Page 123

Andrea holds the back of Roman’s head and flops onto the sofa, making him giggle. I prop myself up beside her and inform her, “Your mom called.”
“Why?”
“To remind you about tomorrow’s appointment.”
“I’m fine.”
I have to laugh. “I know you are. But let’s confirm it,si?”
Her nose wrinkles, but she nods.
There’s no way in hell she isn’t going in for her checkup, but she hates the MRI machine so it’s always a battle.
“I’m fine.”
“I know you are.”
“Then why can I hear your brain firing on all cylinders?”
My smile deepens as her words have me shooting her a look from under my lashes. The girls are cuddled against me on the sofa, and Roman is a true genius—his head is propped on her breasts.
For us, this is quiet, and I love it.
“I’m just… happy.”
Her beaming smile nourishes that happiness even more.
We don’t lead a regular lifestyle.
I don’t go out to work, neither does she. We raise our kids, and her royalties pay the bills, and we just live.
No walls, no locks, no rat race.
Our house is deep in the forest with more open space around it than we know what to do with. It’s a running farm and we pay people to keep it going, but I do my bit. Being outside and working the land is probably the best therapy out there for a man like me.
My father-in-law doesn’t approve, but he’s an Army man. Solid,stolid. He thinks I’m taking Andrea for a ride. Little does he know I am, just that it’s the ride of her life.
At least her relationship with her folks has calmed down since our marriage. They took a while to forgive her for disappearing the way she did. The kids helped ease the tension with both our families—they wanted to be grandparents more than they wanted to be angry with us for our less-than-conventional beginning.
Beyond the sofa where she’s seated, at her back, is a bay window that overlooks the forest line that belongs to our family.
It’s a quiet life, even if things have gotten a touch crazier since Andrea released this last book. She told me once that she missed writing, but it had never flowed for her since her surgery, so when she started plotting, I’d been happy for her.
Until she told mewhatshe was writing.
Talk about merging the past with the present, and in a way that endangered us.
But my job in this life is to make her happy.
To make sure that she’s fulfilled in all things, so watching her write again was a gift.
I don’t think she expected it to be successful, don’t think she believed it would do well after such a long hiatus from her publishing schedule, especially with fans still mad about her not writingLondon’s Burning. Yet, here she is, signing up with production companies and with new awards on her office desk.
I’m proud of her.
More than she will ever know.
“I like that smile on you. Like it even better if I could taste it,” she purrs, switching to Italian.