Page 58 of Too Close To Call

With a hand on one hip, I tilt my head. My daughter has never kept a secret in her life. “Wait a minute. Did you know about this, Daisy?”

Case laughs. “Of course, she did. I had to ask her permission to marry her mommy. Lucky for me she said yes. Both my girls said yes.”

CHAPTER 19

CASE

“Hey there.” I kneel on the bed and lean over my wife for a good morning kiss. I can’t believe I get to live this life now. The one Tori and I had always dreamed of.

Instead of the sunshiny response I was expecting, her face scrunches up and I get a roll over—away from me—and a grouchy, “Five more minutes.”

Morning Tori has been like playing wakeup roulette lately. “Come on, Tori. You know five more minutes isn’t going to make any difference. Daisy and I already have everything packed.”

We’ve been looking forward to spending our first day back on Faire Island on the water. All three of us have been planning this. Tori just doesn’t remember at the moment. Splitting our year between Matthews and the island hasn’t been that difficult.

“Five more minutes will keep me from killing you,” she mutters from beneath the covers.

I snort and shake my head. This woman is adorable. We’ve been married for fourteen months and every day keeps getting better and better.

Grabbing one end of the blanket, I tug until it reveals her head with her long, silky, dark hair tangled and tousled, then her shoulders, her very ample breasts, and then her well-rounded stomach stretching one of my t-shirts. How it hasn’t ripped leaves me clueless.

I lay my hand over our baby growing inside of the woman I love and feel a good morning high-five from a tiny hand or foot.

“Come on, honey, even Charlemagne wants you to get up.”

Her hand begins a seeking mission to find the missing cover. “That’s a horrid name and Rocky hasn’t let me sleep most of the night. That’s why I need another five minutes.”

I wince at that potential name. “No, Rocky is a terrible name.”

A growl comes from the woman who is pretending to be asleep. We’ve been trying names since we found out we were expecting. We decided to ditch the names we’d originally come up with years ago in favor of a fresh start with this child.

I was in favor of finding out the baby’s gender, but Tori wants to be surprised. To say my wife has been a bit of a diva since she peed on the stick and saw two lines is putting it mildly. The doctor says it’s normal pregnancy hormones. I shudder to think of her going through this with Daisy. I wish I’d been there for her.

We don’t live our lives with regrets of the past. Instead we live each day as it comes and fill it with as much love and care as we can.

Tori rolls over and I hold out my hand to help her sit up. She eyes my hand with distain and doesn’t move. “Why should I get up when I can’t start the day with a cup of coffee? That’s crazy!”

I fight the grin pulling against my lips. Never laugh at coffee. I made that error once and never want to repeat that infraction. “Honey, you know you can have a cup of decaf.”

She struggles to sit up, knocking my offered hand out of the way. “Do not mention that word to me again. That is not coffee. That’s swill the coffee companies try to convince us is real coffee, but it isn’t.”

Her rant over, she gives up trying to sit and falls back on the bed spread eagle with anoomph.

I shrug. Okay, this is going to be one of those mornings. I leave my cranky wife in bed. She follows me with her eyes as I close the bedroom door and turn the lock. As soon as she hears the metal against metal sound, her frown turns around. Her face flushes and I swear her nipples grow three sizes.

“Daisy?” she asks.

I grin. “Is watching her favorite Ariel movie while she’s eating breakfast.”

Tori’s face splits into a wide grin as she reaches for me. She knows that gives us a good twenty minutes. “Then we need to hurry.”

I grab the hem of the t-shirt she has on and whip it over her head. “My thoughts exactly.”

Tori grabs the sweats I’d pulled on when I got up with Daisy earlier and then flipped with the agility of a six-month, almost seven, pregnant woman to her hands and knees. We’ve become creative as the pregnancy progresses and her enlarging stomach makes certain positions uncomfortable.

“Oh, my God, Case. I need you in me so bad.” She wiggles her ass as she backs closer.

If I hadn’t been hard before, I sure am now. I kneel on the bed, put my hands on her beautiful, jiggly butt cheeks, and slide into her wet heat with a groan of pleasure.

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