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picture perfect

Christian

“What is it?”

She shakes her head but leans into the monitor as if getting closer will undo what she’s seen. She clicks several buttons and voices comes from the computer speakers.

“We have money.” I know that voice.

“You know how I feel about that,” Ayla responds.

Scratching across the camera’s microphone muffles the recording.

“This isn’t up for debate. Just do what I told you to. Don’t make me tell you again.”

Oh, I think the fuck not. My blood boils, and my temper explodes. I will kill him.

“Don’t make me remind you that I don’t take direction from you. I don’t need your permission to live how I choose.”

I’d celebrate my wife’s backbone if it weren’t for the sound of a fist hitting flesh at the same time her name bellows from the fucker.

There’s crunching of metal met with the shattering of plastic, but it’s what follows that I’ll never unhear.

The thunk of my wife’s body landing from what we know unequivocally was not a fall. It’s the soundtrack of my nightmares

Her hands fly over the keys and her incessant mouse clicking is so loud I want to ask her to stop. But I don’t have to. She spins the screen around, and there, upside down as the camera flies from the ridge, is Seamus Murphy’s face, as anger morphs to horror.

“He tried to kill me?” Ayla chokes out on a whisper. “My own dad. Or he didn’t care that he could have.”

I sit, doing everything I can not to fly down the stairs, get in my car, and find the fucker to kill him slowly and painfully. But I can’t think of torture worthy of him.

I stare at my wife, and she stares back at me.

“What do you want to do?” I finally break the silence. I’ve rubbed my mouth raw, when I say, “Franklin, come.” I pat my chest.

Ayla tilts her head. “I thought you didn’t want him on the furniture.”

“I don’t. I also need a way to calm the fuck down so I don’t commit first-degree premeditated murder and go to prison. So…”

“So Franklin is the lesser of two evils.”

Yeah.

“I want time to think. Like loads of time. Not react. Not fly off the handle. I want time.”

“Do you want time alone or are you okay with company?”

“Company’s good.” She clicks her computer several times, her eyes brimming with tears that defy gravity and never fall.

Many minutes later, I’m dying to know. “Princess, what are you doing?”

“I emailed myself copies of everything. I emailed Cian and Liam with instructions not to open unless directed to. I added a copy to the server. And I moved a copy to my desktop.” She pops the card out.

“This needs to go somewhere for safekeeping. It has timestamps and cannot be manipulated.” She sets it on her desk as if it were coiled snake that will strike at the barest disturbance.

She rises from her chair, moves to sit on the sofa at my side, stroking her dog who is fast asleep in my lap. His tongue sticks out from his muzzle and he’s sucking as if he’s nursing.

“When does he go to boot camp?”

“Two weeks.”

“Can you take some time off work at that point?”

“Sure. What are you thinking? ”

“I’m thinking we should go to Greece. Leave all this bullshit here. Make no decisions before then. Just head to the Mediterranean, lie in the sun, wander the old towns, eat, fuck, drink, fuck some more. And celebrate living.”

How she manages to make things better for me, drain my anger and vitriol, while turning me on, even in the midst of one of my life’s worst moments, I’ll never know.

“I’m in for that, Princess.”

I lean to kiss my wife, drinking deeply from her. Knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that she is my past, my present, and my future. And that everything, even the stuff that could be horrible alone, with her will be picture perfect.

Ayla

Three weeks later

“July may be the perfect time to be in Greece. Or maybe every day is the perfect time to be in Greece.”

“You’ve said that before, only it was September that time.

” Christian extends an iced coffee to me where I stand in the incredible clear water of the villa’s pool.

I’m naked as the day I was born and leaning against the pool wall watching the sun set.

The huge fiery ball isn’t playing hide-and-seek with mountains, but flirting with the horizon as if she might give him just one little peek before sliding away in a coy game of chase.

While I love my camera and I’ve taken hundreds of shots since we’ve been in Greece, I’m loving being in the moment right here, right now, present with my husband, and not having a lens to filter the encounter through.

Besides, beach sunsets aren’t my thing. Mountain ones most certainly are.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me we honeymooned here until we arrived. ”

“Why? There was no need to stress you with it. It might’ve triggered a memory or it might not have, but there was no reason to not relive it again for the first time.”

“The dark corners still persist. Honey, what if my memory never comes back?” I’ve asked myself this question more times than I can count.

“Then we’ll build new memories and have a life so full that that missing window of time pales in comparison.”

This man is too good to be true.

“Now, wife, I’d like to revisit the conversation about our sons.”

“Sons only? No daughters?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking how we could have kids and treat them equally and fairly. I cannot handle a daughter who looks like you and might want to have sex before she’s fifty.”

“And our sons?”

“Well, that’s the beauty of my plan. We’re only going to have boys.” His grin is boyish as he plants his hands on my waist.

“Oh? How do you figure?”

“Well, the father determines the sex.”

“That’s biologically accurate,” I concede.

“So, I’ll only allow boys. Period. End of discussion.”

“Well, you seem to have thought this through with scientific certainty. Good. Good. I’d hate for us to be rash.”

“Exactly.”

“And how to you plan to accomplish this feat?”

“There’s a Chinese fertility calendar. I downloaded it to my phone. It’s nearly foolproof.”

“So if I were to try to seduce my husband—” I rub my hand down his abs to grip his thick hot cock. “You’d need to check your phone to make sure it’s not the wrong day to satisfy me?” I’m baiting him. It’s the most fun I’ve had in a while.

“Afraid so, wife. Can’t have beauties like you out in the world. You’re one in a trillion and all mine.” He thrusts his cock into my fist.

“So what does your calendar say about May eighteenth? ”

“Let me—” He turns to the side before whipping back to face me. “What?”

“I’m waiting, Honey.”

The emotions that pass across his face. Panic, joy, wonder, confusion, elation. “Princess?”

“It’s early, like six or seven weeks. I only found out the morning we flew out since my cycle no showed.”

“You’re having my baby?”

“It’s definitely yours, handsome.” I widen my eyes and pretend to be confused. “But what if it’s a girl?”

“Okay—all the kids are celibate forever. Or until we want grandkids. Deal?”

“Works for m—” I never get the word “me” out because he falls on my mouth, kissing me through a smile that is so wide, it must come from the inside out.

My husband. My love. The father of my child. The man who refuses to walk on eggshells and the man brings me caffeine. My protector and my lover.

“This is going to be one hell of an adventure.”