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  "Are we at the new house yet, Daddy?" she asked sleepily.

  "Yes, pet. You can look all around tomorrow. You're in our bed and either Mam or I will sleep with you tonight. Do you need the bathroom?"

  Ava shook her fair curly head with a little smile and settled down under the covers, too exhausted from the journey to put up a protest yet alert enough to enjoy the triumph of getting Mammy and Daddy's bed. Jim kissed her forehead softly. He loved her dearly and when she was sleepy and biddable she almost caused his heart to ache with tenderness. Awake she was a live wire, constantly curious about the world around, which could be exhausting.

  Three year old Jack hadn't even stirred as Ange tucked him in. He looks so vulnerable, Jim thought. He never seemed to catch up size wise with his peers. And his smallness seemed to serve them both as a continual reminder of their recklessness that caused his early arrival. Jim tried not to let it get to him, but there were times he almost felt resentful of the little lad, as his arrival had been the cause of the gulf that had developed between he and Ange. And then guilt about his negative feelings led him to indulge the little monkey too much, when occasionally he really needed to be more authoritative. Everything hinged on their new home, Jim realized. He needed to reconnect with his wife and leave his guilt neatly packaged up in storage with their furniture in Dublin.

  They were in a new home, with no history or scandal dogging them. And no family members coming between them, twisting the little knife that had been embedded three years ago. One or two of Ange's family had thought he wasn't good enough for her in the first place. He was a self-made man with no education beyond secondary school and the school of hard knocks. As a family of professional people, they had looked down their noses at him. And after the accident, it seemed he was fair game, not only a thick ignorant culchie from Kerry, but also a wife beater in their eyes. Initially, when they were still united as a couple, Ange and he had laughed at the shock they would have felt if they knew it was she, and not he who had started the playing, encouraged it. But nice professional people who were brought up properly weren't supposed to have these perverted little tendencies. It was all right for the muck savages like him with no education or breeding. It was just the ammunition they needed. Sadly the joke had long gone out of it and Jim was well aware that they had hoped she would leave him.

  He heard Ange in the master bathroom, the sound of peeing filtered out through the open door. He smiled. He loved that sound. It was the tinkle of intimacy. That she trusted him enough to pee without shutting him out. These days she generally locked the door when she used the bathroom, and he hated it, it was symbolic – she was closing him out from her private thoughts and deeds. He headed towards the door, as much to see if she would kick it shut. She smiled up from her throne. Progress. He watched her wipe her bottom, again a very private, intimate act, and she didn't try to cover up. She was back to shaving her pussy, too, and he loved the bareness of it. He knew she did that for him, and once the spanking had stopped so too had the shaving.

  "Are you tired?" she asked as she washed her hands. "Damn, no towel." She rubbed her hands on her jeans and shrugged.

  "Yes, but not too tired to open a bottle of that duty free and toast our new beginning if you're up for it."

  "I'm really tired and the kids might wake up looking for us," Ange excused herself.

  "One glass of wine, Ange, and twenty minutes of your time, please." It came out more like an order than a request. He didn't know why, but carrying his point on this seemed important to him. He didn't even care if she drank the bloody wine. He just wanted the togetherness, especially as they were going to be headed to separate beds. He saw her mouth open slightly at the sharpness of his tone, and he waited for her to bite his head off about bossing her around the place, something she always revolted against. To his surprise, she simply sighed and nodded her acceptance.

  He went out to the hired car and took in their baggage. They had travelled as light as possible, having had bulkier items and many of their clothes shipped out separately. As he entered the living area, he could see that the crates had arrived. Grateful for his wife's organizational skills he easily spotted the crate marked kitchen. He was afraid he was going to have to do his old college day trick of pushing the cork into the bottle. He opened it and managed to find a corkscrew and a couple of mugs. Uncouth, but what the hell. Ange came in and surveyed the chaos around him.

  "Jim O'Brien, you're worse than the fecking kids. Look at the mess," she scolded, leaning down to pick things up.

  "Leave them, Ange, unpacking is tomorrow." She ignored him and he landed a sharp swat to her behind. Her eyes were ablaze as she snapped her face toward him.

  Jim laughed. He loved riling her. She was the most formidably independent woman he had ever met. He couldn't believe it when he found out that the BDSM stuff turned her on as it was such a contrast to her spikey, tough exterior. He winked and she relaxed.

  "Bastard, you always get me! Now, open that wine," Ange said with a grin.

  "You'll probably have to watch your language, Ange. Messing aside, I don't think they'll go for it here. I never knew how you could swear like a trooper all the time outside class but not in it."

  "I suppose I will. Mind you, you're not much better, and if you tell me it's all right for a man, you know I'll have to thwap you one. Maybe we should start a swear jar. Problem is I don't notice it half the time."

  "I've a way to make you notice it: every time I catch you at it I'll give you a good wallop. That should soon sort you out," he said, handing her a glass. She poked her tongue out at him, not taking him seriously.

  "Cheers, and welcome to our new life."

  "Cheers, Jim. Here's to a new beginning. The house is lovely, isn't it? It's a pity I slept through our arrival. I didn't get to see the neighborhood."

  "There's always tomorrow."

  He sat beside Ange on the sofa, and she tucked her feet up and leaned in against him and talked about their plans for the next few days. That was all he had wanted. A little close, intimate contact as a promising new beginning. For that brief moment, it was Jim and Ange against the world. Just as it should be, just as it used to be, and maybe it could be again. As they rose to go to bed he even managed not to get too prickly when Ange tutted about how he left his empty mug on the coffee table and pointedly picked it up and carried it over to the sink. Rome wasn't built in a day! If they could get the closeness back the niggling habits that had developed between them could be addressed one by one.

  For the first time in a long, long while Jim O'Brien went to bed with a light heart even though he went to one of the children's beds and Ange was tucked in beside the kids. This was a new opportunity. They had gambled and lost by taking that court case. Jim was just praying that the gamble on Colorado would have a better payoff. It better had, he was not going to give up on his family without a fight.

  Chapter 3

  The house was in a shambles. Before Ange had even woken up, Jim had emptied every crate in the living room not even carrying the crates to the correct room on the grounds that if everything was in the middle of the floor they couldn't procrastinate about the unpacking. Ange was raging. She knew from experience that before it was finished there would definitely be somewhere where Jim would have to be, leaving her to sort out the chaos as he usually did. She'd yelled at him as soon as she saw it and now they were in the process of putting things where they should be in silence, Ange sulking and Jim inwardly fuming. She knew he wanted to read her the riot act but the kids were there and they tried not to argue in front of them.

  After lunch as the children were napping, they were still in the middle of the cold war when the doorbell rang and Jim arrived back in the living room with three people in tow. She could have killed him for bringing anyone in to such a mess, especially one of his making. Not that there really was much choice, the whole ground floor was open plan. This was going to be challenging for her house-proud ego. In her last home, they'd had a playroom
that she didn't mind getting topsy turvy as long as the rest of the house was neat and orderly. Ange plastered a fake smile on her face, mortified to have been caught in such disarray. The smile soon became genuine though when the small, round, redhead identified herself as Maeve Harshaw, and the men as Brent Carmichael and Lelo Stephens. As far as she was concerned the only person that mattered at that moment, in that little group, was Maeve and she grasped her in an almost suffocating hug, squealing with glee.

  "It's so good to finally meet you, Maeve." Ange's eyes welled up as she met the woman who had helped preserve her sanity over the last year.

  "Aw, you too honey," Maeve replied as she tried to extricate herself from Ange's grasp.

  Ange took in the little group. Brent was an attractive man, blond with intelligent-looking grey eyes. She could imagine he could be pretty formidable, as he seemed to be surveying all he saw before him, weighing it up. Lelo, older and completely grey, seemed pretty intimidating, too, for a small man. Ange figured it wouldn't do to get on the wrong side of him. Thinking about it, she should have expected to see all these stern dommy types considering the ethos of the co-op, but she hadn't actually considered that aspect. She sure as hell hoped they realized that she wasn't going to be bending to her husband's rule, never mind any other man's. She wasn't Taken In Hand and had no intention of becoming so.

  The men gave a brief run-down of the expectations the community would have of the new residents, the rules and also the benefits, but it was pretty much as they had signed in their contract. Brent handed an envelope over to Jim.

  "Your signed copy, for your records," he explained. "I wasn't really clear about who is HOH from your application which makes it difficult to assign mentors, but I'd like to as soon as possible to help you adjust to your new environment."

  Jim and Ange spoke at once.

  "I am," said Jim.

  "We don't have one," said Ange glaring at her husband. Who made him boss? Certainly not her! There would be wigs on the green as soon as the visitors left. She saw the men raise their eyebrows at one another.

  "We don't have a head of house relationship, we lean a little more to the BDSM side of things, but I'm the spankee, if that helps," Ange clarified, trying to keep her tone more civil than she felt.

  "Thank you, yes it does, and we'll bear that in mind when we assign you a mentor, Jim. But Maeve has specifically requested to act as yours, Ange, even though her arrangement is a little different."

  "Thank you, Maeve. That would be really lovely," Ange replied with real warmth.

  She knew from their correspondence that they lived by different rules, but by the same token, she was aware that Maeve was an open person who would do her level best for her, and try to understand her point of view, just as she had with her daughter Sarah. They had met on a BDSM site, when Maeve was researching her daughter's choice of lifestyle, and Ange was trying to make sense of her own choices. Ange had a lot of respect for her already.

  "We'll leave you to get on with your unpacking. Each of our telephone numbers and house numbers are in that envelope I gave you, don't be afraid to call on us for anything. When you are ready, one of us will take you on a tour of the neighborhood, and Denver, too, if you like," Brent said rising.

  "Who elected you head?" Ange rounded on Jim as soon as the visitors were out of earshot. "You know I'm not willing to be your sub anywhere but the bedroom."

  Jim gave her a sheepish look. "Sorry, love. It just seemed like the right thing to say at the time."

  "Fuck you," Ange muttered under her breath.

  Jim heard her, there was no doubt of that; his eyes blazed with anger. But he simply picked up an armful of the children's clothes, and walked away with a grim determined look about him and she continued working in an angry silence. So much for the new start. Once the children woke from their nap, he took them out for a walk about their new neighborhood. Ange sat and cried; with frustration at being left with the mess as per usual, annoyance at the stupid argument and general stress from the move and the upheaval her life had undergone over the last months and years. She wasn't even sure if Corbin's Bend was the right answer.

  Looking at it in the cold light of day, she could now see it was a knee jerk reaction to having been made feel a total freak by the media in Ireland. And if she was totally honest about it, she had dragged Jim along. Perhaps she would just have been better moving to the UK with just the kids instead of dragging them all into this odd little community, based on a common ethos of spanking. Sheesh, already it was causing problems and it was their spanking kink that had gotten them into this mess in the first place.

  She was stirred from her self-pity by a rap on the door. Ange contemplated not answering it as she knew she must look a fright but the rapping continued, and she wondered if Jim had forgotten his keys. Maeve came bustling in as Ange opened the door.

  "Sorry to disturb you, but I wanted to catch you alone and I saw Jim out walking with the little ones, aren't they just the cutest?"

  It was only then that she actually seemed to look at Ange properly, and notice her tear stained face.

  "Oh, honey, what is it?" Maeve asked, guiding her by the arm into the living room and sitting on the sofa beside her drawing Ange into her ample bosom.

  "I don't know. What if it's all a dreadful mistake? Coming here I mean. Jim seems to think it makes him in charge, which pisses me off. We know no one. We have no jobs. We're here and it's completely my fault. What if we packed up our lives for nothing?" Ange sobbed.

  "That's exactly why I like being in a head of household marriage, Ange. I don't have the burden of all the decisions. That responsibility belongs to Joe."

  "Does it not make you feel, I don't know how to put it, maybe downtrodden?"

  Maeve gave a hearty laugh as she shook her head in denial.

  "It's not like I don't get a say, we still talk about things. It's just Joe usually has the final say, but often I'll talk him round. Look what happened with Sarah, he came around to her choices. If you have a good relationship, you'll both respect each other, regardless of the dynamics. This is just the way we choose to do it."

  "I suppose you're right, I'm just out of sorts with the move, and the court case, too, I guess."

  "You'll figure out your own path it time. Just watch the others around you. See if you think the wives or subs aren't respected. Most of them would tell you they feel cherished and taken care of, regardless of which path they follow. Of course everyone will tell you the way they do it is the only way. Don't listen to them; the only way to live is what enriches you as a couple, not what works for someone else. What you need to worry about now is getting this place organized and making it feel like a home and I'm here to help. The sooner you do that, the sooner you can settle in and start to meet people."

  "You're right. Thanks, Maeve. I'm sorry. I don't know what's got into me."

  "You've had a hard time, you need to let it all go, and start over. Now, show me where you want me to put things, and we'll see if we can't get this place all nice and homey."

  Another couple of hours saw the floor cleared, with most things in their rightful place. Ange knew it would take weeks for it to feel like home, but for now de-cluttered was good. The two were just sitting down to coffee at the kitchen island when the door opened.

  "Mammy, Mammy, there's a playground here," Ava shouted as she ran in, closely followed by Jack and Jim. She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw Maeve, momentary shyness stealing her tongue.

  "A playground? Well, that's great news, Ava. Come say hello to Maeve."

  The two children shook hands politely when told, but weren't being conned into letting a stranger hug them under any circumstances.

  "Wait 'til you see, they're not usually this quiet," Jim said. "You should have heard them roaring on the swings. Any coffee in the pot or did you find the tea yet?"

  "I did, I'll wet a pot now." Ange rose from her high stool and put on the kettle. Sure, he was perfectly capable of making a po
t of tea for himself, but it was her peace offering. The mess was sorted, she felt better after talking to Maeve and Ange really did want this to be a fresh start for them. It was just that they had become used to sniping rather than pulling together. Sometimes the jibe was out of her mouth before she knew it or even tried to come up with a more reasonable answer.

  "I saw a restaurant in my travels, Endelé. Is it any good, Maeve? I doubt you feel like a trip to Denver after all that work, Ange. I didn't expect you to be finished."

  "No, but I bet you hoped!" Ange muttered, immediately forgetting her resolution to try harder. Maeve cut in, diffusing the tension.

  "Endelé is very good, as are all the restaurants, but you should meet Bernie, she owns Endelé and is like a guardian angel to all the new wives who move in, and she won't be happy 'til she knows you. And speaking of dinner, I'd better go make Joe's. Great to meet you kids. And you two, again."

  "Thanks so much for all your help, Maeve. I'll see you tomorrow, maybe."

  "You can count on it."

  As the children's routine was all over the place from travelling, they opted for an early dinner, before they started to get cranky. A woman of around sixty approached them with a broad smile on her face as they entered the restaurant.

  "No need to ask, you must be the new Irish family I've been hearing so much about. Welcome to Endelé. Aren't they gorgeous?" she cooed, lightly pinching Jack's thigh as he was held in his father's arms. Jack tucked his face into his father's shoulders hiding from her attentions.

  "I'm Jim and this is my wife, Ange." Jim offered his hand. "Is it possible to get a table, and do you mind children?"

  "My guests prefer no children after nine, but it's early and you'll be long finished by then. Besides, I am just dying to get to know you," Bernie enthused.