“Did I hallucinate the ‘I love yous’ too?”
“No, those were real. Very very real.” She rested her head on his hard thigh. “Need another one? I love you.”
“I love you,” he echoed softly, tangling his hand in her hair. She thought of the gentle way he’d worked out the knots in her hair when she broke into the guesthouse.
Then she thought of her mother’s journals. She still hadn’t read through them all. Max had caught wind of them and asked if he could see them. Isabelle had consulted with her siblings.
They argued for a while, then held a vote, which turned out to be unanimous. They had no more right to the journals than Max did, and if he wanted to know his wife—after her death—it wasn’t their place to prevent him. Maybe it would provide some healing for him.
So now the entire box was in Max’s possession. But at least she still had her mother’s silk scarf. A little bloodstained, but more precious than ever, since it had helped save Lyle.
Lyle lifted her face so she met his gaze. “My darling fierce sweetheart, can you help me out here? I’m still not great at hauling myself up and down. Since you’re already on the floor, can you just stay where you are for a minute while I say this?”
“Say what?”
“Just…pretend that I’m the one kneeling, would you please?”
A thrill shot through her. She might be a scientist, a doctor, someone completely unsentimental and not at all superstitious, but that didn’t mean an impending proposal didn’t make her heart race.
She shifted her body into more of a traditional down-on-one knee pose. “How’s this?”
“Perfect. Dr. Isabelle Rockwell, I love you with all my heart.”
She lifted a tentative finger, even though she didn’t want to interrupt his flow. “You don’t have to call me doctor during an intimate moment like this.”
“I don’t?”
“It’s a little formal.”
“Good point.” Humor flashed in his gray eyes. “Isabelle Rockwell, from the moment we first met, I knew something extraordinary would happen between us. I didn’t know exactly what, and I had no idea it would bring us all the way to this moment.”
“Quite a journey, wasn’t it? Crazy, when you think about it.”
He snorted. “You keep interrupting. Would you like to take over? You are the one kneeling, so it would make sense.”
She burst out laughing. “Go ahead. You know I’m no good at keeping my thoughts to myself.”
“And I don’t want you to. Chime in whenever you want. Isabelle, having you in my life makes everything that went before seem tired and pale. I would be honored and so incredibly happy if you agreed to walk beside me from now on.”
She gazed at him, keeping her lips pressed together.
“Well?” he asked, confused.
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t want to interrupt again. Is that it?”
“Did I leave something out?”
“Sort of. I mean, it was absolutely beautiful and I’m not complaining at all, but—”
He snapped his fingers. “Right. Where’s my brain? I blame the painkillers. Will you marry me, Isabelle?”
There it was. The real thing, not that false start from before Christmas. She knew it was the real thing because all of a sudden, words failed her. Just flat out—left her. Instead, joyful chills coursed up and down her body, through her veins, along her skin. It was an extraordinary sensation, as if she was both in her body and out of it at the same time. And it seemed to last forever—or maybe it was beyond time, maybe not even a flash had passed, she couldn’t be sure.
But she was sure of one thing. The wind shifted, just then. In that precise moment, it transformed from a howl to a lullaby. It sounded just like the lullaby she’d heard a thousand times as a child. A lullaby her mother had written herself, and sung in her light, breathy voice, just like the wind crooning at the roof. Fly little baby, fly by me. Come little baby, come to me. Smile, sleepy child, and think of me.
“Lyle,” she said abruptly. “Lyle, I want a baby as soon as possible. It doesn’t mean I want to quit being a doctor, or traveling, or any of that. But I want a baby. I just have to say that.”
He blinked at her. “Okay. So we’re skipping the proposal, the wedding, the honeymoon and going straight to baby?” With his good arm, he lifted her off her knee and pulled her onto his lap. “You got it.”
She leaned back, balancing on his hard thighs. “Really? That was awfully quick, considering you used to not want babies.”
His good arm came around her, pressing her against his chest. She felt his quiet breathing, the rise and fall of his rib cage, his thumping heartbeat. “I told you I love kids. And I told you why I didn’t want my own. But that’s all changed now. I resigned as CEO for this exact moment. So I could hop on the baby train with you. It feels good. Really good.”
She exhaled a long breath, listening to the wind pick up again. The lullaby was gone, the wild howls were back. Had it all been an illusion?
Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, she knew in her bones that her mother approved of all of this. Every bit of it.
“But there is one tiny detail,” Lyle was saying. “There’s a question on the table, and I’m assuming I know the answer, but it would be nice to know for sure—”
“Yes.” Her joy overflowed into a smile that just might last forever. “The answer is yes. It was always yes.”
He let out a long breath. “Good,” he said simply. “Good.”
His look of relief made her smile. Had he really been worried? After all they’d been through? “And now, Lyle Guero…you may kiss the future bride.”
“Kissing, my love,” he murmured as he cupped her face between his warm, rough-skinned hands, “is just the beginning.”
Epilogue
Gracie
Gracie had been putting off this moment for quite some time. It was the weirdest thing…well, maybe not the weirdest, because many things in her life qualified for that description. She’d always been a magnet for odd coincidences, serendipitous encounters, random flashes of intuition. From the first moment she’d seen the old handcrafted bassinet that Kai had hauled out of the storeroom, she’d gotten a strange feeling about it.
It made no sense. It was just a cradle, more or less. A carrier for a baby. They’d probably all slept in it at some point, based on its weathered appearance.
But every time she got close to it, she got the shivers.
For all of Christmas and New Year’s, ever since Beth came to get Tigger, the bassinet had sat in the corner of the lounge, just behind the Christmas tree. Clearly everyone else had forgotten about it. Certainly no one had bothered to take it back to the storeroom.
Obviously it was up to her. She tiptoed toward it, bracing herself for the same strange reaction she felt every time she got near it.
It was like walking into a forcefield, as if something was pushing her back, physically trying to prevent her from getting close to it.
“Look,” she told it, absurdly. “I don’t know what your problem is, but all I’m trying to do is put you back where you came from. Remember that lovely storeroom where you could snooze with all the other yard sale stuff?”
That sounded kind of insulting.
“Not that you belong at a yard sale. Not at all. Everyone wants to keep you around, and they should because Kai and Nicole are pregnant and my gut tells me that Isabelle and Lyle will be next. Just a feeling. But you know me and my feelings.”
She took another step toward it. Geez, this was ridiculous. Why was this so hard?
“Maybe you don’t know me and my feelings, but believe me, I have them and they’re almost always right.”
Like when she’d known that it was time for Kai to come home. And when she’d known that Nicole was a good person even though she was hiding her true purpose for coming to Rocky Peak. She hadn’t known about the man shooting at Isabelle and Lyle, so she wasn’t infallible.
But she did get flashes of intui
tion, and had learned not to doubt them.
One more step closer to the bassinet. She brushed against the Christmas tree, making two glass ornaments clink against each other. She held her breath as they released a gentle chiming sound into the air. Each of the ornaments on the tree held meaning for her, and she’d be crushed if any of them broke.
Sometimes she felt that her life was more or less like that too—holding her breath for fear that something would break.
“Okay, you. I’m comin’ for you.” She aimed her body at the bassinet and pushed forward, ignoring the strange prickles across her skin. Crouching next to it, she gripped the handle, which was made of two intertwined pieces of wood, like vines.
As soon as she did that, she realized that she’d never actually touched the bassinet before now. She’d avoided it, even while lifting Tigger out of his bedding. But now, with her hand clasped around the arched handle, she went lightheaded and the room spun around her.
Even though her eyes were wide open, suddenly she was in the dark, and fresh outdoor air pierced her lungs. There was a baby in the bassinet. No…she was the baby in the bassinet. And she was crying. Yelling to the world, which couldn’t understand.
But someone did understand. There was a boy with her. The boy was a little bit older, he could walk and talk, and even carry the bassinet. She knew that he had been carrying it—he’d been running through the woods. Someone had been chasing them. Someone terrible, who made the boy cry.
She loved the boy, she knew that. He had dark curly hair and light brown skin and he was beautiful, so very beautiful. Everything was beautiful to her baby eyes—the endless trees towering over their heads, the leaves floating from the sky, the sweet air she gulped in between sobs.
“Shhh,” the boy kept saying. He was crouched next to her, on the ground. “You have to stop crying. We can’t let him find us. Please, please stop crying. I’ll do anything.” He made a funny face that she liked, and she stopped crying for a moment, hiccupping instead.
In the sudden quiet they both heard something. A woman’s voice, light and breezy, humming something as she came toward them. The boy scrambled to his feet.
“Shhhh,” he whispered fiercely. “Don’t make a sound. If you do, she’ll find us.”
She stared at the boy, mystified. Not because she didn’t understand him. She did. She always knew what he was saying, even if she didn’t know the words. What she couldn’t understand was why he would be afraid of the woman who was coming.
That woman, she knew, was going to save them.
She opened her mouth and let out a long, unmistakeable wail. The woman stopped singing and called out, “Hello? Is someone there?”
Kicking her feet, wriggling madly, baby Gracie thrashed and screamed her little lungs out.
“Oh my God,” the woman cried out as she broke through the underbrush. “It’s a baby! You poor little thing. Where’s your mother? Why, you couldn’t be much more than a few months. You’re tiny, little bit. What on earth are you doing out here? Hello! Hello, I found your baby!”
No one answered. Not even the boy.
In that moment, she realized the boy was gone. He’d fled into the woods, away from the woman, away from their rescue.
And there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.
Gracie released the handle of the bassinet with a gasp, as if it was a live electric wire. She snapped back to the here and now, and staggered backwards. Somehow she made it to the couch, or at least near the couch. She slid onto the floor and propped her back against it.
What had she just seen? Was it real, or her notoriously overactive imagination? Had she really been that baby in the bassinet, with a boy acting as her guardian? Why? Who was the boy? Where had they come from? Where was he now?
The cascade of questions made it all the more real. Yes. She knew it, deep down. She’d been that baby in the bassinet, and Amanda Rockwell had found her in the woods. Found her. Not given birth to her.
She wasn’t really a Rockwell. She was…well, she had no earthly idea who she was. Even if everything in that vision had been true, all it told her was that she was an abandoned baby who knew a boy. That was it.
Oh my God.
And yet, it made a certain amount of sense. She thought of all the times she’d made fairy houses in the woods, with little treats left inside. Deep down, she’d truly believed that someone would come for those treats.
And she was much blonder than any of her siblings, much smaller. They all had darker hair, except for Jake, with his tawny brown. Everyone always explained her small size by saying she was a preemie.
Oh my God. Did they know? Did everyone know except for her?
She couldn’t bear that. What a terrible betrayal that would be.
No, she didn’t believe her brothers and sister knew. Someone would have let something slip by now. Somehow Amanda had hid the truth from everyone—everyone except Max, obviously.
Max knew. He had to have known. And he’d never told her.
Rocked to her core, she crawled toward the bassinet on hands and knees. Carefully, without touching it, she inspected every inch of it. And finally, on the underside of the handle she saw what she was looking for. A place name.
San Francisco, California.
Fine. San Francisco. She’d go to San Francisco if that was what it took to find the truth.
The face of the boy flashed in her mind again, with his big brown eyes—terrified at last sight—and floppy, curly hair.
That boy had saved her. Of that much she was sure. She was going to San Francisco, right away, and she was going to find him.
* * *
The Rockwell Legacy continues with THE RUNAWAY.
* * *
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About the Author
Jennifer Bernard is a USA Today bestselling author of contemporary romance. Her books have been called “an irresistible reading experience” full of “quick wit and sizzling love scenes.” A graduate of Harvard and former news promo producer, she left big city life in Los Angeles for true love in Alaska, where she now lives with her husband and stepdaughters. She still hasn’t adjusted to the cold, so most often she can be found cuddling with her laptop and a cup of tea. No stranger to book success, she also writes erotic novellas under a naughty secret name that she’s happy to share with the curious. You can learn more about Jennifer and her books at JenniferBernard.net. Make sure to sign up for her newsletter for new releases, fresh exclusive content, sales alerts and giveaways.
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Also by Jennifer Bernard
The Rockwell Legacy
The Rebel ~ Book 1
The Rogue ~ Book 2
Jupiter Point ~ The Hotshots
Set the Night on Fire ~ Book 1
Burn So Bright ~ Book 2
Into the Flames ~ Book 3
Setting Off Sparks ~ Book 4
* * *
Jupiter Point ~ The Knight Brothers
Hot Pursuit ~ Book 5
Coming In Hot ~ Book 6
Hot and Bothered ~ Book 7
Too Hot to Handle ~ Book 8
One Hot Night ~ Book 9
* * *
Seeing Stars ~ Series Prequel
The Bachelor Firemen of San Gabriel
The Fireman Who Loved Me
Hot for Fireman
Sex and the Single Fireman
How to Tame a Wild Fireman
Four Weddings and a Fireman
The Night Belongs to Fireman
Novellas
One Fine Fireman
Desperately Seeking Fireman
It’s a Wonderful Fireman
Love Between the Bases
All of Me
Caught By You
Getting
Wound Up (crossover with Sapphire Falls)
Drive You Wild
Crushing It
Double Play
* * *
Novellas
Finding Chris Evans
Forgetting Jack Cooper
Copyright © 2018 by Jennifer Bernard
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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