An Unexpected Engagement

Chapter 82

Natasha

— Steveeeee!

My desperate scream echoes through the bathroom as I try to get up off the slippery floor while pulling the kicking, screaming baby out of the tub.

Obviously I can't even get up, let alone get Penelope out, who is now throwing water on me and laughing at her small victory.

“Steve, come here now! I scream again, holding out my hands in a new attempt to get my daughter out of the tub, but her slippery little body easily deflects my efforts to grab her and now I'm partially blinded when a jet of soapy water hits my eyes. “What the fuck, Steve! I scream and start to get really angry.

That's enough for me.

I open the drain and let all the water out, to see if it touches itself that it can't stay there. But Penelope keeps ignoring me and when I try to take her off she screams like I'm torturing her or something and then continues to play with her ducklings.

Steve is always more successful at that task. It must be something in the CEO gene that makes Penelope obey him more easily than me.

When it's his turn to bathe our daughter, he always ends up flawless, not a strand of his magnificent hair out of place. Unlike me, who now crawls along the floor like a survivor of the sinking of the Titanic, until I reach the bedroom and finally manage to get up.

Where is Steve? Let him get Penelope out of the bathtub, whatever his strategy is.

— Steve? I leave the room and head downstairs, thinking I'll find him still trying to straighten the tree, which I realize now may have been a little unfair to give him that task.

First, that I am infinitely more talented than he is in this regard. Second, that switching from tidying the tree to bathing Penelope was a shot in the foot.

However, when I get to the living room, I find the room empty and the Christmas tree fully assembled.

Hmm, Steve did it, I think with a mixture of satisfaction and irritation. Is there anything Steve doesn't do well? Maybe fulfill the promise to work less? A suspicious little voice whispers inside me.

— Steve? I call again, but only silence echoes through the empty room.

Is it possible that he returned to the basement? Holy shit, if Steve did this, I'm going to be so mad!

I march down to the basement, already thinking I need more stringent sanctions on this matter. Just screaming and complaining is not working. Threatening not to cook apparently didn't work. Right. Perhaps the time has come to play the highest card in my deck: no sex. Okay, I avoid using that sanction because let's face it, leaving Steve sexless would be something that would hit me directly as well. And why do I have to punish myself to punish Steve? Is not fair. However, I need to be strong and take the reins of that situation. Yeah, if Steve is in the basement with that damn laptop again I'll be emphatic: no sex for a week.

Oh my, all this? Wouldn't breaking the notebook with an ax be more effective? No, I will not use violence. Still. I'm going to have to use sex myself, what can I do? But Steve has to learn. It's for the good of our marriage, guys! And to think Steve promised at Christmas last year that he was changing. That he wouldn't be the workaholic he used to be, that from that moment on he would dedicate himself to me and Penelope. He had even passed on the DBS shares he had secretly bought to my name.
Yes, those stocks he bought using the money he got from his grandfather's inheritance by marrying me. I still feel slightly enraged when I remember Steve's cockiness in that episode.

I smile to myself, yes, I really am an amazing wife who thinks of the good of marriage above her selfish desires.

— Steve? — I open the basement door and turn on the light. However, nothing of him there either.