Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 77160 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77160 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Roe was doing a set later that night.
Then in the morning, we were off on a two-month honeymoon across Europe.
I think we both knew that as soon as we got home, we were planning on starting a family, so we decided to do it up, soak everything in, then go home and start on the baby-making.
“How are things going here?”
“Good. I mean, you know how shit goes. Money is good. Stress is high. But we keep ending up on top, despite the odds being stacked against us at times.”
“It’s all worth it if the books balance at the end of the month,” I said, shrugging.
“Yep. Heard the new house is nice,” he said. Which he’d heard from Santino, who’d visited us a few months back to personally bring the kick-up to Navesink Bank.
We’d had him over for dinner.
I’d cooked.
Roe was, yeah, still… learning.
She almost didn’t turn the pasta to mush the week before. It was an improvement.
“You oughta come up sometime. From what I hear, you haven’t left this town in two years now.”
“Love it here,” he said with a shrug. “But when your woman pops out a baby, I’ll come up for a cigar. Shit,” he said when there was a loud song and an even louder cheer.
“What was that?”
“That was your mother getting a fucking jackpot,” he said with a bemused smile. “Get that woman to bed before she bleeds us dry.”
With that, he walked off.
I got my mother up to her room before going back to my suite, just as Roe did a whole body stretch in bed, the blankets falling down, her rings catching the morning light.
“Hey,” she said, shooting me a sleepy smile.
“Morning… Mrs. Grassi,” I said, going to the foot of the bed.
Her hand went to her heart.
“God, I like the sound of that.”
“You know what I like the sound of?” I asked.
Then I grabbed her ankles, pulled her down the bed, spread her legs, and buried my face between them to show her.
Roe - 9 years
“That’s better, huh?” I asked the infant who was looking up at me with round, trusting eyes from the changing table in the nursery.
It was a room that had gotten a lot of use over the years. Like the other Grassi couples, once we started, we just couldn’t stop.
“No more spittle, no,” I cooed when something out the window caught my eye.
I sighed and reached out to push the window open.
“If you throw that at your little brother, I’m going to make you go to grandma’s all weekend to weed her garden!” I yelled down to the six-year-old who was about to toss what looked like a muddy ball of leaves at his little brother.
Weeding was the ultimate punishment in the Grassi family. Everyone hated it. It worked like a charm. Except for Adrian, who really did need a hand now and again with all that work.
“Boys,” I said, getting a mouth-bubbly laugh from our youngest—and only daughter. “You wouldn’t throw mud, would you?” I asked, lifting her up in her cute strawberry-printed onesie. She made little popping noises with her mouth. “Exactly. Disgusting. I’m worried I am going to need to hose them off before they come back inside.”
“Thought I heard you,” Milo said as we moved down the steps to find him dropping his keys into the dish inside the front door. “How are my girls?”
He moved over to wrap an arm around me, pressing a kiss to my head, then to our daughter’s.
“We’re good. Just got changed. Was about to try to figure out what to throw together for dinner.”
“Or we could order from Lucky’s and make life easier.”
“I’ve been keeping a terrible secret from you for years,” I told him, watching his lips quirk up.
“What’s that?”
“I only married you for the food connections.”
“Might be a little truth in that,” he said, reaching for the baby.
“Nope. You’re on boy duty.”
“Why? What did they do?” he asked. We’d been at this long enough to be suspicious whenever the other tried to push off the older three onto the other.
“Well, they’ve put the past week of nonstop rain to good use.”
“They’re covered in mud, aren’t they?”
“Only from head to toe.”
“Would you be furious if I hosed them off like a dog?”
“I was thinking the same thing.”
“Alright. I’ll see what I can do about that. You wanna order?”
“Already on it,” I said, pulling my phone out of my pocket.
With that, Milo shrugged off his jacket, took a steadying breath, and strode through the house toward the back door in the kitchen.
I made the delivery order with the baby cooing on my hip before walking into the kitchen.
When I looked out the window, what did I see?
My damn husband with a wadded-up leaf/mud/God-knows-what ball in his hand and a body covered in impact zones from the boys nailing him with the mud balls.