My soul sighed again and it was a good one.

Mitch closed the door and I rolled to my back, pulling the covers up to my chest.

It was June and summer had hit the Rockies with surprising vigor. Usually, you could expect anything through May and into June, even blizzards but it had been warm and sunny, afternoon thundershowers nearly every day for weeks taking the heat off and leaving the nights cool and crisp.

The six weeks since Mitch hauled me into the real world were the six best weeks of my life, bar none, not a single day I’d lived in Mara World even came close.

* * * * *

First I sorted out birth control. Mitch said it was a priority and I agreed.

I wanted nothing between Mitch and me so, without delay, I made that so and went on the pill.

* * * * *

Second Mom and Aunt Lulamae totally disappeared. A call to Lynette and a recon mission by her told me they were back home. This was likely because they’d run out of funds to use to make my life hell and didn’t have their usual cadre of drunks and ass**les whose wallets they could steal money from after they’d passed out.

Incidentally, I had shared everything with Lynette in a marathon phone call while my ass was planted in a lounge chair by the pool. It was hard to concentrate on all the important stuff I was telling her because Mitch showed halfway through our conversation, sweaty from a workout at the gym and he looked hot sweaty. It became harder to concentrate when my sunglassed eyes got a look at his face when he was walking toward me and I knew he seriously liked my bikini. It was even harder to concentrate (for obvious reasons) when, right in the middle of me listening to Lynette, he kissed me, hard but closed-mouthed. And it continued to be hard to concentrate when Billy and Billie noticed him and he spent the next ten minutes standing at the pool’s edge picking them up and throwing them in the water. They’d get out and he’d do it again and again. And lastly, it was hard to concentrate seeing as his hotness increased beyond measure because he was, sweaty, smiling and laughing a lot while making Billy smile and laugh a lot and Billie smile and squeal a lot. I wasn’t the only one to notice and would have to tear my sunglassed gaze away from my man and my kids when my possessive woman radar pinged and I’d need to glare down bikini-clad women who were drooling and giving him come hither looks.

But I managed it.

Lynette was beside herself with glee, informing me (repeatedly) she told me so as to the fact I was so a Ten Point Five.

“You might even be an Eleven!” she’d shrieked.

I couldn’t say I believed her (definitely not about the Eleven part). But that didn’t mean Mitch tearing my cocoon wide open and helping me fly didn’t mean I wasn’t (mostly) convinced I was at least a firm Eight.

But it wasn’t Lynette who convinced me of that, it was Mitch.

She was planning a trip out to meet Mitch, Billy and Billie in August and her parents were considering coming with her. I hadn’t seen her in three years, since her last trip out, and I hadn’t seen her folks in thirteen.

I couldn’t wait.

* * * * *

Third Bill was broke, incarcerated and had obviously played his trump card first. He was awaiting trial, a public defender preparing his defense, something Mitch told me would not go well. Firstly because he was guilty, secondly because he already had two strikes and thirdly because he was stupidly refusing to plea bargain.

I never heard from him, the kids never heard from him but I had visited him once and only once and I did this with Mitch standing at my back (Mitch’s decree) so this visit didn’t go well. Still, it probably wouldn’t have gone well even if Mitch wasn’t there.

It lasted long enough for me to pick up my phone, Bill to pick up his phone while his angry eyes stayed glued through the glass to Mitch then they dropped to me, he said in his phone, “Fuck you, Mara. Fuck you.” Then he hung up the phone, got up and walked to the guard.

I walked out trembling and trying not to cry while Mitch held me close with an arm around my shoulders. When I got out, I was trembling and trying not to shout when it hit me I was looking after his kids, kids I intended to raise until they were old enough to build their own lives; my apartment had been ransacked because of him; he’d set Mom and Aunt Lulamae on me and he had absolutely nothing to be pissed about but I had a lot to be pissed about.

I shared all I was pissed about with Mitch in his SUV. I did this in detail and at length and I included family history that went way, way back, something I never shared with anyone but I was on a roll. I only stopped when we got to his apartment, he handed me a glass of wine, kissed me hard to shut me up, lifted his head and I focused on him (finally) to see his eyes were dancing.

Then he muttered, “Gotta go to Bray and Brent’s to get the kids. You gonna tear my place apart in the two minutes it’ll take me to do that or are you gonna light a f**kin’ candle, take a sip of wine and get your shit together?”

I glared at him.

Then I mumbled, “Door number two.”

“Right,” he mumbled back, kissed me again, this time not hard but a lot longer. Then he went to go get the kids.

In the two minutes he was away, I did what I promised him I would do but I also took that time to freak out that during my rant I’d shared family history with Mitch. Ugly, revealing family history and he might take that two minutes to realize I was a Two Point Five.

He didn’t. He came back with Billie over his shoulder in a fireman’s hold, squealing; Billy following, grinning up at them and Mitch declaring he was going to teach Billy how to man a grill.

Then he’d made hamburgers while Billie and I sorted the fixin’s. Billie and I fried French fries and made salad (well, I did, she watched, sitting on the counter and babbling) while Mitch was out on his balcony teaching Billy how to man a grill.

I cancelled my freak out, sipped my wine, ate dinner with my family, got the kids to bed and forced Mitch to watch a Cubs game on TV with me (Cubs win!) before I gave him his reward for being a really nice guy and I did this when we were in his bed.

* * * * *

The police freed my apartment for clean up which I was dreading not only because it was going to be a big job but also I didn’t want to get elbow deep in the proof that all that I’d worked so hard to build had been destroyed.

Mitch, being Mitch, dealt with this too.

When I had a day off, he sorted his mother getting the kids from school then he sorted it so LaTanya, Tess, Penny and the women of two other buddies he had on The Force, Jet and Roxie, came over.