Chapter 1

Moira

“Cannon,” I call up the stairs. “I need you down here right now so I can get your shoes on. We’re going to be late.”

And God knows I totally don’t need your father smirking at me over that since I’m always giving him shit for being late.

“Cah—” Jaime says as she points at the stairs. With blue eyes and chocolate-brown hair sticking out in tufts all over her little eighteen-month-old toddler head, she’s the miniature version of Zach. Well, Cannon also looks just like Zach with the same hair and eyes, but Jaime just sort of has that domineering look that is descended directly from Zach’s DNA.

“Cah—” she says again, trying to say her older brother’s name. Two years separate them, but you can’t tell that to Jaime. She abhors being separated from Cannon and doesn’t understand that big boys can go up the stairs by themselves and sweet, little babies that toddle around like drunk monkeys half the time need to stay down with Mommy.

“Can-non,” I annunciate slowly as I squat down in front of her. Giving her a smile, I encourage her again. “Can you say Can-non?”

Her lips quirk upward in a grin, showing her cute baby teeth. With an evil twinkle in her eye, she says, “Boom!”

I roll my eyes as I lean in to kiss her forehead. “I’m so going to kill your father for teaching you that.”

Zach thought it was hilarious to yell, “Boom!” every time Jaime tried to say Cannon’s name. It only took about four times and she was doing the same.

Yup… need to kill Zach for that one, and I’d be happy to oblige if I could actually get fifteen minutes of quality time with him to cheerfully wring his neck. Damn, but I miss that man. All he ever seems to do these days is work, work, and oh yeah, more work. He gets up every weekday morning with the kids, affording me an extra-blessed hour of sleep while he feeds and dresses them, and then gets to spend some precious “daddy” time playing with them in the den. I get up, he hands me coffee, kisses me quickly on my morning-breath mouth, and jets out the door. Most nights, I’m lucky to still be awake when he slides into bed, so exhausted he does nothing more than snuggle up to me to murmur softly, “’Night, Moira. I love you,” before he’s falling dead asleep.

I sort of knew that marriage and kids could change your life.

For the better, of course.

But I also knew, compliments of my older and wiser sister, that the minute kids came along, your priorities as husband and wife would completely change. First and foremost, our lives now revolve around Cannon and Jaime. Secondly, around Cannon’s Department Store where Zach works. I get that he’s trying to prove himself. Zach’s trying to make his way in the corporate world, and he couldn’t rest on the laurels of just being godson to CEO, Randall Cannon. No… he has to go out there and show everyone that he has what it takes to run a major business.

Sometimes… just sometimes, I wish I could escape with Zach; maybe go back to the Amazon rainforest where we first met and live by ourselves. I want my wild and uncivilized man back who only had eyes for me. Now I’m lucky if his tired eyes can stay open long enough to give me a once over before he falls asleep.

Tiny feet pounding down the stairs snap me out of my musings, and Cannon comes skidding into the den, holding his shoes in his hands.

“Up on the couch,” I tell him, and he dutifully hops up there for me. Jaime struggles to pull herself up beside Cannon. She’s getting good at swinging herself up, my little Tarzana in the making, but sometimes she needs a boost. I grab her by the waistband of her jeans and do just that.

“Is Daddy going to eat with us tonight?” Cannon asks with excitement, and guilt floods me that my child even has to ask such a thing.

When had we gotten to the point that it was almost a miraculous event for Zach to sit down with his family for a meal?

“He sure is,” I say with a smile as I tie his shoelaces into double knots.

And I can say that with assurance since it was Zach’s idea… no wait, it was his command that we all meet up at Vortex Burger to celebrate. I internally smile over his exuberance last night when I told him I got the job.

Not just any job.

The. Job!

The job of all jobs!

It’s the very one I’ve been waiting for, and I’m dying to get back to work.

When I first got pregnant with Cannon, Zach and I were still living in Evanston, Illinois where I was teaching in the anthropology department at Northwestern. Zach was finishing up his MBA at Kellogg. There was some talk then of me possibly quitting work to stay at home with Cannon, but that never manifested. It was more of a dream that I didn’t think could come to fruition while we were living on one income.

Granted, Zach’s education was all paid for by Randall, but we still needed to put food on the table because while Zach grudgingly accepted help with his education, he refused to take money from Randall for anything else. I think the way he reasoned it in his mind was that when he finally went to work for Cannon’s Department Store, he’d be able to pay back the education costs with hard work and dedication. It’s one of the reasons why my husband and I rarely get time together because he’s always working so damn hard to make Randall proud and ensure he has no regrets over his faith in Zach. Not that Randall ever would.

Things finally fell into place for us after Zach received his MBA and we moved to Atlanta so he could go to work full time in the corporate headquarters as Randall’s right-hand man. We were able to afford not only a really nice house in the pretty suburbs, but we were also able to afford the luxury of me taking time away from work to raise the kids.

It wasn’t a permanent goal to be a stay-at-home mom, but it was an important short-term goal to us both. I wanted to spend as much time with the munchkins as I could before they started school, and Zach was all for that. I think that was some of his primal upbringing among the Caraican tribe in the Amazon where the men went out to hunt the meat and the women stayed home to raise the children and cook said meat.

I snicker, because while Zach has truly become modernized and even developed very progressive thinking, there’s still a caveman buried deep down inside of him. If he could actually muster up the sexual energy lately, I think he’d be very happy to keep me impregnated forever.

But in reality, while I love my children more than life itself, I’ve been getting a bit antsy. I’m itching to get back to work, and I don’t think I have it in me to continue on for another two and a half years until Jaime can start Pre-K.

So Zach and I talked about it, and he suggested I look for some part-time work that would satisfy my need to still spend time with the kids, while exercising my brain on an adult level.

And that’s what was offered to me just yesterday.

The job!

It’s as a project manager for Senpace, a leading cultural research organization that puts together and manages anthropological research expeditions. It is “the job” because I can work remotely from home even though the corporate headquarters are in Irvine, California. While it is far removed from my true love of teaching, it is still right up my alley because I’m a freaking organizational whiz. All I have to do is help to create the design of the project using various methodologies, handle recruitment for staffing, and then manage the project from my end on a computer. Easy as pie!

When Zach slipped quietly into our room last night, I was sitting straight up in the bed, almost bouncing with energy. Without me even saying a word to him, he smiled at me and said, “You got the job.”

“Yes,” I squealed as I came up to my knees and bounced like a schoolgirl on the mattress.

Zach held my eyes for just a second before they were drawn downward to my breasts, which were now bouncing right along with me in the silky blue nightie I put on knowing he’d like that. As I was just a tad closer to thirty-seven than thirty-six, gravity decided to leave my boobs alone for now, and Zach was definitely a boob man. And even though just a moment before, his face was lined with exhaustion, now it was filled with desire. He dropped his briefcase to the floor and his hand came up to tug on his tie.

I’ve seen Zach in a variety of dress and undress, from completely naked and covered in the dirt and sweat of the Amazon, to the expert cut of his Hugo Boss suit, and I have to tell you… I never get sidetracked by either extreme because it’s really his eyes that always hold me captive.

They promise me so many things that I know only he can give me. They command that I never forget what a lucky woman I am to have this man. It was his eyes last night that had me captivated as he walked toward me.

Zach crawled onto the bed, pushed me to the mattress, and roughly pulled my legs apart. He then went down on me while murmuring, “I’m so damn proud of you, baby,” and “God, I fucking miss eating your pussy,” and “I love you so much, Moira,” and finally, “Let’s go celebrate at Vortex tomorrow night.”

It was a perfect night, and after my husband made me come twice, he rolled me over to my stomach, hauled my ass up into the air, and held me down by my neck while he fucked me hard from behind.

That is the Zach I miss the most on those nights where he’s too tired to do anything past snuggling into me tight. My primitive, controlling, domineering man that focuses all of these egocentric traits on giving me pleasure, protecting his family, and making us happy.

“Okay,” I say as I tap my hands on Cannon’s thighs. “Shoes are on, Jaime’s dressed, and we are ready to rock and roll. Let’s go eat some burgers.”

“Is Uncle Randall coming?” Cannon asks.

“He wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I tell him, and that’s true times ten.

Randall went without Zach for eighteen years when he was lost to the Amazon wild after his missionary parents, Jacob and Kristen Easton, died. While Zach was raised by the very tribe his parents were ministering to, Randall mourned hard for the loss of his friends and their child.

But he never gave up looking, and he finally found Zach.

Then he sent me to the Amazon, and I brought Zach home.

And here we are, almost eight and a half years later, and I am still head over heels in love with my husband and the father of my children. I have the almost perfect life, and the only thing that would make it better is if Zach didn’t work so hard, but I know this is just for him to pay his dues. It won’t always be like this.

I hope.

Scooping Jaime off the couch, I walk into the kitchen with Cannon scrambling behind me. I pull my phone from my pocket and throw it in my purse before grabbing it, and we all head toward the laundry room, which connects to the garage.

Just as I reach for the door, my phone rings, and I have to put Jaime down with a grunt of frustration to search for it in my purse.

I answer on a breathless, “Hello”.

“Mrs. Easton?” I hear a crisp female voice on the other end.

I sigh internally because I know what’s coming. “Yes… hi, Lila,” I say, trying to hold the disappointment at bay. “How are you?”

“I’m so sorry to make this call, but Mr. Easton wanted me to call you and tell you he’s stuck in a meeting, so he’ll be late.”

“And Mr. Cannon?” I ask, even though I know the answer to this as well.

“He’ll be on time. In fact, he’s left with his driver already,” Lila says, and I find it odd that her voice is more brusque and businesslike when she talks about Randall versus Zach. And maybe that’s because she is Zach’s personal secretary, a woman who I sometimes speak more to on any given day than my own husband.

“Tell it to me straight,” I say in exasperation as I open the door to the garage and help Jaime down the steps while holding her hand. “Is he going to make it?”

Lila is quiet for a moment, and I know she’s trying to figure out the best way to handle a wife on the verge of getting let down and possibly pissed off. I almost expect her to bring out the extra-soft kid gloves she sometimes wears with me, but instead, her voice sounds a little aloof. “It’s an emergency that came up; he’s putting out a rather large fire—”

“Is he going to make it?” I cut her off, my voice firm and brooking no nonsense.

“Probably not,” she softly says.

I let out a long, frustrated sigh, dropping Jaime’s hand to scrub my fingers through my hair. “Figures,” I mutter, my chest constricting with disappointment.

“Zach’s had an incredibly hard day today,” Lila says in defense. “You know he wouldn’t be late unless this was a crucial meeting.”

Hmmmm. That’s interesting. She’s never called him by his first name to me—not that it’s inappropriate because frankly, I feel weird when she calls me Mrs. Easton. Makes me feel old, and I’d rather just be Moira, so I’m cool with the first name. But she’s never used Zach before with me, and she’s never defended his working late to me either. I think the loyalties of one Miss Lila Hendrick are now being tested firmly between her employer and the wife that she often has to “handle” because Zach would rather avoid my anger.

A variety of emotions seems to overwhelm me all at once, but the one leading the pack is sadness that “family” night clearly isn’t going to happen. I know I’m going into full-on pity-party mode when I say, “Lila… call Mr. Cannon and tell him we won’t be making it. Please give him my apologies. He’s coming to Sunday dinner, so we’ll see him then.”

“And what shall I tell Zach?” she asks.

Thinking a moment, I focus in on how quickly I’d gone from happy excitement to crushing defeat. I think of how many times this has happened over the last few years since we moved here, and how clearly, it’s just not a pill that’s getting easier to swallow.

Just this once, I let my anger and emotion come in to play. “Tell Mr. Easton,” I say, putting emphasis on the Mr. Easton, “that clearly he has something more important than attending the celebratory dinner he planned for his wife, and she will see him when he gets home.”

I don’t wait for her to respond. Instead, I disconnect the phone and throw it back in my purse. I pick Jaime up and head toward my car. “Come on, kiddos… let’s go eat some burgers.”

Fuck Zach and his need to work. I’m heading out with at least two loves of my life who seem to like hanging with me. We’ll celebrate my new job. I’ll watch Jaime pick daintily at her fries while Cannon wolfs down his meal. We’ll talk about silly things, and I’ll try to forget for a moment how much I feel like a single mom much of the time.