Page 98 of All The Happily Ever Afters

Strands of brunette hair fall from the elegant bun on the top of her head. I brush them behind her ear and keep my hand there, cupping her cheek as I tell her.

“I got a job offer in the city. Only forty minutes from our home.” Her gasp is covered by her delicate hand. “I’ve had a few interviews the last few weeks I’ve been home. That’s what I’ve been doing but I didn’t want to tell you. I didn’t want to get your hopes up until I knew for sure. I know this has been hard on us and I can’t be away from you anymore.”

I knew she would be happy, but I didn’t expect the tears. I didn’t realize she was so emotional about it all.

“I never would have stayed away if I’d known it made you this upset.” At my admission, she shakes her head, reaching out to my cheek and cupping it like I do her.

With the tip of her nose brushing against mine, she steadies herself, giving me a peck on the lips before looking back up at me.

“I’m glad you’re coming home because this baby is going to need both of us.”

The moment she says baby, her hand moves to her belly and shock and then elation hit me harder than I could ever imagine.

“You’re pregnant?” I question her in a single breath and her wide smile is joined with a nod.

I hug her and she hugs me back, both of us clinging to each other, both of us surprised in the best of ways.

There are ups and downs in marriage, there are good times and there are bad, but moments like these and all of our other firsts that we’ve shared and will share in our lives are so worth every dip on this wild ride.

“I love you,” I tell her and kiss her, crushing my lips to hers before she can even say it back.

I love you for always.

FLIRTING WITH A GOOD NIGHT

SYNOPSIS

In our small town, all of my friends have found their soulmates and here I am, moving from one crush to the next but never actually settling down. The reason why is standing only a few feet from me now. He’s joking with my best friend’s husband, as I sit on their sofa trying not to stare. With his sleeves rolled up, the tattoos he got while he was away in the marines are on display, curved around his toned muscle that flex with his rough chuckle.

Cade was years older and left right after high school. I never told him how I felt, we were so young and there was no way he’d ever go for a sophomore like me. Times have changed and now he’s back… and I can’t stop staring and pining over the man I’ve been longing for.

And when he looks my way, with that handsome smirk, rough stubble and gorgeous baby blue gaze…

SHARON

“Just smell it.”

Magnolia’s command is murmured with aww, even if it does crack me up. Both of us take a deep inhale that has my back pushing against the cream sectional sofa. Her eyes are closed, her nose just a centimeter above the practically bald little one’s head. He has just a small smatter of dark brown hair at the very top of his noggin and with the little jostle, he coos, putting a wide-eyed Autumn on edge.

“There’s nothing like it in the whole world.” Magnolia’s statement is met with both another coo from Cameron, the two-week old little one fast asleep in her arms, and a long exhale of relief from his mother. Autumn’s arms are still up as if she was getting ready to snatch her newborn and quickly rock him back to sleep if he woke from the two of us taking a nice long whiff of that baby smell.

I bite back my smile, unable to not see the humor in the room with Magnolia completely missing Autumn’s stress.

“Seriously,” Mags presses, “There’s something about the way they smell…” I finally let out a laugh when Mags closes her eyes and lays back with the little boy.

“If you keep creeping me out, I’m taking my baby back,” Autumn’s response is given with a broad smile. You’d never know she just went through almost thirty hours of labor earlier this week.

There really is something about that sweet baby powder like scent, though. I have to agree with Mags, pulling my legs up on the sofa and then resting my pointer against Cameron’s little cheek. “He is freaking adorable Autumn,” I murmur and feel my heart swell with happiness for her and Trent and their other two boys.

“I want another baby.” Mags cradles the baby closer and Autumn’s eyes go wide.

“If you wake him, you keep him,” she comments while dragging the basket of clothes across the kitchen island to be closer to her. She’s all the way at the end of it, now perched on a stool, while the two of us, strike that, two and a little a bundle, are huddled at the end of her sofa where the living room meets the kitchen.

Our Wine-down Wednesdays have certainly changed recently. Mags with her … shall I say love life dilemma, and Autumn with her ever-growing family.

“I’m not going to wake him up,” Mags admonishes Autumn then makes an ‘oops’ expression as Cameron wiggles in her arms.

The little man has only been on this earth for less than 2 weeks but he knows how to make the whole world stop as he nestles in tighter.

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