“Oh. Okay. Sure.”

She turned, leaving him to his fate and then came back. “Can I give you a tip about this thing with Kensey?”

He cocked his head. “What thing?”

He was so adorably clueless.

“She doesn’t want to go to sleep. She wants to talk and play. Don’t let her con you. Be firm. Put her back in bed over and over and she’ll quit it.”

“Did she have a bad dream?” He leaned in very close. “Do you think she senses something between us and is acting out? See? We should tell them.”

“Two separate issues. You and I will discuss telling the girls later on tonight. As for why Kensey is getting up a lot after she’s supposed to be in bed? She’s nine. That’s what they do. Like Maddie’s little snit earlier.”

He looked sad so she took pity on him, brushing her fingers through his hair. “It’s a good thing. Before they acted up in a different way. I call them company manners.” She shrugged. “Now they get bratty around you. Also what they do. But they trust you to be themselves, bratty and all.”

“Oh.” She got the feeling he’d been waiting for something negative, but the smile he gave made her happy. He kissed her quickly. “Thank you for that.”

“You’re welcome. Now, like I said, I’m going to shower and you’re on Kensey duty. She’ll be up in the next ten minutes or so. Next up I’m going to guess she’ll pester Maddie. Or have to go to the bathroom. She already has, by the way. Stay strong.”

“When can I come to you?” He closed the distance remaining between them in one step. The heat of his skin dizzied her and she breathed him in.

“You’ll know she’s finally asleep after about half an hour or so after the last whatever it is she does.” She took a step back and headed out.

By the time she’d walked into her bedroom she heard Kensey get up.

“What’s up, sweetheart?” Vaughan called out and Kelly let herself leave their daughter in his hands.

* * *

SHE DID MOST of her best thinking in the shower and that night was no different. Kelly knew he was trying. Knew he hadn’t thought of the issue with Maddie earlier in the same way she had.

She needed to cut him some slack. He was trying, which was what he’d promised. It wasn’t so much that she was angry. More likely a trigger put there by being raised as a commodity instead of a person.

It wasn’t really like you could untangle what stuff you had for a good reason and what stuff you had because of your damage, not when the outcome was something like raising your kids into responsible, whole adults.

It unsettled her to think of them being teenagers without a moral center. When you didn’t, you could make not only bad choices, which everyone made, but also the kinds of choices and decisions that could mess a life up for years.

Ugh. Impossible to not see how much that was because she was thrust into a very adult world when she was only a little older than Maddie. It was sheer luck and the fact that other adults in that world had protected her instead of harming her that she’d gotten through it without the horror stories so many who started young in the fashion industry had.

She got out of the shower and as she brushed her teeth, put on lotion and got into some clothes, she thought about the way Vaughan had listened to her that night.

Before, he hadn’t really looked at her with that much attention when it wasn’t sex or something fun. He’d been too focused on being carefree to want to talk about anything heavy.

Another comparison, she realized, she’d made between how Vaughan was before and how he was now.

It made a difference that he’d changed.

* * *

“I FIND MYSELF thinking about you in terms of before and now,” she announced to Vaughan as he came into her room half an hour later.

He started and then looked her way, a little wary.

But she wasn’t mad so he got that sexy look, well, one of his approximately four thousand sexy faces, the one he wore when he knew he was going to sex her into a puddle of goo. One of her favorites.

But one that tended to make her forget everything, including things they really needed to talk about.

Not that she stopped him from sliding his arms around her and kissing her. She sighed, opening to him, tasting him. This connection between them sizzled and popped.

His tongue teased into her mouth and then retreated as the edge of his teeth slid over her bottom lip when he broke away.

“Now. Tell me about this before-and-now thing.”

They got into her bed, still wearing clothes, legs crossed and facing one another. They’d moved from her sitting area to the bed days ago and hadn’t bothered to go back.

“I was in the shower and thinking about you.”

“Yeah? Did you masturbate while you did? And if not, that’s something I’d very much like to be in on if you choose to do so at another date. Or in five minutes.”

Kelly couldn’t stop her snort of laughter. “Stop. I was thinking about earlier tonight with Maddie and how when I told you why I disagreed with you, I had all your focus. You really listened to me. You thought about what I was saying and I felt respected.”

That had meant a lot because sometimes with Ross she got the definite feeling he thought she was too lax with the girls.

His teasing grin shifted as tenderness replaced it. “I do respect you.”

“Before, I don’t know that you did.”

He propelled from the mattress and started to pace. “That’s not fair.”