Chapter Ten
I’m dragging ass Monday morning as I go about my cleaning routine.
It never occurred to me that maybe Mateo hadn’t fucked me yet because he might not have time, but after losing an entire night in bed with him and only making it back to my own an hour before Lily woke up, I’m starting to consider the possibility.
Apparently, the man is insatiable.
I’m not complaining. Unless I have to sit down. Then my muscles get a little pissed, but all things considered, I’m more pleased than displeased.
When I head downstairs for lunch, I’m surprised to see Mia sitting in the foyer, playing on her phone.
“Hey,” I say, glancing around to see if Vince is with her.
Leaping from the bench, she runs over and hugs me. I’m completely unprepared for it, but I hug her back, despite my utter confusion.
“I am so sorry,” she says.
Blinking at her, I ask, “For what?”
Her pretty face clouds with confusion and she frowns. “For last night? I shouldn’t have suggested that. I just thought—”
“Flirting with Joey?” I ask, trying to catch up.
“Yes. I should’ve known he wouldn’t be a normal person—”
I stop her. “No, that was a good idea. It worked. Good call. I mean, it might’ve been nice if he didn’t require pissing him off to get him going, but hey, whatever works. Is that, like, his thing, you think? Am I going to have to piss him off every time?”
She’s still frowning, and now looking up like she’s reviewing her own thoughts. “I… I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him legitimately angry. I definitely don’t ever want to.”
Shrugging unapologetically, I say, “I’m kind of mouthy.”
“You really shouldn’t be trying to date him,” she states, shaking her head. “You’re a match made in hell.”
I grin at her. “Can you follow me? I’m really hungry. Want me to fix us some lunch?”
“I’ll help,” she says, following me. “But seriously, is it too late to reconsider? I really feel a strong preference that you continue living, and I’m not sure you’re gonna survive Mateo.”
“I’m doing okay so far,” I assure her. “Besides, I’m not really trying to date him; we’re just… having fun.”
“What made you want to work for him, anyway?” she asks.
I open the fridge, grabbing ingredients to throw together some sandwiches. “I wouldn’t say I had a lot of other options.”
“Ah,” she says, her nod knowing. “The Morelli trap. Been there.”
“Yeah?” I ask, curiously. “How did you meet Vince?”
“We went to the same high school. And then other Morelli trap things happened, and I also didn’t have a lot of other options. Only one, in fact,” she says, jerking her thumb in the direction of Mateo’s study. “And far less stable.”
“Gotcha,” I say, reaching into the cupboard for plates. “Well, you’re probably not wrong. Stable is not one of the words I would use to describe Mateo thus far, but I don’t know, I kind of like him. I’ve never met a man so observant; I could’ve spelled out what I was doing for my husband—did, in fact—and he would still have no idea. Mateo, he pays attention to everything.”
“Because he’s trying to catch you in a lie,” she points out.
“Sure, if we’re splitting hairs, but that’s still pretty cool. This is not a guy who’s ever going to forget a birthday, I’d bet on that. His mind is a steel trap. I love it.”
She’s staring at me like I’m an animal on display at a zoo, but she’s nodding, like she kind of digs it. “Okay… so, you actually like his crazy, paranoid, suspicious tendencies.”
I put my hands out like scales. “Paranoid suspicious tendencies, rapt interest…. Who’s to say where the line is drawn?”
Still a little perplexed, she shakes her head. “Did you say you’re married?”
“Widowed.”
Gasping, she says, “Oh, my god. I’m so sorry. You’re so young.”
I’m a few years older than her, but I get what she’s saying. I am young to be a widow.
“Do you mind if I ask what happened?”
Grimacing, I grab a slice of cheese and layer it on top of the meat. “I mean, I’ll tell you, but if I do it’s just going to further your belief that I’m crazy. Maybe we should leave it?”
She grabs the mayonnaise, shaking her head. “Now you have to tell me.”
Well, I warned her. “He was a gambler. Racked up a lot of debt with a lot of dangerous people. Mateo was one of them.”
Her eyes widen at my implication, and I nod. “Wow.”
“Am I too crazy to be your friend?” I ask, offering her a faint smile. “I’ll understand if I am.”
“Just crazy enough, I think,” she says, but she’s still shaking her head in disbelief. “Did he know you? Did Mateo… like, did he just want to free you up?”
“Oh, God no. No, I don’t think he would…” I pause, rocking my head back and forth. “Well, maybe he would do that.”
“He would,” she says, not even conflicted.
“Well, in this case he didn’t. No, we met after. And now I’m here.”
“And you don’t hate him?” she questions.
“My husband was a train wreck. I’m not glad he’s dead, obviously, but…”
I’m just planning to eat here in the kitchen like I usually do, but Mia heads for the dining room. When I don’t follow, she turns back and says, “Come on.”
I follow her, but without a lot of confidence. “I don’t think I’m supposed to eat at the table.”
Unconcerned, she takes her usual seat. I sit down across from her. If Mateo was here, we’d be on either side of him.
I smile a little at the thought. “So, you and Vince used to live here together, or just you, or… how’d that work?”
“Vince lived here, then when Mateo found out about me he moved me in.”
I quirk an eyebrow. “When he found out about you? Were you a secret?”
Mia rolls her eyes. “It’s a long story. He drove Vince crazy, and eventually he let us move out. It’s been a lot better since. I mean, no pool and fewer pretty dresses, but a worthwhile trade-off. What about you, what were you doing before you got mixed up in all this?”
“Bookkeeper. Super boring, but I like numbers. I was also waiting tables through last Christmas, but that didn’t leave pretty much any time to spend with my daughter.”
Her eyes widen as she swallows a bite of her sandwich. “You have a daughter?”
I nod, wishing I had my phone to show her a picture. “Lily. She’s three.”
“You’re…. young.”
“Yep, 23,” I say, flashing her a smile. “She wasn’t planned.”
Nodding, she glances at her plate. “You want more kids?”
“Eventually, sure.”
“Mateo wants a son,” she remarks.
I glance up, surprised. “Oh, it’s way premature to be talking kids. We literally just started sleeping together. I’m his maid.”
“You’ve met Cherie, right? She and Vince share a dad. Also, I don’t think Mateo is too particular about who he procreates with.”
I frown, recalling all the times we had sex last night and this morning, and how none of those times involved a condom. “That’s not cool.”
“He’s past 30 and has no son,” she states.
I shrug. “He has a daughter. Fuck the patriarchy, am I right?”
Mia laughs—but she doesn’t just laugh, she nearly dies. Tears actually leak out of her eyes. “Oh, Meg.”
“That wasn’t one of my better jokes,” I point out.
“No, it was. It was,” she says, swiping tear leakage from her eyes.
---
It’s dark and I’m so comfortable, I never want to move. I lift my head, looking at Mateo asleep next to me, basked in the moon light. He’s really handsome in all light, but moon light definitely works for him.
I’m tempted to stay put, but I need to get back to reality. It’s so easy to get swept up in a whirlwind of sex and leisure, but the alarm on his nightstand tells me I’m going to have to wake up in two hours, and I haven’t actually slept yet.
Squeezing my legs together, faintly sore from being soundly fucked all night long, I can’t say I have a single regret. Still, it’s time to return to my Cinderella gig until darkness falls again.
Slowly easing out from under the comforter so as not to wake him, I roll toward the edge of the bed.
An arm locks around me, yanking me back.
His voice, so sexy with hoarseness from having just been asleep, startles me, “Where do you think you’re going?”
I look back at him over my shoulder. “Back to my own room.”
“Request denied,” he replies, his arm still secured around my waist.
“I have to be up in two hours,” I inform him.
“Then I can have at least one more,” he says, leaning in to kiss my shoulder blade.
“You are a machine,” I inform him. “My body doesn’t understand what to do with all this stimulation.”
He chuckles lowly, resting his head back on the pillow. “Your husband didn’t know what to do with you, huh?”
“He certainly did not have your stamina. And he was younger than you, so I guess kudos?”
“I have plenty of energy for the important things,” he replies.
“Well, it’s nice to see how I rate,” I tease.
He releases me, but just enough so I can roll over to face him, then he drapes his arm across me again. “Tell me something about your life,” he says.
“Before I came here? What would you like to know?”
He shrugs. “You have family?”
“The one I made, mostly. I have a mother, but she’s flaky and we aren’t close. My dad cheated on her when I was like two and I haven’t seen him since they split, so I barely remember him at all. No siblings that I know of.”
“Never looked?”
“Didn’t care.”
He smiles at that. “Not a family person?”
“I like the one I created. Lily’s all I need. Rodney… I hoped he would be better than he was, but I ended up doing everything on my own anyway, just with the fun addition of a boulder strapped to my belt as I tried to carry us.”
“You want more kids?”
“Maybe, if it’s with the right person. I don’t want to get stuck doing everything on my own again.” I look at him, remembering what Mia said earlier. “What about you? You have Isabella, you still want more?”
“Yeah. I need to have sons. At least one. Normally we Morellis have pretty big broods.”
“Women can’t head the family, huh?” I joke.
“Isabella’s too kind,” he says.
“Well, she’s five. I mean, not that I think she should; something more stable would probably be… Actually, what do the women born Morelli do? Francesca runs the bakery, right?”
“Yeah,” he says, nodding. “Before her, my aunt did. Maybe Isabella will someday.”
“I feel like I can see her more as a florist than a baker. You should buy a flower shop just in case,” I advise.
“I already have one,” he tells me.
“How well-rounded of you.”
He shrugs. “It was part of a cluster of businesses, I just absorbed the whole thing. Strangely enough, the flower shop was not my main target.”
“You buy a lot of businesses?”
Nodding faintly, he says, “I have a lot of money to invest. Every year it’s more. Have to do something with it.”
I roll my eyes at him. “Man, to have your problems.”
He smirks. “Funny the way money works. Those with very little have a hard time getting more; those with way too much can multiply it almost without trying.”
“Does everything come easy to you?”
“No,” he says, watching me. “Money, power, those are easy. Finding genuineness is more difficult. If I ever lost the money and the power, I wouldn’t have anything left. I would rebuild, I would acquire them again, but there’s no one who would stick by me because they want to. People give me their loyalty out of fear, nothing more.”
Frowning lightly, I say, “That can’t be true.”
He shrugs, like it doesn’t matter. “Why did you stop loving your husband?”
My frown drops, replaced by surprise. “Oh. I didn’t really stop, I never started. I mean, I had feelings for him once, at the beginning, but then I started to realize how shaky and unreliable he was and I pulled away. I just also had poor enough timing that right when I started pulling away was when I started getting morning sickness, and I realized I was pregnant.”
“You weren’t married already?”
“No,” I drawl, shaking my head. “Nope. We’d only been together a few months. I don’t think he put condoms on the right way; they broke three different times. Apparently one of those times resulted in Lily.”
“So why’d you marry him?”
I grimace. “At the risk of sounding like a moron, because I was pregnant. I know that’s not a good reason, but I grew up without a father and it didn’t go so well for me. Once I found out Lily was a girl, I just...” I trail off, shrugging. “I thought she’d be safer and more secure inside a traditional family.”
“Safer?” he questions, watching me.
“Creeps tend to target single moms. They have kids, they’re busy, they’re stuck carrying a heavy load on their own. They have vulnerable little girls and they don’t always notice things.”
He doesn’t speak, just continues to watch.
I make a face. “I don’t want to go dark on you.”
“Go dark.”
“One of my mom’s boyfriends…” I trail off, shaking my head. “He was a perv, I was a kid. It sort of wrecked me for a couple of years, and my mom wasn’t—she didn’t want to believe me, so. I mean, obviously Lily would never have to contend with that aspect, but I just didn’t want to open that door to begin with. I’d rather have Lily safe and happy, and if Rodney wouldn’t have been so irresponsible I could’ve made it work, but he just couldn’t stop sinking us.”
“Your mother’s boyfriend—what was his name?”
“Why?”
He shrugs lazily. “Curiosity.”
Smiling lightly, I tease, “You gonna send a goon squad after him?”
He merely raises his eyebrows.
“Oh.” I laugh, taken off-guard. “That’s not necessary. It was a long time ago, I’m fine now, you don’t have to…” I pause, cocking my head in consideration. Actually, the world probably wouldn’t miss him. “Arthur Broderick. If you’re gonna whack him, make sure you show me a picture first so I know you have the right guy.”
Smirking, he says, “I’ll get Adrian on it right away.”
“Wow, power is fun,” I tell him.
“You’re the strangest combination of warm and cold I’ve ever come across,” he states.
“Thank you, I think?”
Nodding, he verifies, “It was a compliment. I find it fascinating.”
Reaching a finger out to trail down his bare chest, I return, “I find you fascinating.”
“Yeah?” he murmurs, the bedding rustling as he pulls me closer. “Let’s see if I can fascinate you one more time tonight.”
I grin, tilting my neck as his lips move there like a magnet, more than happy to be fascinated by him.