Family Ties (Morelli Family 4)

I roll my eyes, like it should be obvious. “Mateo.”

He pauses for several seconds, staring at me. “You think your brother, the one who raped Mia, likes her.”

“I know how it sounds. I can’t explain this to you in a way that wouldn’t sound twisted.”

“Correct,” he verifies, nodding once.

I shrug, accepting that. “I guess it is twisted. But I still think he does.”

“Well, I think if he did, he should’ve invited her to dinner and a movie. Since he didn’t, I’d say that ship has sailed.”

“But—”

“Sailed,” he interrupts, making a whooshing motion in the air with his hand. “And after sailing away, it hit an iceberg, split in half, and sank to the ocean floor. It’s not even a ship anymore, just splinters of wood, pissing off some fish that used to hang out there.”

“But what if they could make each other happy? Turn something ugly and horrible into something… good?”

“I don’t think your brother has the capacity to make anyone happy,” Salvatore states. “He’s too selfish. He’d need someone like Ma to put up with his shit, and that wouldn’t be making her happy, it would just be finding someone willing to be his victim for the rest of her life.”

“That’s terrible. I hate that.”

“I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news.”

“I refuse to believe that.”

“You’re a dreamer,” he says fondly, brushing a chunk of hair behind my ear. “He’s a nightmare.”

As if to illustrate his point about me, I tell him, “I can’t wait until we move to our house in the suburbs and I don’t have to deal with this shit anymore. We’ll just visit for family dinners and holidays.”

“Ma’s going to have issues with that. She’ll want to see the grandkids. I’m sure she got ‘em a mountain of presents to put under the tree.”

“We’ll have to work something out. Maybe we’ll visit your mom on Christmas Eve since there are no little kids there, then my house for Christmas. We have very nice Christmases. Mateo’s a jerk, but he’s great at gifts.”

“We’ll have to go to church with Ma for Easter. She’ll want to buy our daughter an extravagant Easter dress.”

“We can put our son in a dapper little suit,” I say, grinning.

“And get our scruffy little mutt a bow tie to wrap around his collar.”

I laugh, sigh, and wrap myself around him. I know these are impossible dreams, but they feel so close I could reach out and touch them. “Where should we go for our honeymoon?”

“Italy,” he says, without hesitation. “Puglia. I have family there and it’s beautiful. We’ll spend a few days there, then we’ll head to Sardinia and spend the rest of the time there.”

“You’ve got this all planned out,” I say, poking him in the side.

“If I can get away for a little longer we’ll hit Sicily, too. We’ll have to train for all the food though, because we’re going to be eating a lot.”

“Well, I obviously hate food, so…”

“And beaches. You in a bikini,” he says slowly, trailing his finger down my arm. “There’s a lot to look forward to.”

“I like the sounds of this.”

He nods, watching me as his hand moves to my breast, catching its weight in his palm. “Every year on our anniversary, we’ll go away together. Even after we have kids, just you and me.”

“You’re going to be such a good husband.”

He smirks. “I kind of have a cheat guide. Ethan basically wrote the good husband manual, it turns out.”

“Are he and Willow married?”

“No, he was married before.”

I raise my eyebrows. “He’s divorced and he wrote the good husband manual? Maybe you should read a different edition.”

“I know, that’s what I thought, too, but it seems like he knows what he’s talking about.”

“We should be couple friends,” I decide.

“That sounds creepy. She’s my sister.”

“Then you should be brothers-in-law and we can be sisters-in-law. I maintain my campaign about you building a relationship with her. You said you want to go out, call her and set something up.”

“We can’t all go out together in the city. I don’t think she’ll even agree to it. She doesn’t really like me.”

“Who could not like you? I don’t believe that. We’ll all go out to dinner, somewhere out of the way, not in the city. It’ll be my treat.”

“I’ll talk to Ethan,” he says, relenting. “He probably won’t agree, either. He tries to keep his distance from anything crooked, and going out to eat with a Castellanos and a Morelli sounds like his personal hell.”

I grin. “Tell him I’m a nice one.”

“Your family doesn’t have a reputation for niceness, sweetheart.”

“You can’t always believe everything you hear,” I inform him haughtily. “I heard you were a ruthless playboy asshole, and that wasn’t true.”

“Well, it was, just not for you, and not all at the same time.”

I wrinkle my nose up with displeasure. “I’m not a big fan of the playboy part.”