Page 86 of My Big Fat Daddy Issues

She stares at me. Then she sinks to her knees and takes my face in both hands. This girl, this woman, my whole goddamn future in a pair of hands that I held when I walked her to her first day of school for so many years. Read her stories and taught her how to scramble eggs and humped her body one night while she slept like a lecherous old fucker.

She kisses me. It's the kind of kiss that doesn't need words because it is the answer.

"Yes." Against my mouth, barely a breath. "Obviously yes, you impossible man."

I slide the ring on.

She holds her hand up. "It's art deco. Vintage like Taylor's ring."

"It is."

After a while, she lifts her head. Wipes her eyes with the back of her hand.

"Bea's going to scream so loud the neighbors call the police."

"Good thing I already introduced myself."

"You thought of everything."

"That's a Daddy's job."

She loops her arms around my neck, settles against me.

Afternoon sun tracks across the floor. A dog barks next door. Down the street, a kid bounces a basketball, the rhythm steady and ordinary and so goddamn beautiful it could make a man religious.

"Daddy?"

"Yes, baby."

"Take me to the bedroom. I want to break in that master suite."

I pull her up against me. Easy, the way it's always been with her, the way nothing else in my life has ever been before her and carry her down the hall.

She's right.

We've got rooms to christen.

Chapter 9

Five Years Later

The tripod goes first.

I clock it in my peripheral — three thousand dollars of carbon fiber tipping in slow motion because my wife's ass knocked it sideways while I had her pinned against the equipment shelf. It cracks against the studio floor hard enough to make my twenty-year-old self grieve.

I don't stop kissing her.

"That sounded expensive," Wren mumbles into my mouth.

"It was."

"Are you going to—"

"No."

She grins against me, hooks her fingers through my belt loops, and drags my hips to hers. Or as close as they get with seven months of our second kid between us. She's enormous. She's luminous. She's wearing one of my old flannels with nothing underneath because she came downstairs from studying to allegedly ask about aperture settings for Monday's intermediate class — and I caught her nipples through the fabric and we both knew the question was bullshit.

That was eight minutes ago. Since then I've swept the shooting table with one arm, sacrificed a reflector panel to gravity, and learned that pregnancy has made her so responsive that dragging my teeth along the side of her neck buckles her knees.