Page 159 of The Daddy’s Girl

My mom likes to remind me I was much the same.

“How are you feeling, Trouble?” Matis asks from the floor, keeping very still for his daughter.

I rub a hand over my swollen belly. “I’m feeling wonderful.”

Under my hand, the baby kicks. Maisie places her hands there too and looks up at me with wonder in her eyes. When her little sister bumps her hand from the womb, she giggles and hops, knocking loose the last of her messy buns.

“Mama, the baby bientôt?” she asks.

“Soon, Maisie,” I reply, ruffling her hair. “Only a few more weeks.”

Walking farther into the room, I lean down and press my lips to Matis’s. The red lipstick smears onto my lips, making the girls laugh.

“I’m going to make dinner,” I say as I run my nails through his hair.

Maisie follows me to the kitchen, and I turn on the music from the speaker as I pull food from the paper bag. She starts coloring at the table as I sing along to the music and start preparing dinner.

Glancing back at Maisie, I admire her floral dress and start brainstorming things we could incorporate for our next spring line. Ever since moving over to children’s fashion, I’ve felt so much more liberated in my work.

As Matis says, I took the long way home, and it rings with so much truth. After many failed attempts at getting into the fashion industry, I started seeing every no as a new open door.

Five years ago, I started designing little girls’ dresses and rompers, which then led to opening my own self-made line and consigning them to local stores and running our own website.

Now I have my own brand, and we’re selling Stella Moon children’s clothes worldwide.

Matis has enough in his retirement and I have plenty in my inheritance to keep us and the girls well taken care of for the rest of our lives, so we put most of what we make with the brand back into Alzheimer’s research funds.

In Estelle’s name.

Glancing back at her chair in the corner, my heart aches with missing the way she used to sit there and watch the girls. When Matis and I got married, we took Estelle out of the home and brought her here to live with us. She spent the last of her days watching her grandbabies, and even if she never outwardly knew the girls were hers, I believe deep down she did.

The heart recognizes more than the mind can.

She passed one year after Maisie was born, living far longer than most do with her advanced condition. A black-and-white photo of her in her burlesque costume hangs over the chair so she stays with us.

“How the hell do you get this stuff off?” Matis enters the kitchen, wiping at his face with a makeup-removing cloth.

Laughing, I turn toward him and help to wipe the mascara from his eyes. They are still lined with black and honestly…it somehow manages to make him hotter still.

This man’s attractiveness should be studied.

Tossing the dirty cloth in the bin, he crowds me toward the counter. Tilting my chin up toward him, he kisses me gently.

“A good day at work?” he asks.

“A very good day. We signed the Harrods deal.”

His eyes widen and his jaw drops. “Mon trésor, that is incredible! I’m so proud of you.”

Taking my face in his hands, he devours my lips with his.

“We should go out and celebrate!” he suggests.

The thought exhausts me. “Can celebrating be you, me, and the girls going out for gelato after dinner?”

With a chuckle, he nods. “Voilà une idée parfaite.”

In our younger, less pregnant days, we would celebrate with long nights in the club, often with others in very kinky scenarios, but now…our lives are perfectly quiet and intimate, and I savor each and every moment.