Page 5 of Midnight Mass (Priest 1.50)
Reluctantly, I opened my eyes, giving the phone a baleful glare. I sat up and reached for her phone. My plan mostly involved throwing it across the room, but I paused when I saw the name on the screen.
Anton Rees.
I couldn’t help myself; I glanced through the texts that were on her screen. Since her phone was locked, I only saw the first line of each and they all seemed innocuous enough:
Just landed at JFK—
London went well, call me when—
Don’t forget Sophia’s proposal today—
I’ll be in early—
Normal co-worker stuff. If your co-worker is the vice chair of the board for your rapidly expanding, award-winning non-profit foundation.
With what I considered saintly restraint, I set the phone back down on the end table without snooping any further. I knew Poppy’s phone password, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that no matter how handsome and intelligent Anton Rees was, no matter how much he was passionate about the exact same things as my wife, no matter how many times they traveled together, I trusted her.
Once, I’d made the mistake of not trusting. When I found Poppy kissing her ex-boyfriend, I’d assumed the worst and left the scene without even trying to talk to her. She’d done it as a purposeful attempt to drive us apart, unable to bear the guilt of being the catalyst for my schism from the clergy. If I had trusted her, if I had stayed, we could have had another year together. Instead, I’d run away, believing that she was unfaithful, and we’d spent a year miserably apart.
Since then, I’d been scrupulous in my trust. Hell, I was even sort of friends with her ex-boyfriend now.
But I’d be lying if I said that Anton didn’t test that.
Poppy wandered back in from the closet, clad in a red thong and nothing more, despite the chilly, drafty room.
“Anton texted you,” I said, my eyes on the pebbled skin of her breasts. “Kind of late to be texting, don’t you think?”
“It’s actually early, you night owl,” she teased as she crawled back into bed. Without any hesitation, she snuggled her body into mine, so that my chest pressed against her back and our legs were slotted together. “He flew in from London this morning. He’ll probably go straight to the office.”
“Mm.” It was a noncommittal noise. A Tyler-trying-to-be-an-understanding-husband noise.
Normally, Poppy would call me on it. She would turn in my arms and search my eyes and lasso the truth out of me. One of my favorite things about Poppy is that she forced me to open up and be honest about my own needs. After years of being a counselor and a resource for other people, it was gratifying to have someone do the same for me.
But not tonight. Tonight, she laced her hands through mine and sighed. “Do you still want to have children?”
Well, that was an abrupt change of subject.
“Of course I do,” I said, kissing the back of her neck. “I want you to be pregnant all the time. I want you to have nine thousand of my babies.”
She giggled, and I pressed my hands against her stomach, smiling into her neck. I loved her laugh. It sounded noble, royal even, like I was the knight who’d managed to charm his way into some queen’s bed.
“Nine thousand is a tall order, even for us,” she said.
“Nine hundred?”
“Still a bit ambitious.”
“Okay,” I sighed heavily. “Nine, then. You did it, you talked me down.”
“Nine kids.” She tried to keep a flat, mock-serious tone, but she failed, dissolving into sleep-delirious giggles again.
“I’m Irish, Poppy. Genetically we can have no less than nine children.”
“Or what? Saint Patrick will chase all the snakes back into Ireland?”
“How did you know? We only tell that to initiates into the ritual.”
“Is the ritual drinking whiskey and singing ‘Molly Malone’? You forget that I’ve spent the last three Saint Patrick’s Days with your family.”
