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       Happily Even After

       Marilynn Griffith

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      MILLS & BOON

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      Contents

       Acknowledgments

       Chapter One

       Chapter Two

       Chapter Three

       Chapter Four

       Chapter Five

       Chapter Six

       Chapter Seven

       Chapter Eight

       Chapter Nine

       Chapter Ten

       Chapter Eleven

       Chapter Twelve

       Chapter Thirteen

       Chapter Fourteen

       Chapter Fifteen

       Chapter Sixteen

       Chapter Seventeen

       Chapter Eighteen

       ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      Every book I write seems to require more and more help. I’m thankful to have a great family, good friends and a great publishing team to help me out.

      Fill, Ashlie, Michelle, Fill Jr, Ben, James, John and Isaiah:

      Thank you for putting up with me while this book came together. I hope that all the harried hugs and microwave dinners leave you no worse for the wear. Each of you is an amazing story that I’m blessed to be able to read every day. Without you, none of this could happen.

      Calvary Chapel Tallahassee and all the amazing moms I’ve met over the years in the nursing mothers’ room:

      Thanks for your support and your friendship. You’re the best.

      Jessica Alvarez, Diane Dietz, Joan Marlow Golan, Megan Lorius and all the Steeple Hill Books staff who worked on this book:

      Thanks again for believing in me and allowing me to tell another story with you. I appreciate it.

      Mom, Maurice, Shay, Mya and Maxwell:

      Thanks for giving me plenty to laugh about while writing this book. You all are incredibly talented and giving. I miss you much.

      Claudia, my wonderful mother-in-law, and Grafton, my father-in-law who treats me like a daughter:

      Thank you so much for your love and support. (And for giving me your son. He’s a keeper!)

      Mrs. A. Smith, Mrs. Dupont, Mrs. Sperling, Mrs. Shaner, Miss Dot, Miss Sonia, Mr. Gillmore, Mr. Hankerson, Principal Gayle, Miss Wimberley and all the other teachers and staff who have cared for my children this year:

      Thank you. Your hard work has been a blessing to me and my family. Sorry I haven’t always been around. This is some of what I was doing.

      Dave Talbot, Rachel Williams, Dick Foth, Sharon Hinck, Susie Aughtmon, Wendy Lawton, Cyndy Salzmann, Janet Eckles, Marci, Vicki Tiede and everyone from the Mount Hermon shuttle van:

      Thanks for the great time at Mount Hermon 2007. It helped me a lot with this novel.

      Mair, Barbara Joe, Jen, Staci, Amy, Angie, Jess, Heather, Gail and all my other writer friends:

      Thanks for putting up with me when I disappear. I believe in you.

      For all the readers who continue to support my work and my family by buying my books and telling others about them:

      Thank you. You make it all worth it.

      Jesus, who picks me up when I fall:

      You did it again.

       Chapter One

       A ll hail the Queen!

       My gold dress drapes the floor as I approach, taking my seat beside the King of all creation. He’s called me forward, invited me into His throne room. I’m blessed and embarrassed. I haven’t seen Him all week. With only a slight tiara adjustment, I stand before the King and step onto a tiny, tiny scale….

      “Tracey! Don’t you hear this baby crying out here? You’ve been in that bathroom for, like, an hour! And now you’re in there screaming? What’s that about?”

      The heavenly throne room faded. My velvet gown became a pink terry-cloth bathrobe. The toilet in my secret bathroom, the only one of the six lavatories in my home far enough away from my bedroom for me to feel safe enough to step on a scale, was no longer my throne. The overhead fan, which usually drowned out my screams when I stepped on the scale, must have finally failed. It was my favorite and most dreaded day of the week.

      Sunday.

      Church with my mother-in-law and weigh-in day wrapped into one morning. And after months of escape in my purple bathroom, my husband had found me out. Was nothing sacred?

      “Coming!” I grabbed my throat, realizing that I was still speaking in my regal tone. I paused in front of the mirror and removed the plastic crown my friends gave me for my last birthday. No time to remove the face paint or the body glitter, though. Oh well. After almost two years of marriage, Ryan should know that I’m a little crazy by now, shouldn’t he?

      Armed with a wet washrag, I scurried out of my secret room, scrubbing my face like a dingy wall as I went. By the time I reached my bedroom on the other side of the house, my husband was snoring, with Lily, my baby daughter, resting on his chest. I sighed with satisfaction at the sight of them. As I tiptoed back to my retreat, though, I groaned at the sight of myself in the hall mirror. Despite my spa treatments, not much had changed.

      I’m no queen. I’m not even a princess. I’m just Tracey Blackman, a fat girl from Illinois.

       Stop it. You are not fat anymore.

      Okay, well, I used to be a fat girl. Sometimes I feel like I still am, like I’m one Oreo away from inflating into a balloon and floating out my window.

      I wondered if my husband would notice.

      Probably not.

      My baby girl would notice, though, since I’d be taking her favorite sources of sustenance, also known as “the girls,” which were currently overflowing my nursing bra, with me. (I like that word, sustenance. It’s so…purposeful. Don’t you think?) Since I’ve got the booby juice and because I know that Ryan really loves me, I’ll forgo the Oreo and settle for my life as a slightly lumpy postpartum person. I read that in a parenting magazine over the weekend, that men can get postpartum depression too, so the term should apply to “postpartum people.” I canceled my subscription after that, though the laughing fit did keep me from finishing a pint of ice cream that I hadn’t

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