Page 123 of Wrath

“A cupcake at lunch?” my husband gasps, his mouth twitching.

“Just a small one.” Liam uses his fingers to demonstrate how tiny the treat was.

If he’s to be believed, my mother’s stocking cupcakes for mice.

“Did you save me one?” I ask.

My big boy nods with a sparkle in his eye that’s so much like his father’s. “The lemon one with a rose. It’s beautiful.” He’s almost as good to me as his father is. “Can we go outside now?”

Rafael promised the kids he’d take them out after lunch. He never breaks a promise, not to me, and certainly not to them.

I smile. “When the adults are finished talking.”

My father beckons Liam over and gives him a hug that makes my heart swell. “We’re done talking.”

Not to be outdone, two-year-old Marina is clamoring for some attention from her favorite mark. Rafael scoops her onto his lap and presses a kiss to her forehead. “Are you ready to go outside, cara linda?”

“Yes!” she giggles, batting her eyelashes at her papai, who she has wrapped around her finger.

Rafael reaches his hand out to our four-year-old, who’s always a bit shy on the day we arrive. “Should we play some football?”

Antonio’s little head bobs up and down as he gazes up adoringly at his father with eyes the color of Valentina’s and his Grandma Vera’s.

“All right, then. Time to go outside.” Rafael stands, and hoists Marina onto his shoulders, then turns to me. “Work out the details with your father.” He glances at Dad. “We’ll talk more after the kids are in bed tonight.”

After I steal a few kisses from my babies, and one from their hot-as-sin dad, the boys follow Rafael out of the library like he’s the Pied Piper.

I place a protective hand on my belly and smile until my cheeks ache. Not about the work I’m about to convince my father to allow me to do, although that makes me very happy. But about the best man I know, who makes my ovaries explode every time I watch him with our kids. They bring out the best in him, and he brings out the best in them.

Rafael is living proof that being an amazing husband and father isn’t about what’s in your genes, or the role models you’ve had—it’s about what’s in your heart and soul. Another thing he and my father have in common.

I glance out the window at my husband playing with our children, and then at my dad. Two powerful men who have helped me become a strong, independent woman, despite their fear for my safety. One, by example, and the other, by embracing me as I am—both loving me beyond measure.

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