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“Sir …”

“Sal, give me a fucking minute!” Dante yelled at his soldier, who quietly left, closing him in alone with nothing but his thoughts and a memory he had hidden deeply …

“Where is your mom?” Dante asked a young Maria as she came running in with her pink floppy dress from the direction of the kitchen.

Melissa had said she was going to take a nap while Leo was having his, so he had gone to his study to take care of a few business matters that were important, or he would have taken one with her.

Dante gave a silent curse at the missed opportunity. His wife and he hadn’t been able to have one since Leo’s birth.

Maria brushed her golden locks out of her face. “Have you checked her garden?”

“Tell Lucca to start dinner. I don’t want your mother extending herself any more than she needs to.” His son was only a young teenager, but his mother had already taught him well enough that he didn’t need supervision to cook anymore.

Walking outside, the crisp air, along with the beautiful scents of her blooming flowers, caressed him. He always loved the smell back here. It was exactly how she smelled.

Glancing around, he was almost ready to go back inside when he caught sight of his wife on a ladder at the side of the gazebo, fiddling with a hanging planter well above on her head. Dante started running when her fingers brushed against the heavy glass planter and it wobbled.

As he snatched Melissa off the ladder, the planter fell down, crashing to the ground.

“What in the hell are you doing?”

“Shh … One of the children will hear you.”

“Don’t shush me. They’ve heard much worse from me.”

“Which you have promised to work on,” she reminded him.

“Why are you on the ladder? You could have asked me or Lucca.”

“I didn’t want to disturb you.” Peeling herself away from him, she went to get a broom and a dustpan from the gardening shed.

Fuming, he had to wait until she came back before laying into her again. Taking the broom and pan away from her, he started sweeping up the shattered glass.

“You don’t think me finding my wife with her head bashed in would disturb me?”

“You’re overreacting. It was a simple mishap. Don’t make more of it than it was.”

His overwhelmingly beautiful wife gave him a censuring glance.

“I’m not overreacting. What would I do without you?” It bothered him to his core to even think about that possibility.

“I have every confidence you would raise our four children with all the love you are capable of.”

His brows furrowed at her choice of words. “What does that mean?”

“You’re not a very demonstrative man, Dante. We’ve discussed this many times before.”

Dropping the shards of glass in a waste bin, he leaned the broom against the gazebo before taking his wife into his arms.

“I love you.”

“You do now, but you didn’t when we married.” She wrapped her arms around him. “We weren’t given the choice to choose.”

“Would you have chosen me?”

“Yes, once I got to know you better. Would you have chosen me?”

“If I didn’t want you, I would have told my father to choose another bride for me,” he hedged. “I loved you within the first month of our marriage. Just because I wasn’t the one who picked you doesn’t mean my love is less than a man’s who was able to choose.”

“Dante, from the moment you told me you loved me, I’ve never doubted your love for me, or our children. The problem we have is your inability to express your love to others the way you do to me.”

“Our children know I love them.”

“Do they? I worry about Lucca.”

“You should be more concerned about yourself. If I ever see you climbing a ladder again …”

“Why? You would never lay a hand on me regardless of how angry you are with me.” Patting his cheek, Melissa moved out of his arms. “Leo will be waking. I need to go check on him. Come with me?”

Dante took her hand to creep inside the nursery next to their bedroom. Lovingly smiling at the small infant gurgling in his crib, Melissa picked the baby up to carry Leo to a rocking chair.

Going to their bedroom, he filled a glass with ice and opened a bottle of sparkling water, filling it up. Carrying it into the nursey, he gave it to Melissa as she nursed Leo.

“You take such good care of me. You’ve been a good husband.”

“What brought that on?”

“I started thinking. You were right; I shouldn’t have climbed the ladder. The basket was too high. Most accidental deaths happen in the home, by people just doing things that would have been wiser for them not to do. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“Thank you. That still doesn’t get you off the hook.”