“I know. You told me. And you told me how I’d changed your life in just a matter of weeks and I realised again how you’d changed mine. I didn’t recognise the woman I’d become, but I liked her. I liked being me, even though I was exhausted.”
We were in the same spot that we had been all those years ago. “I think I fell in love with you all over again. You looked shattered because Callum had been up most of the night and I don’t think you’d showered in days, plus you’d spent the afternoon instructing a barrister on the case you were working on…”
“What made you ask me to marry you again that night?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe because I had no other words that would get across what I felt. Then you paused…”
“And I saw the look of fear on your face. You looked bereft.”
“Then you threw yourself at me and told me yes about six hundred times. Then kept saying yes when I banged you against the door.” I knew my grin was dirty. The store was cold, but it was private and we’d discovered that we could have a few minutes of privacy in here, unlike in our bedroom into which Callum made pretty much nightly trips until he was about seven, wanting Marie.
“I think the cold sharpened my orgasms. Ah, there it is.” She reached for the envelope that was in plain sight on the shelves near the canned food. “Let’s see where I’m going next. And hope it’s somewhere warmer.”
I watched her face, still the same beautiful eyes and sharp cheekbones, just a little older now.
“The place where we made the twins.For crying out loud, Grant, please tell me they don’t know about these clues. They’ll only get revenge.”
“They don’t know the truth about them. I may’ve told them some stories just to gross them out and stop them going in my study for my whisky.”
“We conceived the twins in your study. At least it’s warm in there.” She headed to the door.
“I think it was because it was warm in there.”
A couple of minutes later and I closed the door behind us into my study. It was my den now, work becoming something I dipped into every so often when they were busy at the office or needed an opinion on something complex.
“Do you remember that night?” Marie sat at my desk, just as she had then.
“Every minute of it. You were in here working and I was feeling impatient.” She’d also been wearing a skirt that made me think indecent thoughts whenever I saw her in it.
“You were feeling horny. Claire was staying at Amelie’s, and Jackson and Max were away with cubs. Callum was fast asleep and I was trying to write an advice when you walked up behind me and started massaging my shoulders.” She turned to look at me. “The next thing I know, you had my blouse unbuttoned and my bra undone, I was bent over the desk with my skirt pushed up and I was well on my way to my second orgasm.”
The hand I placed on her shoulder was batted away.
“Don’t think we’re having a repeat until I get my present.”
I threaded my fingers through her hair instead. “Do you remember afterwards when we were in bed? What you said?”
“I told you that you’d just got me pregnant.”
“How did you know?”
“I just did. Something happened. It might’ve not been that exact time, but it felt like it. And nine months later we had the twins.” Her hand went to the envelope on the desk. “I wanted to tell Payton and Seph that they were conceived with the beautiful, romantic making of love, and not a good hard fuck over your desk, Grant Callaghan.”
I laughed. “We should’ve told them about it. At least it would’ve kept them out of here.”
“True. Let’s see where I’m heading next.The place where you knew you were a mother.”
She looked at me confused.
“Let me take you there.”
Before we remodelled the house, we’d had a bedroom with a small room just off it. That was the room where Marie had moved Callum to when she moved in. He’d been a baby, not even old enough to have a big boy’s bed, and he would wake in the night without crying a lot.
It had bothered Marie. She said he was used to having no one there when he’d cried, so he’d just stopped. For months, if not longer after she’d moved in, she’d start the night with him, being there whenever he woke, come to bed with me later on, but in the morning, I’d find her back with him, on the rocking chair or when he did get his big boy’s bed, in there with him.
“Callum’s room,” she said as she opened the door. It was now a dressing room for the second master suite and the room where Eliza was sleeping.
We peered in at our granddaughter, Claire and Killian still downstairs, making the most of an hour without having to parent. Eliza looked angelic, blonde haired, long eyelashes on her fair skin, her breathing soft and deep.
