The Next Mrs Russo

Like… a campaign shake.

Oh, God. He has no idea about this setup.

“Audrey, nice to meet you.” Polite. Perfunctory. Cold.

“Audrey’s your date for Saturday,” his mother adds and the announcement lands like a three-year-old with finger paints on a white sofa.

Chapter Three

Warren pauses, already three steps past us, his attention on checking the watch on his left hand. He pivots slowly, his gaze flickering from his mother to me and back to her again.

I can’t get a read from the cursory glance he gives me. Which, honestly? Is really annoying. My heart is still racing from being in the same room as him. I’m still tingling from the simple, professional handshake. My imagination is aflame with ideas about what he looks like beneath that perfectly cut suit. It’s definitely not vintage. Most definitely not recycled from an old wool sofa. But I can appreciate brand-new when the man is wearing the hell out of it. Suit porn. Black, paired with a crisp white shirt and a patriotic blue tie.

I’d be swooning even if I didn’t care about fabric quality and perfectly tailored hems, which I got a good look at when I was still on the floor. Impeccable.

Also, he smells good. I never thought to wonder about that.

Looks good. Smells good. Dresses well. Radiates big dick energy.

Exactly what I don’t need.

“Mother.” He says it flatly. One word, but his tone is loaded, an unspoken history of arguments buried in that single word.

Mrs Bianchi is undeterred. “You said you didn’t have time to date and I said I’d take care of it.” She shrugs as if this is all settled and she’s completely in the right.

Warren runs two fingers across his bottom lip, stepping backwards until he’s resting on the edge of a desk. We’re in his office, I realize. Or his home office, rather. His home in the governor’s mansion. It doesn’t feel like a place he’s in every day, I determine with a quick glance. It feels pretty generic. Like a place he stops to take a quick meeting when he’s not at the capitol building or wherever he does governor stuff—signs legislation, revises existing policies, whatever governors do.

And sure enough, another man sweeps into the room steps behind him, a file folder in his hands, already mid-sentence about something or other as he enters. Warren holds up two fingers, a non-verbal request to pause.

“So that’s taken care of,” Mrs Bianchi says. It’s so not. Everyone in this room knows it’s not taken care of, even the guy who just walked in. Even Duke knows. “I like Audrey. I’ve got one of my feelings about her,” she adds, her voice triumphant and a very satisfied expression on her face as she nods, as if to officially seal her good feeling.

“One of your feelings,” Warren repeats back, one hand now rubbing the back of his neck, his body language indicating just how much he doesn’t want to deal with this right now.

The new guy sighs, like he knows what’s coming.

Duke sighs. I’m not sure if he knows what’s coming too or if he just wants in on the action. To be fair, he might just want another belly rub.

“You crazy, meddling…”

“Twenty-six hours of labor, Warren!” Mrs Bianchi interrupts, with what sounds like an argument she’s made a time or two hundred before.

“Forty years ago, Mother. I appreciate the twenty-six hour marathon to birth me forty years ago, but it’s time to move on from that particular line of argument.”

I snort.

No one pays any attention to me. Except Duke. He nudges my hand with his wet nose and steps on my foot.

“Where did you even find her?” Warren continues waving a hand in my general direction, his gaze still firmly on his mother. “Did you set up a website? Date a governor dot com?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Warren.”

“It’s hard not to be, Mother, when I’m genetically related to you. Which we know, due to the many, many references to your having given birth to me. I’ve learned ridiculousness from the best.”

“We all agreed you needed a date for the wedding this weekend,” Mrs Bianchi continues on, clearly not bothered by Warren’s dig on his heredity.

“We”—Warren stresses the word—“agreed on no such thing.”

“The governor’s mansion is not a bachelor pad, Warren! It’s a family home.”

“What a stunning argument, Mother. And here I was about to get rid of that old sofa in the living room and install an indoor hot tub.”

“Don’t be smart, Warren.”

“Marcia,” the new guy says and there’s a familiarity in his tone. A fond familiarity, but I’m not sure how they’re connected. They’re close in age if I had to guess and he’s clearly well versed with Mrs Bianchi and her… feelings.

Then they start bickering between each other in an old-married-couple kind of way and there’s some talk of discussing it later at home and I think they might be a couple, but I’m not entirely sure at this point. They’re delightful, whatever they are.