Total pages in book: 41
Estimated words: 37270 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 186(@200wpm)___ 149(@250wpm)___ 124(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 37270 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 186(@200wpm)___ 149(@250wpm)___ 124(@300wpm)
“You mean…?” he asks, deliberately wanting me to tell him again, wanting, like me, to relive this moment forever. I nod, smile, and feel him hug me so fast and hard it winds me.
His huge body’s jerking with silent sobs I know he’d never let me see, but I can feel them mixing with my own.
“You’ve made me the happiest man alive, Melissa! The happiest!” he exclaims once he’s recovered enough to show me his face. His dark eyes are wet with tears, but they’re tears of joy. However, Mark being Mark, decrees a new set of rules if I’m with child now.
“No more cooking and no more starting fires or getting dizzy or anything else without me to supervise. Got it?” he asks, thumbing a tear from my cheek and pressing it to his lips.
“I love you, Melissa… and whoever you are in there,” he adds, leaning his body and pressing his head against my belly. We sit like this until it gets dark, and when Mark suggests we order a pizza, I’m all ears.
“No,” he assures me, “we won’t be having lamb again. Not for a long time.”
EPILOGUE
THREE YEARS LATER
Mark
It’s the perfect situation for us all. Winter in the States can be brutal, especially with the little ones. So, coming home to Australia for the northern winter months is perfect.
The family home Melissa pledged to keep in the family is our USA base, with the beachfront Sydney house our main stay whenever we’re home in Australia.
When the twins were new, I wouldn’t let us travel anywhere. It took Melissa months to convince me they’re not made of glass. Guess I’m just a little obsessive about protecting what’s mine, but now they’re a little older, we can travel as a family. What better way to enjoy this vast brown land than camping in style.
“Glamping, I think they call it,” I remark, screwing up my nose and scratching my head as I try to figure out which pole goes where in our tent that costs about as much as the motor home I bought. Almost, but what’s money if you can’t enjoy it?
“Why don’t we just all sleep in the camper?” Melissa asks, the eternal voice of reason whenever I’m trying to prove just how well I can provide for my family, even if we are three hundred miles from the nearest anything.
“I thought it would be fun. Y’know? The kids can have a fort in the tent. That kinda thing.”
Melissa looks over at me from the outdoor camping chair she’s propped herself up in with a sleeping toddler on each arm.
“Can they at least sleep in the camper until you’ve put the magic ‘fort’ up?” she asks me, stifling a grin, teasing me just a little more than usual.
“My property developer hero,” she coos, standing up with ease as she expertly cradles our children and makes her way to the hotel on wheels I loosely refer to as “the bus.”
“I can help you get them down,” I offer, but realize I can’t do both. I can’t make a tent and settle the babies.
The not-so-distant rumble of thunder, followed by heavy drops of warm rain, makes me look up.
I think I’ve gone soft, working too long in the office. Some hunter-gatherer I am. Just as well, we have the bus. And central heating. And a plasma TV…
Roughing it in the bush can be tough, but I think it’s safe to say I’m actually pretty prepared—prepared to keep my family safe, warm, dry, and entertained, too, even if it’s me doing the clowning by trying to put up a tent with a rain cloud right overhead.
“Come inside!” Melissa calls out from the bus, a familiar edge in her tone that makes me cock a brow and then smile. I know she won’t give me too much of a hard time about the tent business, and seeing as it’s almost dark, it can wait until tomorrow.
I rejoin her in the luxury motor home, scooping one sleeping baby up and nestling her into her little cot. Melissa’s busy changing her brother’s diaper.
“What shall we do? My campsite’s all washed out,” I ask with mock innocence, trying not to grin widely as Melissa pretends to think while glancing over at our sleeping babies.
Our greatest gifts. Little Zak and Zoe.
And apart from Melissa, my reason for everything these days.
“I dunno. It looks like a real storm is brewing out there. We could be stuck in here for hours,” she says.
“Days,” I correct her, moving over to her and locking my mouth over hers, feeling the thrill of our first kiss now as much as I did then. I moan as her hands move over me, sliding down my front.
“How about we work on getting something useful erect?” she purrs, but we both know I’m already there.