Page 90 of Promise of Punishment

“Go long!” Wes shouts to Lachlan and tosses the football across the sun-drenched shoreline belonging to the Sea House hotel.

It lands in the dunes, buried in the beach grass.

That hasn’t happened once since they started playing about half an hour ago.

I know because I keep glancing at my sexy husband in his bathing suit, his incredible abs on display.

Focus. I continue filling the toy bucket with water, like I have four times already, so I can bring it to the sandcastle I’m building with my daughter.

“Fable,” Emery shouts. “She took off.”

I whirl around.

In a gold bikini, looking like a model and not like she ever had a baby, Emery stands with her ice-cream-covered son on her hip, pointing down the beach.

My darling two-year-old runs across the sand, headed for the dunes where the ball landed. I take off after her.

Her dark curly hair bounces as she pushes her little legs to go faster than seems possible. Giggles escape her, and I can’t help but laugh at how cute she looks, like a drunk sailor in a sky-blue bathing suit that matches her eyes. She stumbles like she’s about to go down, but rights herself and keeps going.

If she falls, she’ll get a mouthful of sand and the fun will be over.

“Wes!” I call out, moving slower than usual thanks to the almost full-sized bun baking in my oven. In two months, we’ll get to meet daughter number two.

He turns, just as our little one darts by him, too far out of reach for him to grab.

It only takes him three long strides to snatch her up into his strong arms. She giggles and pushes away from him, pointing at the dunes. “Ball. Ball.”

He kisses her chubby cheek and walks her toward Lachlan, who straightens up from the grassy dunes with the football in his hand.

I take a moment to catch my breath, hating how easily winded I get, even though it’s for a good reason.

Lachlan brings the ball to my still pointing child. She pats it with her little hand. “Ball. Ball. I play.”

Wes laughs. “Not for a while, Faelynn.”

Her name always makes me smile. I don’t know how we’ll come up with another unique one for the new baby.

Wes was very specific about picking this one.

“I want her to have a name as pretty as yours,” he said, standing in her finished nursery at Harmony—the newly renamed Hellfire. Floral curtains and bedding in soft shades of pink, yellow, and green gave the room an ethereal feel, while a mural of an enchanted abandoned garden wrapped the walls in magic. “And I want it to start with an F,” he added.

“What did you have in mind?” I asked, certain he’d given this much thought. Wes has a plan for a plan and a third plan in case the first two fall through. He also doesn’t see this trait is more about his need to control things than to keep order, although he needs that too.

He took a baby name book from one of the drawers and handed it to me. “I circled four. But I want you to pick which one you like best, unless you don’t like any of them.”

Doubtful. I giggled through my nose and opened the page he marked. Fate, Flora, Fiera, and Faelynn. Each had meanings and origins. Faelynn’s jumped out at me. Fairy princess, little fairy.

I’d suggested angel to him once as a name, but he said I was his angel and our baby would be his little fairy. It must be why he circled it twice.

“Faelynn seems perfect since it’s likely she’ll be tiny like me, even with your height genes.” My dad was six feet tall, and I still ended up as short as my mom.

“I would hope so.” He bent and kissed me on the lips, his big hand holding my belly.

Emery appears beside me, holding Leithan—Leith for short. The little guy licks blue gelato from his shirt. The cotton candy color coats his tongue, fingers, and face.

She spent the last twenty minutes trying to help him eat it instead of wearing it. She rolls her eyes. “I give up. He’s as stubborn as his father.”

Leith looks at me with his big eyes—hazel swirls of gold and turquoise—and smirks. I’ve seen his father do it several times and am convinced Faelynn will grow up to be in love with him one day.