Page 162 of The Marriage Clause

One brow lifts.

"You’re insatiable, aren’t you?" he asks.

I smile. "With you? Yes."

Something shifts in his eyes—dark, warm, a promise that hasn’t expired.

He crosses the studio in two steps, bends, and lifts me off my feet. I yelp, then laugh, my arms looping around his neck as he carries me out of the studio and down the hallway toward the master bath like a man with a debt to settle.

"Breakfast after?" I ask against his neck.

"After," he agrees.

The shower turns on.

The door closes.

And breakfast waits.

Chapter Twenty-Five

EVERETT

It’s been a week since we got back from France.

A week of waking up with my wife in my bed and pretending that still sounds temporary in my head when it no longer feels temporary anywhere else.

A week of working from the home office with the glass doors open while she paints in the west wing studio I built for her. A week of hearing music drift down the hallway while I answer calls, of finding new smears of cobalt and ochre on the edge of her wrist at dinner, of watching the estate slowly stop feeling like a house I own and start feeling like a place we live.

She paints and I work from home more than I ever have. We eat lunch together when neither of us is pulled in opposite directions. We fall into bed at night and tangle into the sheets together like there was never a version of this house that held only one of us.

The strangest part is how quickly I’ve formed a routine with her in it.

It’s good.

Too good.

That’s the problem because for most people, happiness probably feels like relief. But when your brother, who’s also your lawyer, says that the board has been a little too quiet as of lately, every call, email or text message, could end something.

Jeremy hasn’t alerted me to anything unusual on his end of things as he’s taken up more responsibilities to be my eyes and ears at the Kauffman enterprise building. If he had heard anything, he would have said something, though he’s been busy and our communication over the last week has been far less than usual with his new work load.

Tonight is the Hawkeyes’ first home game since we got back and it’s the first time we’ll be out in Seattle as a married couple since our wedding.

And I know the exact moment the estate stopped feeling temporary.

It wasn’t when Aria moved her brushes into the kitchen drawer she declared more logical.

It wasn’t when Matteo started setting out two coffee cups instead of one.

It wasn’t even when I woke up this morning and found one of her earrings on my bathroom counter beside my watch, as if her belonging here had become as ordinary as time.

It was ten minutes ago, when she stood in the dressing room off the master bedroom with one gold hoop in and one still in her hand and asked, "Is this too much for a hockey game?"

A hockey game.

As if she isn’t about to walk into the owners’ box wearing my ring and my name and the kind of quiet confidence that makes entire rooms reorient around her without understanding why.

"No," I say, tightening the knot of my tie. "It’s not too much."