41. Savio
CHAPTER 41
Savio
THREE YEARS LATER
W ondering what I did to deserve an offspring louder than his mother, I pick up the screaming child, who’s only screaming because I’m not about to let him use my collection of Andrea Jura books as building blocks.
When the other two start wailing, I plead, “ Mon Dieu , what will it take to stop you from yelling?”
A snicker sounds from the other side of the room, and I twist around to find my wife staring at me, leaning against the doorjamb and somehow managing to look sexier than she should when she’s dressed for business and not to impress.
Wearing a smart pantsuit, not her usual attire of shorts and a cami that always shows just enough to keep me hard if I eye her up, and with her hair twisted into a bun, she reminds me of a secretary. A naughty one.
I want that rope of hair in my hand as I pull her head back and?—
Damn, I need to not have an erection right now.
Her smug smile has me narrowing my eyes at her as Roman manages to swipe jam over my cheek—my desire for cleanliness faded after the third time Roman peed on me when I changed his diaper. The first time, I almost had a heart attack. By the third, I didn’t even yell for help, just finished changing him, put him in his cot, and then showered.
“You said five hours,” I grumble.
She grins unapologetically. “The meeting went over.”
“You signed?”
Earlier, she was unsure if the production company who wanted to option one of her titles would have the same creative vision she did. From her smug smile, I get the feeling things went well.
In four years of being together, she’s only managed to write one book. Vows We Break, featuring a lot less sex, a lot more torture, and a priest who killed himself rather than let the carabinieri bring him in for murdering a child predator in his flock, has been on the bestseller lists for years.
Production companies have been after her about the movie rights. With the director she approves of at the helm, this is the only company she’s deigned to have a meeting with.
“I signed.” She winks at me. “Twenty million coming our way.”
My lips twitch at her smug glee. “You’re too rich already.”
“ We are. How many orphanages can we build with that in Oran, hmm? Plus, it’s for them, isn’t it?”
The three children who are more like hellspawn than angels for my comfort.
My nose wrinkles. “Why did we have three children so close together again?”
“Because my body is overactive and you have super sperm?” she teases, strolling in with more of that loose-limbed gait that has my dick hardening.
Again.
At forty-four, I should be too old for these instant erections that remind me of when I was a teenager, but I figure I have a lot to make up for.
When she snags one of the snuffling toddlers who stopped wailing when their mama made an appearance, I haul the others into my arms.
There’s Roman, Thiya, and Arabella, but Roman, despite being the eldest, is the biggest baby of them all.
When his mama isn’t around, he sulks like crazy.
Huffing now that he’s in Andrea’s arms, as if he’s pissed because he was always supposed to be there, the girls and I just roll our eyes at him, but at least they stopped their sobbing too.
I hate hearing them cry, hate it for so many reasons, but though it can make me murderous, how can I slay a table corner they bumped into? How can I slaughter a bottle of ketchup for being empty?
Children wail at the most random stuff, and I have to be honest, it both amuses me and drives me nuts. I think, to a certain extent, it’s also tempered me.
I never expected to have kids, so having three is a gift. But a boy first and two girls ten months later? My punishment.
My mouth curves at the thought, and I press my lips to both golden crowns that bob before me—one comes perilously close to slamming into my nose until I duck out of the way in the nick of time.
Andrea holds the back of Roman’s head and flops onto the sofa, making him giggle. I prop myself up beside her and inform her, “Your mom called.”
“Why?”
“To remind you about tomorrow’s appointment.”
“I’m fine.”
I have to laugh. “I know you are. But let’s confirm it, si ?”
Her nose wrinkles, but she nods.
There’s no way in hell she isn’t going in for her checkup, but she hates the MRI machine so it’s always a battle.
“I’m fine.”
“I know you are.”
“Then why can I hear your brain firing on all cylinders?”
My smile deepens as her words have me shooting her a look from under my lashes. The girls are cuddled against me on the sofa, and Roman is a true genius—his head is propped on her breasts.
For us, this is quiet, and I love it.
“I’m just… happy.”
Her beaming smile nourishes that happiness even more.
We don’t lead a regular lifestyle.
I don’t go out to work, neither does she. We raise our kids, and her royalties pay the bills, and we just live.
No walls, no locks, no rat race.
Our house is deep in the forest with more open space around it than we know what to do with. It’s a running farm and we pay people to keep it going, but I do my bit. Being outside and working the land is probably the best therapy out there for a man like me.
My father-in-law doesn’t approve, but he’s an Army man. Solid, stolid . He thinks I’m taking Andrea for a ride. Little does he know I am, just that it’s the ride of her life.
At least her relationship with her folks has calmed down since our marriage. They took a while to forgive her for disappearing the way she did. The kids helped ease the tension with both our families—they wanted to be grandparents more than they wanted to be angry with us for our less-than-conventional beginning.
Beyond the sofa where she’s seated, at her back, is a bay window that overlooks the forest line that belongs to our family.
It’s a quiet life, even if things have gotten a touch crazier since Andrea released this last book. She told me once that she missed writing, but it had never flowed for her since her surgery, so when she started plotting, I’d been happy for her.
Until she told me what she was writing.
Talk about merging the past with the present, and in a way that endangered us.
But my job in this life is to make her happy.
To make sure that she’s fulfilled in all things, so watching her write again was a gift.
I don’t think she expected it to be successful, don’t think she believed it would do well after such a long hiatus from her publishing schedule, especially with fans still mad about her not writing London’s Burning . Yet, here she is, signing up with production companies and with new awards on her office desk.
I’m proud of her.
More than she will ever know.
“I like that smile on you. Like it even better if I could taste it,” she purrs, switching to Italian.
The smile she wants to taste darkens, and I murmur to the girls on my lap, “Nap time.”