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The woman reached out a hand, asking Anastasia’s permission for intimacy. His palm caressed Anastasia’s back, urging her to take her mother’s hand. As soon as she did, the woman pulled her into a brief, though fervent hug.
Then, as if she didn’t want to push her luck further, with tears running down her face, Grace turned and rushed away.
After watching her mother’s departure, Anastasia turned to Ivan, face brightening, eyes igniting.
Before he could scoop her to his heart again, a big hand slapped him hard on the back. Dammit.
“So tell me, Wildcard, how do you feel now you’re a married man?”
He turned to Antonio, who was grinning at him wickedly, everything right with his world again now that he’d gotten his Liliana to forgive, and marry him, too. Something Ivan had had a hand in.
While he’d been with Anastasia in Russia, Antonio had called him in a bleak state, asked him to come take what amounted to his last will and testament, to give to Liliana after he’d left, ostensibly to commit accidental suicide on some frontline. Ivan had rushed to his side, then to Liliana’s to make her stop him. Which she had.
Ivan had rushed back to Anastasia the next day. She’d still been sleeping so long in those days he doubted she’d even noticed he’d been away.
But when Antonio’s wedding had come just a week later, he’d begged off being his best man. Anastasia hadn’t been up to attending weddings at the time, and he couldn’t have left her. And he couldn’t bear seeing his best friend get the love of his life, when he’d felt he’d eventually lose his.
Did that make him a terrible friend? Yeah. Probably.
Antonio sure would never let him live it down.
Pulling Anastasia into his side lovingly, he crooked an eyebrow at his best friend. “Why don’t you tell me first? You’re an old married man now, while I’m fresh off the altar.”
Antonio looked down at his wife of only two months, going positively goo-goo eyed. “It’s simple really. I’m the happiest man in existence.”
“Oh, no, you’re not!” Ivan growled, actually annoyed at his friend’s claim.
“Oh, yes, I am.” Antonio all but stuck his tongue out at him.
“It’s my wedding, and if I say you’re not, you’re not!”
The two women looked at each other...then burst out laughing.
As he and Antonio turned to their wives, demanding in mock severity what they found so funny, the rest of the gang, as Anastasia called them, converged on them.
“So what are you ladies busting a stitch over?” That was Isabella, sauntering over with that serpent husband of hers slithering right behind her. Yeah, Ivan still wasn’t a fan of Richard Graves, a.k.a. Cobra. Neither was Richard a fan of his. They were both perfectly fine with this.
“Yeah, we want in on the belly laughs,” said Scarlett, Raiden’s wife.
Anastasia and Liliana turned to the ladies, laughing harder than ever.
“There’s just something hilarious about watching these two Olympians bickering,” Anastasia spluttered.
Liliana hooted in laughter. “And not any bickering. The twelve-year-old variety. Time stopped for them the day they met, it seems.”
“No, it didn’t,” Ivan growled. “And we don’t bicker!”
“You tell them, brother.” Antonio squared off beside him, as always joining with him against any others.
“Oh, you bicker. You’re experts at it.” Eliana, Rafael’s wife, gave Antonio an affectionate nudge. “Just admit it.”
“It goes beyond expertise. It’s a matter of survival for you boys. I don’t think you can live without plucking at each other’s shiny feathers.” That was Jenan, Numair’s wife, who’d become the leader of the gang of wives, just like Numair had been and remained their brotherhood’s leader. “So what was the subject of the squabble this time?”
Anastasia feigned a shudder. “I’m afraid if we tell you, we’d have a full-scale war among all of you on our hands.”
Liliana nodded in mock trepidation. “Yes, we shouldn’t say. To preserve the peace within the brotherhood.”
It was the men who now spoke up, each demanding in his own inimitable way to know what the Bones/Wildcard duet had been saying behind their backs that they should be punished for.
