I love you too, sweetheart, and your father and I are so proud of you. For you to win an award like this at your age. Why there's no telling where you...ll..."My rambling was halted my a soft hand laid on my ass near the top. That hand slid sensuously down the curve of my left ass cheek, over the rounded underside, down the back of my skirt-covered thigh, and stopped on bare skin with the fingers curled to the inside of my left thigh.I took a deep breath in anticipation of that hand easing up. While she was sitting down she said:"Of course you have noticed that we have rather long and old-fashioned names. All new clanmembers with short and modern names are asked to take up a new name, or to call themselves the original version of their name. How would you like us to call you 'Alyssia' ?" You wouldn't believe it, grandmother, but that is the name I've got on my birth certificate. I don't even know where my parents got that name, but it has never been used. I was always called Alice.. It was clear from their heartwarming mutual glances that Sara and Rory loved each other.Rory had never been happier. Rebeca and Rory were inseparable as they did chores, chatted, and played games. The monstrous house he had built for Tina started feeling like a home as Sara worked on improving it.All Rebeca could talk about was her new uncle, Rory, and the adventures they had together on the farm. Each day felt like they had woken from the nightmare that their lives had become over the past. Plus, I'm already on the bottom rung and I'm confident enough in my own abilities to believe that I'd have little difficulty transferring to another ladder. I only started worrying when you threatened Tamsin, but that was after I'd submitted the report.''If she's nothing to you as you say, then why the concern?''I didn't say that she means nothing to me, I said that she's not my girlfriend. She is the closest of many friends I have here and that friendship does mean something.' I nearly added.