Keep reading past this chapter for a preview of the sequel, two bonus chapters, Amazon info, and the remake!
Love you all
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"But that's not fair."
"Boo."
"You're so mean."
"You're so whiney."
"What? I can't hear you?"
"Shut up."
"You shut up."
"Make me."
"You're such a bitch."
"Language," I said.
"But she started."
"You started it, dumbass."
"Language," I repeated.
"Dad we cuss all the time."
"Don't call your siblings names."
They both rolled their eyes.
"You should be more behaved like me."
"Whatever."
"What's with all the fighting?" Lafayette asked, entering the room with a box. "Why aren't you kids getting to work? The family's gonna be here soon and this is what you're doing? Standing around?" He looked at me. "What're you doing?"
"Working."
He plopped down next to me to watch me play Solitaire on the computer. "This game is intense," he said.
"Clearly."
He smiled at me and leaned back, propping his legs up onto the table. "Get to work."
"Why don't you have a job?" asked Kenneth, grabbing the box of Christmas decorations.
"Because I've been working since I was twenty and practically saved America from itself by creating an amazing company."
"One that I will be running in a few years," said Dean.
"Only if you want to."
"You know I want to."
"What if I want to?" asked Carmen.
"Yeah right."
The kids were a handful, especially when there was five of them and they were between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. Dean was the oldest, a senior in high school, having turned eighteen in August. Alisha had carried him for us, with the genes of Lafayette's and hers, which were also partially my genes. He ended up looking a lot like my dad, and so he got his name. Kenneth was seventeen, and Axelle had carried him for us. He was the spitting image of Lafayette, but with my blue eyes. Carmen had just turned seventeen, both of them being juniors. We had adopted her from a woman we met in Brazil. Eve was fifteen and her mother had been pregnant, looking for adoptive parents so we've had her since day one too. Finally there was Gabriel. He was fourteen, a freshman. He had golden eyes and sandy brown hair. It might have just been my imagination, but I always thought the kids resembled us in some way. Dean and Kenneth of course did. Carmen looked like Lafayette's side of the family, and she always had that look in her eye that he had, too. Eve reminded me a lot of my own mother and people on her side of the family. Then Gabriel sort of seemed like a mix of Lafayette and I, with similar eyes to Faye, similar bone structure to me. Really, though, it probably was my imagination.
We started having kids a year after we got married. It just seemed like the perfect time, and many things happened in the midst of raising these troublemakers. Alisha and Clovis had their son Alex and then a little girl named Emily. Emilio and Michael got married and adopted three kids from around the globe. Vince retired. I published a lot of books. Lafayette retired about three years ago, leaving it over to Micah until he wanted to retire, when it would then be passed on to Dean. Marcus and Daniel got married but were holding off on kids. Owen and Liam got married and adopted a child as well, Tamir, their son. Jeremy and Micah Schumacher also got married and had a little girl, Alyssa. And then we started to host a Christmas party every year for both of our families and the mentioned friends and their children. Our house was in my hometown, surrounded by a lot of grass and trees but only a few minutes from Mom and Dad's place. Lafayette had it built, and it was huge. Of course.
The kids were setting out the decorations as we waited for everyone to arrive.
"I thought you weren't going to publish any more stories for a while," Lafayette said.
"I was talking about fiction stories," I said.
"What're you writing now?"
"Just...a story."
"About us?"
"You can say that. It's actually about this really sexy boss I had an affair with when I was younger."
He chuckled, putting his arm around me. "Sounds riveting."
"Oh it is."
"I hope it's filled with a lot of sex scenes."
"Nonsense."
He chuckled again, leaning over to look at the screen. "Our story. How sweet? How are you going to start it?"
"I'm not sure." I tilted my head up, then looked over at him. I gave him a kiss with a smile and then looked at the computer, typing out the first line of our story.
I worked for a billion dollar company owned by the greatest man in the world - Lafayette Jeff...
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