Coming Home (Morelli Family 6)

I can’t open them fast enough, and when I do I see a wall of baby shoes. I grab his arm to brace myself as I look up and down, taking in the rows and rows of teeny tiny shoes to go on teeny tiny baby feet. The mental image of the onesie-wearing smiling baby kicking its little legs at me comes back…

I want to cry again. I don’t even care if it makes him uncomfortable, I grab Adrian and give him a big hug. He sighs like I’m annoying him, but he totally hugs me back.

“Thank you,” I say, quietly. “This was exactly what I needed.”

“Well, I know you like shoes.”

I pull back, grinning. “And baby shoes. They’re so tiny!”

I abandon Adrian for the shoes now, but I don’t think he’s sad about it. I gasp, grabbing a pair with the most darling little pink satin bow on them.

“Look at these. Are these not the cutest things you’ve ever seen?”

He smiles, but rolls his eyes at me. “Oh, yeah; I wish they had them in my size.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” I toss back, grinning at the shoes. “God, I hope it’s a girl.”

“Me too,” he agrees, more fervently than I expected. “That would make life a lot easier.”

That sounds a lot like Adrian has a better idea of where Mateo’s head is than I do, so I grab onto it. “That’s his issue, isn’t it? The stupid son thing?”

“I’m not disagreeing that it’s stupid, but you knew all this about him when you met the man. If that’s a boy and he raises it as his, it’s one of Mateo’s heirs.”

“But not the heir,” I point out. “Meg’s having a boy, he’ll be the eldest.”

“By a few months,” Adrian states. “That leaves a pretty damn good opportunity for a vicious rivalry to spring up. If anything happened to Mateo’s son, Vince’s son would take over Mateo’s family. That’s a huge risk.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to Mateo’s son.”

“Your son could want him out of the way so he could take Mateo’s place. They’ll be even closer in age than Mateo and Dante, and we’ve all kept an eye on Dante for as long as I’ve been around.”

“My child is not going to be a murderer,” I inform him.

Adrian’s eyebrows shoot up. “Are you serious?”

“Well…” I grimace, realizing that’s probably not true. “Jesus, I don’t want my baby to be a murderer.”

“Whether he gets his own hands dirty or not, he’s not going to be virtuous. Not in this family. And given the history between those two bloodlines, it’s not completely insane for Mateo to be worried about it.”

I roll my eyes. “That’s stupid. Bloodlines don’t determine whether or not people will grow up to get along, it’s all in how they’re raised. If Mateo’s a jerk about it and makes it an issue, then yeah, something could pop up. So we don’t do that. We raise them as brothers regardless and move on with our lives. Every other baby I have will be Mateo’s. We can have 20 if he wants to. He just… he just has to accept this one first.”

“And what about Vince?”

Picking up a little pair of white booties, I say, “What about Vince?”

“If you let him take care of that problem, he’ll probably feel a lot better about this one.”

I hate everything about what he just said, so I ignore it and go back to admiring baby shoes.

Since I don’t know the gender yet, my shoe choices are limited. I end up picking out an adorable pair of newborn booties, white with little yellow duckies on them. I can’t stand how cute they are.

I’m feeling a lot better after baby shoe shopping, so I do get hungry. Adrian takes me out for tacos since Mateo is a hater of tacos and I never get them. It’s basically our tradition at this point.

When we get home, I feel a lot lighter. Adrian has to get back to work to make up for disappearing for the afternoon, but I’m really glad he did. That’s what Mateo should’ve done, but he’s too deep in his own head, sorting out of the problems associated with my pregnancy. I understand it isn’t ideal, obviously it’s not my first choice either, but the man has children by two women before me; he should be able to cut me a little slack here.

Chapter Twenty Five

Mia

Dinner is quiet and tense.

Mateo leaves with the guys when dinner is over. He doesn’t tell me where he’s going, so I have no idea when he’ll be home.

He does that sometimes, but infrequently enough that it makes me feel like there’s a problem when he does it tonight. I think about going to Meg’s room to talk to her, but I guess I shouldn’t do that anymore. When we were living as sister wives, it was fine to turn to each other when we needed someone to pick up the slack, but now that I’m on my own, it doesn’t seem fair.