The Beautiful Boy with a Brand New Toy

"Don't you realize that it's a little early to be sneaking around?"

The little girl who had attempted to sneak out from her room after she had been sent there for being bad tempered stopped short, still as could be with wide eyes of surprise. How had her mother found out that she was trying to slip just outside her bedroom door? Was she really that loud, or did her mother have extremely good hearing?

She focused her blue eyes on her mother's form standing before her with her arms folded across her chest, eyebrow raised with a stern expression. Her foot tapped impatiently. Admitting defeat, the girl gave a mighty sigh and hunched her shoulders and looked to her mother pleadingly.

"Please, can I come out, Mama? I promise I'll behave!" she whined with a childish pout.

Hunter regarded her daughter carefully, debating on whether or not she was being sneaky again. She had developed a bad habit of being able to lie with a straight face. She lifted her brow and pointed a finger right between her eyes.

"You had better keep that promise, young lady or it's back to your room for an extended period of time," she warned seriously and stepped back with a loving smile as her daughter disappeared. She turned headed back into the sitting room with a sigh and plopped down onto the couch near the window where she had been reading, and gazed out the window. Five years had gone by and since the night that she had joined with Zack and ended in the result of a beautiful daughter that shared her father's eyes and mother's hair. When she was born, they had decided to name her Rosemary which had been her great-grandmother's name. Time had gone by so fast and it only seemed like yesterday when she remembered arriving on his doorstep and seeing him for the first time.

She smiled in memory until she was roused from her thoughts by her wandering husband who had finally managed to slip away from work. He stood there in the doorway dressed neatly in a black suede jacket and dress pants with fancy polished shoes. His midnight black hair was ruffled from the breeze on the way here and his eyes sparkled like the pacific ocean much like their daughter's. Her smile widened.

"Hello, love. I decided to leave work early to be able to have a proper family dinner with the people I love," he murmured, his breath tickling her skin as she gave a girlish laugh and shared a passionate kiss.

"Daddy, daddy!"

Rosemary's cry broke them apart but they were both all smiles at the sight of their wonderful daughter rushing towards them with excitement flush in her eyes and cheeks. He laughed as she launched into his open arms and swung her around, planting a kiss on her cheek, relishing her childish laughter.

"What have my two favorite ladies been up to today?" he asked as he watched Hunter rise to her feet and lead the way into the kitchen where their maid, Emily was preparing tea.

Rosemary gave a pout and her eyes slanted in a glare towards her mother. "Mama had me on a time out."

Zack lifted his eyebrows and looked to Hunter who shook her head with a small smile that Rosemary couldn't see as she grabbed teacups for the beverage. He frowned down at his daughter and gently flicked the tip of her nose.

"Well? What did you do to deserve such punishment?" he questioned, already knowing how she had ended up there in the first place. They had been having trouble with her for the past month with her attitude changes. It was only normal for vampire children, seeing as they aged faster than the average human child. They had less time to grow through the stages until they became an adult.

Rosemary rolled her eyes with a sigh and folded her arms looking very much like her mother, and Zack fought back a smile.

"She confined me to my room because I was behaving badly," she said angrily and he stared at her, wondering when she had stretched out her vocabulary like that.

"Well, if you were talking back and not behaving like a young lady should, then she had every right to send you to your room, sweetheart," he said honestly and gave her tousled curls a ruffle causing her to glare at him through her bangs, but it never lasted. She could never be angry with her father for too long. She peered up at him with adoration.

"I'm just so glad that your home for dinner," she squeaked and wrapped her arms around his legs. He stared down at her in surprise, but easily settled into a warm smile and stroked her curls gently.

"Me too, honey. Me too."

When dinner was complete, the three of them sat together for the first time in a while as a family and enjoyed every single moment, because even though you can live for eternity, life throws you some unexpected obstacles.