha was both pleased and puzzled, and glad that Lionel had given her a heads up. She would not have liked to have been caught off guard by these two women. She was not at all used to this level of conversation between people. She had never before been a part of anything like this. The closest she came was her relationship with Peggy, and that had come only very recently since Peggy had moved to New York and they had started working together. She was an only child and had not even grown up around any cousins in her own age group either, so she had never had the chance to develop those relationships in which people felt it normal and natural, and even that it was their right, to know the details of somebody else’s life, intimate and otherwise. Lionel glanced over at her from time to time, as his sisters asked their deeply personal questions with the same tone in which, Sasha thought, other people might ask “How are you?”
She and Lionel were seated together in the back of Francesca’s car and he was holding her hand. He would give it a gentle squeeze every time he felt her discomfort, but he didn’t try to stem his sister’s questions or to help Sasha give an answer – until Francesca asked Sasha, point blank, and with deliberate naughtiness, looking directly at her in the rear-view mirror, whether her brother was even worth getting naked for!
Los Angeles was going to be a real good time, Sasha realised with alarm, once she finally managed to pick her jaw up off the California freeway and get her mouth closed again. She couldn’t wait to meet the others.