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“Yes!” She slapped me one last time. “Your ass is like two chestnuts!” She rung her hand out, like my ass was so firm, it was hurting her palm.

“My ass?” I laughed even harder. I never remembered laughing that hard. “What about my balls?”

“Walnuts!” She exploded with laughter, then she made an obscene, for her, fondling gesture with her hand at them.

I set my arm around her neck, since it was safe to get back in the water, and pulled her in, sighing, kissing her temple.

She held on to me and we walked into the stable together.

Then she ditched me to grab an apple for Seraphina.

She was trying to get comfortable with her.

Seraphina seemed to sense this. She came right up to my wife and carefully took the offered piece of apple.

The horse still wanted to sniff her, curious about her smell, but I ticked my mouth at her every time she tried.

She snuffed at me but didn't do it. I was proud of my wife.

She was nervous but trying to overcome her fear, the fierce little outlaw that she was.

She even attempted to get close to Guerriero while he was locked in his stable.

He eyed her with suspicion. He felt her unease and knew it was a weakness. He wasn’t like the rest of the horses in our stable. He liked a way in. A vulnerable spot. A chink in the armor. He was a war horse through and through. That fucking horse was an outlaw too.

I looked at him, and our eyes met as they had the first time. “Yeah,” my eyes said to him. “Fuck around and find out. You’ll be going to the soap factory.”

He beat against the stall and then, like a fucking bull, he pawed the ground, snorting. Sometimes he did it out of frustration, if his rides were not satisfactory to him. Maybe he was anticipating war. In that moment, he was letting me know.

Bring it, motherfucker. You might be going in the ground. Remember the close fall?

It was just the nature of our relationship. I’d die before I allowed anyone to lay a finger on him. I was almost certain he’d do the same for me.

Sistine looked between us and shook her head, backing up slowly.

I took her by the arm and pulled her to my side, shaking my head. “I’m next to you. Stand your ground.”

She spoke to him, called him by his name sweetly, and even though he wasn’t giving her the same defiance show, he was still looking at her with possible intent. Reading the look, she said, “That’s enough bonding time for today,” and went back to her angelic mare.

While my wife was attempting to make friends with her horse, I stared at the crooked sign and sighed.

I grabbed my tools, then realized I needed a ladder tall enough to reach.

I had never forgotten anything before. I shook my head, like that would set me straight, but then she started to hum while feeding Seraphina and…

Where the fuck was I again?

Sistine turned the corner. “What are you doing, Marito mio ?” She looked at me and then at the wall, the direction I’d been staring in.

I blinked at her. Tiny particles of hay were floating around her, like dust motes, highlighted by the wintry sun.

Not as golden. More silver. Stella had bought a pink and white trucker hat for my wife, and I had hung it on the peg next to mine in the stable.

It had Cowgirl embroidered on it. Sistine must have set it on her head.

I turned my hat backwards and went for her, knocking her hat off.

“Fuck,” I barely got out, taking her face in my hands, not able to get enough.

“ Marito mio ,” she rasped out, grabbing for me too.

“I have no fucking control.” My voice was out of control too. “No fucking control. You are my disease and my cure. You break my fucking heart and keep me breathing.”

Our clothes were shed, and my body was next to hers, and…

“Fire,” she breathed out. “You are so hot, you can burn this place down.”

“Fucking let it burn,” I said, entering her in a thrust that made her perfect breasts jiggle. I was hypnotized by them. Completely under her spell—for the rest of my life.

We rolled around in hay, neither of us breathing right, for…however long.

Not long enough.

We both walked out of the alcove dazed. I stared up at the wooden sign again, hands on my hips, my wife next to me. She kept blinking at the sign. I plucked a piece of fodder from her hair. That wasn’t going to help her cause with the horses, but fuck if she still didn’t look like my fantasy.

“What the fuck are we doing?” I said to her, but it was just a rhetorical question. Something that came from the space area of my brain. This woman had roped me in, and I was under her control. I couldn’t free myself, and I suddenly had a new respect for the cattle we did this too.

“Seven days.” She looked at me. Blinked at me. “We only have seven days, the last I counted.”

“What?”

“What—what?”

“Is that what we were fucking talking about?”

She shrugged. “I do not remember.”

Our eyes connected, and we both grinned. She plucked a piece of hay from my hat.

A throat cleared, and we both turned toward it at the same time.

Nino. His wife was why we were going to the island in a week.

She had other patients to attend to before she could leave.

I had demanded she come with us since my wife felt comfortable with her.

Especially since Sistine was pregnant. I wanted all hands on deck.

Nino pointed at the dangling sign. “This needs to be fixed, ah?” He pulled a face.

I refused to look at Sistine.

She refused to look at me.

It was such an Oscar-worthy face that, if we looked at each other, we would start to laugh—not able to stop. That magical shit my wife had referenced in the house was running through our veins. I was fucking levitating too.

“Yeah,” I said, forcing my voice to normalize. This was something Fausti men were accustomed to doing. Getting ourselves under control when we were around family. “I’m about to fix it. I need the tallest ladder I’ve got.”

“In the tool shed,” Nino said. “I will get Oscar and have him grab it.”

He walked out.

Sistine looked at me. “It always amazes me that they do not even see it—the resemblance to the puppet characters on television.”

“I’ve seen pictures of Nino when he was younger. The resemblance only grew in time. Now Oscar could be his stunt double.”

She grinned. “I wonder if Oscar’s wife notices it?”

“Oscar’s wife?”

She nodded. “When I was not feeling well, he told me his wife enjoys tea. He offered to make it for me, but I could not even stomach the thought.”

“Oscar’s not married,” I said, burying the fact that Oscar was there for my wife when I wasn’t. It didn’t sit well in my stomach, like the thought of the tea didn’t sit well in my wife’s thoughts.

She pulled a confused face. “Perhaps I was too sick…perhaps I am not remembering right.”

Oscar came in with the ladder, and I asked him if there was something I should know. He made a scram! face, and then said, no, all was the same.

“Marriage,” I said to Oscar.

Sistine shot me a narrow look. Our silent conversation went like this after:

I narrowed my eyes back. What?

Her eyes popped open. You were not supposed to ask him now!

I shrugged. Why not, Annie?

She shook her head. My husband. He does not participate in the family gossip train, but he is as subtle as a train.

It was our own language, and it reminded me of the language I spoke with my youngest brother, Maestro, at times.

We used sign language, because during his life, he might lose the ability to hear altogether, just like Mamma’s brother, Elliot had.

Uncle Elliot, who my old man used to call Maestro, died before any of us were born.

He was my old man’s best friend. Mamma and Papà still spoke of him.

They both demanded they keep his memory alive.

Oscar’s face went completely blank, and then he stood taller. He met my eyes, but I could tell he wanted to look anywhere but at me. Sistine groaned in the background. She felt bad for Oscar. Most of the women did. His looks endeared him to them. They almost felt maternal over him.

“No,” he said to me, standing as a solider who was about to receive punishment would.

“I am not married to Noemi, yet. She will be my wife, someday, therefore I refer to her as my wife. If this is not to be, I will honorably bleed for the lie. It does not feel as though it is a lie to me.” He turned to Sistine, and she looked so helpless, like she wanted to hug him.

This time, when I narrowed my eyes at her, she sighed. I would fucking pummel him if she hugged him. She knew this.

“My apologies, Signora Fausti,” he said, as respectful as a peasant to a queen.

“I did not mean to confuse you, or to give you the wrong impression. In our world, this deserves blood. It is still a lie.” He pulled out a knife and cut his palm.

His blood instantly welled up and ran. It rushed to the floor, then dripped.

“Sistine,” she breathed out. “Call me…Sistine.”

I set my hand around my wife. She looked pale. Too pale suddenly.

“Get your mamma,” I said to Oscar in a low, sharp command.

“No!” Sistine seemed to harden. “I was just not expecting…that. Blood does not usually bother me, but watching the cutting…” She shivered.

I shot Oscar a hard look, and Sistine shot me one.

She smiled at Oscar. “It is okay, Oscar,” she whispered. I could tell she wanted to reach out to him but thought better of it. “I think that is very romantic. Noemi would be lucky to have you. You took good care of me when my husband was not able to do so.”

Oscar stood as proud as a fucking winner getting the highest reward from the most prestigious woman in the world. My wife.

“Perhaps you should have your mamma look at that?” She nodded toward his hand.

Oscar looked at me. I nodded.

He turned and left. As soon as he was out of the stable, my wife shoved at me.

“Why did you do that?” She sounded aghast, truly affronted on his behalf.

“Shit,” I said. “He’s gotten to you too.”