Always (Family Justice Book 1) by Suzanne Halliday Page A

in the romance department, she’d been content, although sometimes itchily so, to avoid emotional entanglements, preferring the occasional flirtation to anything more substantial. It had been years since she’d let any of those casual encounters become more than a make-out session. Sleeping around for the sake of sex just wasn’t her style any more than finding her undies dampened by a chance meeting with a smoldering pair of blue eyes and a set of pecs that begged to be licked.
    She seriously hoped that what she was experiencing was just a surge of pre-menopausal hormones because there was no way she was up for anything else. She was in Arizona to help her daughter prepare for the birth of her first child. She was going to be a grandmother soon, goddammit. That was it. Zip. End of the line. Calder Dane was an unwelcome distraction, no matter how yummy he was.

“OH, LOOK SWEETIE,” LACEY COOED as she stooped down next to the all-terrain stroller and pointed into a group of pinõn pines nearby. “That’s a roadrunner! See?”
    Cam watched the sweet interaction between his adorable wife and infant son with undisguised joy. Dylan might only be two months old and adept at little more than holding his head up, but the way his Ponytail kept up a non-stop narrative during the baby’s every waking moment, you’d think they were carrying on a conversation. And maybe they were.
    Not too unlike what he experienced during the precious quiet times with his son, when he murmured about guy things like learning to catch a baseball or how he couldn’t wait to teach his boy the joys of reading. He’d come to enjoy reading during the long months of Lacey’s blissful pregnancy when they sat side by side while she taught herself to knit and he read aloud. Life was fucking great in the Cameron household these days.
    Chuckling when she straightened and returned to pushing the fancy stroller along the road, he couldn’t help but remark, “Be glad Zeus isn’t running around out here. She loves to chase those little buggers. Raven, too. One day they might even catch one and then watch out! Holy shit, but that’ll be funny.”
    “Language, Daddy,” Lacey reminded him with mock indignation. “I don’t want Dylan’s first words to be off color.”
    Cam couldn’t help but laugh. “Off color? Fuck, woman, he’s gonna have to learn how to curse like the rest of us outnumbered males if he doesn’t want to end up with a box of dolls stashed under his bed.”
    “Oh, be quiet you,” Lacey giggled. “I can hope, can’t I? But you’re right—this whole place is like ground zero for swear words. Doesn’t help that Tori has a black belt in naughty language and Meghan’s not far behind.”
    Slinging a possessive arm about his wife’s shoulders, he hugged her close and chuckled. “It’s only you, my delicate flower, who thinks there’s any merit whatsoever to watching your mouth.”
    His heart filled with a lot more than love when she glanced sideways at him from under her lashes and whispered, “Well, you’ve found plenty of other ways for this mouth to be naughty than with some vulgar language.”
    And man oh man, had he ever. His sexy ponytailed wife had taken to subjecting him to some scorching hot intimacies featuring her lips and tongue that made him a happy man indeed.
    “Speaking of which,” he drawled lazily, “isn’t it about time we had some alone time? You know, some horizontal rhumba with your legs in the air and me fucking the giggles right out of you?”
    Lacey stopped pushing the stroller and huffed at him with female indignation oozing from every pore of her face. “Seriously, husband? Is that all you think about?”
    “Hardly,” Cam answered with a sly wink. “And look who’s talking. I seem to remember your doctor saying we should wait at least seven weeks before being intimate. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t it you who tried to force the issue way before then?”
    “Shush you,” she