“I didn’t.” I grab her wrist, kiss the inside of her palm. “I’ve kept the damn ring with me for months. You finally cracked and peeked.”

“You’ve been acting mysteriously.” She rubs my lower lip, back and forth.

“Not mysterious enough, as it turned out. We could’ve already been pregnant twice had it been up to me.”

“You can’t get pregnant twice at the same time. It’s a one-time thing.” She cracks up, covering her face. I think she’s blushing, but it’s damn hard to see in the dark.

“Is that a challenge?” I hiss, hooding my eyes. But my nonchalance expires a second later. “Am I going to kneel on one knee for all of fucking eternity? Not that I mind. Just asking for a friend.”

“A friend?”

“Well, friends. My joints.”

She full-blown giggles now. I try to bite down my smile, but I just want her to say yes and put me out of my goddamn misery.

“Fine.” She rolls her eyes. “I’ll marry you, Vaughn Spencer. But on one condition.”

I frown. “Yes?”

“No children.”

“You don’t want any children?”

“Nope.”

I don’t pause to think about it. “Fine. Whatever. Fuck it. They’re whiny and annoying and could grow up to be fucking serial killers. Who needs them?” I slip the ring onto her finger and stand up, jerking her with me, holding her by the ass and wrapping her legs around my waist. She moans into my mouth, her arms linked around my shoulders as I kiss her.

I slap one of her ass cheeks with a grin. “Lenora Spencer.”

“Lenora Astalis-Spencer,” she corrects. “And I would very much like you to become Vaughn Astalis-Spencer.”

This time I do think about it. There’s a pause. Then she starts laughing again, wildly, covering my entire face with kisses.

“You’re such a bloody eejit.”

“Your bloody eejit, baby.”

One year later

“What happened to ‘I don’t want kids’?”

Vaughn is standing by the sink in the OB-GYN clinic, picking up a chart showing the fetus’ growing stages and frowning at it with dry concentration.

He has the tendency to do everything gravely, and that makes me laugh.

Even the day he dragged the statue of us, the one he sculpted, into our bedroom—the last piece of decoration we’ve added to our home—he looked no more happy than he was when he chopped vegetables for a salad the evening before.

“I said that just to see what kind of husband you’d be if you don’t get your way. It was a test.” I’m dangling my feet in the air, sitting on the examining table in a gown, waiting for the doctor to tell us the sex of the baby. The truth is, the idea of children had grown on me, like leaves on a summer tree, the more time Vaughn and I spent together.

But everything I thought I wanted or needed changed after we eloped in London’s city hall three weeks after Vaughn’s proposal, in front of our close friends and family. Poppy arrived with her new boyfriend, Jayden, whom Vaughn got along with surprisingly well. Really, we couldn’t have done it any other way, when you think about it. Vaughn wasn’t one for fancy events.

Three weeks after the wedding, Baron and Emilia presented us with our wedding gift, a plush, six-bedroom beach house in Todos Santos. We thanked them politely, but weren’t going to do anything with it, of course. We loved our Corsica home. Then Emilia made the very good point that we could at least visit it and list it to be rented. We agreed.

The minute I set foot in that house, I knew I was born to live there.

The ocean called to me.

The sound of the waves crashing on the shore lulled me into drugging bliss.

Everything was open and beautiful and new. The air felt lighter and crisp. The four of us walked in—Emilia, me, Vaughn, and his father—and the second I stood in the center of the living room, I knew it was my new home.

I turned to Vaughn with a smile. “Let’s keep it.”

Without a thought, he turned straight to his parents and narrowed his eyes at them. “Is it too late to rebel against your asses? Because you fucked me over real nice and good this time.”

His father patted his shoulder with a patronizing smirk. “Watch and learn, son.”

“Not sure I’d be dedicating my life to screwing over my imaginary kids, if we wanted to have them,” Vaughn countered.

He still thought I wasn’t into the idea of kids. My silly, silly hubby.

“You’d be singing a different tune if and when they decided to live on the other side of the universe.” His mother smiled sweetly, but there was no venom in her voice. She meant it. She missed us.

For the next few months, we lived at the Spencers’, in hotels around Todos Santos, in San Diego, and with Knight and Luna Cole. We had to stay close while we worked on designing the house. And that left a lot of room for morning sex.

And evening sex.

And middle-of-the-night sex.

And, frankly, all-day sex.

I took the pill religiously and didn’t take antibiotics or do anything to hinder their success. It was a fluke, but one I wasn’t even a tiny bit annoyed with.

“Not sure I’m comfortable with something like this living inside my wife’s body.” Vaughn turns around to me now with the chart in his hand, tapping a pink blob the shape of a comma.

“Not sure you have much choice.” I grin, sitting back on the bed. “Besides, if you think that’s odd, it’s about to get a hell of a lot weirder.”

He pushes his lower lip out, coming to sit next to me. “Question.”

“Yes?”

“What if I suck as a dad? I mean, I know you’re one-hundred percent going to save the situation, but what if I won’t be enough?”

“Do you love me?” I ask him.

“To death,” he says. “And that’s not just a figure of speech, although I’d appreciate it greatly if you don’t test me on the matter.”

I already did, I want to tell him. And you chose not to kill someone, because of me.

But that’s not a conversation we have too often.

“Then you’re going to love this baby twice, if not thrice as much. You’re an amazing husband. Why wouldn’t you make a fantastic father?”

We smile at each other, and the doctor walks in—the same one who delivered Vaughn, actually. I lie back and allow her to squirt ice-cold gel onto my stomach. My stomach is poking out a little more than usual for how far along I am, but Emilia says it’s because I’m tiny, so everything shows. Emilia is a bit like the mother figure Poppy and I needed after Mum died, and I would let that frighten me if it wasn’t for the fact that my happiness is too raw, too real to let the past upset me.

The doctor watches the monitor and moves the transducer around my belly. We all stare at the screen expectantly. Vaughn is holding my hand.

“How old are you again?” she asks, as a way of making small talk.

“Twenty-one-ish,” Vaughn answers on my behalf when he realizes I’m too stunned with joy and pride.

I can feel his foot tapping on the floor. He is nervous, but happy.

“Why?” he asks suspiciously.