It doesn’t take long, and we both cum together, Ash’s warm release filling me and giving me a sense of comfort.

  When we come down, he spins me around, opens the shirt and sucks on my tits for a few minutes, taking the edge off.

  “Breakfast.” He smiles and kisses me, his hand rubbing my belly. “You still thinking a girl?”

  “Yep. Pretty sure.” I’ve been able to predict the sex of each of our babies early on, so now it’s become a bit of a game.

  I didn’t stay Anastasia Snow for long. I enjoyed the cooking, but I enjoyed being a wife and mother more. I still do a bit of blogging about food. I make all the baby food as well, so I have a lot of posts about that. But overall, I didn’t want the notoriety.

  Cameron still works for Ash and has brought them some wonderful new talent over the years as well as kept the charities organized and on the up and up.

  It was difficult enough for a few years to get the press to leave us alone. We live here in Ohio about a third of the time, then we have our other home in rural Connecticut and a penthouse in Manhattan, as well as a villa we just bought in France.

  We are gypsies in a way, but the kids are always with us, and we are always together. We fly on our private jet, so I am a fairly spoiled gypsy. Ash still runs his businesses, although he spends less and less time at the office as the years go by.

  We talked about him retiring in the next five years because his true joy lies here at home with us.

  Our charities take up a lot of our time, and even though we work on them together, Cameron and the staff do the lion’s share of the work.

  The one thing we don’t have, however, is house staff. I like our home life to be just ours, and the kids all do chores from the time they are able.

  My father and I came to terms after the first year of my being married. I didn’t give up, I just kept in touch and finally, little by little, he came to realize that my life is mine and his is his.

  And those things do not preclude us from having a relationship. He comes to Sunday dinner when we are in town. But some things won’t change. He won’t fly to see us and doesn’t feel comfortable too far from the community, and that is fine. He is his own man.

  He’s still the preacher in the church, and his congregation relies on him. He is a softy for the grandbabies though, and the sparkle I see in his eyes when they are crawling on him and asking him for stories tells me we are in a good place for now.

  You never know what the future will bring.

  Ash also did an investigation into my mother, with my permission. It’s sad. She had no other family, and when she left, she apparently tried to get her life together and support herself. From what he knows, she wanted to come back for me, but she had a car accident and was in a coma for nearly six months.

  When she recovered, she was never the same. A few years later, she passed away in a state-run facility. I grieved for the loss but was comforted by the fact that in her heart, she did want me. She wanted to come back for me, and I wasn’t simply abandoned by my mother.

  “Yum.” Ash finishes on my boobs then kisses me with the sweet milk flavor still lingering.

  He runs his hands through my hair and down my back, then pulls away, licking his lips.

  We both look outside when we hear crying and see Lukas kneeling next to one of the girls.

  “Mom!” I hear him yell and Ash turns my shoulders, holding them, and we walk out from behind the bar.

  “You’re being paged.” He kisses my cheek as we walk to the open doors to the backyard.

  “Seems so.”

  He smacks my bottom as I step back into the sunlight.

  I glance back over my shoulder to see him watching me go, and I wonder how a simple preacher’s daughter prayed for a different life and ended up in her own kind of Eden.

  One

  Van

  “YOU’RE GETTING MARRIED?” I let out a long exhale restraining my sigh as I watch my breath hang in the air while the low rumble of the diesel generators muffles my father’s reply.

  “Isn’t that what I just said?” He snaps back with a half chuckle. “I want you there, Van. Good reason to see your old man. It’s been almost two years.”

  “Busy, Dad. You know how it goes out here.” I switch the phone from one hand to the other, shoving my frozen fingers down into the front pocket of my muddy jeans.

  As I stomp frozen dirt off my boots, I hear the sound of a twenty-four-inch pipe wrench slamming against metal and the word ‘motherfucker’ being repeated by four rig-hands trying to convince the next section of pipe to concede defeat and slip into the frozen pipe casing that descends six thousand feet into the ground.

  Trying to ignore them—and my dad—I snap my fingers at George, my ten-pound overlord who is snarling and barking at God knows what.

  When I found her, she was half frozen to the ground on a well site, no bigger than my fist and looking about ready to give up the fight. The guys said she wouldn’t make it, but I shoved the filthy ball of fur down where it was warm in the inside pocket of my Carhartt jacket, and within an hour she was poking her head out, nipping at anyone that came near me and licking and pulling on my beard.

  I called her Georgia because that was the name of the well site we were on. But ever since, thanks to her bossy nature, everyone just refers to her as George.

  That was three years ago, and since then I take her everywhere and put up with the shit everyone gives me because of it. A guy like me with a little hellion inside his jacket or following behind me wherever I go, with her seemingly running the show, well that gets me my share of grief.

  My father goes on, “You’re always busy. The only time I see you is funerals or weddings. And you miss those more often than you don’t. This is my wedding, you’ve got the money, get on a plane tonight. Spend a day here, then the wedding, then you can get back to your world. I love this lady, and when you know, you know. Her daughter just happens to be in town too, and we don’t want to wait. Life is too short, Van. I want you to come.”

  Your fifth wedding to be exact.

  When the cursing on the rig quiets, I see four men with mud and grease on their faces and coating their winter coveralls jumping up and down. Two light cigarettes while the other two spins around to fight with the next thirty-foot section of pipe that’s half frozen to the pallet. Wind whips through my coat and I see the driller waving me toward the dog house through the small window in the door.

  “I thought you swore off women.” I grip the frozen railing as I make my way up the stairs with George following close on my heels, heading for the massive steel monster on top of the drill shack, where gages and sensors help guide our never-ending search for the next big hit.

  “Yeah, I did. But when you meet the one, you know. It’s different. I’m not letting her get away, and I want my son there to help celebrate.”

  Since my mom died in a car accident when I was just seven, my father went through more women than I can remember. Some I liked, some I hated, but none lasted long enough for me to get attached. I once wondered if our front door was revolving, the way one would be on the way out and the other on the way in.

  Didn’t sit well with me. I took the other route, a handful of pseudo-relationships in my twenties, but since then my work is my life. The rigs I own are my mistresses and my wives, and I have George for companionship.

  “And Kara?” I ask waiting for what I know will be a disappointing reply from my dad.

  There’s a pause on the other end of the line, and I almost hear the disgust in my dad’s voice when he answers. “It’s just going to be family.”

  “Right. And she’s my sister.”

  He laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “No, she isn’t. She’s not even your stepsister. Her mother and I were hardly married. It does not make someone family. I didn’t love her, not like Gayl.”

  Kara’s mom, Duska, was one of my dad’s many ‘brief flings.’ A Slovakian ballerina so that you might expect a prima donna, but that wasn’t her at all. She was kind, friendly, the sort of woman I wouldn’t have minded having as a step-mom. Unfortunately, her relationship with my dad lasted maybe a month, and then that was it, but Duska didn’t forget eleven-year-old me.

  Every birthday, there would be a card — every Christmas, a little gift, nothing much but just a reminder. I kept in touch and visited her on the quiet, spending time with her and her young daughter, who would become like a little sister to me.

  “Duska died, we’re all the family Kara has had for ten years. Either she’s invited, or I’m not coming.”

  There’s a pause before he makes a kind of clucking noise and answers, “Fine, invite Karolina, why should I care? She won’t come anyway. But if she’s invited, you’re committed to coming. No excuses.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” I raise my voice over the constant noise of the drill site as I step up the last stair onto the platform in front of the dog house door. George is next to my left boot, and I reach down to scoop her up and stuff her down inside my half-zippered jacket, where she curls up and pops her nose out to bite at anyone that comes within snapping distance.

  “You’ll be here.” My dad’s voice hardens. “You can take one day out of your life. I’ll expect your flight information in my email. I’ll pick you up if you’d like.”

  I think of what my schedule is like the next few days. Stress.

  More stress.

  Topped with stress.

  The oil business isn’t for the faint of heart.

  “I’m texting you a picture of us from earlier today. I met her daughter too. She just moved back. I want this to work, Van. This is it for me.”

  “Okay, Dad. I said I’ll see. Let me call you back.”

  He may pretend not to understand, but this kind of work isn’t exactly nine-to-five. I’m working in southern Ohio at the moment, but I’ve got rigs running in three states. Dad lives back in Rochester, Michigan, where I grew up, and with the flights out there and back I’m looking at taking at least three days out. I hear the sound of the text coming through as I grip the freezing handle of the door. Through the window, I see Jack, the driller, shrug and throw his hands up wondering what I’m doing.

  The tension in Jack’s face tells me something is wrong and sure, on an oil rig there’s always something wrong, but sometimes those things are matters of life or death—or millions of dollars. Both can be split-second decisions and time is not your friend.

  “I’ll expect your flight information within the hour. Love you, son. See you soon.”

  Dad clicks off, and I shake my head on a frosty exhale as I open the door and drop my phone from my ear, looking down to tap on his text which opens the photo he sent.

  Jack’s gravelly voice starts as I step inside. Something about the twenty-thousand-dollar drill bit failing, and we have to trip out six-thousand feet of pipe which will take eighteen-hours minimum. That means downtime. That means progress stops. Shit’s always breaking, but it still makes everyone pissy, including me.

  I open my mouth to answer when the photo opens up on my phone screen.

  His voice disappears. There’s a ringing in my ears and a clutch in my chest that is either a heart attack—which wouldn’t surprise me—or something I’ve never felt before.

  I see my father, his arm around who I’m guessing is his soon to be bride, Gayl. Exotic, and beautiful.

  But neither of them have my knees ready to buckle and the world spinning around me.

  It’s the third person in the photo.

  It’s her eyes. Ice blue, wide but sharp. As though she’s looking through the lens at me, knowing I would be here.

  It’s her half smile. Her arms wrapping around her waist as if to say, I want to be anywhere but here.

  Her hair is pulled over her left shoulder in an ivory waterfall that covers part of her face and curves over her chest, and my mouth starts to water. She reminds me of that character from the Frozen movie. The blond. I’ve watched the movie a few times with Sophia, Kara’s little girl, and if that character was based on a real human, I’m looking at her right now.

  She’s wearing a chic light blue suit, controlled and professional looking for such a young woman.

  “Van!” Jack’s voice cuts through my haze, and I tear my eyes from the phone for a moment to see him gawping at me.

  “What?”

  He says each word separately as if explaining to a child. “The bit isn’t coming out with the pipe.” A clap of his hands punctuates the importance of what he’s saying. “We have to go fishing for it. Fuck. That’s another thirty-six to forty-eight hours.” His face shows the years in this job. He’s a decade older than me, and I just had my fortieth.

  I don’t know much about him at all, despite us working together for nearly twenty years. I mean, I know he’s not married, we seem to have a similar view on relationships, especially in this business. We know each other, just not much about lives outside of work. But, then work is our life.

  Despite the fact, he’s probably the closest thing I have to a friend in this whole world, and when we are out together at a restaurant or whatever, we’ve been mistaken for brothers many times. Neither of us seems to see the resemblance, but enough strangers in bars have made it a point to mention it, so now we just shrug and nod.

  “So fish it out!” I grunt back as my eyes find their way back to the screen of my phone. “I’ve got a family thing. I’m flying out tonight.” George pops her head out and growls at Jack, who flips her off with a snarl.

  “Fucking dog. Oh, wait, what?” Jack draws his brow together, the sarcasm coming through. “You have a family?”

  He’s only half kidding.

  “Fuck off,” I answer back. Four letter words are half our vocabulary out here. “Get the fucking bit out of the hole and get back in. You can handle it. I’ll check in.”

  The door behind me opens, and I glance around to see the newest guy shuffle in behind me, clearly looking for Jack. “Boss, there’s—”

  Jack holds up a hand, silencing him. “Can it wait?”

  “I guess.” The guy shrugs and Jack turns back to me.

  “And what about the deal with Gloria? You expect me to handle that as well? She called and ripped me a new asshole when I told her about the bit.”

  The worm chuckles hearing Gloria’s name, and I hear him mutter something about the surprise she has under her dress and I see red.

  I’m not much of a violent man, but there are some things my guys know I won’t tolerate.

  One of those things is being disrespectful toward women. Whether or not they were born that way.

  I spin around with my arm already out and grab him around the throat, hearing him choke as I pin him up against the dog house door. “You got something to say?”

  Out here in the oil field, we have our own set of rules. Straightening out a hand with physical force is just something we do. I once saw a driller swing his boot around like Jackie Chan and knock three teeth out of a drill hand’s mouth for refusing to carry his weight in a critical moment. Just how we operate, good or bad, take it or go home.

  The worm, he’s the lowest on the totem pole, chokes out, “Some of the guys told me she was a—”

  I get up in his face, and my next words are barely a grunt. “I’m going to let this slide. Just once. You tell those guys I’d better not catch them badmouthing Gloria, or they’ll have me to answer to. Her investments help to pay your salary. Not only that, she’s a woman, and she deserves your respect. You got that?” George helps by snarling and snapping at him from inside my coat.

  He nods, and I drop him, turning away as if he’s not even worth my time. It happens again though, he’s going to be looking for a new job and an emergency room. George spins and tucks herself back down in my jacket; her work here is done.

  “Just tell her to call my cell,” I say to Jack. “She’ll understand if it takes a day or two longer. She’s just going to give us shit about it.”

  With that, Jack shrugs, shakes his head and starts yelling at the worm to grab the last of the samples and deliver them to the mud-logger’s shack and let him know the rig is going to be down for a couple of days. And just like that, things are back to normal.

  This is my life. I live out of my truck the majority of the time. I have a house—pretty fucking nice house too—but I’m never there. I let Kara stay there with her daughter, rent free, in exchange for watching over the place while I’m gone.

  As for me, I stay in hotels or on-site in a trailer and eat in restaurants or here at the rig when the guys cook in crock pots or on the grill, I make sure they have at each site.

  Oil workers work twenty-one days on and seven off, twelve hours a day, but being the owner of eight of my own rigs, not counting the ones I own in partnerships, I work 365/24/7 for the most part.

  We’re a rare breed. It’s a tough life for anyone in a relationship; I tell everyone I hire this could end whatever relationship they have and often it does.

  So just another reason I’ve not made that a priority in my life. One of many reasons.

  Sometimes I envy Kara. Sure, things might not have worked out with her daughter’s dad from a romance point of view, but they still have a connection. They’re friends, and Kara has a family, a life to look back on when she’s old. What will I have except this?

  This is crazy shit. One fucking photograph and I’m seeing a lifetime. I need to get a grip, but it doesn’t look like that’s about to happen.

  Before I even realize it, I’m back out of the shack and down the stairs into my truck, pulling up flights to Detroit Metro Airport as I start the engine and feel something...something I haven’t felt in longer than I can remember.

  “Looks like you’re going to be off the road for a few days.” I look at George who nibbles my chin.

  The sight of the girl in the photo has my dick raging hard. My heart is thumping around against my sternum, and when I press my fingers to the phone screen and enlarge the photo of her face, I just know. The way her lips are slightly parted, the way her tongue is just glancing the bottom.