Page 48 of Secret Mafia Daddy

I chuckle. “All right, Ms. Traditional,” I tease.

Catarina doesn’t respond, her expression looking blank for a second before she sighs, as if admitting defeat.

“Okay, let’s go to the cake tasting.”

“Great.” I cup my hands around my mouth. “Hey, all fairy princesses, the train to fairy town is boarding!”

Chelsea pops her head into the living room. “Fairies don’t take trains, we fly.”

“Well,” I say, laughing. “I guess that means the fairies without wings don’t get to go to fairy town.”

Chelsea huffs. “I guess.”

I grin at her, picking her up and carrying her to the car. Catarina sighs, and I know she doesn’t like it that I carry Chelsea everywhere, but I can’t help it.

She’s just so small and sweet and mine.

“I’ll take you to get your fairy wings, how about that?” I ask Chelsea, and she whoops in victory.

“Can we get the baby some too?” she asks, and I nod and she claps her chubby hands together excitedly. Even Catarina cracks a smile.

Maybe I’m not too stoked about being married, but I’m in love with being a father, and that’s good enough.

20

CATARINA

There’s an odd flutter in my belly when Angelo takes Chelsea into the department store and comes out with a couple of pairs of fairy wings. It’s something like excitement, I guess, on Chelsea’s behalf. It’s just because Angelo is a good father.

It has nothing to do with him. It’s not because I have feelings for him.

Angelo is handsome, funny, smart...all the things people want in a man. But the one trait that he has that keeps me at a distance is a big one: he’s a mobster, and one with a reckless streak about a mile wide.

I don’t want my daughter to have to live her whole life in this kind of dangerous environment, and I know Angelo will never change. He doesn’t even want to.

He loves the life the same way that I hate it, and so we can never be a couple. Not that I want to, anyway. Not that he does.

We are both perfectly content being parents and sleeping together on occasion.

But still, it almost feels like a date as we drop off Chelsea with her new fairy wings and head toward the bakery.

He puts his hand on my knee, humming low in the back of his throat.

“If I didn't know better, I’d think you were enjoying this,” I accuse.

“I am,” he says simply.

I raise an eyebrow. “Why?”

He shrugs. “I like cake.”

I snort out a laugh. “Now you sound like Chelsea.”

“Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, I guess.”

I hadn’t been asking about the cake-tasting, though, but all the wedding planning. He seems excited when I mention certain things about the wedding, and he’s certainly more excited about it than I am.

I’m mostly terrified, worried that my stepfather or mother will see right through our façade and realize that we’re not really in love.

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