Page 47 of His Vengeful Tradwife

"What about a trip to Australia?" my father-in-law enthused. "Gabriel and I would love to explore the unique rock formations there."

"Seraphina and I have been considering Paris," my mother-in-law objected. "She wants to shop along the Champs-Élysées with me."

"Why not both?" Maverick put in and both his parents turned to glare at him.

"Youshould focus on those workbooks," his mother said tartly.

"Silence, you fool," his father added. "We are making plans with Tallulah and the children."

My husband gritted his teeth but had to fucking take it, and the rest of us parted on the best of terms.

We arrived back home to a beautifully-addressed notice of dismissal from Maverick's job. Apparently Mr. Perez had seen the news of my husband’s arrest. There was also a bouquet of flowers and a basket of gourmet cheese and wine from his boss as an apology for me.

"Worth it," said Maverick. "I wanted to fucking break their necks."

"If you don't get me to 40 million subscribers," I said, "Perhaps I'll share this gourmet wine and cheese with as many professional volleyball players as I can."

"Over my dead fucking body," Maverick said, glaring at me with narrowed eyes. "You are mine, Mrs. Laurent, and you will realize that right now unless you want your husband in jail for murder."

The very next day, Maverick was awake even before my early alarm.

"Let's go milk the cows," he said.

"I didn't think you'd want to start rightaway," I replied, yawning since I was still on vacation time.

"I do," he said. "I don't want to delay our reconciliation a second further."

My stepmom was always here early to babysit while I filmed early morning content, so I threw on some overalls and a flowered blouse, put my hair in a messy bun, and we went out to the barn.

"Let's get this milk," Maverick said as he straddled the milking stool and grabbed for the udders.

Alarmed by the rough handling, Claribel mooed loudly and kicked over the milk bucket.

"Slow down there, champ," I said. "She isn't the opposing counsel in a courtroom. Let me show you how it's done."

Maverick listened closely, then bent over to do as I instructed, his face twisted in concentration.

"And what about recording you?" I asked slyly. "To be on my channel?"

He twisted around. "Of course."

"You're not afraid about any of your former coworkers or golf friends seeing you failing to milk a cow?" I asked.

Maverick shook his head. "No," he said.

"This is hard shit," he added after 45 minutes, when all his patience had managed to get him maybe 1/4th of an inch of milk in the bucket. "I can see today is going to be an object lesson on why I shouldn't have been such an arrogant ass to think any of this was easy."

"Even if itwaseasy, you were still a jackass," I said in response to his apology, because I'm not a perfect person.

When that was done, we moved on to churning butter.

Because I was nothing if not on-brand, I of course had an old-fashioned butter churning setup with a fancy aged wood churnand long handle for turning the heavy whipping cream into butter.

"I hope you've enjoyed that nasty store margarine," I put in.

His mouth twisted up and then that old easy banter between us was there again, just for a moment as he grinned at me. "Tallulah, you've so thoroughly bested me in every possible way. You've bested me down to the fucking nasty-ass margarine level. I'm fucking lucky you never went to law school and I had to face you in the courtroom, because you would have garroted me then too."

"Don't try to get around me with flattery," I said, but I felt a little tingle of pleasure.

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