Page 133 of Marcus

“Yes, and I still want it.”

No shame.

She had none.

He loved that, too.

“So, are you going to give me the surprise?” she asked.

“How about you read Tiff her bedtime story, and we’ll revisit this later?”

Cella sighed. “Really?”

“Patience is a virtue, bella.”

“In your world.”

He chuckled.

She still left him to his business, though.

Marcus took his sweet time shaving what remained of the facial hair on his throat before moving onto the rest of his face. When he was in New York for a week with Cella, he could get away with having a bit of scruff on him. It also helped that he still had to use a faked passport, one with his brother’s identification information but Marcus’s picture, to get across the border because he still wasn’t supposed to leave his country. While the investigations had died down because the cops still couldn’t prove he had a hand in taking out the Quebec chapter of the Riders, he still had a lot of legal issues that seemed to keep coming up one after the other.

Nonetheless, the facial hair helped because Corrado was going through a whole phase of growing out a beard—which his spouses hated—and he and Marcus looked far more similar when his grew out, as well. Not that anyone at the border seemed to know the difference, and the bribes he paid to keep a couple agents quiet certainly helped. But tomorrow, he had to head back to Toronto, so he’d shave tonight and cross the border clean-shaven so that when he had his meeting with the made men of the family in the evening, they didn’t think their boss was pushing the rules by not shaving.

By the time he finished his business in the bathroom, Marcus found Cella’s Rochester home to be quiet as he walked through the upstairs hall. Tiffany’s bedroom door was firmly closed which meant the girl had finally allowed her mother to tuck her into bed for the night. He went in search of Cella, quickly finding her downstairs in the kitchen where she stood against the island with her back slightly turned to him.

He could still see the small smile playing on her lips, though. Not to mention, the way that smile of hers grew wider when a sound started to echo from the phone in her hands. He said nothing, leaning in the doorway as she listened to what sounded like the hooves of horses beating to the ground on top of white noise. Then, the recording went straight to white noise with no other sound before the hooves came back again, a bit slower than the first time. He was sure he’d heard that before but where, he couldn’t quite place it.

“What’s that?” he asked, when it finished.

Cella turned fast, that phone of hers dropping to the counter at the same time. Her wide eyes met his, and he grinned back. “God, you need to make noise.”

“Okay—but answer the question.”

“Heartbeats.”

Marcus took a second.

Then, two.

“As in, more than one?” he asked. “Wait, whose heartbeats?”

Cella smiled.

In that moment, Marcus understood everything.

Her passing comment—technically, two surprises.

He knew exactly where he’d heard that sound before. Each of his brothers had sent him similar recordings when they first had the chance to hear their babies’ heartbeats during pregnancy exams.

“You’re pregnant?” he asked.

Even as he asked that, he wasn’t sure he actually said it. His legs moved on their own accord, taking him across the kitchen as Cella nodded in response to his question.

“Nine weeks,” she told him, “and I’m not even sure how.”

“Nine weeks,” he echoed.