Free Woman Beheld by Tianna Xander

shook his head. He couldn’t help it, but a smile managed to crawl up his face, ignoring his best efforts not to do so.
    She looked away. “I don’t know that I’m lying. The last time I felt this way, I was told that I wasn’t in labor. What if this is just another false alarm?”
    “Go lie down.” Daffyd wiped his mouth and stood. “I’ll go get her and bring her back.” He shook his finger at her. “And no eating my pancakes.”
    “Why not? You’re not eating them.” She crossed her arms. “Don’t think I don’t know that you’re glad to get out of eating my cooking, Mister.” She grinned. “You’d better get used to it. I’m going to be cooking a lot once I’m not pregnant anymore.”
    “Just another reason to keep you pregnant, my love,” he said under his breath.
    “Ha! I knew it.”
    “Knew what?” He turned, doing his best to look as though he had no idea what she was talking about.
    “You forget. Apparently, I’m a defender, too, remember? I heard that. You don’t like my cooking. You haven’t even tasted it and you don’t like it. Did you think I didn’t notice that you hadn’t taken one bite? Just because you wiped your mouth doesn’t mean you took a bite, you jerk.”
    Daffyd smiled. Even her calling him a jerk meant the world to him. She told him what it meant, but somehow, from her, it was a term of endearment and he loved her for each and every one of them.
    “I’ll take a bite, okay? Will that make you happy?” He stalked back to his plate, cut a fairly large piece from the mess on his dish and crammed it into his mouth. The taste surprised him. “It’s good!” He had expected it to taste like warmed over shit, but it tasted much better than he expected. He wiped his mouth, for real this time, and strode to the other end of the table. “I’ll go get Alia and be right back. Don’t have the babes without me.”
     
    Three hours later, after Elle had called him and every other male in existence—everything but decent human beings—Alia helped Elle bring little Hayden and Haley into the world. Hayden, three minutes older than his sister, Haley, came out screaming, his little fists pumping with anger as he let them know that he wasn’t at all pleased to have been forced from the warmth of his mother’s womb. Haley, on the other hand, whimpered for a moment, grasped Daffyd’s finger in her little hand and smiled.
    Daffyd was certain it was a smile, no matter what Alia and Elle said. It was not gas. “I feel as though I must lodge a complaint with you about your children, my beautiful lady.”
    “What could you possibly find wrong with them?” she asked with that adorable little crease between her brows.
    “Both of the babes became thieves before they have even had their first feeding. The two of them have stolen my heart from my chest and they hold it between them. I don’t think they plan to give it back.” He pressed his lips together, trying to keep a straight face.
    Elle smiled a secret little smile she got only for him or when she thought of her babes. “None of us plan to give it back to you. It belongs to us now.”
     

 
     
About the Author
     
     
    Dear Reader:
    If you’re reading this, I hope it means that you’ve just enjoyed reading one of my books. Always a romantic, I started weaving little fantasies for my friends at the tender age of fifteen. Never once did I think that writing would be my dream until around 2002. After complaining to my husband that my favorite authors didn’t write fast enough, he asked a fateful question. “Why don’t you write one of your own while you’re waiting?”
    Once I started, he couldn’t stop me. I write in the morning before work, and during my breaks at the day job, and I write at night when I should be relaxing. I’ve even been known to write in my sleep. Every member of my family has had the dubious honor of witnessing my fingers moving over the keys while I’m off in dreamland. Sometimes it even