The Negotiator
Page 22
She warmed up the place.
She made the house a home.
Cheesy, but true.
"Well, maybe this will help," I suggested, nodding to Laird who shook his head, and moved to open the door to the crate.
Which sent a squealing pig racing through the space.
"Oh my God. Oh my God!" she shrieked, dropping to her knees, holding out her hands to the pink thing still zooming around the space, a blur of hoofed feet and a squiggly tail. "Oh my God. You sweet, sweet baby," she cooed, scooping him up as he made grunting noises at her. "You got me a mini pig?" she asked, beaming up at me.
"Actually, no. We had a visitor. Who promptly caught sight of someone in a tight dress and disappeared."
"Fenway?" she asked, smile bright.
"I guess he never did forget."
"Forget what?" she asked, brows drawing together for a second before she showered kisses all over the pig's head.
"That day on the yacht," I started, knowing she knew what day and which yacht. "You told him that a pig would have made the situation better."
"And I told him not to get me one because I'm too busy," she agreed, actually booping the pig's flat nose, letting out a squeal of joy as she did so.
"He was looking up pigs on his phone before Bellamy and I talked him out of it. He said he was making a note for later, though."
"This is random, even for him."
"It's not," I told her, shaking my head.
The pig leapt from her arms, doing another lightning-fast tour of the room, much to Melody's delight, but she sent me a glance. "It's not?"
"It's been one year," I told her. "Since you came here the first time."
"Since you had me drugged and kidnapped, you mean," she specified, giving me a smirk.
"Yes, since then," I agreed, not regretting it a bit.
"That's unexpectedly sweet of him that he remembered," she decided as the pig made his way down into the dining room. And then, judging by the yelp of surprise, into the kitchen with Cora.
"I remembered too," I told her, reaching into my pocket as she got back on her feet. "Fenway kind of took the wind out of my sails here," I added, pulling out the small jewelry box, watching as her eyes went to it. "But I've been planning this for a while, so I am going to do it anyway," I told her, flipping open the lid as I walked closer, and went down on one knee.
"Oh my God," she said, sounding breathless as her gaze fell on the simple pear-shaped diamond on a white gold band. Jules, Gemma, Aven, Jenny, Meadow, Sloane, and Nia had all conference called with me while I toured the jewelry store, helping me pick it out. "Really?" she asked, hand moving out, finger tracing over the diamond.
"I've never been more sure of anything in my life," I told her, sliding the ring on her finger, liking it even more than I expected, seeing it there.
Her arms wrapped around my neck, her lips crashing to mine, kissing me hard and long before going back down on her flat feet, pulling away.
"Well, now you took the wind out of my sails," she told me, making my brows furrow.
"What?"
"Well, I didn't forget either," she told me, reaching for my hands, grabbing them by the backs. "I have been planning on telling you something for a little bit too," she told me, resting my hands on her belly.
Realization soared through my system, stealing my breath.
"Really?" I asked, gaze meeting hers, finding her eyes bright, and a little teary.
"Really," she agreed, nodding.
I don't know if I ever truly understood what wonder felt like until that moment. But there was no denying that was exactly what the soaring sensation felt like in my chest.
"I love you," I told her, with nothing else to say.
"I love you back," she told me, beaming for a moment before we felt the piglet force in between our feet, making her break away, and lean down to scoop him up. "I love you too, you precious thing, you."
As with everything that has to do with Fenway, that pig came with some very unexpected consequences.
Miller - 8 years
"Come on, buddy," I demanded, patting the massive flank of what had once been a very small piglet.
Fenway had his heart in the right place.
He often did.
But the man hadn't done much research.
As he often did not.
See, Oliver was not your typical mini pig, short and stout, roughly the stature of a medium-sized dog, weighing in at a healthy ninety to one-hundred-thirty pounds.
Oh, no.
Oliver was not a mini pig at all.
Nope.
Oliver was your standard pink-skinned farm pig.
All six-hundred pounds of him.
Yes, six-hundred.
The problem was, we didn't figure out this fact until he was several months old, litter-trained, and a happy, loving member of our little family, whose favorite pastimes were begging Cora for kitchen scraps and taking naps on the living room carpet.
We figured he had just been growing, as piglets do.
Until he just... never stopped growing.
Then the vet had confirmed what we had begun to suspect.
He was a farm pig.
But this farm pig was living a well-adjusted, mostly indoor life. There was no way we could have forced him to go and live in the backyard, just because he wasn't exactly what we had expected.
So here I was, trying to get him out of the way of his chosen nap spot directly in front of the back door.
"Come on, bub, I need to get out there," I tried again, tapping his front hoof with my toe.
He just kept on sleeping.
"Fine," I sighed, turning, going into the cabinet, pulling down the cereal box, rustling the bag inside of it.
I could count on a lot of things in life.
The kids would always sense when me and their father were about to have some much-needed adult time.
Alexander would always make us worry about his reckless young adult life.
Cora's Loukoumades recipe would always be a crowd-pleaser.
And Oliver would always come running for snacks.
Especially if they were of the Cheerio variety.
"That's a good boy," I told him, dropping a handful on the floor, then grabbing the tray I had loaded up with snacks to bring out back.
We were in Navesink Bank for the Fall and Winter, finding that the kids liked having traditional winters with snow and family. And because of their father's line of work—and mine, though much less frequently these days—we had long ago decided homeschooling was the safest bet for them, which allowed us to lead lives on different continents without screwing with their education. They got the best of both worlds, and had friends in both countries that they never got sick of.
We did eventually need to sell my old, cramped little house, buying something bigger with a nice yard for the kids and—let's face it—the pig.
It was an old, but lovingly restored Victorian on five acres lined in pine trees which lent perfect privacy, something we didn't get much of in Greece.
"I think your kid just cursed out a bug in Greek," Gunner informed me, nodding over toward our oldest—a six-year-old, dark-haired, dark-eyed, cherub of a girl with her father's severity and my hatred of insects.
"That sounds entirely plausible," I agreed, nodding. "Where're the boys?" I asked, looking around, not seeing my very rough-and-tumble five and four year-olds.
I did not see myself as a baby-making machine. But much like cooking, once I got a taste of motherhood, I was sold on it. We had three with another on the way, likely the last, but you never really know.
"I don't think you want to know the answer to that," Gunner told me, shaking his head.
"Oh, God. They're not under the porch again, are they?"
"It's not a porch," he informed me. "It is their clubhouse."
"Yeah, well, tell that to the raccoon who calls it home," I told him, shaking my head. I'd had Christopher shore up the entrances to the underside of
the porch three separate times. Each time, the boys found a way around the barricades.
Part of me was ticked.
The other part was kind of proud that we'd produced such willful kids.
"What's the matter?" Christopher asked, coming up the stairs of the porch.
"Your children," I told him, shaking my head.
"They're only mine when they're bad," he said, smirking. "What'd they do now?"
"Probably got rabies," I told him.
"You know, they'd probably leave the porch alone if you built them an actual clubhouse," Smith observed.
"You know... that sounds an awful lot like an offer to make one!" I declared, stomping my feet hard on the porch. "Boys, Uncle Noah is going to make you a clubhouse!" I yelled, hearing a squeal, then shuffling, followed by a bang, and crying.
Being rough-and-tumble boys, the crying typically meant someone was bleeding or something was broken.
"I got it," Gemma called, waving me to stay on the porch as she walked around to their little entrance to help pull them out.
"Never a dull moment with all these kids around," Gunner observed, nodding at the yard full of all the various aged children we'd all accumulated over the years. "Hey, look who it is," he added, jerking his chin toward the side yard. Where Fenway was moving up the walk with his woman at his side.
Yes, you read that right.
His woman.
As in one of them.
That he had actually done the unthinkable with.
Married.
Theirs was a hell of a story, too.
My gaze slid to Christopher, smile pulling at my lips.
Though, mine and Christopher's would always be my favorite.
"What?" he asked, moving over toward me, wrapping his arms around me, placing a hand on my giant belly.
"Just thinking."
"About what?"
"Us," I told him.
"One of my favorite topics," he declared, pressing a kiss to the top of my head.
"Mine too," I agreed. "You know what?" I asked, leaning my head into him.
"What?"
"I'm a pretty damn good negotiator after all," I told him, leaning my head up to look at the way his brows drew together.
"Yeah?" he asked, knowing I was getting at something.
"The deal was always just the eight million, right?"
"Right," he agreed.
"Well, I got everything," I told him, beaming.
And I did.
I got absolutely everything I never realized I wanted so badly.
The house.
The kids.
The pig.
And Christopher.
DON'T FORGET
Dear Reader,
Thank you for taking time out of your life to read this book. If you loved this book, I would really appreciate it if you could hop onto Goodreads or Amazon and tell me your favorite parts. You can also spread the word by recommending the book to friends or sending digital copies that can be received via kindle or kindle app on any device.
ALSO BY JESSICA GADZIALA
If you liked this book, check out these other series and titles in the NAVESINK BANK UNIVERSE:
The Henchmen MC
Reign
Cash
Wolf
Repo
Duke
Renny
Lazarus
Pagan
Cyrus
Edison
Reeve
Sugar
The Fall of V
Adler
Roderick
Virgin
Roan
Camden
West
The Savages
Monster
Killer
Savior
Mallick Brothers
For A Good Time, Call
Shane
Ryan
Mark
Eli
Charlie & Helen: Back to the Beginning
Investigators
367 Days
14 Weeks
4 Months
Dark
Dark Mysteries
Dark Secrets
Dark Horse
Professionals
The Fixer
The Ghost
The Messenger
The General
The Babysitter
The Middle Man
Rivers Brothers
Lift You Up
Lock You Down
STANDALONES WITHIN NAVESINK BANK:
Vigilante
Grudge Match
NAVESINK BANK LEGACY SERIES:
The Rise of Ferryn
OTHER SERIES AND STANDALONES:
Stars Landing
What The Heart Needs
What The Heart Wants
What The Heart Finds
What The Heart Knows
The Stars Landing Deviant
What The Heart Learns
Surrogate
The Sex Surrogate
Dr. Chase Hudson
The Green Series
Into the Green
Escape from the Green
DEBT
Dissent
Stuffed: A Thanksgiving Romance
Unwrapped
Peace, Love, & Macarons
A Navesink Bank Christmas
Don't Come
Fix It Up
N.Y.E.
faire l'amour
Revenge
There Better Be Pie
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jessica Gadziala is a full-time writer, parrot enthusiast, and coffee drinker from New Jersey. She enjoys short rides to the book store, sad songs, and cold weather.
She is very active on Goodreads, Facebook, as well as her personal groups on those sites. Join in. She's friendly.
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<3/ Jessica