Maid for the Hitman: A Steamy Standalone Instalove Romance Flora Ferrari (summer beach reads TXT) 📖

they have purpose. As long as they have a mother as wonderful and caring as you, they’ll be just fine.”

A glow moves through my body, setting parts of me alight, hot stars whispering through me.

“I can’t believe I didn’t want to believe this was real,” I whisper. “It feels so real, Ryland. It feels so meant to be.”

“That’s because it is,” he says, his chest reverberating with passion. “And don’t you ever forget it.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Ryland

I sit behind the wheel of my sleek bulletproof sedan, glancing into the rearview as Harold gets Jackie set up in her seat.

She waves a hand at him when he moves to fix her seatbelt for her.

“I love you, young man,” she says, with the same sassiness in her voice I recognize in her daughter. She might be sixty-one, but she’s still got a lot of playful energy in her. “But if you insist on fussing over me anymore, I will make you regret it.”

Rosie giggles from beside me.

“Mom, he’s just trying to help.”

Harold grins and walks around to his side of the car, sliding into his seat.

“Dealing with unruly patients is part of the job, I’m afraid,” he chuckles.

I chuckle. “She’s nowhere near as bad as my old man.”

“No comment,” Harold chuckles.

I laugh again, shaking my head, and then double-check that all the doors are locked.

Chopper is curled up in my woman’s lap, Rosie’s hands fixed in his fur. She’s wearing tight-fitting jeans and a hoodie that does nothing to hide the shape of her fertile, no-longer-a-virgin body.

“Is everybody ready?” I ask.

Rosie looks across at me, biting her lip, her eyes wide and filled with meaning.

I can tell she’s not ready. She’s not sure.

“But I want us to live a life together, not in hiding,” she said to me last night, passionately in my arms. “If this is the way, we have to do it. We owe it to our children.”

My chest fires at the memory, the truth of her words thundering into me.

“Yes,” Jackie says.

“Yeah,” Harold says, nodding.

“I’m ready, Ryland,” my woman says, and I know she’s talking about more than the road trip.

She’s ready for us, for the life we’re going to live together.

I press the button to start the electric engine.

This car was built to keep the people inside safe under any circumstances, which is why it’s bulletproof and blast-proof.

I pull out of the garage and into the morning sun.

Vito needs to know where we’re going, and his men are amateurs.

If I left it until nighttime, they’d never keep up.

“This is a lovely drive,” Jackie comments about an hour in, as we roll through the winding country road, bordered on all sides by bright spring-green.

Rosie smiles across at me, glancing down every so often as she wrestles the tiny rope from Chopper. The Chihuahua is on his hind legs, his forepaws laid against my woman’s stomach, as he fills the car with his loud playful growling.

“Very scenic,” Harold says. “It almost makes one long for the days of I, spy.”

“Makes one?” Jackie laughs. “Are you the poshest Englishman in America, young man?”

Harold grins at the good-natured joke.

I know because I’m glancing in the rearview every few moments, making sure that Vito’s dumbass men are still following at a distance. Maybe they think they’re being discreet, always leaving a few cars between us, but I clocked them the moment I left the estate.

“I hope so,” Harold says.

Rosie laughs. “Ignore her, Harold. She loves picking on people.”

“I called him the poshest man in America,” she cries, smiling. “I’d label that a compliment.”

We all chuckle, but I keep something back, a piece of me that has to be ready for war no matter what happens. I grip the steering wheel hard, despite myself, despite knowing that remaining calm is the best way to make this work.

But my anger is less obedient today than it normally is.

These motherfuckers are tailing me when I’m with my woman, with my future mother-in-law, with the man who cared for my father in his final days.

Who the fuck do they think they are?

Rosie reaches across, touching my forearm.

“Relax,” she whispers, just loud enough for me to hear as Jackie and Harold keep bantering from the backseat. “We’re all going to be okay.”

I relax my hands with an effort, and then she touches my face and I smirk, realizing I’m clenching my jaw, too.

“There,” she smiles. “All better, right?”

I smirk. “Yeah, except it’s hard to focus on the road when you’re sitting next to me.”

“Hey, enough of that,” Jackie smiles.

I chuckle. “Sorry, ma’am.”

“See?” Jackie flares, full of life. “This is a man who understands manners. I told you he was a keeper, Rosie. I’m glad you’ve taken my advice for once.”

Rosie giggles, rolling her eyes.

“I’m glad I followed your very wise advice as well, Mom.”

She throws me a look, all silent communication, as though the years have fallen away and we’ve already been married for decades. I can read every tiny change in the implications of her expression, detect every tic of her eyebrows and quirk in her lips.

I know what she’s saying.

I’m so happy you’ve won mom around, her eyes blaze.

I nod, letting her know I understand how important this is for her.

She smiles wider, nodding in return.

We could trade whole songs in this way, through glances alone.

“I should ask you if you have honorable intentions, though, young man.”

I smirk as I guide the car around the soft bend in the road, glancing at the rearview to note Vito’s jet-black sedan trailing after us. Whoever’s behind the wheel deserves to be fired for their shitty effort.

“Young man?” I chuckle. “It’s a long time since I was called that.”

“You’re—what—fifty?”

“Mom,” Rosie says.

“I’m forty-two,” I tell her.

“That’s young to me,” she declares. “Or are you trying to dodge the question?”

“No, ma’am,” I tell her. “My intentions are to be with your daughter forever. My intentions are to keep her safe and as happy as a man can keep a woman.”

She laughs quietly.

“Very nicely phrased. See that, Rosie? He left himself