Page 137 of Manhattan Secret

“Always, baby.”

With her, I’ll always be up to something shady.

My beautiful teacher will always be my motivation for everything.

* * *

Delaney

SEVEN YEARS LATER

A gorgeous mouth is sucking gently on my neck when Lachie and I hear tiny feet padding across the thick pile carpet in our bedroom. It’s three seconds after that, comes the wild scampering of other feet, along with a yip-bark.

Thank god we are still under the comforter, or our four-year-old inquisitive daughter would have gotten a load of her naked parents twisted up together in a heated clinch.

Lachie groans, making me giggle.

This isn’t our first foray into being caught by a tiny person or our pets.

But it’s only recently we’ve started to enforce rules about our bedroom if the door is closed.

Lachie kisses my neck again and then cranes his head around to see Elzani, or Ellie as we call her, standing at his side of the bed in her blue PJs.

“Baby, what did me and mommy say about the door when it’s closed?”

Her light-colored hair, exactly like her father’s, is in disarray around her little cherub face. Eyes the color of the ocean with a forever devious smile on her face, she makes an O shape with her lips and scampers across the floor. “Oops! Sorry, daddy.”

I giggle again with my face pressing into his shoulder, watching her slam our bedroom door closed, thankfully before she caught Chris’ tail. The brown Chihuahua is her shadow, so is his sister, Shelly—who is probably still sleeping in her favorite spot in the sun room.

Lachie and I share a look. “Cockblocked again,” he grumbles, slipping his hand beneath the covers, he moves that warm palm across my belly and holds the fullness of my boob. Jiggling it a little.

“You were the one who wanted kids,” I tell him.

“You didn’t stop me knocking you up, mouse. You know I turn brainless when I’m inside you.”

My insides right now warm to a lovely temperature. It’s as we are about to share a kiss when Ellie thumps on the door. Lachie grins against my lips and calls out. “Who is it?”

“It’s the police, open up.”

We both burst out laughing.

Elzani is four, going on fifty-four.

I swear, she came out of me knowing everything.

She’s a complete mini version of Lachlan.

She loves challenges.

If someone says she can’t do something, then that’s all she wants to do and ends up doing it. Right now she refuses to wear any feminine colors because a kid at her day-care told her blue isonlyfor boys.

For five weeks now all she will wear is blue clothing.

Our girl is a hellraiser and so like her dad.

Her personality is a challenge and a delight.

Lachie will say she gets her quiet side from me.

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