Resisting Mateo (Morelli Family, #5)

by Sam Mariano

  “You’d probably like that, wouldn’t you?” he asks mildly. “Then you get none of the blame and all of the freedom. Do you think it would take a whole hour before you were back at the mansion on Mateo’s dick, or a little less?”

  “This is fun,” I tell him, looking back at him over my shoulder. “I’m so glad we’re having breakfast together, baby.”

  Standing abruptly, he grabs his plate and brings it in to dump the rest in the garbage can. “Why don’t you call back your fucking friend,” he flings back.

  “I’m busy,” I tell him, even though it’s obviously not true.

  He nods and turns back to grab his coffee.

  Then a moment later, he turns back and hands me the phone. He smiles at me, eyes dancing with pleasure. My eyes widen on the display and I see the seconds ticking down, indicating the call has been made. I hear Meg’s sing-song voice saying hello on the other end.

  I glare at Vince, jerking the phone out of his hand.

  I mouth “fuck you.” He winks and mouths back, “Maybe later.”

  “Hey,” I say into the phone, my tone falsely cheerful.

  “Hey, lady friend. What’s up?”

  “Oh, you know, just… enjoying Vince’s company.”

  Vince chuckles and heads off down the hall.

  “I figured today would be a fun day for you,” she remarks. It goes unsaid whether she means because of Mateo or Mark, but that there are two options instead of one today really emphasizes the fun-factor.

  “Yeah, we’re a real Eminem song over here. Anyway, what can I do for you?”

  “Well, I was thinking, why don’t we go out and grab lunch? I know we have dinner later, but just the two of us.”

  “Vince and I just finished eating, actually. Big breakfast. Huge. There’s no way I’ll need to eat again before dinner. But thanks anyway.”

  “Well… then what about shopping? Not too long, just a couple hours. I need to get a new maternity dress or two for these dinners. My stomach is starting to severely limit my dress choices. I’ll buy you shoes!”

  Cracking a smile, I tell her, “I’m actually good on shoes right now. I’d also love to help you pick out some maternity dresses, but I have a really big exam this week that I haven’t studied for at all. I’ve been so busy with the wedding and everything. But we’ll go this week or something,” I throw out.

  “I kind of feel like you’re blowing me off.”

  My face burns. I didn’t expect her to call me on it.

  Laughing uneasily, I say, “Why would I blow you off?”

  “I don’t know,” she returns easily enough, but it sets me on edge. “Is there some reason you’d be avoiding me?”

  There’s only a few seconds of silence, but each second is like a whole day. “No,” I finally answer. “Of course not.”

  “Good,” she chirps.

  “We’ll go this week,” I assure her, feeling the need to back up my lie. “We’ll get you lots of pretty dresses.”

  “Mateo and I have a baby doctor appointment this week, but we’ll do it another day.”

  I wince. God, the image of Mateo and Meg at the baby doctor together makes me legitimately ill. It’s impossible to imagine that’s not precisely why she said it.

  I’m so fucked.

  I need to get it together. Or talk to Mateo, but that’s an intimidating prospect. Probably better to just wait him out and fake it with Meg. More stressful, certainly, but….

  “Yeah, definitely,” I say, a little brighter, feeling the need to overcompensate. “Well, Vince is in the shower so I have a few minutes of quiet. I should probably take advantage and get started on that studying.”

  “Yeah, of course,” she says. “We’ll see you guys at dinner.”

  We. That’s twice in a minute. She’s definitely trying to drive the point home. Or I’m being Mateo-levels of paranoid, but I don’t think it’s that. He put a target on me with that dance last night. I don’t know what the man was thinking.

  Which is the real issue, because Mateo wouldn’t have done that by accident. I don’t know why he wanted to kick up so much shit around me, but he must have known what he was doing.

  Now if only I did.

  Chapter Four

  Meg

  “Can you zip me?”

  Since I’m in Mateo’s study, and I came all the way here from our bedroom, he glances up in surprise. Which is reasonable. How does one walk all that way without coming into contact with another human being who could have zipped me up?

  I didn’t. And Maria offered. But I wanted him.

  Mia’s going to be here any minute, and while I’m not feeling as crazy as I was last night after the wedding, I still wanna make my man touch me.

  “How are you feeling today?” he asks, getting up from his desk and coming around to help me.

  What’s funny about this question is he doesn’t mean physically, because of my pregnancy. He means mentally, since I was a little cracked last night. Like it’s unreasonable to feel a little weird about your fiancé slow dancing with, flashing his big brown hypnotic eyes at, and kissing the motherfucking hand of the girl he fucked before you. A girl who has slept in your bed. A girl you’ve wondered if he had some unresolved feelings for on more than one occasion. A girl who looks at him with her heart in her eyes. A girl he has joked about making your sister wife.

  But yeah, I must not have been feeling well.

  Ugh, I’m getting annoyed again. Can’t have that. Mia and Vince will be here anytime. It’s game time.

  I cock my head from side to side, regaining my focus. “Yep, I’m good,” I assure him. “I talked to Mia earlier. It seemed like she and Vince were doing okay today.”

  I look back at him over my shoulder as I deliver that, and after zipping up my dress, with a faint smile on his lips, he points his finger up in the air and sarcastically twists it around a few times to indicate he gives zero fucks.

  Okay then.

  So I offer a light roll of my eyes and add, “I thought maybe we could grab lunch earlier, but apparently I interrupted. She and Vince were about to get in the shower. So hey, I guess if they’re not doing okay, it’s working for them.”

  I have no possible frame of reference for what to expect after saying this. I’m literally throwing shit at the wall and seeing what happens.

  Mateo is still behind me, but his grip on my shoulders tightens as he pulls me back against his chest.

  “What are you doing?” he asks mildly.

  My heart pounds, but I maintain a tone of complete innocence as I ask, “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t bullshit me, Meg.”

  My heart kicks up a couple of gears, then I say, “I was just… relaying—”

  “You were trying to get a rise out of me,” he states, not letting me finish. “I know what you were doing; I want to know why you’re doing it.”

  Since apparently we’re doing this, I pull one of his hands off my shoulder and turn to face him. “Do you want Mia?”

  He holds my gaze for a moment, then instead of responding, checks his watch. He checks the fucking time. “Why don’t we talk about this later?”

  My blue eyes practically pop out of my head. My stomach sinks. I can’t find words.

  “They’re going to be here any minute,” he adds. “This isn’t a quick discussion.”

  I guess that answers that, then.

  I’m not sure how I’m supposed to stand in the kitchen and make dinner with her now, when I kind of want to stab her.

  “Are you fucking her already?” I ask. My voice completely betrays me by wobbling with emotion in the middle of that question, and I want to curl up and die.

  “No,” he says, firmly, grabbing my shoulders and bending to look into my eyes. “I didn’t mean it that way. This is exactly what I don’t want. I wish, if you needed to talk to me about this today, you would’ve done it before now. It’s too late, Meg. People are going to show up for dinner any minute.”

  I want to flip
my shit on him, tell him I don’t care if people are going to be here, this is my life, this is more important than goddamn dinner, and I need to know what the fuck is going on.

  But I don’t. Because I know better.

  I feel like I’m going to throw up, but I don’t blow up at him.

  I feel like an idiot. But I don’t say so.

  Mateo surprises me, pulling a ballsy fucking move, leaning in to give me a gentle, reassuring kiss. If I ever doubted he had gonads before, I wouldn’t now, when he actually has the gall to kiss me after all but admitting he wants to fuck my best friend.

  Crazy pregnancy hormones engaged! I’m going to kill them both. I’ll seduce Dante. He looks enough like Mateo, right? Colette doesn’t even like him, and I get to keep the house. Probably. If he gets the family, presumably he also gets the house.

  If Mateo notices I don’t kiss him back, he must not care.

  “Everything is fine,” he assures me. He’s the one who drops some bullshit like that, and I’m the one who gets the reassurances. Aren’t those mine to give? Shouldn’t I be the one saying, “It’s okay, Gigantic Master Asshole of All Assholes, I still love you, even though you just said that”?

  But no, he is the one reassuring me that everything’s okay.

  “I want the talk now,” I state. “I don’t care about dinner. I don’t care. Call them and push it back an hour if you have to. I’m not going to be able to get through dinner with this on my mind. Unless you want me stab Mia with a kitchen utensil, it’s a very bad idea for us to make dinner together.”

  This displeases him. Sighing, he tugs me closer, holding my hand. “Don’t do that. You like Mia—you love Mia.”

  “A little less knowing you want to fuck her.”

  “I didn’t say I wanted to fuck her,” he states, glancing at the door to the study.

  Adrian is standing there, with a wide-eyed Elise by his side.

  “We’ll come back,” Adrian says, about to turn around.

  “No,” Mateo says, stopping him. “Stay.”

  Adrian’s head falls back and he sighs, like he’s never dreaded anything so much in his life.

  I feel like I’m going to cry. I hate being pregnant. I hate everything.

  “Do we have to?” Elise asks.

  Mateo smirks, amused that even Elise wants to leave. “Come on in.”

  “Actually, I have kitchen things to do,” Elise says brightly, leaning in and giving Adrian a kiss. He secures an arm around her waist, tugging her closer, like he needs to kiss her a little longer to get through this mess.

  I reach a new low as I feel jealous of Elise. Adrian is so fucking devoted to her. She’s so lucky. I’m rolling downhill fast.

  I’m trying not to get lost in it. I’m trying to keep my balance. I’m trying to be logical, and that’s usually easy for me, but… well, pregnancy.

  I should go do kitchen things too, but now Elise is in there and she damn sure doesn’t want my company. Mia’s going to be here any minute, and I’m still feeling super stabby. If I just murder her today, I can totally blame my pregnancy hormones, right? How pissed would Mateo be? But hey, without his back-up bitch around to warm his bed, he’d surely keep me alive.

  No, I can’t kill Mia. That would be wrong.

  Of course, Mateo might be fucking Mia, and secretly fucking my fiancé is also pretty wrong.

  I emerge from my murderous contemplation to see Adrian pouring himself a stiff drink, slamming it back, then pouring another.

  Now he turns to face us, sighing. “So, what’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” Mateo assures him. “Meg’s hormones are… making her crazy.”

  “Meg’s always been crazy.”

  “Yes, but the kind of crazy I like,” he specifies. “Apparently pregnancy makes her emotionally unstable.”

  “Only room for one emotionally unstable partner in the relationship, huh?” Adrian asks good-naturedly, like he’s amused. I guess he has to be. This is a goddamn disaster.

  Mateo rolls his eyes and approaches the cart to grab himself something to drink.

  “Hopefully it’s a boy then,” Adrian remarks. “Maybe you won’t have to do this again.”

  “Am I even going to be here for this to happen again?” I ask, my eyes on Mateo’s back. “What does this mean?”

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” he says again, looking a little less patient. I do know how he hates to repeat himself, but I also don’t give a fuck right now. “I told you we’ll talk about it later.”

  “After I stab your girlfriend—got it.”

  Mateo slams his glass down and I jump as he strides across the room, catching my arm and yanking me close. I’m alarmed already, but even more so at the look of warning he gives me, like I’m sorely testing his patience.

  “Be nice,” he says, simply.

  I can only stare at him, my eyes wide, anxiety gathering in my chest. It aches. This hurts. Not his hold on me, nothing physical, but that he’s taking a stand for Mia—telling me to be nice to her. Letting me know he won’t accept me lashing out at her.

  Goddamn him.

  I swallow, looking away from him. “Yes, master,” I reply, scathingly.

  He grabs my chin now, forcing me to look up at him. “I love you. Nothing has changed.”

  Everything has changed.

  But I don’t say that.

  “I’m not feeling well,” I say, tugging my arm away from him. “I think it would be best to have dinner without me tonight. We’ll talk later.”

  “Meg…”

  “It’s one fucking dinner, Mateo,” I snap. “You want me to be nice and I can’t right now. So I’m going to go upstairs; just tell them I’m having a bout of morning sickness and we’ll be back to normal next week.”

  I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t know anything, because apparently there’s a long conversation coming, and I don’t know what it’s going to sound like.

  I don’t wait for his permission. I don’t say another word; I just quit the study and head upstairs before I run into Vince and Mia. My emotions are out of control and I want to rip her hair out of her pretty little head, so I definitely do not want to see her.

  I try to ground myself while I walk. I’m out of sorts, getting carried away, but I need to relax. For one thing, Mia was normal around me until yesterday. Until they danced. He can’t be fucking her yet—he came home with me, and they didn’t disappear together after they danced. So he isn’t fucking her. But he must have said something to her in those three minutes that changed things for her. Maybe he told her that he wants to fuck her. Which seems like a disaster, because Mia’s so fucking infatuated with him that she stays in a relationship with someone she half-hates just so she can keep coming around.

  I need to find an objective perspective. I need to clear my mind, push past my foreign surplus of emotions, and figure this out.

  Chapter Five

  Mia

  I hustle through the front door, Vince trailing behind. I think he’s moving slowly just to aggravate me. We’re running late, and I hate running late.

  Since we are running late, I don’t wait for him; I make my way to the left and through the open door of Mateo’s study.

  I expect to find Mateo at the helm and men in arm chairs.

  But there’s only Adrian sitting alone in a wing chair with a drink in his hand. He tips his glass at me in acknowledgement as I walk in and come to an abrupt stop, searching the room for Mateo. He’s not by the drink cart and he’s not behind his desk, so he clearly isn’t in here.

  “Where is everybody?” I ask, as Vince catches up and stops behind me.

  I know it’s Vince behind me, because I would be able to feel Mateo.

  “We’re on our own tonight. Mateo canceled dinner. You were already on your way, Elise is already cooking, and I’m still hungry, so it’s just us.”

  My stomach sinks. “He canceled dinner? What happened?”

  “You,” Adrian mutters, taking another drink.<
br />
  My stomach somehow sinks harder, and the blood in my veins turns to ice water, sending chills everywhere.

  Vince laughs and heads over to the alcohol cart to pour himself something.

  “I don’t understand,” I say, not moving.

  Adrian’s brown eyes meet mine and he states, “Meg needed to spend some time with Mateo. So he’s spending time with her.”

  “Is she mad at me? Are they both mad at me? Maybe I should go—”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Adrian says, cutting me off.

  “Are we done pretending this isn’t a thing, then?” Vince asks mildly, taking his drink and heading over to the wing chair. Then he reconsiders and comes over to grab my arm, casually dragging me along so he can yank me into his lap once he’s seated.

  I have half a mind to tell him we don’t need to put on a show; only Adrian is here. But there are probably cameras in this room, so I don’t.

  I feel terrible about everything right now. “Was Meg upset?” Meg rarely gets upset. She’s a fortress. If I’ve upset her, I’m literally the worst person ever.

  “I’m sure you’ll be looped in later,” Adrian tells me, drinking some more. “I’m not dealing with this shit until I know what I’m dealing with, so I’m afraid I’m not going to be a stream of information for you tonight.”

  “Is Mateo coming back down later?” I ask, since apparently I need him for any answers.

  “Nope.”

  It’s impossible for my mind not to wander to them upstairs in bed together. Sure, he only said spending time together, but he’s Mateo. If she’s mad at him, he’ll just make her stop with his stupid sexy body. With his tender, playful words. With his beautiful face, his sensual smile—the one that makes you feel special. That makes you feel everything he wants you to feel. Mateo can handle emotional women. You can’t really stay mad at him if he doesn’t want you to.

  This makes me sad.

  Not sad because I want Meg to be upset, but sad because I don’t want to be sitting here on Vince’s lap while Mateo fucks Meg upstairs in their bed.