Page 158 of Made in Love and Blood

“It’s an opening for her. By the time I’m done with breakfast, she’ll have sent me thirty voice notes demanding I explain things that are none of her fucking business anyway.”

“Are you going to tell her you’re pregnant?”

“Why, so she can sell it to somewhere the first chance she gets because she’s pissed at me?” Carina asked back sharply. “Right, let me jump right on that, Sal.”

Frankie chewed on her bacon strip and stared back and forth between the two who weren’t quite arguing but bordered it. “When are you going to tell others outside the family?”

At that question, Carina passed Salvatore a glance that he dropped quickly.

To her stepdaughter, she only said, “When it’s the right time.”

“When is that?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“How do you plan on hiding it in the meantime?” Frankie questioned after finishing her last bite of bacon.

“The same way I always did,” Carina muttered, plucking the cloth napkin from the table to snap it open. She laid it across her lap before adding, “Strategically chosen clothes and well-placed bags, darling.”

Salvatore laughed under his breath, but when the two looked his way, he’d shoved a jam covered piece of toast in his mouth like he hadn’t done it in the first place.

“Because it won’t be strange at all for you to wear something that doesn’t conform to every crevice of your body?” Frankie asked, pointing out the flaw she could see in Carina’s plan.

“Good point,” Sal mumbled around his food.

“Don’t eat with your mouth full,” she told her dad.

He arched an eyebrow, and then promptly swallowed the bite. “Oh, you’re speaking to me now? And being the adult in the room at the same time? I am stunned. Totally bewildered.”

“Oh, here we go,” Carina said under her breath.

“Didn’t think you had it in you, Frankie, truly,” her father added.

“Are you trying to pick a fight with me?” Frankie asked, cocking her head to the side. “Because I could have spent the morning with my boyfriend like I wanted to before I don’t get to see him for an entire fucking month, Daddy, but here I am instead. And you want to do this?”

“I don’t need to pick anything. I felt that mood of yours the moment I walked into the room, Sunshine. Look at it like I’m just giving you what you want so we can finally move the hell on here.”

“You—”

“No yelling allowed,” Salvatore told her the second her voice raised, “it’s not good for the baby.”

She blinked. “Says the man who spent my entire childhood screaming at his wife while she did the same thing right back. That’s real rich of you, Daddy.”

“Okay,” Carina said airily, standing from the table with the napkin in her hand. She plucked the platter from the table, telling the other two as she headed for the connected dining room, “I’m going to go eat my breakfast with Sissy.”

“What about the thing you wanted to give her?” Salvatore asked.

She stopped at his chair on the way by, dropping a kiss to his mouth. “I’ll leave that to you today. You might need it, you know?”

“But it’s your thing.”

“It was my idea, it’s our gift. It doesn’t have to be me that gives it, baby. And like I said, it’s sounding like you’re gonna need that.”

“All right, go.”

Frankie watched Carina leave, asking, “What gift?”

Salvatore speared a cut of waffle, dipping it into syrup. “Where’s Nico going for a month?”