If the kids had ever gotten around to doing the math, they would have figured out the truth eventually. Grant and I had met when Ryan was two, married when he was three, and Willow didn’t come along until he was six. But what twelve-year-old notices those tiny discrepancies? Hell, apparently eighteen-year-olds don’t even do the calculations. I guess Grant and I had been vague enough about when we had first met that they never questioned if Grant was Ryan’s biological father. But did it matter, really?

Grant was his dad. Willow, Lucas, and Collette were his siblings. One big happy family. Period. Except to Willow, apparently it did matter. Enough to send her digging in the remains of my past.

The creak of floorboards drew my attention to the hallway. Grant stood there, his body lithe and toned from after-work gym workouts. At least that’s where he told me he spent his time. Or were those chiseled pecs and that flat stomach the result of extraordinarily athletic sex with his equally agile paramour in seedy hotels?

I hated Grant for his perfect body and youthful face while I wore my exhaustion like a burial shroud.

“Hey, honey. I have a surprise for you.” Grant wiggled his finger at me to follow him.

“A surprise, huh?” I knew what that meant. A surprise for me meant sex for him. And I was so not in the mood.

Two kids ago we were sex-crazed lovers who couldn’t get enough of each other. Four kids, two car payments, and a mortgage later we were dull strangers who shared a bed. Grant blamed me; I blamed the kids. When you’re barely surviving on a couple of hours’ sleep, and spending all day grocery shopping, folding laundry, prepping meals, nursing, and helping with homework, well, it gets old. It drains you of that passion for life you once had.

It didn’t help that I felt self-conscious when naked around Grant. He looked like a Greek god while I still carried the mushrooming tummy of a pregnancy eight months ago. And my boobs, while huge with milk, crawled with stretch marks and blue veins popping through creamy skin. I thought nursing would help shed the pounds, but by the time you hit forty, skin’s elasticity doesn’t bounce back like it does in your twenties. My flat ass was evidence of that as the skin sagged where my thighs met my butt cheeks. If you had this worn-out body, would you want to flaunt it in front of your hot husband? I think not.