Her eyes widen as she swallows a bite of her sandwich. “You have a daughter?”
I nod, wishing I had my phone to show her a picture. “Lily. She’s three.”
“You’re…. young.”
“Yep, 23,” I say, flashing her a smile. “She wasn’t planned.”
Nodding, she glances at her plate. “You want more kids?”
“Eventually, sure.”
“Mateo wants a son,” she remarks.
I glance up, surprised. “Oh, it’s way premature to be talking kids. We literally just started sleeping together. I’m his maid.”
“You’ve met Cherie, right? She and Vince share a dad. Also, I don’t think Mateo is too particular about who he procreates with.”
I frown, recalling all the times we had sex last night and this morning, and how none of those times involved a condom. “That’s not cool.”
“He’s past 30 and has no son,” she states.
I shrug. “He has a daughter. Fuck the patriarchy, am I right?”
Mia laughs—but she doesn’t just laugh, she nearly dies. Tears actually leak out of her eyes. “Oh, Meg.”
“That wasn’t one of my better jokes,” I point out.
“No, it was. It was,” she says, swiping tear leakage from her eyes.
—
It’s dark and I’m so comfortable, I never want to move. I lift my head, looking at Mateo asleep next to me, basked in the moon light. He’s really handsome in all light, but moon light definitely works for him.
I’m tempted to stay put, but I need to get back to reality. It’s so easy to get swept up in a whirlwind of sex and leisure, but the alarm on his nightstand tells me I’m going to have to wake up in two hours, and I haven’t actually slept yet.
Squeezing my legs together, faintly sore from being soundly fucked all night long, I can’t say I have a single regret. Still, it’s time to return to my Cinderella gig until darkness falls again.
Slowly easing out from under the comforter so as not to wake him, I roll toward the edge of the bed.
An arm locks around me, yanking me back.
His voice, so sexy with hoarseness from having just been asleep, startles me, “Where do you think you’re going?”
I look back at him over my shoulder. “Back to my own room.”
“Request denied,” he replies, his arm still secured around my waist.
“I have to be up in two hours,” I inform him.
“Then I can have at least one more,” he says, leaning in to kiss my shoulder blade.
“You are a machine,” I inform him. “My body doesn’t understand what to do with all this stimulation.”
He chuckles lowly, resting his head back on the pillow. “Your husband didn’t know what to do with you, huh?”
“He certainly did not have your stamina. And he was younger than you, so I guess kudos?”
“I have plenty of energy for the important things,” he replies.
“Well, it’s nice to see how I rate,” I tease.
He releases me, but just enough so I can roll over to face him, then he drapes his arm across me again. “Tell me something about your life,” he says.
“Before I came here? What would you like to know?”
He shrugs. “You have family?”
“The one I made, mostly. I have a mother, but she’s flaky and we aren’t close. My dad cheated on her when I was like two and I haven’t seen him since they split, so I barely remember him at all. No siblings that I know of.”
“Never looked?”
“Didn’t care.”
He smiles at that. “Not a family person?”
“I like the one I created. Lily’s all I need. Rodney… I hoped he would be better than he was, but I ended up doing everything on my own anyway, just with the fun addition of a boulder strapped to my belt as I tried to carry us.”
“You want more kids?”
“Maybe, if it’s with the right person. I don’t want to get stuck doing everything on my own again.” I look at him, remembering what Mia said earlier. “What about you? You have Isabella, you still want more?”
“Yeah. I need to have sons. At least one. Normally we Morellis have pretty big broods.”
“Women can’t head the family, huh?” I joke.
“Isabella’s too kind,” he says.
“Well, she’s five. I mean, not that I think she should; something more stable would probably be… Actually, what do the women born Morelli do? Francesca runs the bakery, right?”
“Yeah,” he says, nodding. “Before her, my aunt did. Maybe Isabella will someday.”
“I feel like I can see her more as a florist than a baker. You should buy a flower shop just in case,” I advise.
“I already have one,” he tells me.
“How well-rounded of you.”
He shrugs. “It was part of a cluster of businesses, I just absorbed the whole thing. Strangely enough, the flower shop was not my main target.”
“You buy a lot of businesses?”
Nodding faintly, he says, “I have a lot of money to invest. Every year it’s more. Have to do something with it.”
I roll my eyes at him. “Man, to have your problems.”