“Daddy!” Ethan ran up to his father, a handful of late flowers clutched in one little fist. “For Mama,” he said proudly, handing them over.

Mal looked at them. “Shouldn’t you be giving these to your Ma yourself?”

“Later.” He grinned and scampered off again.

Mal looked at the little posy and shook his head, smiling ruefully as he tucked them into his shirt. They were likely to be limp by the time they got back to the house, but he knew Freya would treat them like the biggest and most expensive bouquet she’d ever received, probably pressing one or two of the petals in the journal she kept, and her son would love her even more.

Not that it was hard to love her. Not in the slightest. It only took one look at her, her short brown hair (even if one or two were starting to turn silver), those hazel eyes that read his thoughts off the back of his skull, the tattoo flaming up her back … he just had to see her to want to love her. Which he’d proved the night before when he walked in on her taking her bath.

She was floating in the delicately scented water, her eyes closed. She knew he was there, of course, and her lips twitched as his gaze ran down her naked body. The scars ghosting across her skin were now merely shadows, echoes of what had been, and if she was slightly softer from carrying two children, it was the kind of softness that pulled at his soul, made his heart beat faster, and took blood away from his senses to a far more responsive organ altogether.

“You gonna stand there all night and watch me?” she asked, still not looking at him, the words echoing in his mind as much as in his ears.

“Not sure,” he said. “The view’s pretty breathtaking. Might be considering seeing if I can capture it on paper. You know, for posterity.”

“Could make a fortune.”

“Could at that.”

“Your very own Mona Lisa.”

“Mona who?”

There was a pause. “Water’s just right.”

“It looks it.”

“And I’m comfy.” Now she opened her eyes, gazing into his blue orbs. “So why don’t you join me?”