Page 175 of Handsome Devil
“What does it look like?” I groaned.
“Sort of like parsley but with a wider leaf. Try and taste it. If it tastes like something you put in dishes, it’s cilantro. If it tastes like something you put in a salad or for garnishing, it’s parsley.”
I glowered at the greens for a few seconds before Row tromped his way into my garden. He and Cal were visiting us, and he volunteered to cook. “Jesus fuck, how useless can you be out of the board room?” He shouldered me out of the way, crouching down and plucking a wag of green shit and burying his nose inside it. “Smells good. Gia has a green thumb.”
“And I have a lethal fist, so shut the fuck up about my woman’s body.”
Row stared at me, aghast. “You’re insane.”
Maybe, but I was up to the gills in pills and therapy sessions these days, so I didn’t feel that way so much anymore.
We made our way back to the house. Inside, Cal and Gia were cooing and adoring each other’s pregnant bellies. They were just a few weeks apart and, to my dismay, insisted on spending a lot of time together.
Serafina, their older daughter, was running around the house, breaking shit. If this was life as a parent, I didn’t get the fascination, but if Gia wanted kids, I’d give them to her.
If Gia wanted fucking Mars, we’d move there in a heartbeat.
“Tate! How good to see you,” Cal greeted, giving me a forced hug.
“No need to lie. My wife wouldn’t let me kick you out even if I wanted to. Something about etiquette.” I patted her back, wishing she’d pull away sooner rather than later.
“Are you ready?” Row turned to Gia, already chopping the cori-whatever-the-fuck on a thick wooden board. “I’m going to show you how to make the garnish.”
Whatever they were making smelled divine. I could see fish and stew and herbed potatoes.
“Yes!” Gia said excitedly, clapping her hands as she advanced toward him. Her crème woolly dress enhanced her gorgeous curves and pregnant belly. “I’m all ears.”
“I’m going to find Serafina.” Cal jerked her thumb toward the corridor. “Make sure she didn’t break too many things and, if she did, that they’re Tate’s things.”
“Thank you,” I said evenly.
Forty minutes later, we were all at the table, enjoying a hearty meal in front of my stunning English garden. Brayden was enthusiastically telling us he got accepted to a lacrosse team at his public school while shoving bread into his mouth like it was some eating competition. His eyes sparkled with enthusiasm. I liked that I put that glint there. That I gave someone the second chance I had desperately needed when I was about his age.
In the middle of dinner, my phone danced in my pocket with an incoming call. I pulled it out. Achilles Ferrante’s name was on the screen.
I stayed in touch with the Ferrantes and visited them from time to time. We had business together, but it was all legitimate these days.
“I need to take this.” I tossed my napkin onto the table and stood up, waltzing outside so I could have some privacy. Istopped in front of the king’s pond pool, which reminded me fondly of my very first murder, and swiped the screen.
“Yes?” I drawled.
“Tatum,” Achilles said.
I followed two swans with my gaze as they sliced through a nearby lake, just on the edge of my property.
“I fucking know my own name. Anything else you got?”
Achilles’s laugh filled my ear. It sounded eerily like a nail rolling over a blackboard. “I have a piece of news I think would make you very happy.”
“Doubt it.”
Only one thing made me happy, and it was currently in the house, cooing over Calla Litvin’s incredibly boring story about a pie she burned yesterday.
“Tiernan Callaghan.”
The name alone made my skin crawl. He was the first and only man I did not finish off completely after he crossed me. And not from lack of desire. We both had too much on the line.
I could play with my own life but never Gia’s. Never our baby’s.
