Rialto Read online

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Ian demanded as soon as he reached him. Before he could even answer, there was a surge of outraged shouts from the kitchen. Ian almost darted toward the noise, but Hollis’s hand landed on Ian’s shoulder, holding him in place. Probably for the best if Ian wanted to avoid being accidentally shot.

  “Are you the owner of this place, Ian Pierce?”

  “Banner,” Ian automatically corrected.

  “Banner what?”

  Ian growled. “It’s Ian Banner now. I got married. And yes, I’m the owner. This place is Rialto, a five-star restaurant. I repeat, what the hell are you doing here?”

  “We’ve had reports that your kitchen staff contains several illegal aliens. We’ve also got reports that drug smuggling has been operated—”

  “I beg your pardon!” Ian shouted.

  He took a step toward the ICE agent and despite being nearly a foot shorter than the man, the agent took a nervous step back. His hand dropped to his sidearm and Hollis pulled Ian away. Thank God, because he was leaping past rational thought. The idea that he was harboring illegal aliens was ridiculous, and to say his restaurant was involved in drug smuggling as well was ludicrous.

  “You have no right to conduct a search of the premises without a search warrant,” Hollis tossed out.

  But the agent had been waiting for it, and he shoved the document in Ian’s face. Ian snatched up the paper and tried to read it, but it was all legalese gibberish, and he was too pissed to try to decipher it. He handed it over to Hollis and waited. His former cop husband skimmed it, his frown deepening before he nodded at Ian.

  “We advise that you stay out of our way while we question your staff and search the premises. We will be bringing drug-sniffing dogs to check over every inch of this place. If you try to hinder our investigation at any point, you will be arrested. Do you understand, Mr. Banner?”

  “And do you understand if you bring dogs into my restaurant that I’ll have to close everything down and throw out food in order to re-sterilize everything?” Ian snarled.

  “No interference, Mr. Banner,” the agent repeated, apparently not giving a shit that he was wasting both Ian’s time and money.

  “He understands,” Hollis said sharply before Ian could continue, and it was for the best. He’d been about to call the man a goose-stepping idiot.

  “Can we at least allow the guests to leave so you don’t traumatize them with your antics any further?”

  The agent gave a stiff nod before turning back to his men. Rage burned through Ian as he shrugged off Hollis’s restraining hand, and he turned to a too-pale Carla. She was a second-generation Mexican American. She’d been born in the United States to parents who had naturalized years ago. But that didn’t matter in today’s political climate. Her skin was too brown for her to be a real American for some people.

  “Hey, look at me,” Ian said gently as he approached Carla. He took one of her shaking hands in both of his. “Nothing is going to happen to you. No one is taking you out of here today, I promise.”

  She turned tear-filled eyes on Ian. “But what if—”

  “There’s no what if. You’re not leaving here. You’re an American. You belong here. Everyone who works here belongs here. There is nothing illegal happening in my restaurant.”

  Carla nodded, looking reassured but still frightened. Ian couldn’t blame her. There were too many horror stories of American citizens being detained because they looked foreign, regardless of their actual citizenship. It was fucking bullshit.

  “Why don’t you help Hollis escort customers quietly out of the restaurant? I’m going to call my lawyer.”

  Hollis’s brow furrowed. “Sarah Carlton?” Ian nodded. “I don’t think immigration is her thing. I thought she was mostly corporate law.”

  “Maybe not, but she’s scary enough to take a chunk out of these fucking assholes.”

  Hollis smirked at him. “That is very, very true.”

  Sarah Carlton had been Lucas Vallois’s lawyer for almost as long as Ian had known Lucas. She stood five-foot-nothing in her stiletto heels and looked as if a stiff breeze would knock her over, but the woman was an absolute shark. Men ran in terror from her, and Hollis had confided that half the Cincinnati police force was scared of her.

  Luckily, she absolutely adored Lucas as if he were her own little brother. And lucky for Ian, that love extended to Lucas’s family. Even if she couldn’t do anything for him, she’d at least try to make sure that everything happening was by the book.

  Turning away from the sounds of ICE agents rummaging through his kitchen and harassing his staff, Ian looked down at his magazine and frowned at his image on the cover. The presence of ICE in his domain felt like a dirty smear across his perfect dream.

  * * *

  Five fucking hours.

  It took Ian five hours to get rid of the ICE agents. They lingered in his restaurant as if they had nowhere else to be. And through it all, they found absolutely nothing. Not that Ian thought they’d find a damn thing.

  Every one of his employees had a proper ID and credentials, proving they were in the country legally. Only Enzo was a foreign citizen, but he had all his papers proving that he had a visa to work legally in the United States.

  And then the damn dogs. He loved animals but not in his freaking kitchen!

  Sarah had come to Rialto immediately, but it was clear that there wasn’t a damn thing she could do, thanks to the warrant. She’d stayed every minute though, making sure that not one of his employees were harassed or dragged off. The agents quickly learned to give the tiny woman a wide berth.

  By the time the ICE agents were gone and Ian had his restaurant back, they were well into the dinner rush. But they couldn’t cook. Too many people and dogs had trekked through the kitchen, touching the food, the counters, and the equipment. Everything had to be thrown out or scrubbed down.

  To his chagrin, the restaurant was forced to close for the night so they could properly clean. Customers had to be called so their reservations could be canceled and rescheduled as best as they possibly could.

  It was after midnight when the lights were turned off and the doors were locked. Ian sat alone in his office, exhausted and angry. He couldn’t understand why anyone would make such a report against his restaurant. It was absolutely ridiculous. There was a part of him that wondered if ICE had even gotten the right restaurant, if it had all been a stupid mix-up. He tried to reassure himself that it was all over and that life would now return to normal.

  Besides…he had a sexy husband to get home to.

  Chapter Two

  City lights decorated the night, passing in a blur as Hollis focused on the road. A cool front had moved into Cincinnati, allowing Hollis and Ian to enjoy the drive with the windows down. Hollis had one elbow on the edge of his door and one hand lightly resting on the steering wheel. He glanced over and smiled at the way the wind ruffled Ian’s once perfectly styled hair, a thoughtful expression on his handsome face.

  “It was a good meeting,” Hollis said as he guided them home from the foster parent training class.

  After several long talks over the past months, they had decided to try and become foster parents. Ian had brought up how many kids were out there without loving homes, and they felt their home could be the perfect refuge from a difficult world.

  It also didn’t hurt that they were both plagued with worry about the kids they’d helped rescue from pedophile crime boss Boris Jagger. What had happened to the ones who hadn’t had families? There were no forthcoming answers on that front, so they could at least take steps to help those struggling to find a warm, welcoming place to belong.

  They did eventually plan to adopt and had discussed surrogacy, but this was the route they’d decided on to ease into creating their family. Hollis also looked at this as a chance to brush up on his meager parenting skills before they had their own kids. He’d helped raise his younger sibling, but that had been years ago. And the occasion
al babysitting of little Daciana Vallois wasn’t exactly putting him on track to be father of the year.

  Regardless of whether the kids that were placed in their home were there for a week or years, it didn’t matter. They were both excited about this new step they were taking toward building a family.

  The path to becoming foster parents wasn’t easy. The process could take anywhere from six months to a year with classes, paperwork, and home visits. Up front they had twelve classes to go through. Each one was three hours long and happened twice a week. They were on week four, and rearranging their schedules for them was getting hard.

  It was worth it, though. With each class, Ian had grown more and more excited, and Hollis loved seeing his enthusiasm. Normally, he left the long classes bubbling with excitement and talking a mile a minute about all the things they needed to do.

  But tonight, Ian was unnaturally quiet. Hollis kept throwing him concerned glances as he drove back to the condo. Undoubtedly, his husband was worrying about the raid on the restaurant two days before, and Hollis didn’t know how to ease his mind. Nothing had come from it, but the whole thing had thrown Ian off his game. And pissed Hollis off royally. He’d been in a mood since—one he couldn’t seem to shake.

  Their training class that night had been about agency policies and honestly, pretty damn boring. But still, it got them one step closer to their goal. Soon, they would be completing the home studies. They were on track to be foster parents in less than a year at the rate they were going.

  “It was a good meeting.” Ian sighed and ran his hand through his hair, then turned in his seat to face Hollis. “But I had no idea how dull a PowerPoint presentation could be. I kept picturing that incoherent teacher in Charlie Brown cartoons. Loved the way you nodded off.”

  “Thanks for that awesome jab to the ribs, by the way.”

  Ian’s lips stretched into a wide grin. “Would you rather I let you snore?”

  “Sleeping through most of that class would have been a blessing.” Hollis chuckled. “I’m looking forward to being done with these. Three hours, twice a week is taking a toll.”

  “We only have two and a half weeks. We can do it.” He suddenly frowned. “But it is a lot. I’m sorry about my mood lately. I can’t help but wonder if maybe I am taking on too much. We have these classes, and we’re supposed to be getting the condo prepped for foster kids. I’ve got the new restaurant happening, and now we have all this craziness at Rialto. Rialto alone is a huge job.”

  Hollis threw him a glance. “Which one would you stop?”

  “That’s just it. I don’t want to stop anything. Well, I could have done without the ICE raid.” He snarled, still so obviously annoyed about that. “But the rest is all important. And we have everything nearly ready at home anyway.” He groaned and scrubbed both hands over his face. “Ignore me. I’m tired and worrying too much.”

  “I’m not going to ignore you. I’m worried about you.”

  “Don’t be.” Ian let out another long breath and leaned against the door. “I really am fine. Just frazzled tonight.” His phone buzzed in his lap and Ian looked down at it, then snorted. “It’s Snow again. This time he’s asking about the officiant.”

  “Didn’t he just text you half an hour ago about that?”

  “No, that time it was about scheduling cake tastings. He honestly just wants to hire me to do the cake, and I told him that he and Jude need to go through an official cake decorator to make sure they get what they want.”

  “You love doing wedding cakes.”

  “I know. I’ll probably end up doing it, but they could still go through the tasting at an actual cake shop to pick their flavors.” Ian laughed. “I could tell Snow was grumbling on the other end without even seeing him.”

  “I thought he said he was doing all the wedding planning. Seems like he’s hitting you up a lot.”

  “Oh, his exact words were ‘How hard could it be?’ ” Ian laughed and texted something back to Snow. “He has no idea what he’s doing. Stubborn ass.”

  Hollis frowned, kind of annoyed with Snow for bugging Ian with so many questions. Snow and Jude had gotten engaged just a few months earlier, but Hollis had heard through the grapevine that Snow’s soon-to-be mother-in-law Anna was demanding that they start making official wedding plans. Things like setting a date, location, caterer, and whatnot.

  Egotistical bastard that he was, Snow was convinced that he and Jude could handle it all, but it meant so many questions were flowing down to Ian. It would have been easier all around if they’d just let Ian do the planning, but everyone was worried about his time with the new restaurant, not to mention their training to become foster parents.

  Rialto alone kept him busy, so the added stress of a wedding would have been too much. Well, according to the guys that made up Ian’s unique family. He knew his husband—Ian would rather be planning that wedding himself. And it wasn’t as if he didn’t have fingers in it anyway. Not with how often Snow texted.

  Stopping at a red light, Hollis reached across to touch Ian’s hand in his lap. Ian turned his palm over and threaded their fingers together, giving him a sweet smile. Hollis’s heart picked up as it always did when he was on the receiving end of that particular smile. It never failed to get a rise out of him and had from the very first time he’d seen it.

  God, he loved this man.

  When the light turned green, he didn’t let go of Ian, using his other hand to steer until they reached their neighborhood. Ian’s phone buzzed again. This time, he let out a laugh, then read the text out loud.

  “What the hell are ‘Save the Dates’?”

  Ian shook his head and called Snow just as Hollis pulled into their driveway. He listened with half an ear as Ian patiently explained about the mailers and told Snow not to read any more online wedding planners.

  “I’ll get you a list of what you need to do,” Ian finally said as he got out of the car. “No arguments. We’ll use the list for mine—it’s already done, and you won’t have to do half of what I did. Yours isn’t going to be…what did you call it? Oh yeah, isn’t going to be as extravagant as mine.” Sarcasm dripped from his tone.

  He listened for a moment, then laughed. “If you don’t watch it, I’m going to call Anna and tell her to help you. Next thing you know, it’ll be a pink, rainbow, and unicorn themed wedding.”

  That warning seemed to shut Snow up, because Ian got off the phone as they walked inside the condo. They’d recently bought furniture, making sure everything was nice, new, and clean for when they got to foster a kid or two. The couch and love seat were hunter green, the chair and ottoman striped green and white. They’d even fixed up the one guest bedroom to be ready for a kid—hell, they were as ready as they could be. They just had to finish going through the training and home studies.

  “Get everything situated with Snow?” Hollis asked as he tossed his keys into the bowl on the small table by the door.

  “For tonight, anyway. He was going through online checklists and getting overwhelmed, poor guy. Some of those lists start out a year ahead. The Save the Dates mailings had him all jacked up because he supposedly missed that timeline. And he doesn’t even have a date!” Ian shook his head and plopped down onto the couch, crossing one ankle over his knee. “He should let me do it.”

  Hollis scratched his jaw and flashed Ian his best crooked grin. “Weren’t you the guy just minutes ago saying you were taking on too much? And now you want to add another wedding to that mix?”

  “I like planning weddings, smartass.” Ian smiled to himself. “Snow’s would be my third one. I’m getting much better at them. Faster. Learning all the good shortcuts.” A soft sigh slipped from Ian, but there was an underlying current of happiness in his tone. “Sometimes, I think I should have been a wedding planner because I find the whole process fun and interesting. Exciting, even.”

  “Then you wouldn’t be the chef of the highest-rated restaurant in the city. And I wouldn’t reap the benefits of all that fantast
ic food.” Hollis patted his belly, then sat next to him and pulled him under his arm.

  Ian sighed and stretched his legs out, putting his sock-covered feet onto the coffee table. He’d kicked off his shoes when they’d come in. “I’m still reeling over that damn raid. Someone had to have called it in, and I can’t figure out who would do such a thing. It’s driving me crazy worrying about it.”

  “Everything’s fine. Even Sarah told you there’s nothing to worry about now.”

  “Still, it shouldn’t have happened, and having those dogs in the kitchen?” He growled softly. “I just hope we don’t get any disgruntled reviews from the people we had to reschedule.”

  “Bad reviews happen, you know that.”

  “But over something like this? Something completely out of my control?” He sat up and faced Hollis. “I can’t get it out of my head that someone actually turned us in. And all that stuff about drugs? Drugs, Hollis! The last thing Rialto needs is a rumor like that. We had people in the restaurant who heard all that when the agents first came in.”

  He stood and started pacing the room. Hollis watched his slim, agitated form as he moved, noting that his hands were clenched into fists at his sides.

  “Rumors of drugs could hurt our chances of becoming foster parents, too!” he nearly yelled. He reached up and ran his fingers through his hair, leaving the brown strands sticking out all over the place.

  He’d worked himself into a frenzy again. Hollis stood and walked to him. He placed his hands on Ian’s shoulders, feeling the fine bones beneath his palms before sliding them down Ian’s back to pull the man into his body.

  Ian slumped against him, wrapping his arms tight around him. “Thanks.”

  “For what?” Hollis asked.

  “For the hug. For knowing I needed one.” He tilted his head and stared into Hollis’s face. “You always know how to calm me down.”