A Perfect Valentine’s Day
Mia
Once in a while, I’m sneaky.
Like right now. I creep barefoot across the marble floor of the master bathroom and peek into my bedroom.
My beloved husband is supposed to be getting ready for dinner. Instead, he’s lying on the bed next to our sleeping baby girl. She fell asleep holding his hand and he didn’t want to wake her up, so he stayed put. That’s his official story, anyway. I think he just loves watching her sleep as much as I do.
Warmth washes over me looking at them together now. His face is so relaxed, so at peace, so happy—usually he only looks like that around me.
His brown eyes shift suddenly and narrow on my face. A faint smile tugs at the corners of his mouth and he says, “Can I tell you a secret?”
“Is the secret that we’re going to lose our reservations because Annalise is holding my big, bad husband hostage?” I ask, giving up my attempt at spying and walking over to our bed, toward two of the most important fragments of my whole world.
“No,” he says, then pauses. “Well, probably. But the secret was that you’re not the least bit stealthy.”
I look at Annalise’s tiny hand, wrapped securely around Mateo’s finger. God, I love that finger. I love that hand. I love every single inch of this man, and I’ve gotta say, with my newborn baby girl’s tiny fingers wrapped around it, the love is reaching nearly painful levels.
Since we’re clearly not going anywhere anytime soon, I climb on the bed and snuggle up on Annalise’s other side, looking down at the tiny bundle that has brought so much additional joy into our life.
For Valentine’s day, I dressed her in pink and white. Her little white onesie reads quite accurately, “My heart belongs to Daddy” and she has a pink bow on her tiny little head, resting on her soft, dark hair. Bunched up on her legs are little pink leg warmers with white polka dots. She’s absolutely perfect. Just looking at her makes my heart swell up with love—not just for her, but for the man who gave her to me. The man I’m sharing my life with. The most impressive man I’ve ever met. God, I am a lucky woman.
I already feel all gooey, then I look across the bed and see him watching her again. He watches her all the time, like he’s terrified she might blink out of existence if he looks away.
“Remember when you didn’t want to have another baby?” I tease.
Mateo smiles faintly. “Once in a great while I have a truly terrible idea. You always fix it for me.”
I push up on my hands and knees and crawl gently across the bed. I’m careful not to disturb Annalise as I crawl around to Mateo’s other side, but I need to be close to my husband. The man is my favorite drug, and I need a little hit.
When I get there without waking the baby, I curl my legs beneath me and lean against my sexy husband, gently combing my fingers through his dark hair. “I love fixing your terrible ideas.”
His free hand comes up to catch mine and he drags it to his chest, flattening my palm over my heart. “I love you.”
Filling up with affection, I keep my hand on his heart and lean down to brush my lips against his. “I love you, too. More than anything. More than everything.”
Sighing with contentment, his brown eyes meet mine. “How about we stay in tonight and we’ll go out for Valentine’s Day tomorrow night instead?”
“Fine by me,” I say, easily. “We don’t have to do Valentine’s Day at all. I have everything I could ever want right here in this house.”
Smirking, he says, “Cornball.”
“Nope, it’s just the truth. We have a night off, no one will bug us, we can relax, play with our babies, curl up and watch a movie or cuddle. I don’t care what we do; as long as I get to spend the night with you, it’s a perfect Valentine’s Day. Annalise or Tristan might want to borrow my boobs from time to time, but other than that.”
“As long as I get some time with your boobs, too.”
Smiling and leaning down to give him another kiss, I say, “You get as much time with all of my naked body as you want. I’ve had three babies in three years; that doesn’t happen because I’m depriving you of your husbandly rights.”
“Well, to be fair, I was only responsible for two—” I cover his beautiful mouth with my hand to shut him up.
“Shh.”
He moves my hand but his grip on my wrist tightens and he yanks me forward. I go easily, curling against his sexy body and getting lost in his kisses. My abundantly powerful husband can easily sweep me up in him and wipe out my ability to even think, but right now he’s still holding Annalise’s hand, so he keeps things calm. As much as I crave my husband, I crave the family time, too. It’s a difficult balance, finding time for everyone when Mateo works as much as he does. I make sure to try to fill in any gaps with the kids—and Adrian helps, bless him—but there’s only one Mateo.
Gently breaking the kiss, he settles me against his chest and rests his hand on my back, looking over to check on Annalise again.
“Do you like the outfit I ordered for her?” I ask.
“Sure. I’m much fonder of the little human inside it.”
I squeeze him, sighing happily. “Me too. I can’t believe we made something so beautiful.”
“I believe you did. We’ll have to wait until she does more than sleep to see if she got any of me.”
“She’s devastatingly beautiful—clearly she got that from you.”
“Yeah, right,” he says, warmly. “I can’t be away from her very long without thinking about her—a little worried she got that from you.”
“That’s just because you’re her daddy,” I assure him.
“I don’t know, West hangs around her every chance he gets.”
“West is six,” I state.
“Doesn’t matter. She already pulls him in and she can hardly stay awake.”
I shake my head against his chest. “You’re crazy.”
His tone is dry as hell. “Yes, because I’m wrong so frequently, I couldn’t possibly be picking up on something you’re not.”
“I think maybe you’re just not used to this feeling of protectiveness. It’s scary, loving someone so much. Obviously you love all our children, but Annalise is the baby. The last one. And she does already show a strong preference for you over everyone else—even me, and I’m not only the family baby whisperer, but her only source of food. She would rather be snuggled by you than let go so she can eat, and that’s not how babies usually work. She’s already a daddy’s girl. It makes sense that you’re more paranoid about her.”
“I’m not paranoid,” he mutters.
“Not to mention, you’ve seen how much trouble I’ve stirred up over the years, and I was just some nobody. Annalise is your daughter. She’s a Morelli.” I prop myself up on his chest so I can look at him, and bring my free hand up to lightly tap his head. “She may have the power of this mind, the appeal of your name, and whatever odds and ends I managed to throw in there. She has all the ingredients to be a real force of nature.”
“Like I said, it’s going to be trouble.”
“You think all our kids are going to be trouble. You insist that with literally every single one.”
“Because they’re all Morellis,” he states. “It goes without saying they’ll be trouble. Lily’s the only one I’m not worried about. All the other kids will terrorize everyone.”
I lift an eyebrow, since he’s been so cocky about the importance of his genes before. “Well, that’s your fault, not mine. And Dom isn’t going to be any trouble. He’s a little sweetheart. Did I tell you what he did the other day when—”
The door bursts open. To say this is not a regular occurrence would be an incredible understatement. No one ever opens our bedroom door and comes in unannounced, but suddenly Adrian flies in, uncaring of whether or not he’s interrupting.
Mateo grabs my waist and pulls me off him, extracting his finger from Annalise’s hand and leaving us here on the bed. His voice is much harder as he demands, “What’s wrong?”
“We don’t know where Bella is.”
“What?” Mateo barks.
I glance beyond Adrian and see Lily in the hallway, twisting a lock of blonde hair over and over again, a nervous look on her face.
Adrian fills him in as quickly as possible. “Ju was just gathering all the kids for dinner. Bella isn’t there. Ju can’t remember when she last saw her. I went in the surveillance room and checked all the cameras; she’s not in the house. I can start reviewing the tape to see when and how she left, but I thought I should come tell you now.”
“Track her phone,” Mateo says, simply.
A look of dread on his handsome features, Adrian says, “I did. The problem is, it’s in her room. Wherever she is, she didn’t take it with her.”
Silence falls for a loaded moment, then Mateo says, his voice deadly calm, “My pre-teen daughter is missing and she doesn’t have her phone?”
Nodding grimly, Adrian says, “That’s right.”
My stomach sinks and I push up off the bed. All the noise has Annalise stirring, so I scoop her up and settle her against my chest, walking past Adrian and Mateo toward Lily, still hanging back, watching the scene unfold fearfully. Fearful because Bella is missing, or fearful because she knows something?
As I come closer she backs up, and once we’re out in the hallway alone, I ask quietly, “Do you know where Bella is, honey?”
Lily shakes her head quickly, her big blue eyes widening. “No.”
“Where was she last time you saw her?”
“In her bedroom. She was writing something down—in a notebook, I think.”
“Her diary?” I question, latching onto something that might hold clues.
“No, it wasn’t her diary. Just a—a regular notebook.”
“Do you know what she was writing? A letter? A list? Was it school work?
“I don’t know what she was writing.”
I don’t believe her. Since she’s still wide-eyed and nervous, I nod like I do. “Okay, honey.”
I’m just about to head back in the bedroom, but Adrian nearly bumps into me as he storms out. Mateo follows behind him, shrugging on his suit jacket.
Mateo’s gaze hits mine just as he’s about to pass. “I’m sorry; I have to deal with this.”
Glancing back at Lily once more, I follow, speeding up so I can catch up to Adrian. “Hey, slow down.”
Adrian looks over at me, raising his eyebrows. “I can’t slow down; I have to find your missing daughter.”
He has a point, but I think there’s something they’re overlooking. Their damn Morelli instincts have shown one glaring blind spot in the past—they don’t think about questioning women. They don’t expect women to wreak havoc, to keep important secrets or sell each other out. You would think Mateo might have learned his lesson when I went missing because my own best friend sold me out, but here we are.
There’s no reason I can see that Lily should have been following Adrian, but Mateo doesn’t even question it.
I glance down at Annalise, sleeping peacefully against my chest, her little butt pushed out, supported by my hand. He’s right; the girls probably are going to be all sorts of trouble—but only because he won’t expect them to be.
No one taught Mateo how to raise sons and daughters; he was only taught to train potential employees and the women who would support and enable them. Bella was such a well-behaved child when I first met her—the perfect Morelli girl, quiet, appreciative, and out of the way. Obviously we’ve shaken things up in the years since; Annalise is never going to be five-years-old, sitting beside her formal, intimidating father, too timid to ask him to cut up her food—she’s going to be sitting right in his lap, waving a meatball in his face and trying to feed him a bite.
Bella’s still a good kid, but she’s straddling the difficult line between being a little girl, and coming of age. I know Mateo is probably thinking the worst case scenario, that something horrible has happened to her, that she’s been kidnapped by some rival force he’s going to have to crush.
I don’t think so, though. I think our well-behaved eldest daughter snuck out, knowing we weren’t supposed to be home this evening. I think the Morelli daughters are already causing trouble, and he’s not ready for it.
Mateo is cool and collected on the surface, but I can see his wheels turning as he falls into step beside Adrian. “Did you call Ethan?”
Adrian shakes his head. “He took Willow to Paris for Valentine’s Day.”
“Fucking Valentine’s Day,” Mateo mutters. “Why do we all have to love our wives?”
“Hire all bachelors from now on,” Adrian says, lightly. “‘Round the clock availability.”
“I’m going to,” Mateo states. I can’t tell if he’s joking.
“It’s fine. I don’t need Ethan; you know I’ll find her,” Adrian assures him, firmly patting his shoulder. “I just wanted to loop you in, that’s all.”
Mateo stops outside the study to dismiss me. “Why don’t you go play with the kids while Adrian and I work on this?”
“I want to help,” I tell him, stealing a glance back at Lily, who still lingers, watching us.
“I appreciate that, but you’ll just get in the way.”
My beloved husband takes me seriously as a co-parent and life partner, but when it comes to “business” he doesn’t think I can hang. Something about me trying to save people and making extra work for him. Utter nonsense.
I cock an eyebrow at him. “Is that right?”
He leans in to kiss me, to smooth down any feathers he may have ruffled. “I didn’t mean it like that. You’ll distract me. I need to focus.”
“Can I make a suggestion?”
“Sweetheart, time is of the essence right now.”
I shake my head at him, leaning in to kiss him on that sexy mouth of his. “You’re exasperating sometimes. Fine, go on, I’ll talk to Adrian.”
“I need Adrian,” Mateo states, backing into the room. “Don’t hold him up.”
Given my husband’s right hand man is slightly more capable of seeing the value in a mother’s input, he hangs back. “What’s up? You think of something I should know?”
Lily is behind me and I still need to scare the bejeezus out of her, so instead of showing my hand, I lean in close and whisper to Adrian, “Check Tommy’s house.”
Adrian scowls. I nod faintly. I’m no happier about it than he is.
Sighing heavily, Adrian says, “I’m not ready for this.”
“No one is,” I agree.
Now he storms into the study and I pull the door shut, falling back and nodding at Lily. “Come with me. I need a distraction while your father looks for Bella.”
“All right,” she says, trailing behind me as I head for the playroom.
She’s still twisting her hair, a nervous habit of hers. I’m relieved she didn’t pick up on what I told Adrian because after all I’ve lived through in this house, I have one firm lesson to teach: we don’t keep secrets from Adrian, no matter who asks us to.
“How come you were following Adrian?”
Her cheeks flush. I don’t know if it’s because she has a bit of a crush on Adrian, or because she knows where Bella went and she feels guilty for lying. “I don’t know. I just wanted to see if he could find her, I guess. Will she be in trouble?”
“She could be in serious trouble right now,” I state, shaking my head and absently rubbing Annalise’s back. “Even if for some reason she left the house on her own, it’s incredibly dangerous that she doesn’t have her phone or a guard with her. We have no idea where she went and she’s out in the city all on her own. Anything could go wrong. She could get seriously hurt—or worse. Your father has a lot of enemies. There are some very bad people out there who wouldn’t hesitate to hurt a member of his family just to hurt him.”
I can see the conflict in her young, unguarded face. “But maybe she’s not out in the city. Maybe she was going somewhere and it wouldn’t be dangerous. Like, to a house or something. Maybe she’s just with a friend. Maybe no one took her. Would she be in a lot of trouble when they find her?”
“The longer we don’t know where she is, the more trouble she’s going to be in.” I look down at her again. “If you have any idea where she is, it’s very important that you tell us. Even if Bella asked you not to. I know you want to keep her confidence, but this isn’t a normal family, honey. There is danger out there for us. I went with someone I thought was a friend years ago, and it got me in so much trouble, I may never have seen any of you again.”
“I remember,” she murmurs lowly.
“The same thing could happen to any of us, and it may not end so well again. There’s a reason Mateo is so protective of us. I know it may not always seem fun or fair, but he has to do it to keep us safe. If you know something, you need to tell an adult. Me or Adrian, in particular.”
Lily is so uncomfortable, torn between not wanting to keep a secret from me and her loyalty to her best friend. I’m relieved it’s loyalty to her best friend causing the conflict. That hasn’t always been the case around here, and that’s another page from the family history I don’t intend on living through a second time.
As soon as Lily gets to the entry door of the playroom, she runs inside to get away from all the mom-guilt I’m piling on top of her.
Elise is already inside playing with the little ones, but when she sees me, she puts Candace down and rushes over for an update. “What’s happening? Adrian bailed on dinner and he didn’t give me any details, he just said Bella’s missing?”
Since Lily is nearby, I lean in and tell her I think they have a lead, but I don’t want to talk about it in front of the kids. She nods her understanding, sighs with concern, then drifts back toward the smallest ones.
A trio of babies sit on the soft mat, playing with blocks. Elise and Adrian’s daughter, Candace, and my sons, Dom and Tristan. Dom is the eldest of the three, so he’s the leader of their little construction crew. Tristan gnaws on blocks, Candace hands them to Dom, and he carefully stacks them on the tower. Candace gets intrepid sometimes and skips the line, but her motor skills aren’t quite up to snuff, so she nearly knocks down the tower every time she stacks one herself. My little gentleman kindly steadies it for her and she claps with approval. They’re so damn cute.
As soon as Dom sees me, he beams a smile up at me and holds up a block. “Here, mama.”
“Thank you, baby,” I say, gently dropping to my knees while I cradle Annalise. Once I’m seated and she’s still sleeping, I take the block. “This is a great block. Do you know what color it is?”
“Red!”
I look up, since that was not Dom who answered me, but his slightly older brother, Roman. He toddles over and drops on his butt beside me, reaching for the block. “My block.”
“That’s not how you ask,” I remind him.
Roman is not big on asking for things, he’s big on taking them. Normal moms tell me not to worry, it’s just his age, but since Mateo fathered him, I still find it worth worrying about.
“My block,” he repeats, grabbing for it, but I pull it away.
Candace chimes in, reminding him of his manners. “Pease!”
Roman looks at her, but swiftly dismisses her and reaches for the block again.
I hold it up out of his reach. “Nope. What’s the magic word?”
“Pease,” Candace says again, not even watching at this point. She’s too busy building a block tower with Dom. Tristan was helping them, but now that Roman is over here stirring up conflict, his little brother is just sitting there observing to see what happens.
Roman sighs and dramatically drops back against the floor, staring up at the ceiling. He can’t even believe we won’t all cede to his demands and deliver a mountain of red blocks at his little feet.
I can’t help smiling as I ruffle his hair. He’s so damn cute, and so very much his father’s son. “Just say please and I’ll give you the block, Roman.”
He would rather live the rest of his life in a block-less world.
“All right,” I say, with a warning tone. “Last chance. I’ll give the block to Candace and Dom if you can’t remember your manners.”
“Stupid block,” Roman mutters.
Well, I tried. Since I have to follow through, I hand the block to Dom instead.
“Thank you, mama,” he says, placing it on top of the tower. Candace claps like he just finished constructing the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Roman huffs and stands up. I expect him to wander away from us and go find something more fun to do where he won’t have to say please, but instead he steps forward and kicks over the block tower.
Dom grasps the sides of his face, almost comically shocked. “Oh no!”
Candace scowls up at Roman. “Hey!”
“Stupid blocks,” Roman announces, stomping past her.
“Hey, you come back here,” I call after him.
He doesn’t, but he doesn’t make it far—Candace’s older brother steps directly into his path, looking down at him with a none-too-pleasant look on his face. “Go tell Candace sorry.”
“No,” Roman says, stomping his foot.
Gripping the back of Roman’s shirt, Westley Palmetto turns his little ass right around and urges him back toward Candace. “Tell Candace you’re sorry for knocking over her blocks. She worked really hard on that tower.”
“I wanted it,” Roman complains. “My block.”
“Say it right now or I’ll smash your juice box,” West says, his patience apparently at an end.
Still scowling, still with his little arms folded across his chest, Roman mutters, “Sorry, Candace.”
“And Dom,” West adds.
Roman looks up and gives West a dirty look, but then with another huff, he says, “Sorry, Dom.”
Sighing with pleasure, Elise leans over and nudges me. “Aren’t you glad you have my kids around to balance out Mateo’s?”
Even though I absolutely adore my difficult husband, I can’t help admitting, “Yes.”