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Tears immediately flood her eyes, and she gasps, her right hand covering her mouth. Her left hand is in mine, shaking, trembling.
I stare into her eyes that are welling with tears and begin the speech that I’ve recited in my head over and over again. The speech that I partially spoke to her father when I told him my plan, asked his permission. I will only do this once in my life and I have to do it right, building our lives together from the ground up.
Chapter One
Tess
My alarm blares next to my ear and I groan, throwing the leg off my stomach that had somehow managed to wrap around me all night long. After prying my stiff and aching body off the bed, I look back to discover the leg that was wrapped around me was none other than the leg of Harper, our six-year-old. Of course. Still in our bed, she lies spread-eagle next to my husband, who’s somehow only getting hotter with age. Meanwhile, I look every day of my forty-four years. It’s so unfair that men just get sexier as they age.
Barrett’s slightly curly, short brown hair is looking deliciously messy, and I so wish I could crawl back into bed, kick out the extra human, and curl up next to him. My fingers itch to run my hands through his hair. His shoulders peeking out of the covers are so tempting, strong and broad. He may not have that perfect six pack any longer, but his body is still better than any other forty-four-year-old man I know. It shows off the years of hard work he’s put into building our family. He might not spend hours in the gym every day, but I swear he looks even sexier because his body has worked hard. I look at him and see the way he protects our family with all he has in him. I lucked out. Big time.
He’s lying on his stomach, one muscled arm curled under his pillow, the other reaching out to my side of the bed, Harper’s head wedged underneath. I can just barely see a hint of the tattoo that wraps around his tricep, but I know it’s there. It’s one of the hottest things I’ve ever seen.
Somehow wedged around them lie our two dogs. Rex, our boxer, and Flash, our Jack Russell terrier, both think they’re human. How the two of them managed — or all three, I guess — to make their way into our bed once again is beyond me, but not out of the ordinary. The last time I was able to share the marital bed with only my husband was, far too long ago. Our daughter has never been a good sleeper. The nightly battle to keep her in her own bed after she finally falls asleep is more than exhausting.
The dogs have their own beds on the floor in the laundry room, but I know if we had a camera aimed at our bed, we’d see both of them sneak into our room at night and jump in with us. Harper, however, is a different story. She’s not sneaky about it. She just barrels in at any hour of the night, even after she’s been sound asleep in her own bed for hours. Her excuses are becoming less and less original with each night. Most of the time, she just mumbles incoherently under her breath or says something about a bad dream, then nestles in under the covers and falls back asleep within seconds. Bad dream my foot.
After wrapping my robe around my body, I slide my cell into the pocket, grab my glasses off the nightstand, and head to the bathroom. I look into the mirror after washing my face and gaze at my reflection. The years haven’t been horrible to me, though it’s hard to hide the fact that I’m in my forties. My skin is fairly clear and smooth, thanks to drinking tons of water, and probably sporting good genes too. My blue eyes are still vibrant, even with the few wrinkles that surround them and faint dark circles underneath, and my shoulder-length hair has some amazing highlights, but those are courtesy of my brilliant hairstylist Julia, making my hair a honey-blonde rather than the gross dirty-blonde it tends to lean toward without the aid of chemicals. My eyes are still tired, so I decide to leave my dark-framed glasses on until I’m ready for my contacts later.
I pad my way into the kitchen to where the coffee has already been made, thanks to its auto-brew setting. I grab a mug from the cupboard, add my favorite cream, and pour my first — probably of many, cup. I open the sliding door and close it behind me after I step onto the deck of our modest-sized story-and-a-half home. A chill in the air causes me to shiver, but my navy pajama bottoms and fuzzy slippers that cover my feet help ward off some of it. When we were blessed enough to build our house right after Grady was born, we knew we wanted to be here forever. We both wanted our kids to remember this as their childhood home, and so far, we’ve been fortunate enough to stay put.
The wide, vertical, dark grey siding and rich ivory trim around the windows and doors was definitely something different from the norm when we built, but I couldn’t be happier with it. It still screams home to me. Everything about this place is personal in some way, much of it handcrafted by Barrett and Josh, his lifelong best friend. When Barrett’s father was still alive, he made his living as an architect. He drew up our blueprints and helped design our home.
I smile when I hear the door slide open and shut and feel strong arms wrap around me from behind. Stubble scrapes against my neck, making me shiver, and a soft kiss lands just below my ear before I hear my husband’s husky morning voice.
“Morning, babe.”
It’s the same way we’ve woken up since the day after our wedding. And lately it’s the most physical touch we get with one another all day long.
“Morning, honey. How’d you sleep?”
“You mean with octopus legs kicking me all night? Excellent. You?” He asks sarcastically. Even in my grumbly state for sleeping like crap all night, he still makes me chuckle lightly.
“We have to figure out a way to lock out the extras that seem to keep sneaking into our bed at night.” I groan as I let my head fall back to his shoulder that I was basically drooling over just a few moments ago. Unfortunately, he slid a white T-shirt on over that tempting shoulder before he came out here. “Ugh, why did you put a shirt on?” I grumble, to which he chuckles. He knows my weakness for his upper body.
“Sorry, babe. It’s cold out here.” He kisses me again on the neck and I feel his warm hand push aside my robe and slide under my pajama shirt. It feels so good to be touched, to have him show me some affection. We’re drifting away from each other. I can feel it. He can feel it. We’ve let our lives and our kids take precedence over our marriage and it’s become an issue.
I sigh, leaning into his touch. “You tired?”
“What do you think?”
We’re both exhausted, so when a kid comes climbing into bed at two o’clock, it seems much easier to just let it be. Fighting with her and dragging her back to her own bed all the way across the hall seems like way too much work and effort. Work and effort that would have likely paid off the next morning when we can barely move and have bruises on our bodies from being kicked all night long. A king-size bed seems huge until we have to make room for all the extra bodies.
“What do you have going on today?” his still sleepy voice asks as he looks out toward the landscape behind our home. The thick wooded area shows signs of fall with the many leaves covering the ground and the vibrant colors still decorating the trees. Barrett removes his heat from behind me and reaches around my body and takes a sip of my coffee, another thing he’s done for as long as I can remember. He never wastes the time to prepare his own cup. After our private good morning moment is shared, he will, but it’s always this way. We share our first cup of coffee, passing it back and forth while we have a few minutes alone together. It’s my favorite tradition we share, even if we didn’t set out for it be a tradition.
He sighs contentedly, making me do the same. When we built our house, we were able to find a great deal on two lots so even though we have neighbors, they aren’t as close as they would have been had we not purchased them both. Barrett’s grandparents left him a very generous inheritance that we put toward the asking price. Even with that help, we had years of financial struggle. Those years help us to remember to be grateful.
“I have just one appointment at eleven this morning. The couple took the day off work, so I assume they have lots of plans,” I say as I raise my eyebrows.
He laughs, running a thumb over my left eyebrow. “What’s with the brows?”
“I’ve just learned over the years that some couples tend to be more of a handful.”
“And you think they might be?”
I shrug my shoulders. “Not sure. They sounded like they could.”
“But that doesn’t bother you,” he tells me, rather than asking. He knows that more detailed-oriented couples don’t get to me. I enjoy working with everyone.
