Total pages in book: 197
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
Lucian glanced up with wide eyes. “I didn’t do anything!”
“You do enough, son.”
After a second, Lucian shrugged.
Because yeah, it wasn’t a lie.
“You’re making your mother sad,” Antony said quietly, “and what happens in this house when Cecelia gets sad?”
It took another second.
And then two.
Both boys jumped up from their respective seats, and headed for the door.
“Get dressed first,” Antony shouted at their backs. “Something nice.”
Lucian kept going—likely heading for his room.
Dante spun back around, and went for his walk-in closet without another word.
Because hell yeah, they knew.
When Cecelia got sad ...
Antony got pissed.
And nobody wanted that.
Boys Won’t Be Boys
“Is this what you were looking for?”
Antony grinned at the woman standing to his left, and took the Tupperware container with his secret sauce from her outstretched hand. Cecelia winked when he said, “Maybe I was.”
“Maybe. Maybe says the man who stayed up until one in the morning getting the sauce just right because apparently he can’t cook burgers on the grill without it.”
Sucking air through his teeth as he popped the top off the contained and the smell of spices and all his hard work the night before drifted into the air and mixed with the bit of smoke from the barbeque. “Are you—queen of her kitchen; first of her domain—telling me I was being ridiculous last night making my sauce?”
“No, I think the way you covet that sauce is ridiculous.”
She even added a pat to his cheek for good measure. Before he could think better of it, he leaned forward and caught hers lips with his own in a burning kiss. At least that way, he got something good out of this conversation and it quieted his woman.
God, he loved his wife.
Only Cecelia could make Antony playful, and he adored her for that, too.
“But you are a little ridiculous about it,” she whispered against his smirking lips.
Well ...
“You only say that,” he murmured, straightening back up and readying to prep his burgers with a good dose of the sauce, “because I won’t tell you how I make it, Cecelia.”
“I don’t barbeque, Antony.”
He gave her a look from the side, arching a brow. “Are you saying you couldn’t use this sauce for something else, then? It’s quite flex—”
“Just cook your damn burgers.”
Antony’s laughter rung out over the mansion’s backyard that was currently filling with more people. After all these years, he still wasn’t one for entertaining, but Cecelia loved it. He’d do anything to indulge his wife—even barbequing for fifty people in the neighborhood who he swore only came to the Marcello party because they were curious what they might see behind closed doors. As though they were a fucking circus act.
But who was he to say what people thought?
“Oh, there’s the Martins,” Cecelia noted, “I’ll go say hi.”
Antony sighed, not even bothering to turn and look at the new guests his wife mentioned. He didn’t need to see the husband and wife, and their arrogant sixteen-year-old teenage son who regularly tested his patience whenever he was put in the same proximity as the boy.
“Keep Gio away from the kid, yeah?” Antony muttered.
Cecelia shot him a look. “I didn’t notice him. There’s ... a problem there?”
Antony shrugged. “Always has been, I think.”
Not that he could explain it.
It just was.
Sometimes, that’s how boys worked. He wanted to avoid a real problem before it became an issue and keeping the teenagers separated seemed like the right way to do it when Gio’s anger could come quicker than a blink, and he had no qualms with acting out from it, either. Antony was still working on that with his fifteen-year-old. He had a feeling he’d be working on it for the rest of his fucking life, too.
“Oh, never mind,” Cecelia said under her breath, taking her first step away from Antony, “there’s their son. Worry about your burgers, Antony.”
Right.
The burgers.
*
“I’m proud of you,” Antony said.
From the end of his bed, Giovanni looked up from where he was kicking off his shoes to a careless pile on top of the clothes that rested down below. In nothing but his boxers, and looking like he’d probably had two or three glasses of wine when someone wasn’t watching—maybe something else, too; fuck, Antony really needed to keep a better eye on his youngest—Gio stared at his father in the doorway.
“What?” he asked.
“You heard what I said. But in simpler terms, thank you for not pounding the arrogant shit out of the Martin kid today during the barbeque.”
Gio rolled his eyes and fell to his back on the bed with his arms spread wide. “Okay, but that was really hard. He never shuts the fuck up, Papa—he’s always going on about one thing or another like he knows what he’s talking about.”
Then, all at once, Gio sat up on the bed and gave his father a look. “He’d probably be a lot easier to deal with if someone did knock his stupid ass out. Did you see how he wears his fucking hat?”