Slaying the Dragon (Deception Duet #2) (49 page)
Read Slaying the Dragon (Deception Duet #2) Online
Authors: T. K. Leigh
“Daddy!” a small voice called to me, breaking me away from the snow and my thoughts. Charlie ran into my arms and I swung him around, making him squeal with delight. “Presents?” he asked.
“Did you ask Mommy if it was time yet?” I replied, glancing up to see Mackenzie laughing with Jenna and Olivia. A warmth spread through me as I caught sight of the little bump on her that was starting to show. I missed the early stages of her first pregnancy and was thrilled that I would be here every day of this one, morning sickness and all.
“She said to ask you.”
I chuckled at what had become our parenting style. “Do you want to open presents?” I asked in hushed tones.
He nodded, his eyes growing wide.
“Then you can open your presents.”
When he squirmed, I put him down and he darted from me, shouting, “Daddy said it’s time!”
Meeting my eyes, Mackenzie smiled and sauntered across the room toward me. “You’re incorrigible, you know that? You
do
understand you’ll be up all night long assembling all the toys, right?”
I pulled her against me, raising my eyebrows. “Well, if I’ll be up all night, I’m sure we can find
something
more constructive to fill our time, rather than putting together a bunch of toys that will just be destroyed in two days.”
“Oh, really?” she replied, pulling on my blazer jacket, leading me toward the bay window in the formal sitting room of our house.
“Mmm-hmm…”
“And what would that be?” she asked as I folded my arms around her, both of us staring at the snow falling at a steady pace.
“I have a few ideas,” I murmured, kissing her neck.
“I don’t know. I’m exhausted from growing a human inside of me. You could rub my feet and tell me a bedtime story.”
“What kind of story?”
“A good one.” She raised her eyebrows.
“Anything for you,” I said, savoring the warmth of her body next to mine. “Once upon a time,” I began, planting a kiss on her forehead, “there was a little girl who stopped believing in fairytales. She had been hidden away for years, always holding out hope her Prince Charming would come and rescue her from her self-imposed prison. Then, one day, a man appeared. He was a little rough around the edges and may not have had the purest of intentions to begin with, but he fell in love with the woman that little girl had turned into.”
I glanced down to see her eyes closed, a look of serenity on her face. I began to rock her back-and-forth, almost swaying to the music in both our heads. “But there was an evil dragon who tried to keep the prince from his love. The prince knew he had to protect this woman from the monstrous beast who was trying to tear them apart, so he set upon a quest to slay the dragon and free his love.”
“And did he?” she asked, turning to me.
Grabbing both her hands in mine, I simply nodded. “Yes, with a bit of help. And he used his powers to return all the people who had ever been taken from the princess to her so she could finally have the family she had been yearning for her entire life.”
“How did it end?”
“Like all fairytales should,” I said, raising her hand to meet my lips. “They lived happily ever after.”
Losing Your Memory
- Ryan Star
Cannonball
- Damian Rice
This Woman’s Work
- Greg Laswell
Sideways
- Citizen Cope
The Space Between
- Dave Matthews Band
Your Ghost
- Greg Laswell
If You Love Me Let Me Go
- Colbie Caillat
Gone Away
- Lucy Schwartz
Between The Lines
- Sara Bareilles
I’m Through
- Ingrid Michaelson
Over You
- Ingrid Michaelson, featuring A Great Big World
Everything’s Not Lost
- Coldplay
The Lonely
- Christina Perri
Cold Blooded
- The Pretty Reckless
1000 Times
- Sara Bareilles
Awake My Soul
- Mumford & Sons
You Make It Real
- James Morrison
All Of Me
- John Legend
Boston
- Augustana
Breathe Me
- Sia
Apologies
- Grace Potter & The Nocturnals
I Do
- Susie Suh
Bewitched, Bothered, And Bewildered
- Ella Fitzgerald
Tamacún
- Rodrigo y Gabriela
Magic
- Colbie Caillat
In The Embers
- Sleeping At Last
Nothing But The Water (I)
- Grace Potter & The Nocturnals
Weapon For Saturday
- LOLO
By My Side
- William Fitzsimmons
Future Days
- Pearl Jam
The One
- Kodaline
The Luckiest
- Ben Folds
(A stand-alone Heart of Light prequel)
The Deception Duet
For more information on any of these titles, please visit T.K.’s website:
It's not over yet…
A new Beautiful Mess series novel coming your way in 2016!
Rayne Kilpatrick has everything. A job she’s dreamed of since she was a little girl. The perfect house. And a man she loves and is about to marry… Until he never returns from a humanitarian mission.
Gone. Disappeared. Vanished.
When footage of his gruesome murder by a Muslim extremist group is shown across the country and around the globe, she wants the person responsible for the disappearance of the man she loves to pay. She wants him to lose the one person who means the world to him, too, and she won’t stop until he does.
Alexander Burnham has everything… Finally. A job he enjoys where he can actually make a difference in the world. The perfect woman who he’s loved his entire life. And the most beautiful daughter a father could ask for… Until he wakes up one morning and her bedroom is empty.
Gone. Disappeared. Vanished.
It’s a race against the clock for Alexander to put the pieces together and find out who has taken his daughter and what they want from him. As information comes to light, he is forced to bury the guilt he feels after losing his fellow team member and focus instead on finding and saving his daughter… Before it’s too late.
A brand new Romantic Comedy coming from T.K. Leigh in 2016!
You know how you always say someday I will?
Well, I’ve hit my someday.
Someday begins today.
Baylee Morgan is at a crossroads of her life. Leaving her marriage of ten years and the only life she’s ever known, she starts over in a penthouse ocean-front condo in Santa Monica, California. She soon finds herself immersed, albeit reluctantly, in the daunting and perilous world of dating as an almost thirty-something in Los Angeles, unsure of how to act, what to do, or whether that hot guy she meets in yoga class is straight.
Sebby Powers’ dream has always been to work in the film industry. At the age of thirty-five, he’s one of the youngest up-and-coming producers in Hollywood. His life is perfect. Perfect apartment. Perfect girlfriend. Perfect dog. Until a friendship with a beautiful new neighbor with vibrant red hair and a similar taste in cheesy movies throws his perfect life into a tailspin.
The Other Side Of Someday
is a fun, sexy story of looking for Mr. Right in a world full of Mr. Wrongs, when Mr. Right could be just next door.
These books in my Deception Duet have probably been the most difficult for me to write, from a technical perspective. There are so many puzzle pieces that make up this story and the amount of read-throughs I’ve done to make sure everything made sense, that nothing was too confusing far surpassed the number I’ve done on any of my previous books. Of course, I had a lot of help from my wonderful beta readers who read this story and were brutally honest with me regarding whether everything made sense.