A Love Most Fatal (Morelli Family, #1)

by Kath Richards

“Why?” “Because I don’t know very many women.” “Flattering,” I say, wry. “And even if I did know many women, you might be the most beautiful one.”

Vanessa is hot, like stupid hot. She is hotter than me, I am aware. I would probably have to be an Avenger, or a fucking vampire to be as hot as she is. And despite trying to bribe me like some sort of criminal or nefarious millionaire, she apologized and has been friendly ever since. Charming, even.

My mind paints a very clear fantasy, unbidden, in which Vanessa and I live in domestic bliss. I’ve quit my job, just for a few years, just until the youngest is in pre-school, and Vanessa runs the world all day before she comes home to be with me and our two babies. After the children are asleep, after a delicious dinner I made, unless we ordered in, we make love and in fact make another baby, a third, a girl who we name Vanessa Jr. She has my nose. I think there is something wrong with me.

I can handle any number of things on my own, but I didn’t realize how nice it is, sometimes, to have someone whose job is to handle things with you.

I have decided countless times that I will not go seek out Vanessa tonight. Not after she and the whole Morelli family were charmed half to death by Maxim Orlov—whose name literally translates into Greatest Eagle (I googled it) which makes me even angrier somehow.

“But you said⁠—” “I know what I said.” Vanessa pulls her hands from mine and perches on the side of her bed. I follow and drop down next to her with a few inches between us to give her some semblance of space that I really don’t want to offer after that bombshell. “You know what I am,” Vanessa says. “I do. I think you’re the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“I love you,” he says, pauses, then rushes on, “I am criminally, fatally in love with you, and you can try to marry someone else, but I’m not going to leave. I like your house too much and I like you too much to ever be away from you.”