Darker images were there too. Soft sobs, raised voices, thumps and thuds she instinctively knew were bad. Her mother flinching away when Grace touched a dark bruise, then pulling her close and smothering her in kisses until she giggled and forgot about the pain in her mother’s green eyes.
The one memory she stubbornly believed with every fiber of her being, the one she chose to focus on now, was of her momma singing to her. They were sitting outside. Under the star-filled night sky. Little Grace clutched a black-haired, green-eyed dolly. Momma held her close on her lap and rocked her back and forth. Her soft, sweet voice rose and fell with the melody of “Amazing Grace.”
Matt’s familiar hand smoothed her hair from her face.
Smiling, she opened her eyes. “You’re home early.”
“How can I resist when there’s a beautiful woman waiting?” He came around to the front of her chair and knelt down. “Besides, I couldn’t wait.” Holding her gaze, he gathered both of her hands in his. “Grace, I love you so much. I hope you know that.”
She nodded, her stomach tightening.
He played with her fingers. “The first time you walked into my office I knew you were special. Maybe that’s why I held off for so long on getting to know you. Although there is that whole sexual-harassment issue.” His dimpled smile still bowled her over. “When my mom got sick, I realized I was letting life slip by me. I’d become afraid of getting hurt.”
Grace squeezed his hands. She was well acquainted with that fear. He had overcome it with much more determination and charm than she had, just one of the many things she loved and respected about him.
“The more I got to know you, the incredible woman you are, the more I fell in love. You awed me at every turn.”
His hands were clammy. Grace’s stomach rolled. He wasn’t breaking up with her, was he?
He cleared his throat. “I can’t imagine my life without you. I know you moving in is a temporary thing, but I don’t want it to be. I want you here every day. I want to know that when I come home, you’ll be here. When I go to sleep at night, it will be with you in my arms.” He cleared his throat again. “What I’m getting at, in a roundabout kind of way, is…” He took a deep breath. “Grace, will you marry me?”
Holy.
Cow.
For a second, Grace couldn’t breathe. He wanted to marry her? To be together forever? And ever? She launched off the chair into his arms.
“Yes.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed his jaw. “Yes.” Kissed his chin. “Yes.” Kissed his cheek. “Yes.” Kissed him on the mouth and whispered, “Yes, please.”
Matt laughed, settling her bottom on his upraised knee. “Is that a yes?”
“Yes.” Just in case he wasn’t sure or she was speaking gibberish, she nodded emphatically. Then she kissed him again. He mumbled something into her mouth.
“Hmmm?”
He pulled back. “I have an engagement ring for you. And a wedding ring. We won’t be doing a long engagement.”
“We can go to Las Vegas tomorrow for all I care. Or tonight.” She tried to tug his mouth back to hers, but he resisted. “Matt.”
He chuckled. “Don’t you want it?”
“What?”
“Your ring.”
“Matt.” She grabbed hold of his hair on either side of his head and looked him in the eyes. “If you do not take me inside right this instant and make wild passionate love with me, I’m going to hurt you.”
“Now?”
She nodded. “Now.”
He sighed. “If I have to.”
Her jaw dropped. As if.
Laughing, he scooped her up and strode into the house. He dropped her on the big bed. Then he covered her with his body. “Whatever the soon-to-be-married lady wants,” he whispered against her lips.
EPILOGUE
Three years later
Matt’s arms wrapped around her from behind and he rested his chin on the top of her head. Contentment hummed. Grace leaned back. The waves outside the big windows beat against the dark-gray sand. She liked the fact that the walls and insulation didn’t keep the sound of the ocean out.
“How are you doing, sweetheart?”
“Hmmm.” Practically purring, she sank a little deeper into him. “Tired, but good.”
His hands smoothed down over her swollen belly. A little foot kicked against his palm. He chuckled. “This one’s going to be as sassy as her momma.”
“You won’t think it’s funny when our son is as ornery as you.”
“That’s okay. I’ve got years of experience on him. I’m pretty sure I can handle him.”
Laughing, she turned. “So cocky. I can’t wait to see how confident you are two weeks into having twins at home.”
Matt grinned. “I don’t see the problem here.”
Laughter and running feet thundered down the stairs of their vacation rental. Sarah, Charles and Terrance tore into the room. Little tornadoes of mass destruction, but she adored them nonetheless.
“See? I’ve had these terrors to prepare me. Nothing could be as bad as these three.”
“Hey,” Terrance shouted. He’d learned to talk and gone straight to yelling everything. “That’s not nice, Matt.”
With a final pat to the ginormous belly preceding her these days, he released her. “I dare you to deny you’re a terror to my face.”
Never one to back down from a challenge, four-year-old Terrance marched right up to him. Grace groaned. So much for the five minutes of peace she’d enjoyed.
“I am not a terror. She,” he pointed toward Sarah, “is the terror.”
Matt snatched Terrance and, in a blink, had him hanging upside down. “Now, Terrance. We’ve talked about this.”
Terrance shrieked with laughter, intimidated beyond belief, obviously.
“That is not the way you talk about girls. They are sweet, precious, delicate little creatures—”
“What?” Jane placed her hands on her hips.
“…and us men,” Matt continued, “need to be respectful of their more fragile temperaments.”
“As if.” Grace rolled her eyes.
“Yeah. As if,” Sarah echoed.
The first child they’d taken in, the seven-year-old little girl had quickly become a regular mini-me of Grace. At nine, she’d decided to put her own spin on things. She did so by placing her fists on her hips and flipping her long-blonde hair over her shoulders.
Grace couldn’t decide if her spunky attitude was a good or bad thing.
Taking in foster children had been an easy decision. Letting go when and if their parents got their acts together…not so much. Except for Charles, the youngest of the group, none of them were orphans. Sarah’s parents weren’t married, her dad was in jail for armed robbery and her mom was in jail for criminal neglect of her child. The bright little girl sashayed out of the room with another hair flip. A comment about her dolls being better company than a bunch of boys drifted over her shoulder.
Matt met Grace’s eyes over Terrance’s tennis-shoe-clad feet and raised an eyebrow, as if to say, “What was that all about?”
Grace shook her head. Despite their commonality of an X-chromosome, Sarah was often beyond her grasp.
There was a tug on her pant leg. Charles stood beside her. The look of patented longing in his big blue eyes spoke volumes. Dismissing the half second thought of sitting on the floor like she used to—she couldn’t even see her feet anymore, let alone get off the floor—she gingerly lowered herself into a chair. Halfway down, Matt’s arms came around her.
“There are two of them, so it only seems right I help.” His brown eyes twinkled. She was really hoping at least one of the babies would have his eyes. “After all, two against one is hardly fair.”
“Ha-ha.” She’d married a regular comedian.
Once she was settled, Matt scooped Charles off the floor and placed him on the narrow wedge of what was left of her lap. With a toothy grin, Charles fisted her blouse in one hand and reache
d for her hair with the other while scrambling up the mountain of her belly.
Matt intervened with a gentle “No” and parked his diapered bottom back on her leg.
Another attempt had them both chuckling, but Matt persisted. Only this time, he put Charles on the armrest of the chair within the circle of her arm. The closer proximity to her face seemed to relax the fifteen-month-old. He dropped his blond head onto her belly and stuck his thumb in his mouth.
Matt rubbed the baby’s curly hair. “He adores you.”
“That’s only fair, since I fell in love on sight.”
“Kind of like with me.”
“Uh…yeah. Exactly like that.”
Matt narrowed his eyes and leaned down until their noses were an inch apart. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Fluttering her lashes, she widened her eyes and made her smile as guileless as possible. “Nothing, honey. All those months before we began dating… Why, I could barely restrain myself from jumping you during those dry board meetings.”
“I think you’re confused. I was the one tormented with lust for months. I know darn well you never noticed me.”
“Oh, I noticed you.”
“Not like a man. A man you’d like to get naked with,” he whispered to avoid the children hearing.
“Well, I think it’s pretty obvious that changed.”
Someone knocked at the door.
He patted her belly. “You stay put, sweetheart. That’s the rest of the family.”
The scent of the ocean swept in through the open door, along with Matt’s mom and step-dad, his brother and his girlfriend, an aunt, a couple of uncles and too many cousins to count. The irony of her life since marrying Matt was not lost on her. For a woman who’d spent her whole life alone, isolated from relationships and lacking a family, she now had more relatives than she could count on both hands and feet. Permanent relationships were coming out of her ears. Not the least of which were the foster children they cared for.
Grace snuggled Charles closer. He was such a somber toddler, as if on some level he sensed what he’d lost so early in life. Her dearest hope was that she and Matt could restore some part of these children’s faith in humanity by providing a stable and happy home.
Oh, man. She had to pee again. That’d be like the fourth time in less than an hour. “You babies are really taking up more than your fair share of room.” She squirmed enough to ease a dozing Charles onto the seat cushion—he showed his displeasure by frowning and sucking harder on his thumb—then heaved herself up and waddled to the nearest bathroom.
In about three weeks, according to her doctor, she would be able to walk like a normal female again. Not only that, she might actually feel like a normal female again. Not to mention sex. Holy cow, did she miss sex. She’d become so uncomfortable in the past month that making love was an impossibility.
Halfway across the kitchen pain arced through her back. Her belly tightened, stealing her breath. She gasped and planted her palms on the counter.
“Matt?” Her voice came out a whisper. She gathered herself to try again.
Before she could, Matt was there. He wrapped himself around her. “You okay, sweetheart?”
Really not a good time, kiddos. They didn’t care. A fact demonstrated with clarity when liquid trickled down the inside of her thighs.
“Um, not really.” She winced and pressed a hand to her swollen belly. “The babies have decided to put in an early appearance.”
“What?” He snapped straight, like someone had used a cattle prod on his butt. Then he flew into action. An admiral commanding his troops, that was her husband.
Grandparents were assigned babysitting duty. Everyone promised to stick around and help entertain the children. He swept her up in his arms, despite her protests. She flushed. Another contraction hit and she stopped caring that she weighed as much as a walrus.
By the time they reached the Ilwaco hospital, the contractions were only two minutes apart. Matt rushed inside for a wheelchair. Giving birth to premature twins in a tiny coastal hospital hadn’t been on her agenda.
She focused on not hyperventilating or worrying about things she couldn’t control. Like when and where her obstinate children decided to be born. They were going to be just like their father, that much was obvious.
Four hours, one emergency helicopter ride to a better-equipped hospital, and more screaming and agonizing pain than she cared to recall later, Grace cradled her newborn babies. Their tiny fists waved in the air. Little Cassandra sucked on one of her fingers. Christopher curled his teeny fingers around Matt’s finger and her eyes misted over.
“Just a few more minutes, Mrs. Duncan. Then we need to get them to the neonatal unit.”
Matt’s head snapped up. “Why? What’s wrong?”
“They’re doing really well, but they’re five and a half weeks early and we want to keep a close eye on them. If they’re still doing as well in a few hours, we’ll bring them back and your wife can try nursing.”
Matt nodded, but she could see he was still worried. So was she. Astoria’s hospital was much larger, but it wasn’t state of the art, by any stretch. Portland would have been preferable. Unfortunately, her labor had progressed at lightning-fast speed. No way would she have lasted for that trip.
Grace dropped a kiss on the top of Christopher and Cassandra’s little heads and reluctantly handed them to the nurse. She and Matt watched in tense silence as the nurse placed their little swaddled bodies in a warming cubicle together.
The woman tossed a perky smile over her shoulder when she reached the door with the wheeled cubicle. “They’re doing great. Try not to worry. You need to relax and get some rest while you can, Mrs. Duncan.”
The nurse disappeared. Grace chomped down hard on her lower lip to hold her tears at bay. It didn’t work.
“Shhh, sweetheart. They’ll be fine.”
She nodded, but the tears kept coming. Matt gently scooted her over on the hospital bed and lay down beside her. Curled around him, she cried into his shirt until physical exhaustion dragged her into sleep.
Three days later, Grace heaved a sigh of utter relief. The mobile munchkins darted past, Charles doing his best to keep up. Matt followed her in. His arms were full, so she shut the door.
“Home,” she moaned.
Collapsing on the couch, she closed her eyes and waited while her body’s aches sorted themselves out. Wasn’t easy pushing out two babies then traveling across an entire state with twin newborns and three older children. Matt settled a fussing Christopher in her arms. He quickly latched onto her breast and settled down. Both babies had been able to leave the hospital with her—no small miracle.
Matt rocked Cassandra, enthralled. He had yet to look up from their daughter. When he did, the wealth of emotion in his dark eyes made her heart pinch.
“How did I ever get so lucky?” he whispered.
Grace smiled, looking at the baby boy suckling her breast. “I beg to differ. You didn’t get lucky. I did.”
THE END
About the Author
The only girl in the midst of four brothers, I spent my childhood hiding behind romance novels. Now the mother of four overly-energetic children, a Whimsy kitty and slobber-flinging Great Dane, fiction is still my refuge. Excessive caffeine fuels my typing, stiletto heels maintain my sass, and the splendors of Idaho alongside its gregarious people inspire my muse.
You can follow me on Twitter @_AngelNicholas.
Also by Angel Nicholas
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