With a hard thrust, he entered her fully, and every thought that didn’t involve the exquisite pleasure they found together was pushed from her mind, swept away on a waves of desire that required her full attention.

“Nothing has ever been like this, Steph,” he whispered against her ear as he pushed deep into her before withdrawing and doing it again. “You’re the best thing to ever happen to me.”

Listening to him, feeling him, surrounded by him, Stephanie finally was able to let go of the past, of the fears that had ruled her, and embrace the future that would revolve around him and the love they’d found together.

“You can’t ever leave me,” he said. “You’d ruin me.”

“Where would I go when the only thing I need is right here?”

Her words seemed to light a fire in him that had him picking up the pace, until they both cried out from the power of what they’d created. She clung to him, her anchor in the storm, and took everything he had to give until he was spent and lax in her arms, his heart beating fast and his breathing rapid.

“So Labor Day it is?” he asked after a long period of silence.

“Labor Day it is.”

Mac and Maddie arrived home from the day’s festivities to find a party going on at their house. Daisy and David, who’d been babysitting for them while they attended what they thought would be a clambake, were entertaining Jenny Wilks and her fiancé, Alex Martinez, as well as Jared James and his new wife, Lizzie. With them was another woman Maddie didn’t know.

“Hey,” Daisy said when they came in through the sliding door. “Mom and Dad are home, and we’re in so much trouble for having a party.”

“Oh stop it,” Maddie said to her friend. “As long as no one was drinking, there’s no trouble.” The kitchen table was littered with beer bottles, wineglasses and snacks.

“Um, well,” Alex said, trying to hide his beer bottle.

Mac laughed at his lame effort. “Are there more of those somewhere?”

“In the fridge,” David said. “Help yourself.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” Mac said.

“It is your house after all,” David replied.

“Do you want us to go?” Daisy asked Maddie when she pulled up a chair to the table.

“No need to break up the party,” Maddie said, even though she was beyond exhausted. Since discovering her third child was on the way, exhaustion had been her closest friend. She’d never been this tired with Thomas or Hailey. “How were they?”

“Thomas didn’t want to go to bed, as usual, but he’s out cold now.”

“He didn’t give you a hard time, did he?”

“Nothing like that. He and Uncle David were having fun with the trucks, and he didn’t want to stop playing.”