That had been a hard thing to do when I'd first gone back to work, but I'd wanted some part of my old life back. Work, while at times exceedingly boring and monotonous, was also my final connection to normalcy. There, I wasn't Emma, the mixed vampire married to an undead vampire, raising two partially vampiric children. No, there I was just Emma, super employee.
And that's what I had become. One thing I'd discovered early on was how beneficial my new skills were at my job. No one in the office could type faster than me. No one in the office could pull reports faster than me. No one in the office could do anything faster than me...literally. To them, since returning from my maternity leave, I'd become this indispensible person that everyone relied on to get things done.
As I pulled into the parking lot of Neilson, Sampson and Peterson, the prosperous accounting firm that I worked for, I smiled at remembering my first day back after the twins. As my old boss, Clarice, had warned me, she'd filled my position and I'd had to start again at the bottom. Grudgingly, I had gone to my new spot...in the mail room. I hadn't been there two months before my reputation for quickness started to precede me, and I was quickly promoted out of there.
Of course, my super hearing also played an invaluable role. I'd sort of become known as the "psychic" one, since I had an uncanny knack for bringing people what they needed, before they'd even asked for it. It was one of the few benefits of being able to hear nearly every conversation going on in the building.
Once I'd learned how to shut out the pockets of conversations that I didn't need, I found that I could hone in on the conversations that I did need. Say, Mr. Peterson muttering to himself that he needed a tax statement on an important client. I could then walk in and hand it to him, explaining that I knew he had a meeting with that client later and I figured that he would need it. Moves like that tended to impress bosses, and within the year, I was back to my old job.
Well, no, that wasn't exactly true. What with my super efficiency and my uncanny "psychic" abilities, I was no longer the secretary's secretary. I was no longer underneath Clarice. I was Mr. Peterson's second executive administrative assistant. I was her equal.
She hated that.
Smiling as I walked down the corridor to my new office, an actual room instead of a life-draining cubicle, I waved at my friends and coworkers. Pausing beside one of the cubicles, I looked down at my assistant. Yeah, I had my very own assistant.
"Good morning, Tracey," I told my friend brightly.
She smiled over at me as she stuffed her purse in the tight desk drawers. I smiled wider, happy that I now had a closet for my behemoth of a bag. "Morning, Emma. How are those adorable kids of yours?"
I sighed contently, taking a second to mark where I felt their presence in my mind. Picturing them climbing all over my mother, I shook my head. "They are wonderful, perfect little angels."
Tracey scrunched her beautiful pixie face. "I miss them. Ben and I need to come over soon and spoil them rotten."
I laughed at that. She and Hot Ben had made a real go of their relationship. Tracey even had a full carat sparkler on her ring finger to prove it. I'd had to feign ignorance when she'd told me that he'd proposed. As he'd been talking with Teren about it for over a month, I'd known exactly where, when, and how it was going to happen. I'd even been the one to suggest the place - the diner where they'd gotten back together after momentarily splitting up, for the second time.
The separation had been brutal on both of them, and was sort of Teren's and my fault. Ben had walked in on an....intimate moment and had discovered what Teren was. It had eaten Ben up inside, the constant fear, and he'd distanced himself from the love of his life. At that diner, he'd opened up to her and they'd gotten back together. Sure, he'd been lying his ass off to her about why he'd been distant, but she didn't need to know the real reason for his turn around.
But, regardless of the reasons behind the split and make up, the memory of that afternoon was a big one to her, a wonderful one, one that she still brought up to this day. I knew that him proposing to her there...would be perfect.
I sighed at her comment. "Yeah, we'll have to arrange something really soon." To her, I only smiled widely, but in my head, I was remembering all of the preparations that had to happen before someone not in the loop, like Tracey, could come over.
The kids would be sat down individually and warned about what they could and could not do, what they could and could not say. It was exhausting for them, it was exhausting for us. When they were younger, we didn't let anyone come around unless Halina was there. Since she could do adjustments to people's memories, one perk of full vampirism that Teren and I didn't have, she eased a lot of the tension in the air. If something weird did happen, she could evaporate the memory in the blink of an eye.
But Hot Ben was actually handy too when it came to distracting Tracey. When she'd commented on something weird she'd seen once, he'd expertly shifted the conversation around to their upcoming nuptials. Any memory of the kids doing something sort of odd was immediately lost on the bride to be. After that moment, we'd all sort of agreed that Ben would come with Tracey whenever a visit with the twins was in order.
Waving goodbye to Tracey, I headed over to my office, eager to start my day. As my office was situated directly in front of Mr. Peterson's office, I shared it with his other assistant, Clarice. She was there, of course, as I breezed through the door. Maybe wanting to feel secure in her own job, she had started coming in fifteen minutes before me, and leaving fifteen minutes after me. It still didn't help; I got way more done in a day.
As I waved at the sour, rotund woman, I felt a little bad for her. I did have a supernatural advantage that she'd never, ever, have. But then I remembered all of the years of abuse I had suffered under her scowling, disapproving eyes, and I let the guilt slide right off me. What was that that they say? Karma is a bitch.
She adjusted her June Cleaver pearls as I tucked my satchel into my closet. "Good morning, Clarice. How are you on this fine day?" I tried to keep the smirk out of my voice but it was just so hard not to tease her.
"I don't have time to chit-chat with you, Emma." She raised a penciled-in eyebrow at me. "Some of us have work to do around here."
Nodding my agreement as I sat down at my wide-open, spacious desk, I watched her grab a stack of papers from her inbox and march them out to the cubicles, where I knew her assistant was about to be loaded down with copying and collating in triplicate. Poor thing. The woman who had my old job was a slip of a girl, not really cut out for the harshness of this environment, especially under Clarice's dictatorship. I gave her another six months before she cracked, tops.
Smiling that I no longer had to fake my cheeriness at being here, I listened for my boss through his door as I rapid-fire read through my emails. When I heard him muttering that he was dying for some coffee, and he really needed to be looking at the Johnson's report, I chuckled lightly and went about getting both for him.
Yes, sometimes being a vampire was exceedingly handy.
Feeling a prideful sense of accomplishment as I completed my work day, I hopped in my car to meet up with my family. The Tuesday night dinners had kept going on after the twins' births. If anything, they had sort of felt even more important after that event. We were all so busy now, and it was a good way to put the brakes on the world and reconnect with each other, if only for an hour or two.
Driving over, I popped in a CD that I couldn't listen to if I had the kids in the car. Not that the music was dirty or anything, but the song did have a couple of F-bombs in it, and I didn't need three-year-olds repeating that kind of stuff. I mean, at least until they were petulant teenagers and truly understood the swears that they were spouting at their overprotective parents. God, I was not ready for that day. I didn't think I'd ever be ready for that day.
Pulling into the cozy little cafe that was an extended home for me and my family, I smiled at seeing Teren's Prius already there. I wasn't surprised, since I knew with absolute certainty that he was in the far corner of the building, not moving, and that our children were about a mile away, closing fast. No, what had me smiling was the peace that had started spreading through my body when I'd started moving towards his direction.
It was like stepping down into a hot tub for the first time, that warmth soaking into every muscle, down to the bone, relaxing every part of me, parts that I hadn't even realized were sore. It was a warm fire after being out in the cold all day and no matter where it happened, our reconnection was always like...coming home.
I sighed happily, feeling Teren's direction shifting towards me, to meet me at the door most likely. The languid warmth seeped throughout my body as I walked towards him. Slow and soothing, I felt only utter contentment and joy. We usually met now with a mellow kiss and whispered words of affection, and I was grateful that the dial had been turned from boiling hot to simmer. While the smoking hot connection had been electrifying when we could ride it's coattails to multiple satisfying releases, it had, more often than not, been annoying.
The very first time we'd all attempted to get back together for our dinners, Teren had been running late, having had a meeting with his editor. Everyone at the diner that had gotten to know my family over the years, had oohed and aahed at the babies when I'd brought them in, virtually ignoring me and any oddities that I might have had, like, a fang slightly elongating as I cooed at my son, having accidently relaxed my hold on them for a micro-second.
We'd gotten the twins' car seats safely propped up on wooden high chairs, and were all watching them stare at the toys dangling almost in their faces. I was watching Julian's pale eyes track a black and white ball when I'd felt my husband draw near.
Knowing that I could not lose control in the middle of the restaurant, I'd begged my sister to start talking about something. Noticing and understanding my condition, she'd started rambling about her schoolwork and how she was inching her way up to the top of her class. I'd struggled to ask intelligent questions, but I'd had to sit on my hands to stop myself from tearing apart the table top.
Breathing noticeably heavier, my mom had eventually asked me what was wrong. Since I couldn't talk long enough to explain, and since Mom knew what I was anyway, Ashley started filling her in on my situation. Mom thought it was weird. I agreed.
I'd whimpered and bit my lip when I felt him in the parking lot. Ashley had held my arm as I sat beside her, looking like she was afraid I was going to blur out of the room to rush to him. Honestly, I'd wanted to, and as I was sitting on the edge of the bench seat, I could have. I can clearly still remember imagining the chaos that would have created, the diners seeing a streak of a person rushing by them. I'd shifted my gaze to my children then, to distract my growing desire. I would not risk them by exposing myself. Not for this. I was stronger than that.
When I'd finally felt him walk into the cafe...that's when things had gotten embarrassing. He'd sped walked over to me and I'd dashed out of my seat to crash into his arms, like we were lovers reuniting in some sappy home-from-the-war movie. Then we'd started ravishing each other right there beside the tables, while shocked patrons surely gawked at our fondling hands and eager mouths. My mom had sputtered reprimands, and my sister had had a serious attack of the giggles, but it was eventually our longtime waitress, Debby, who had pried us apart and threatened to kick us both out of there if we ever did that again.