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For the love of God! I think as I sit in the back of the car next to Kiki in her car seat.

“Home, Mrs. Steel?” Giovanni, the driver Jase insists I use, asks.

“Please,” I nearly beg.

Jase. Jase. Jase. Jase. He is all-consuming, demanding, opinionated, as “alpha” as they come, and he is … mine.

Mimi thinks it’s horrible and I let it get to me. I shouldn’t.

I look over at Kiki and smile.

“Daddy’s shirt.” She points. “Yuck.”

I laugh at my little Katherine, my mother’s namesake, which was Jase’s idea.

She laughs back, reaching out her little hand and grabbing mine. It’s warm and soft, and it’s a part of Jase and a part of me.

Emotions roll to nearly a boiling point as I lean over and kiss her little cherub face.

There have been too many times in my life when I have worried about offending people, not making them feel like they have all of me and my support. The only person in my life that I feel gets me and takes me as I am one hundred percent is Jase, my husband, my best friend, the father of my children, my family.

“Ducks are bad, Mommy?” Kiki whispers.

“Not all ducks are bad, Kiki,” I whisper back.

“Okay,” she says.

“Okay,” I say back.

After dinner, I’m exhausted. Jase and I are sitting on the couch with the girls. It’s past their bedtime, but they will be gone early tomorrow morning and I won’t see them until Wednesday afternoon.

There are days when I wish I could cave into Jase’s suggestion and stay at home with them instead of working, but my work is important, and he knows that.

I want to set the same example my mother set for me. That a woman can take care of herself, her family, and do it alone if they so choose. That they can make a difference. That they can achieve any dream they have and succeed at whatever they desire.

I look over to see he is looking at me. He gives me a slow wink, as if to say everything is good, and it is. It’s so good.

Saying goodbye to the girls for even a night is hard, but when leaving them with Momma Joe and Thomas, I know they are going to be loved and entertained. They are going to have fun.

Jase is holding the car door open as I walk out after just one more kiss from the girls.

He is wearing low-hung jeans with a black leather belt, and a long-sleeved black Henley. His sleeves are pushed up, exposing his ink. His hat is on backward, and he has on sneakers.

I shake my head as I try to suppress a grin. My husband, regardless of how frustrating he can be at times, is so damn sexy it should be illegal.

This morning, when I got out of the shower and walked into the bedroom to grab clothes, there was a bag with two navy Clinton 2016 sweatshirts and my pair of navy chucks sitting on the floor next to our bed.

I didn’t buy the shirt. He did, for me and for Mimi.

Why? Because he is indulging me.

He went through a phase when he was bringing home flowers for me and the girls nearly every day. Our home looked like a florist shop. When I received the credit card bill, I was shocked to see he had spent close to five thousand dollars on flowers.

That indulgence stopped when I told him that, as much as I loved the flowers, it was excessive and we could have done so much good with that money.

His argument was: we donated plenty already.

I was angry. I mean, how much is plenty? To us … now, not the us when we first met, it wasn’t a ton of money, but it was still something I couldn’t get used to. I shopped at thrift stores growing up, for crying out loud.

He understood my point and handed me the credit card. “Do with it what you want, Carly. Whatever makes you happy.”

So, I did.

Is it silly? Looking back now, yes, it is. But he did that for me, too.

He cocks his head to the side. “You going in the house ‘just one more time’?”

“No.” I shake my head as I walk toward him. “You look … amazing.”

He smirks and nods. “You just realizing that?”

I playfully smack his rock-hard abs before getting into the back of the car.

He slides in beside me. “You look beautiful and, dare I say, relaxed?”

“Relaxed?” I laugh as he puts his arm around me and pulls me tightly to him. “How can I be relaxed?”

“Momma Joe has it all under control, baby.” Jase kisses my cheek.

“I know she does.” I nod and sigh.

“You’re worried Mimi and I will throw down?” he jokes, though it’s not really a joke.

“She’s going to think the car and driver are excessive and over the top.” I yawn, and he chuckles.

“Then you tell her that you insisted on saving the cash it would cost to park at the hotel for the night. Tell her that Giovanni is paid a salary that is far above union scale, and that you insisted. She’ll be just fine with it then.”

I laugh. “I’ll leave out the union part.”

“You do whatever it is you do to keep that smile on your face, and we’ll all be fine.”

“Then you keep doing what you do.” I pause. “Well, some of what you do that makes me happy.”

“We are happy.” He kisses the top of my head.

I smile. “We so are.”

“Right now, I wanna fuck you,” he says, and I shake my head, sighing. “But I’ll wait until after the election results are in. You rest now; it’s gonna be a busy day.”

I look up at him and smile. I smile because of him.

“I love you.”

“I know. Now remember that when I am all up in that ass—”

I slap my hand over his mouth, and he laughs then kisses it. Then he grabs my wrist and pulls it away to kiss me.

I am seconds from opening my mouth for him, wanting to feel that ball roll across my tongue, when he pulls back, presses his forehead to mine, and kisses my nose.

“I love you, Carly Steel.”

We kiss, closed mouth, soft. It’s nice, so nice. He holds me tighter against him like always, but not like normal.

“I like this.”

“Yeah, me, too.”

I smirk, expecting him to make a joke of it.

“What?” When I don’t answer him, he continues. “I do like this. Holding you, being alone with you, knowing I have you to myself for over an hour. God willing, traffic will suck, and then we have longer before we get to JFK. I love that I’m not on pins and fucking needles, or itching to find a moment alone with my wife.”

I nod. I get it.

“Do you know what it’s like to walk around hard all damn day, knowing I got about a fifty percent chance of getting inside you?” He covers his heart. “Hurts, baby, hurts bad.”

I shake my head, looking down. “You can get it whenever you want.”

He uses two fingers to lift my chin so our eyes connect again. “You get tired. With work, the girls, being mother of the year, and staying that damn sexy all the time.” He smiles widely, “Goddamn, must be tiring looking so hot.”

“You tell me. You are so hot.”

“We. We are so hot,” he says, kissing my nose.

“Still?”

“Always.”

I lean up to kiss his lips, but he pulls away.

“Not yet. I want this.”

I glance down at his lap and see he is fully erect.

“I can’t control that. He’s …” He looks down and laughs. “He’s in love with your vagina.”

I laugh out loud, then cover my mouth.

“He is. He’s all get up in there. Get. Up. In. There! And this …” He holds my hand over his heart. “For some reason, this has more sense than my dick. You did that. You, Carly Smythe, did that. Made my heart louder than my dick. You are more important than coming.”

“Aw … that’s kind of sweet in a really weird way.”

“Yeah, really weird,” he says, kissing my hand. His eyes twinkle, and he tries to hold back a grin. “Now my dick wants to tell you to sleep because, when Trump wins, it’s gonna fuck you senseless … all … night … long.”

“Oh, nice, Jase, real nice.”

“Not my fault, baby. It’s my dick’s.”