Page 38 of Mafia Christmas Vows

I blink. “Really?”

“If you are asking me of my honesty… yes. We do not lie to each other,” he murmurs.

I don’t know how this whole truth thing came to be part of our very, very new marriage but…

I trust it.

More than that, I really like it.

Both of those things help solidify my decision for me.

Nodding, I take my sweater from him.

“Let me change, and I’ll meet you in the kitchen.”

After a quick internet search converting metric to US measuring units, and lots of help from Elena, I’m fully ready to make sugar cookies.

I’m mixing them together when I feel a warm presence at my back.

“Alexei,” I breathe.

“Hmm,” he murmurs. His lips touch my neck and I shiver.

The kiss he places is fast. Just a brush of his lips against me.

But the tenderness there is downright domestic.

It makes me ache.

“So. Tell me of these… cookies.”

I rise my eyebrow. “You don’t make cookies in Russia?”

“We make a variety of treats,” Alexei shrugs. “I think American cookies are probably different.”

“Well, first, tell me. Did you make anything like these with your mom?”

He shakes his head. “In Russia, we spend more time on New Year’s than Christmas. I think the old holiday ways are still dominant in Novgorod and nearby, but the fact that we were a country without religion for so long changed a lot of the holidays.”

“That doesn’t answer my question, and kind of sounds like a bad joke.”

“A joke?” he tilts his head.

I nod. “You know. The old ‘in Russia, you don’t have holidays. Holidays haveyou,” I emphasize with a fake Russian accent.

Alexei’s face is completely neutral. “I have never heard this. And I don’t sound like that.”

“I don’t sound like that,” I mimic in my fake accent.

I’m teasing him.

The thought strikes me like a lightning bolt. I’m sitting hereteasingAlexei, like we’re…

Like we’re a real married couple.

A real smile crosses his lips. “You like my accent, Magdalena?”

“Maggie,” I roll my eyes. “Seriously, I think… at this point, call me Maggie.”

---