Total pages in book: 49
Estimated words: 47716 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 239(@200wpm)___ 191(@250wpm)___ 159(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 47716 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 239(@200wpm)___ 191(@250wpm)___ 159(@300wpm)
They had so much more than some; they were lucky in life; in love with each other, still.
Viviana’s fingers fidgeted beneath the sheets, curling into her tank top and the bed. Restlessness was a constant without her husband at her side. Without a doubt, Viviana knew Anton was feeling the same way. It was some odd sensation that bubbled up in her stomach and kept her mind awake even in her exhaustion. As if she couldn’t sit still any longer unless her husband was at her side.
Time—somehow, they needed to make some for one another. If Anton was too scattered with his responsibilities to remember, Viviana would make the first step. Starting now.
Reaching for the bedside table, she found her cell phone in the dark room and dialed her husband’s familiar number. Anton picked up on the third ring, the background of a live and loud club muffling his voice.
“Hey, baby. Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”
“Trying,” Viviana said, smiling at his dark tenor washing through the phone speaker. An idea popped into her mind and her smile grew to a sly grin. “You almost done there?”
“Nearly. Another half hour or so. It’s going okay. How’s the kids?”
“Good. Sleeping. Could you stop at Seven Lights before you come home?”
“Why?” Anton asked.
Viviana scrambled to think of something that would work as an excuse to get her husband into his office at Seven Lights. “Demyan has Show and Tell at preschool tomorrow and he wants to show off the miniature model Bugatti Gia got him for his last birthday. He left it in your office because you helped him to finish it, remember?”
Sure, that worked. Viviana mentally patted herself on the back. Anton wouldn’t deny Demyan a thing.
Anton groaned, the noise in the background dulling as a door closed. “I was trying to get home soon, Vine, not spend more time away. I hoped you’d still be awake, you know. You’re working the morning shift tomorrow at the bookstore, and I’ll be tired as fuck come morning. He can’t find something else for Show and Tell?”
Viviana grinned, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from spilling her plans. “I’ll still be awake, maybe. Please get it for him. You know how particular he is about the things Gia gives him.”
When her husband sighed, Viviana knew she had the battle won. “All right, baby. But you better be awake when I get home.”
Viviana heard the heated warning her husband didn’t voice out loud.
“I will.”
She planned to keep her word, but not in the way Anton assumed.
*
“Boss!” Rory cheered, grinning like a fucker all the while keeping his eye on the man at the end of the bar staring at Jen like she was a piece of meat. “I thought you were working the new club tonight?”
“I was,” Anton said gruffly, rapping his knuckles down to catch Jen’s attention down at the end. “Next week the second one opens and I’ll be there for that shit show, too.”
Rory chuckled. “What’d you do, buy a fuckin’ mess?”
“Mess of management. Nothing I can’t handle.” Anton tapped his knuckles down to the bar again, finally gaining his head bartender’s attention. “Hey, the one who signs your paychecks needs a moment down here!”
Jen tipped her chin upwards. “Yeah?”
“You busy?”
She lifted a bottle of Grey Goose. “Kind of. What do you need?”
Someone to go search his office for a small model car that was liable to be any-fucking-where knowing the propensity his son had to hide things for Rocco to eventually find. Anton could look, of course, but he really wasn’t in the damn mood.
“Never mind,” Anton said, sighing. “Drinks are on me for Rory, but keep him sober enough to walk himself to your car, yeah?”
Jen winked. “Got it, boss.”
“Don’t be a fucking idiot with some jealous crap,” Anton told Rory before he turned to face the crowd. “I don’t need a mess to clean and she can handle any dumbass in this place, including you.”
Rory smirked. “I know. I still like watching her while she sways back and forth behind there.”
Anton didn’t need to hear anymore after that. Without another word, he was pushing his way through the crowd. He was tired and he wanted his wife.
Anton’s fingers ached to touch Viviana. Earlier at the new club, he watched as a man smiled against his girlfriend’s cheek like nobody else around him mattered but her. It reminded Anton of Viviana. The realization of the fact they hadn’t had a full, real conversation in days had been harsh, never mind something physical. That was ... weeks, at least.
When Anton couldn’t remember the last time he had his wife, there was a fucking problem.
One he intended to correct and fast.
Anton quickly made his way across the club, took the stairs two at a time, and flung open the door to the office in his haste. Then, he promptly froze right where he stood with his jaw falling slack and his cock hardening.