Life was good; and tonight, my hard work building a beauty empire would be rewarded and all of my dreams would come true. Well, almost all of them, because babies didn’t arrive like the award I would receive this evening, and my clock was ticking.

I pinned the last bobby pin into my hair and lowered my arms. Curled strands glittered in gold, forming a flowing fire. The hair creation matched the sparkling dress hugging my body. My mother had called in a favor to a designer from Paris, and a month later, the custom-made gold-chained gown fit me like a glove.

A loud splash drew my attention to the outside. I paced to the balcony where the setting sun bathed the backyard in orange. Below, Hunter was walking up the pool steps, carrying what looked like another toad in his hands. He crossed the lawn to the lily pond and crouched. A giant toad hopped off his hand and into the water. That made the third toad he’d saved this week.

He rinsed his hands in the pond water, shook them off, and stood, pulling his fingers through his hair. The column of his back muscles twisted. He turned around. The permanent tan from the time he’d spent landscaping the backyard glowed in the evening light. His beautiful chest, dusted with hair, was young and firm, with room to grow.

I watched him cross the lawn back to the house. He stopped and looked up to the balcony where I stood. His piercing blue eyes were drowning with sadness. His head fell forward, and my heart sank. 

I’d known Hunter Silver since his diaper days. He was my uncle’s nephew on my mother’s side, and our families spent every holiday, birthday, and celebration together. And boy, had he grown up fast. For his eighteenth birthday, I bought Hunter a bike and asked for a few lessons on my broken Harley, which he was eager to fix that evening. Let’s just say, he fixed more than my bike. He’d begun as my boy toy, and three years later, he was saving frogs from my pool.

As soon as he stepped inside, I hitched my dress to my thighs and hurried to meet him downstairs. Hunter wouldn’t reject a quickie before I left, and I was ovulating.

“Hey, baby. Another toad in my pool?”