Page 55 of Protected by the Sinner (The Sinner’s Touch #2)

New Orleans

Months Later

“Ball, mommy?”

“Yes, the most colorful one, sweetheart.”

“Pink,” she says, handing me the ball she picked, a bright pink one with little silver stars.

I smile, thinking that for Violet, every ball could be pink. Maybe the whole world is pink in her pure, innocent eyes—my forever baby. She loves that color.

I look at my little daughter—so eager to help me decorate our Christmas tree—and my heart swells in my chest.

I did it, I whisper to myself.

I finally have a home where I can celebrate Christmas, birthdays, and New Year’s Eve.

Walls covered in framed pictures of us and her father—and soon, of the little boy on the way: my Lucien.

A family gathered around the dinner table, enjoying life’s little pleasures, such as the three of us snuggled in bed on a Sunday morning.

My husband, relaxed and half asleep, with Violet napping on his chest and our mutt—the son of Amos and Lilly’s dog—curled at our feet.

My siblings are not nearby but always present for the moments that matter.

Being called sister, aunt, sister-in-law, mom, wife. Building bonds. Creating a family. Loving and being loved. Belonging to someone, to a home, to a family.

Ambition is relative.

Mine is summed up in everything I have now, and it has nothing to do with living in a ten-bedroom mansion but everything to do with knowing that, day by day, my family and I are building our story.

We have a story.

Not a perfect one—not a prince finding his princess and living happily ever after—but the story of two broken, guarded, wounded souls. A couple still smoothing out their rough edges, who met through a lie, yet chose to fight for their own version of “forever.”

Fairy tales don’t appeal to me. I want real love. The kind that sometimes means ripping each other’s clothes off out of shared stubborn frustration, and then, the next day, becomes slow, deep, and full of whispered promises.

“This is going to be the prettiest tree in all of New Orleans,” Beau says, catching us by surprise, and Violet goes wild.

She’s obsessed with her dad, and honestly, I get it. Who could resist his grumpy charm?

He kneels to pick her up, and her giggles sound like music to me.

“Pink ball, Daddy!”

Beau looks at me and smiles—one of those rare ones he gives only to the two of us. “So many pink balls,” he says, winking at me.

The nanny walks in and says it’s bath time. After the usual protests, our daughter lets herself be led away.

“I read it’s just a phase. As they get older, girls’ favorite colors tend to change.”

He lifts me into his arms and sits down with me cradled in his lap. “I don’t mind. We could paint the whole house pink if it means she’ll keep smiling like that,” he says.

“I don’t care about the color of the ornaments either. I just want the tree. Not what’s on it, but what it stands for.”

“And what does it stand for, my Amber?”

“The three of us. Together.”

“Four,” he corrects, placing a hand on my five-month belly.

“Sorry, baby,” I say to Lucien. “The four of us. Together. These memories that no one can take from us. They’ll never be forgotten. They’ll be the foundation of family for our children, something neither of us ever had. Living proof of our love.”