His: Tony: The Sabatini Family by Fiona Murphy (sneezy the snowman read aloud TXT) 📕

Shaking his head. “I don’t have to watch over Christy. She isn’t going anywhere. Okay, I’ve fucking held my tongue. What the hell is going on with you and her?”

Anyone else, any other time, and I’d knock him the fuck out for talking to me like he did. I’m not even sure why I laugh. Both men are surprised. “I found my woman. And she’s a flight risk. Until there is no doubt in my mind she’s not going anywhere, someone is always with her.”

Joseph frowns. “Really? Because she looks at you like she’s in love with you.”

“I’m pretty sure she is. But she’s had a hard time and is slow to trust in it.”

The door to my office opens. Christy walks out wiping her eyes. “I’m pretty sure she has a concussion. She shouldn’t be left alone.”

“Joseph is going home with her. He knows how to handle a concussion. Vito is going to take you home. I’m going to handle her husband.”

Tears start flowing faster, I pull her to me. “What’s the matter?” She shakes her head, “What, damn it?”

“You were so nice and sweet with her.” She wipes her tears away. “You aren’t like that with me.”

Sending my hand into her hair, I pull her back to look up at me. She is saying exactly what has fucked with me since I laid eyes on her. “That’s because none of them affect me the way you do. I was a civilized motherfucker until the moment I met you. You twist me up and shred my fucking guts with the need to touch you, to have your body against me, for me to be inside you. No one has ever done this to me, made me feel this way but you. I don’t like it, and it pisses me off. I’m still not sure if I’m pissed at you or myself.”

Her hazel eyes go to glowing emerald, the way they do when I’m deep inside her. Damn, she is so fucking beautiful and she’s all mine. I will never let her go. “Vito, I’m going to need you to take me home. You want to handle shit? You can handle Thomas Perri. I’m going back to bed for a bit.”

Vito laughs. “I’ll handle Thomas Perri, Boss.”

***

Christy

Over the next week, pretty much every moment is spent at Tony’s side. Every once in a while he needs privacy but I’m never far from him. Dominic still studies me as if he’s trying to figure me out, however, he never says a word or treats me with anything but respect.

It isn’t until almost an entire week has passed that we have our first argument. We’re at his bookstore, I’m reading an Italian dictionary, trying to become comfortable with the language. Once again, I feel useless as Tony and Charlie argue over a shipment that was supposed to have arrived and hasn’t. After Charlie slams out of his office, I give it a minute before I bring up what I had been thinking.

“Maybe I can help around the bookstore or something? For a little while, before I go back to nursing. To you know, keep busy.”

The lines appear on his forehead for the first time in almost a week. “You aren’t going back to nursing.”

“What?” I cannot believe how flatly he says it. As if he was daring me to argue with him.

“You aren’t going back to nursing,” he says it slowly. I’m not really surprised other women have tried to kill him. “You are going to focus on our children and home. You haven’t even done anything around the house to make it yours.”

Oh my god, I’m back in the fifties. “I love being a nurse. I didn’t work so hard for my degree to become a stay-at-home mom.”

“You will love being a mother. How does it make sense to long for so many years to become a mother, then let someone else raise your children? No. If we need a nanny to help, fine, but no one else will raise our children but us.”

His question stings. When I was with Eddie, I told him that I wanted to stay home with our child for at least the first year. He had refused. Three months was fine, any longer and I would be spoiling our child. Also, where was the money going to come from while I was home? Yet the way Tony says it, like a decree, annoys the fuck out of me.

“I loved being a nurse. It takes a lot out of you, but it was a part of who I was.” I need him to understand that I do want to go back to nursing. “Not immediately, but eventually.”

Leaning back, he studies me. “You let the job consume you. You loved being a nurse because it gave you an outlet to help people the way you weren’t helped as a child. Eventually, is when the kids are in high school, and they don’t want anything to do with us anymore.”

I roll my eyes. “Did I slip and fall into the fifties? What about when you aren’t here, and I’m raising a half dozen kids all by myself? How will I take care of us?”

He laughs, and oh lord, the sound skims up my tummy and fills me with liquid heat. “There’s over sixty million spread out over a half dozen accounts to take care of you and our kids when I’m gone. And Dominic would always make sure you are taken care of.”

Holy shit, sixty million dollars?

“Don’t look so excited. We Sabatinis live long lives. My great-grandfather was ninety-seven, in great health and had all his wits about him when he passed. The only reason he died was because his wife died first. After she died, it wasn’t a year before he followed her. My grandfather was the same at ninety-five. His wife died, and it was only a few months before he passed on too. As much as I