We wound up packing our bags that night and informing our staffs the next morning that we were going to be gone for two weeks.
Lucky for Lukas, he had veteran employees who knew how to run the ship while he was gone and lucky for me, I had Tess managing my store like a well-oiled machine. She had begun working with me when Pope Chocolates started to get too big for me to handle alone.
Hilariously, my first bit of publicity came while filing my restraining order against Cam.
Sara swears she had nothing to do with it, but somehow, a few blogs and gossip columns caught onto “fallen real estate prince Aiden Cameron” harassing a little business named Pope Chocolates. Since no one could figure out Cam’s motivation, articles teasingly theorized that my chocolates were so damned good that he was simply obsessed to the point of being deranged. Lukas, Tess and I had spent many nights choking with laughter over the comments section in these articles, which tore Cam apart. Apparently, the city laughing at him was enough of an ego blow for him to leave Lukas and me alone.
Thanks to the publicity from that incident, I got listed in an article titled “The Badass Women Behind Your Favorite Brands” and from there it was history. Regular orders, custom orders – they were all pouring in so fast that I’d been forced to double my staff within the first year. And when our lease at the hotel ended just as we knew it would, Tess informed me that she noticed the coffee shop across from her apartment was moving.
Everything just fell together.
“Hey, look who’s here!” Tess said once we finished looking at the pictures of Barcelona. I turned around to find Sara making the rare midday appearance. She was still as swamped as ever at work, but she’d come by today because she knew I had an announcement. And when I told her, she – for the first time in the six years I’d known her – burst into tears.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” she bawled, looking to Tess for confirmation that this was true and not at all a joke. “Wait, you told Tess first?” she demanded, her voice still shaking and her mouth still agape as sobs choked from her throat. I tried not to laugh because she seemed to be on the verge of drowning in her own tears.
“In all fairness, Lia didn’t tell me, my brother told me. He couldn’t hold it in, I guess,” Tess giggled. “Never thought the day would come where he’d call me and say that but guess things change when you find the person you love.”
I beamed because it was true.
I had been stagnant for my first twenty-five years, shut myself off to the world for the next two-and-a-half, and then I met Lukas.
The day I found him in my hallway, my life changed. And since then it hadn’t stopped.
And while I’d achieved so much on my own, exactly the way I’d wanted to, I knew I couldn’t have done it without Lukas being my rock. My husband, my best friend, my everything. He was every important role in my life.
And pretty soon, he was going to assume yet another – a new one that he’d never dreamed of before meeting me. But like Tess said, love sparked change.
LUKAS
She wasn’t quite showing yet, but there was something going on – maybe a glow.
“You’re just happy my tits are bigger,” Lia snorted as we sat on the couch at night, watching TV as usual, with her legs in my lap and my hands wandering all over her body.
“I won’t lie, that’s definitely an added bonus,” I grinned, sucking her nipple into my mouth.
“Damn it, Lukas, this is where we paused the movie yesterday, too,” Lia pretended to whine but she couldn’t contain her breathy moan as I let my erection rub against her thighs. “Fuck it,” she muttered, turning the TV off as she reached down between us, sliding her hands into my pants and wrapping her fingers around my hot, hard cock. “No teasing, Lukas. You need to fuck me right now.”
That was another thing about her pregnancy – a complete lack of patience to feel me inside her. I took no issue with it whatsoever.
Filling my mouth and my hands with her breasts, I moved inside Lia, still in awe of how unbelievably wet she got for me. She was so damned easy to worship, to get hooked on. I still couldn’t get enough and thank God, I didn’t have to.
She was my wife now – my best friend, my partner in crime and most importantly, the mother of my son. We were a good five months away from meeting him but we already knew his name – Nicholas Wyatt Hendricks. Nicholas after Lia’s mother, Nicole, and Wyatt after my brother who would have been the best uncle – who I knew was proud of me, wherever he was. It took Lia’s help to get me to that belief and whenever I wavered, she was there to hold me steady again. Because like I was hers, she was my anchor. She was the woman who changed me and my life for the better, and every day, I tried to find a different way to let her know.
Of course, for the next fifty-two days, I had a new method. Using the deck of cards Lia had bought at the airport in Spain, just so we could pass time till our flight, I’d worked on a little project for her between my breaks working on the nursery.
With a black Sharpie, I’d written one thing I loved about her on every card.
21. I love the little sound you make when you stretch in the morning.
22. I love every time you introduce me as your husband to new people we meet.
23. I love carrying you to bed because you fall asleep on me every night on the couch.
24. I love when you kiss the back of my hand. I love the times you do it without even realizing.
It had been like this since I’d met her, but there were a million things Lia unknowingly did that made me stop for a moment and thank God with everything inside me that she was mine. Most of the time, it was nothing – a look exchanged in public, a random memory she’d tell me with excitement. On the outside, it looked like just another moment. But that made it even better.
25. I love the mundane moments I fall deeper in love with you and you have no idea.