“Who knew dads were so sexy?” I asked, breaking the silence.

His head lifted, his eyes meeting mine. “She’s so tiny,” he whispered.

I crossed the room, placed my hand on his shoulder, and peered down at them. “She looks good on you.”

“Just like her momma,” he teased, wiggling his eyebrows at me.

As if on cue, a nurse popped her head into the room. “Okay, Banks family. Ready to go home?”

After two days in the hospital, I was more than ready to get home and settled in as a new family of three. Jeremy and I’d spent weeks preparing the nursery. Not to mention two nights of not sleeping with Jeremy was two nights too many.

She went about her duties, giving us instructions and tips for the future. Jeremy listened intently, taking note of things here and there, and it was so damn cute how serious he looked.

Until we got to the sex part.

“Now, to be on the safe side, the doctor recommends at least six weeks until you engage in intercourse with penetration,” she said matter-of-factly.

I grinned and poked him in the side. “Hear that, Jeremy? Six. Long. Weeks,” I said, dragging out each word for emphasis.

“Six weeks?” he asked, incredulous.

“Doctor’s orders,” I replied.

Jeremy’s lips curved into a playful smile, and I could only imagine what he was thinking. His glance flicked between the nurse and me.

“Maybe,” he said with a shrug. “But what’d your dentist say?”

I woke with a start.

Something wasn’t right.

My breasts were heavy and swollen, begging for relief—it was past feeding time. I groaned, wishing I could put my pillow over my head and go back to sleep. Ava, thank the heavens, was a relatively good baby. Okay, I’ll be honest and brag a little bit. Ava was the best baby. My pregnancy had been stellar—not a lick of morning sickness—and for the most part, she only woke through the night when she was hungry. But I was still exhausted beyond belief. Not getting more than three hours of sleep at a time thanks to my daughter’s appetite, I was starting to feel like the walking dead.

It was a small price to pay for the joy she brought to our lives though. A price I’d pay time and time again. Hell, even though she was only four months old, Jeremy was already talking about having another one.

Something I was getting pretty close to giving in on.

Just as I rose to feed Ava, I realized what was wrong. His side of the bed was empty, and he still had two hours before he had to be up for work. I smiled to myself. I was in charge of the night feedings, but sometimes, Jeremy still snuck in there.

We’d decided I’d stay home while Ava was a baby—at least, for now. Jeremy’s real estate business was more than enough to support the family, and we were comfortable. So I usually let him sleep at night because I could catch little naps here and there during the day. And even still, on nights like tonight, when I’d barely kept my eyes open through the latest episode of Criminal Minds, I knew exactly where Jeremy was.

When I padded down the hall and peeked into Ava’s nursery, my heart melted. I’d seen the sight in front of me a thousand times, but it never got old. Jeremy had always been sexy to me. But that right there? It was the most arousing thing I’d ever seen. There’s nothing like a hot, muscular man holding a tiny baby in his arms. Except for when the hot, muscular man holding a tiny baby in his arms was whisper-singing the most inappropriate song to her little ears.

An empty bottle sat on the bookshelf next to him, and thanks to the nightlight, I could see that Ava’s eyes were drifting closed. Jeremy’s voice softened, and he slowly rose. That’s when he saw me. I held a finger to my lips, and he nodded. Then he placed Ava in her crib and quietly shuffled to me. Before I knew what he was doing, he swept me into his arms and I had to hold in a squeal.

He took me down the hall to our bedroom and sat down. Then he lay back and rolled onto his side. The entire time, he kept me close to his body, and now, we were face-to-face.

“You know you don’t have to do that,” I told him, placing my hand on his jaw and enjoying his rough stubble. “I do appreciate it, but I also know you need your sleep.”

“Sierra,” he whispered, pulling me closer. “I could lie and say it’s for purely unselfish reasons, but it’s not. Sure, I think you need more sleep and I enjoy helping out, but it’s more than that.”

I gazed at him. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t really know to explain it,” he said. “It’s like…I spend all day running from one property to the next, and I’m always on the go. I come home to an amazing wife, a beautiful little daughter, and I spend my evenings with you both, playing with her, playing with you. And then we go to bed. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. In the best fucking way.” He smiled.

“Doesn’t sound so bad when you put it that way,” I whispered.

“It’s not. Not even close to bad. It’s amazing. I love it. I love our life, and I wouldn’t change a single thing about it. But there’s just something about sitting in that rocking chair at three in the morning, staring down at this tiny person you made. No sounds but her sucking from the bottle full of milk that comes from these,” he said, cupping a full breast.

I winced, but his sentiment was so beautiful I couldn’t interrupt him.

“Those are the moments when it really hits me. How beautiful my life is. Those quiet moments where I slow down and take it all in, counting every single one of my blessings.”

I knew exactly what he meant. That happiness in the stillness. In the quiet. It was everything. Sure, the hustle and bustle of life was exhilarating, but sometimes we forgot to slow down and smell the baby powder.

“Then take those moments, Jeremy, any time you need. They’re yours,” I whispered. “You deserve them.”

His hand slid down and squeezed my hip before moving to the small of my back and settling there. “You gave that to me, baby.” He paused, and my breath caught as his eyes searched mine. “The day you said, ‘I do,’ I thought I was the luckiest man in the world. I thought I had the whole world. And I did. I still do. It’s just… It’s a little different now. You’re not just my world, baby. You’re my fucking sun. And Ava? She’s my moon. Without the two of you, I’d have no light in my life. I’d be incomplete. Hell, I wouldn’t even exist anymore. With the two of you, I have everything, and my world can keep on spinning.”

Tears were streaming down my cheeks by the time he was done. My big, goofy husband had his sweet moments. This one? This one trumped all the ones that had come before. To the point that I was rendered speechless. So, instead, I let my actions speak for me and set about giving Jeremy his sun.

And maybe…just maybe another moon.

2010

“THAT WAS AMAZING,” I gushed as I rested my head on the headrest in Jeremy’s truck. My brain was fuzzy from the margaritas, but I was drunker from the experience than from the tequila.

Jeremy snorted, and when I glanced over at him, he shook his head and scoffed.

“I get serious husband points for what I just sat through,” he told me.

I gave him a tipsy grin. Little did he know, he’d earned much more than husband points for this.

“You know you enjoyed it just as much as I did. Your legs were shaking, just itching for you to be able to jump up on stage and show those men how Jeremy Banks breaks it down,” I teased.