Page 57 of The Bratva's Innocent Sold Bride
“I don’t think I can muster the energy for sightseeing or shopping, and nobody in your family’s going to be in the mood for another big dinner.”
“You’re right,” he said, agreeing quickly and easily. “I have some things to take care of at home, anyway, that probably shouldn’t wait.”
“Will I have anything to do when we get home?” I asked hopefully.
He grinned, taking my hand from where it rested on his cheek and kissed my palm. “You can start work again as soon as I wrap up a few things.”
“When?” I asked.
“When I tell you. Not long though.”
There wasn’t any point in pressing the issue since he’d only refuse to tell me what he needed to wrap up, but I was happy enough to be able to keep my beloved office and still be helpful. I was downright excited to get back home. Funny how I thought of it as home now. I had an opportunity to be out of this, and I threw it away. Was it really because I feared for my father’s life or… Yes. Of course, it was that. What else could it be?
We both napped on the jet, not getting much sleep the night before, and once we were back in Silicon Valley, Mat asked me if I wouldn’t mind having takeout for dinner.
“Maybe watch a movie, have a few drinks?” he asked.
“Sounds perfect,” I answered honestly, directing him to a greasy burger stand that had the best sweet potato fries in all of Silicon Valley. “We could use a relaxing evening.”
He smiled, almost wistfully, his blue eyes searching mine. “I like how you say that.”
“Say what?”
“We,” he answered. “Both of us, together.” He kept looking at me until the girl at the window waved the bag of food at him.
He was in an odd mood, and I didn’t think it was the near brush with death, since he’d already put the fight far from his mind. But he was thinking about something, I could tell that much. I wished he had told me what he was so eager to get takencare of, but knew better than to ask. Being ignored or told not to worry about it would only put me in a bad mood.
At home, the evening was much cooler than in LA, but the sky was clear, and we decided to eat out by the pool, wrapped up in cozy sweaters. It was a bit incongruous to see Mat in jeans and a thick wool sweater instead of his tailored suits. He was like a teddy bear if teddy bears regularly got into gunfights. Damn handsome too, to the point I couldn’t keep my hands off him, always reaching to touch his arm or his knee while we ate our burgers and sweet potato fries with an aged red wine.
As the stars started to blink to life in the rapidly darkening sky, he asked me how I felt about his family.
“You can be honest,” he said.
“Why wouldn’t I be? I really do like them all. I can’t believe they’re so welcoming. I mean, I’m a complete stranger who just popped up in your life, but they treat me like I’m one of them.”
“You are one of us,” he said, making my heart feel strangely warm and too big for my chest. “Because I say so. Because you make me happy.”
I laughed. “Well, they think that, don’t they?”
His brows shot together, but he didn’t contradict that they were operating under an illusion. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him if he was going to enact his revenge on my father for the rest of our lives. Did he really mean to stay married to me, or did this ruse have an expiration date? But I couldn’t, because for some reason, I didn’t want to know.
Things weren’t bad. They were pretty good. He told me I could go back to work soon, and I was excited about a new project. Before I could ask about that, instead of the tenuousstate of our marriage, he brought up my father, and my blood chilled.
“What?” I pretended not to hear, unable to make eye contact because the single word sounded like the worst acting in the lamest B movie ever.
“How’s your father?”
Did he read my mind? Was it somehow written all over my face that I talked to him only that morning? I shrugged, shaking my head, forcing myself to remain calm and speak normally.
“I guess he’s fine. I haven’t seen him since the wedding. I don’t really care to talk to him,” I said. The last part was true, anyway.
His look was inscrutable as he stood, leaning down to kiss me gently on the cheek. Wasn’t that the sign I was on a hit list or something, according to old mafia movies? His smile was rueful as he told me he had some things to do.
“But what about the movie?” I asked.
No answer. He was gone. I spent the next hour pacing, getting the dog all worked up as I went over what just happened in my head. I finally relaxed, sure Mat was just being his normal, reticent self, and it was something he thought I didn’t need to worry about. Since I’d already had the shock of a lifetime the night before, he didn’t want to upset me and was downplaying leaving in a hurry.
There was no way he knew about my father’s impromptu visit to LA, or he would have just said something, at the very least. At the most, he’d drag my dad over here and teach him a lesson.
