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  ‘You always do,’ she muttered as they returned to Jazz and the three babies.

  ‘I was expecting you two to disappear,’ Jazz told them cheerfully. ‘You’re famous for that.’

  ‘Well, we’ve grown up a bit,’ Freddie told her sister-in-law piously.

  ‘You may have,’ Zac said levelly. ‘But I haven’t.’

  And with that statement, Zac swung Freddie up into his arms and carried her indoors, impervious to Angel taunting him from the barbecue. Ignoring her protests, he carried her upstairs to their bedroom and fell down on the bed with her, lamenting that she would need to go on a diet before he would try that again. Freddie thumped him with a pillow and then, suddenly, he was flattening her to the mattress and gazing down at her with an urgency that sent heat coursing through her lower limbs.

  ‘I love you so much, meu pequenino,’ he told her with raw sincerity. ‘It’s hell being away from you for so long.’

  And at that admission, Freddie melted, breathlessly telling him how much she loved him while frantically tearing him out of his jeans in a generous invitation that Zac greeted with all the potent virility he could demonstrate. Freddie showered him with love and he never tired of her warmth.

  ‘I think we should have a marriage blessing to make up for our catastrophic wedding day,’ Zac told her afterwards, lying with Freddie wrapped in bliss in his strong arms. ‘I’ve also torn up the pre-nup agreement. It wasn’t fair enough to you and you signed it under duress.’

  They both had a healthy appetite by the time they joined the barbecue. Zac was mobbed by the kids because he always played with them and expectations ran high.

  ‘Freedom was never this much fun,’ Zac told her before he ran off to play football with Eloise and Jack.

  And with a contented sigh, Freddie cradled Antonella and sat with the new family she had gained, while marvelling in Zac’s energy levels, because he had travelled for hours to get back in time for his daughter’s birthday. But then that energy went into everything Zac did, she conceded, including his persistent pursuit of her. And she couldn’t stop smiling at the acknowledgement that what had most annoyed her about Zac when they first met was truly his saving grace.

  * * * * *

  Coming next month

  THE BRIDE’S BABY OF SHAME

  Caitlin Crews

  “I can see you are not asleep,” came a familiar voice from much too close. “It is best to stop pretending, Sophie.”

  It was a voice that should not have been anywhere near her, not here.

  Not in Langston House where, in a few short hours, she would become the latest in a long line of unenthused countesses.

  Sophie took her time turning over in her bed. And still, no matter how long she stared or blinked, she couldn’t make Renzo disappear.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice barely more than a whisper.

  “It turns out we have more to discuss.”

  She didn’t like the way he said that, dark and something like lethal.

  And Renzo was here.

  Right here, in this bedroom Sophie had been installed in as the future Countess of Langston. It was all tapestries, priceless art, and frothy antique chairs that looked too fragile to sit in.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she said, her lips too dry and her throat not much better.

  “I think you do.” Renzo stood at the foot of her bed, one hand looped around one of the posts in a lazy, easy sort of grip that did absolutely nothing to calm Sophie’s nerves. “I think you came to tell me something last night but let my temper scare you off. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say you used my temper as an excuse to keep from telling me, would it not?”

  Sophie found her hands covering her belly again, there beneath her comforter. Worse, Renzo’s dark gaze followed the movement, as if he could see straight through the pile of soft linen to the truth.

  “I would like you to leave,” she told him, fighting to keep her voice calm. “I don’t know what showing up here, hours before I’m meant to marry, could possibly accomplish. Or is this a punishment?”

  Renzo’s lips quirked into something no sane person would call a smile. He didn’t move and yet he seemed to loom there, growing larger by the second and consuming all the air in the bedchamber.

  He made it hard to breathe. Or see straight.

  “We will get to punishments in a moment,” Renzo said. His dark amber gaze raked over her, bold and harsh. His sensual mouth, the one she’d felt on every inch of her skin and woke in the night yearning for again, flattened. His gaze bored into her, so hard and deep she was sure he left marks. “Are you with child, Sophie?”

  Continue reading

  THE BRIDE’S BABY OF SHAME

  Caitlin Crews

  Available next month

  Copyright ©2018 by Caitlin Crews

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