Page 39 of Secret Baby for the Mafia Don

She looks at the colorful board game and the little cars with our single playing piece stuck in them, then meets my gaze. Her eyes are open to me at the moment, and I see sadness there, and caution, but also a flare of something dangerously like hope.

“Isn’t that what we do every day?” I reply. “Aren’t we always playing the game of life as best as we can?”

She snorts and starts organizing her game pieces. “Fair enough. Remind me how to play this ridiculous game. It’s been years.”

I chuckle. “We can relearn together. I don’t remember any of the rules either.”

Chapter Sixteen

Kate

If you had told me a month ago, that I would be sitting on a bed in a guestroom at the Baldini mansion, playing The Game of Life with Elio, I would have died laughing. Yet, here we are, playing a silly board game together and trying to forget about the past and the current difficult situation that we find ourselves in.

“Another baby? Ugh!” I exclaim as I get yet another card that says I have had another child. My little car is completely full and I’m running out of money.

Elio laughs and the sound warms my heart. It’s good to see him acting like a human being for once. It makes you almost forget what he truly is. “And here I am without any.”

“If you were a chivalrous man, you would offer to help me with all of my kids,” I tell him, moving my playing piece a few more spaces.

He smiles and reads the card he was instructed to pull from the stack. He looks up at me then, pausing before taking the rest of his turn. “Didn’t you always want to have a lot of kids?”

I feel the smile slip off my face. “Yes,” I admit. I feel sadness twist around my heart. “I wanted to have a big family just like the one I grew up in.”

“It’s not too late,” he tells me.

I scoff at this. “Nothing has turned out the way I thought that it would.”

“That’s usually how life goes,” Elio replies negligently, finishing his turn.

“Looks like we’re almost done with the game,” I say. “I think I’m going to win.”

He slants a coy look up at me. “It does. Do you want to sweeten the experience for me since I’m probably going to lose?”

I eye him cautiously. “What do you want to do?”

“I was thinking we could add a stripping element to the game. Might make things more fun for those of us who are going to lose.”

I laugh lightly. Clever man. I told him to show me intimacy that didn’t include sex, but he has managed to somehow come back to his favorite way of expressing his interest in me. However, I have to admit that seeing more of him wouldn’t hurt my feelings. “You’re going to be doing a lot of stripping, I think,” I warn him.

He smiles at me, and my heart stutters a little. God, why does he have to be so good-looking?

“Fine by me,” he says. He tells me what kind of system he wants to use to determine when to take off an article of clothing and I agree to it.

I take my turn and I score a point on him. I arch my brow at him. “One point for me,” I remind him.

He smiles at me and my traitorous heart flips over in my chest as he sits up straighter and shrugs out of his tight-fitting shirt.

Elio was always meticulous in his personal grooming, and I see that nothing has changed in the years since we were together. His tan skin is smooth, shadows dipping into the grooves and marks of his well-defined muscles.

I swallow firmly, and turn back to the board. “Your turn,” I direct him to cover my sudden arousal.

“So it is,” he says, and takes his turn. I watch in a distracted way as he reads the little card he was directed to pick up. I see his lip curling and I know that I am going to have to take off an article of clothing as well.

“One point for me,” he says, confirming what I had surmised from his expression.

“Don’t tell me that you were pretending to be bad at this game so you could convince me to up the ante,” I say accusatorily as I start unbuttoning the silk shirt I chose for our meeting.

I can’t decide if I’m happy that I wore a bra or not, as I cast the shirt to the floor in a puddle of brilliant, shiny color.

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