“Yes, but you must have been so bored and uncomfortable…and oh my God, did I drool on you?”
He smiles, the dimple flashing in his cheek. “Not this time. You did snore a little though.”
I groan again, burying my face in my hands. “I can’t believe I snored in a mobster’s lap.”
“This mobster is glad you did. It was kind of cute, actually.”
I peek at him through my fingers. He doesn’t seem to be lying. He does, however, tug down on my hands to see my face and search my eyes.
“Jessica, I can’t change the man I am or the things I do. But I need to know how you feel about them. I don’t want it to change what we have.”
Fuck, those eyes are blue. “What do we have, Matteo?”
His voice is a low whisper when he answers. “Something special.”
My body remembers every something special that he’s done to it. I’m so dazzled by his eyes, his expanse of toned skin, and that square, handsome face, that the words come out without me thinking about them. “I’m okay with it, Matteo. I think. As long as I feel safe.”
He yanks me into the fiercest hug I’ve received. I think it’s the first time we’ve actually ever hugged. It feels amazing, glorious even, to be pressed against the length of him, his bare skin hot against mine.
“You’ll be the safest woman in the city,” he vows. “You’re under my protection, and I’d die before I let anything hurt you or my baby. I’ll keep you safe and sound.”
“Okay,” I whisper against his chest.
I think I almost believe him.
The weekend passes in a blur of sex. When we’re not fucking, Matteo coddles me like a baby, searching out any and all of the food that sounds good to me, showering with me after I’m sick, and letting me sleep whenever the pregnancy exhaustion tugs my eyes shut. Being with him is intense, surreal, almost hypnotic, and when he drops me off at my apartment Sunday night, I walk into the loft like a person waking up from a dream. How is this small space my life? My real life?
How long have I lived this so-called real life without Matteo in it?
I think it will be the next weekend before I hear from Matteo again, but he texts me the next morning.
You’re in my head. I need to see you again tonight.
I can’t help the way my toes curl in my high heels and the little whimper of anticipation I make. I look around my corporate law office, at the people sitting quietly at their computers and at the closed conference doors where the partners are having their Monday meeting. I sigh relief when I realize that no one heard me. I’ve always been the most serious one here, the most driven, the one least likely to talk when there’s work to be done. I’ve never been one of the people to chatter or gossip or…whimper…in front of others.
What is Matteo doing to me?
That night at his house, we’re alone. No Pauly or Gina, no guns, and after he lays me on his dining room table and fucks the shit out of me, he cleans me up and goes to find some of the peppermint tea he bought because he read about it in the baby book.
The idea of Matteo reading a baby book of his own free will is so fucking hot to me.
While I wait, I get up and wander out of the dining room to his office, which is lined with built-in bookshelves. I gravitate towards the shelf by his desk; rather than lines of thick, leather tomes like the other shelves boast, these are all peeling and worn paperbacks, an eclectic mix of non-fiction, fantasy science fiction, and classics. A tingle dances down my spine when I recognize most of the books as the books I keep in a low shelf by my bed:
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Matteo even has the Seamus Heaney translation of Beowulf which surprises me. What would an investment banker/Mafioso in Kansas City see in a Dark Ages Scandinavian swords-and-monsters story? Although there is something in Matteo that reminds me of a warrior…that hard, strong body and quiet presence and the way he talked about honor on his bathroom floor…
“That was the moment I realized I had to fuck you again,” Matteo says, and I jump, not hearing him come in.
I turn to see him with a steaming mug of tea and a dimpled smile. As always, that smile makes my heart flip over.
“I got out of your bed when you finally fell asleep and went to get a glass of water,” he says, setting the mug down on his desk, “and then I noticed your books. Almost the same as my favorites.” He comes closer, bracing his hands on the shelf on either side of me. “They all looked like mine, all bent and dog-eared and torn up, like they’d been carried around everywhere. That’s when I realized that you weren’t the girl I thought you were. That there was more that met the eye.” He tilts my chin up to force me to meet his gaze.
“And that’s when you decided to come wake me up and fuck me again.”
The dimple gets deeper. “Well, I still got my drink of water. And then I stared at your tits while you slept. Then I woke you up.”
“I’m not complaining.”
His hand drops from the shelf to my belly, spreading into a protective, long-fingered sprawl below my navel. For a moment, excitement spikes in my chest as I wonder would it would be like to have him touch my stomach months from now, when we can both feel our baby squirming around.
“Even with this?” he asks, his eyebrows drawn together in two dark, worried slashes. “You’re not complaining, knowing the outcome?”
I think about it for a moment. “It’s all too new,” I admit. “Sometimes, I think I feel nothing but regret, but then other times, I think…” I trail off, because the words are too stupid, too premature, too soon.
I think I might be falling in love with you.
He doesn’t press me, but I sense he knows what I was going to say because he captures my mouth in a fierce, stormy kiss, his tongue pushing in deep and taking the unsaid words for himself. His mouth plunders mine as he pushes me harder against the shelf, rocking his erection into me, and then I’m being scooped up and carried back to the dining room table, where he fucks me for so long that my tea gets cold and the sky gets dark, and I don’t care. Not one bit.
After two weeks of this—seeing Matteo every night, fucking until I can’t see straight and having him coddle me with massages and Preggy Pops after—it’s time for my first prenatal appointment, and Matteo comes with. He looked at me like I was an escaped asylum inmate when I asked him if he’d like to join me.
He’d rolled up on his elbow in bed and looked down at me, half incredulous and half amused. “How many times do I have to prove it to you, princess? This is my baby too. And I care. A goddamned lot.”
And his face at the appointment when the doctor let us listen to the heartbeat…if I’d thought his smiles made my heart flip over, it was nothing compared to that look of fierce, all-consuming protectiveness and awe. After filling my prenatal vitamin prescription at the drugstore, he took me back to his place and spent hours kissing my belly, which turned into him kissing me farther down, which turned into another sleepless, glorious, orgasm-filled night.
It was ridiculous and insane and maybe so very very wrong…but I was falling in love with the father of my child, head over heels. Guns, crime, and all.
This lasted until my tenth week. And then it all came tumbling down.
9
Jess
“Jessica.”
I nearly jump out of my skin when I open my apartment door to go down to my car and instead see my uncle standing in front of the doorway, wearing a leather biker vest and a frown.
“Uncle Jimmy! Why didn’t you tell me you were stopping by?”
“You haven’t been answering my phone calls,” he chastises, stepping inside of my place. I glance at my watch. I’m going to be late to meet Matteo at the restaurant he specified, and I can’t help but begrudge every second I don’t get to spend with him.
Matteo is kind of family now, my brain counters.
I shut the apartment door with a sigh and then follow my uncle back into the open area that serves as the living room. “Do you want anything?” I ask him. “Coffee or soda or I might have some old beer…”
“Beer’s good,” he says. “Something domestic, none of that ‘craft brew’ crap, though.”
I grin as I fish out an abandoned Bud Light bottle from the back of my fridge. “The craft brew crap is normally the only thing I drink, so you’re lucky Nate left some of his nasty beer here before we broke up.”
I bring it over to Jim, who cracks it open and narrows his eyes at me. “You forgiven that boy yet?”
I sigh and flop down in an armchair across from where he stands. He doesn’t sit though, starting to pace around instead. “I’m not going to date Nate again, Jim. Let it go.”
“It would make life easier if you’d just take him back of your own free will,” he mutters, taking a sip of his beer, and trailing his hand along the bar-top counter that edges my kitchen.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Never mind,” he says. “Why haven’t you been returning my calls? I’ve been worried about you. The city is—”
“—Rough right now, I know. But don’t you read the news? All the crazy homicides that have happened this year have been drug-related, the police think. And I don’t do drugs. So.” I shrug.
It occurs to me as I’m saying this that the father of my baby does engage in dealing drugs, however, but I don’t mention this to Jim.
My uncle pauses his pacing momentarily and stands at the counter, his back to me. “It’s dangerous for everyone,” he answers slowly. “And it’s about who you know, Jessica. Not what you do.”
Just as I’m about to fire back a retort about how I don’t know anyone dangerous—Matteo aside—Jim turns to me with an unreadable face. “Do you care to explain this to me?”
In his hand, he holds the plastic container of prenatal vitamins. I had left them out on my counter.
Shit.
For the briefest second, I consider lying. But then I stop myself. What will that help? Especially when the truth will be evident enough in another month when I start showing.
So I swallow my discomfort and confess the truth. “I’m pregnant, Uncle Jimmy. About two and a half months along.”
There’s a brief flash of love and concern, but just as my chest starts to swell with happiness that he’s not angry or upset, the concern vanishes, replaced by frustration.
“Dammit, Jessi,” he swears, calling me by my childhood nickname. “And is there any chance it’s Nate’s?”
Jesus, when will he stop being so obsessed with Nate? “It’s not his,” I say irritably. “We didn’t have any sex at all the month we broke up.”
He rubs a hand over his graying beard, frowning. “This is bad, Jessica.”
I’m hurt. “Well, it’s not great, given that I’m still young and not married, but God, I thought you’d be at least a little supportive.”
His face softens. “I’m not trying to bring you down, honey, but there are bigger things going on right now. I promised Nate…”
“Promised Nate what?”
“I promised him you, Jessi.”
This is so outside of my experience that I have trouble processing what he’s saying. “This isn’t Sarah, Plain and Tall,” I say, my voice rising in anger, “I’m not a mail order bride. You can’t promise me to people! And what does that even mean?”
He rubs his beard again. “It’s complicated.”
I throw up my hands. “Let me uncomplicate it for you! I’m not going to go back to a man who cheated on me just because you made a promise that you had no right to make. Got it?”
“He wants you,” my uncle implores. “Even after you left him, he still wants you back. And I said he could have you, in exchange for certain…business favors he’s done for me.”
“I don’t care what he said or what you said,” I tell him coldly. “I’m not going to get my heart broken again. Not for him. And besides, I’m dating someone else.”
“You are?” my uncle seems shocked. “But you’re pregnant!”
I roll my eyes. “It’s the father of the baby. It’s not unheard of for people to date in that circumstance.”
A rap at the door interrupts our conversation. I walk over to the peephole and see Matteo on the other side of the door, looking mouth-watering in a dark suit with a bright blue tie.
“What do you know,” I tell my uncle. “You’ll get to meet him now.” And then I open the door.
Matteo steps in and crushes me to his chest. His stubble scrapes against my face as he asks, low in my ear, “Where were you? You didn’t meet me at the restaurant and I was worried…” he trails off, seeing my uncle.
And then he slowly lets me go. A cold silence wafts between the two men; a cold, scary silence.
“Moretti,” my uncle seethes, taking a step forward.
Matteo cuts in front of me, pushing me behind him as if to protect me. “Jimmy.”
“You two know each other?” I ask, confused.
“You could say that,” Matteo says, his tone polite even as I can feel his body practically vibrate with violence.
“Jessica, step away from that man, honey. He’s dangerous and he’ll hurt you.”
“Matteo?” I push around my lover’s arm to be able to look at my uncle’s face. “But he’s the guy I was telling you about. The guy I’m seeing.”
“He’s your baby’s father?” Jimmy couldn’t look more disgusted than if he’d just stepped on dog shit. Except there was also an undercurrent of horror in his words, like he was genuinely disturbed…maybe even frightened.
“Yes, Uncle Jimmy,” I say, trying to dissolve whatever tension sprung up between them. “I didn’t know you two knew each other or anything. We met at a bar two months ago, and then I found out I was pregnant and then we started dating. It was unplanned, but Matteo is a great guy, and I’m happy right now.”
There. Cards on the table. He wouldn’t dare keep fussing about Matteo after I told him I was happy.
Except then his features shift, distort with some understanding I don’t share. His lips curl under his long biker beard with a snarl.
“You,” he breathes at Matteo.
“Me,” Matteo agrees. His hand slides around my waist, yanking me to his side possessively. “And Jessica, your precious niece, pregnant with my child. Pregnant and in love with me.”
I’m still trying to absorb the fact that these two men—the most important in my life right now—know each other. Not just know each other, but have some sort of long-standing animosity toward each other. But something about Matteo’s words rub me the wrong way, activate alarm bells in my mind. I pull away from him, missing his warmth but unable to stand his nearness while I’m so confused.
Matteo keeps facing my uncle, his handsome features creased into a mask of pure, determined hatred. “You made it all too easy, Jimmy. I told you not to leave your assets unprotected—did you really think I meant that shit junkyard you call a shop?”
You made it all too easy.
Assets unprotected.
“I suppose I never assumed you’d stoop this low,” Jimmy says, his shoulders tight with restrained fury.
“Look around us. Are there any dead bodies? Any tortured soldiers? And homes burned? Smart men don’t need to resort to such crass measures as long as they know their enemy’s true weakness. Which was Jessica.”
I swallow back the nausea climbing up my throat—nausea I’m pretty sure has nothing to do with the pregnancy.
“Matteo,” I whisper. And when he turns his head to look at me, those blue eyes as cold as glacier ice, I realize that all the suspicions his words created in me were right. “Am I…are you using me to get at my uncle?”
Matteo’s jaw works, as if he’s uncomfortable. “Remember what I told you during our
first weekend together? About the men who have control of this city? Your uncle is their leader.”
I scoff, the reaction immediate. “Uncle Jimmy?” I ask disbelievingly. “He wouldn’t hurt a fly, much less trade meth and sex slaves.”
This, of course, would be the time for Jimmy to chime in and validate what I’ve just said, to reassure me that he is still the Jimmy I’ve known since I was a baby, the Jimmy who made sure my college tuition was paid and that I always had gas in my tank.
But Jimmy stays silent, and in that silence, the admission of truth is as clear as a bell ringing. I swivel to look at him, stunned. “Is this true?” I ask in a trembling voice.
Jimmy tugs on his beard and refuses to meet my eyes for a minute. But eventually he raises his eyes to mine and says, “Yes, Jessi. The boys and I…we do some stuff I haven’t told you about yet. I was waiting until you were older, until you and Nate were married. I didn’t want you to be on the outside when I told you, when I explained everything to you. I wanted you close, so you could see and understand for yourself.”
My mind flashes with a thousand connecting points of light as the pieces assemble into place. The long road trips with the boys, the guns around the shop, his constant worry about the city being rough…I want to bark out a harsh laugh. Of course he’s worried—the city is dangerous for me because of him. Because of his lies.
Oh God, and the things Matteo said that they did—selling meth and guns and children. I clap a hand over my mouth and stagger backwards to a chair where I sit, not seeing anything.
“Why don’t you tell her how you sold her to Nate as advance on payment for all the work he’s done for you?” Matteo coaxes in a cold, silky voice. “Why don’t you tell her how her parents really died?”
My head snaps up, my heart pounding and my lips numb. “What?”
Jimmy is furious, a leather-bound hulk of grizzled, old anger. Matteo is completely composed, his hands in the pockets of his suit pants, his posture relaxed. “Tell her,” Matteo urges. “I’ll wait.”
Made for Him: A Mafia Baby Romance Page 6
