Even better, Mackenzie finally had Damian back in her life, who came up to visit as much as he could. The sound of her laughter echoing through the house as they reminisced about their childhood always brought a smile to my face, knowing I was able to give that to her.

Jenna and Brayden remained in South Padre, where she continued looking after the restaurant operations, although she had been spending quite a bit of time in Boston to prepare for the opening of a second location of their restaurant in the Financial District. She seemed to have forgotten all about Richard, although it was hard to tell with her.

“Daddy!” a small voice called to me, breaking me away from the snow and my thoughts. Charlie ran into my arms and I swung him around, making him squeal with delight. “Presents?” he asked.

“Did you ask Mommy if it was time yet?” I replied, glancing up to see Mackenzie laughing with Jenna and Olivia. A warmth spread through me as I caught sight of the little bump on her that was starting to show. I missed the early stages of her first pregnancy and was thrilled that I would be here every day of this one, morning sickness and all.

“She said to ask you.”

I chuckled at what had become our parenting style. “Do you want to open presents?” I asked in hushed tones.

He nodded, his eyes growing wide.

“Then you can open your presents.”

When he squirmed, I put him down and he darted from me, shouting, “Daddy said it’s time!”

Meeting my eyes, Mackenzie smiled and sauntered across the room toward me. “You’re incorrigible, you know that? You do understand you’ll be up all night long assembling all the toys, right?”

I pulled her against me, raising my eyebrows. “Well, if I’ll be up all night, I’m sure we can find something more constructive to fill our time, rather than putting together a bunch of toys that will just be destroyed in two days.”

“Oh, really?” she replied, pulling on my blazer jacket, leading me toward the bay window in the formal sitting room of our house.

“Mmm-hmm…”

“And what would that be?” she asked as I folded my arms around her, both of us staring at the snow falling at a steady pace.

“I have a few ideas,” I murmured, kissing her neck.

“I don’t know. I’m exhausted from growing a human inside of me. You could rub my feet and tell me a bedtime story.”

“What kind of story?”

“A good one.” She raised her eyebrows.

“Anything for you,” I said, savoring the warmth of her body next to mine. “Once upon a time,” I began, planting a kiss on her forehead, “there was a little girl who stopped believing in fairytales. She had been hidden away for years, always holding out hope her Prince Charming would come and rescue her from her self-imposed prison. Then, one day, a man appeared. He was a little rough around the edges and may not have had the purest of intentions to begin with, but he fell in love with the woman that little girl had turned into.”

I glanced down to see her eyes closed, a look of serenity on her face. I began to rock her back-and-forth, almost swaying to the music in both our heads. “But there was an evil dragon who tried to keep the prince from his love. The prince knew he had to protect this woman from the monstrous beast who was trying to tear them apart, so he set upon a quest to slay the dragon and free his love.”

“And did he?” she asked, turning to me.

Grabbing both her hands in mine, I simply nodded. “Yes, with a bit of help. And he used his powers to return all the people who had ever been taken from the princess to her so she could finally have the family she had been yearning for her entire life.”

“How did it end?”

“Like all fairytales should,” I said, raising her hand to meet my lips. “They lived happily ever after.”

Losing Your Memory - Ryan Star

Cannonball - Damian Rice

This Woman’s Work - Greg Laswell

Sideways - Citizen Cope

The Space Between - Dave Matthews Band

Your Ghost - Greg Laswell

If You Love Me Let Me Go - Colbie Caillat

Gone Away - Lucy Schwartz

Between The Lines - Sara Bareilles

I’m Through - Ingrid Michaelson

Over You - Ingrid Michaelson, featuring A Great Big World

Everything’s Not Lost - Coldplay

The Lonely - Christina Perri

Cold Blooded - The Pretty Reckless

1000 Times - Sara Bareilles

Awake My Soul - Mumford & Sons

You Make It Real - James Morrison

All Of Me - John Legend

Boston - Augustana

Breathe Me - Sia

Apologies - Grace Potter & The Nocturnals

I Do - Susie Suh

Bewitched, Bothered, And Bewildered - Ella Fitzgerald

Tamacún - Rodrigo y Gabriela

Magic - Colbie Caillat

In The Embers - Sleeping At Last

Nothing But The Water (I) - Grace Potter & The Nocturnals

Weapon For Saturday - LOLO

By My Side - William Fitzsimmons

Future Days - Pearl Jam

The One - Kodaline

The Luckiest - Ben Folds

The Beautiful Mess Series

A Beautiful Mess

A Tragic Wreck

Gorgeous Chaos

Heart Of Light 

Heart Of Marley

(A stand-alone Heart of Light prequel)

The Deception Duet

Chasing The Dragon

Slaying The Dragon

For more information on any of these titles, please visit T.K.’s website:

www.tkleighauthor.com

It's not over yet…

A new Beautiful Mess series novel coming your way in 2016!

Rayne Kilpatrick has everything. A job she’s dreamed of since she was a little girl. The perfect house. And a man she loves and is about to marry… Until he never returns from a humanitarian mission.

Gone. Disappeared. Vanished.

When footage of his gruesome murder by a Muslim extremist group is shown across the country and around the globe, she wants the person responsible for the disappearance of the man she loves to pay. She wants him to lose the one person who means the world to him, too, and she won’t stop until he does.

Alexander Burnham has everything… Finally. A job he enjoys where he can actually make a difference in the world. The perfect woman who he’s loved his entire life. And the most beautiful daughter a father could ask for… Until he wakes up one morning and her bedroom is empty.