“Because he’s coming to Charisma to meet with me,” she said, sounding a little bewildered by the fact. “He actually lives in Virginia Beach, but he had the contest judging in New York City so that his editor and his agent could give their input. And they both agreed that my illustrations were right for his new series. Although I couldn’t win the contest, he wants to meet me to be sure that we can work together and, if he thinks we can, he’s going to hire me.”
“So you’re not mad that I sent your work to New York without your knowledge or approval?”
“I’m not mad.” She lifted her arms to link them around his neck and draw his mouth down to hers. “In fact, I’m very...very...grateful.”
He savored the sweetness of her lips and the softness of her body pressed against him.
“You know—when Wade refused to give me the weekend off to go to New York, I think I was almost as relieved as I was disappointed. Because if I didn’t go, I could console myself with the fact that I hadn’t actually lost without risking failure by putting myself out there.”
“I knew you wouldn’t fail.”
“No one has ever believed in me the way that you do.”
“You have a tremendous talent,” he said. “You just needed a little nudge to seize the opportunity that was there.”
“I’ve been scared for too long,” she realized. “Afraid to go after what I really wanted, in case it was out of my reach. Or worse, afraid that I might actually hold it in my hands, and then have it snatched away.”
“And now?”
She took both of his hands and linked their fingers together. “Now I’m ready to reach for what I really want.”
It was the perfect opportunity for him to drop down to one knee. In fact, he was reaching into his pocket for the ring he’d been carrying with him for the last three days when his phone rang again.
Chapter Seventeen
Marco disconnected the call and tucked his phone back in his pocket. His head was spinning, trying to sift through all of the information his mother had thrown at him and latch on to the most important pieces.
“What’s wrong?” Jordyn asked.
“There was a fire in an abandoned warehouse in South Meadows. Three firefighters were inside when the roof collapsed.”
She immediately guessed the reason for his grim tone. “Craig?”
He nodded. “I don’t know the details about what happened, I only know that he’s been taken to Mercy Hospital.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
“My mom and dad want me to go over to my sister’s, to stay with Anna and Bella so Renata can go to the hospital with them.”
“Of course. Do you want me to come with you?”
He was surprised by the offer, and even more surprised to realize how much he wanted her with him. “I do,” he admitted.
She took his hand. “Let’s go.”
* * *
Renata was waiting on the front porch when they arrived. Marco spoke a few words to her and hugged her tight—or as tight as he could considering the size of her belly—before she got into the backseat of her parents’ car and headed off to the hospital with them. The girls were inside watching a video on TV, oblivious to the drama that was unfolding around them.
Despite the fact that it never chimed to indicate a message, he kept checking his phone every two minutes, desperate for word of his brother-in-law’s condition. The rest of his family was at the hospital with Renata, but Jordyn could tell that he wished he were there, too. Not that he could do anything more than what was already being done, but families stood together in times of crisis, and it was obvious he wanted to be there for his sister.
They had dinner with the girls, made pictures with modeling clay, then Anna got out a board game, which they’d been playing for the past two hours.
“Agin,” Bella said, when her token landed on the rainbow square to finish the game. “Wes pway ’gin.”
Jordyn fought against a smile as she mentally translated Marco’s youngest niece’s words. “Marco?” she prompted.
“What?”
“Bella wants to play again,” she told him.
“Oh, yeah, sure.”
“I love Candy Land as much as the next person,” Jordyn said. “But we’ve already played six games and I’m guessing that it’s getting close to bedtime.”
Marco glanced at the clock. “I didn’t realize how late it was,” he admitted.
“Is it bedtime?” Anna asked.
“Past your bedtime,” he told her.
With a reluctant sigh, she started to gather up the cards to put the game away.
“No, Anna.” Bella grabbed for the cards. “Pway ’gin.”
“It’s bedtime,” Anna told her sister, tightening her grip on the pile of cards in her hand.
“No!”
“Bella,” Marco said, a note of unmistakable warning in his voice.
“Pway ’gin,” she insisted, yanking the cards with such force that they flew out of her sister’s hands and scattered around the room.
Anna gasped. “Bad!” she told her sister. “Bad Bella!”
Which, of course, made Bella start to cry.
Then Anna’s lower lip started to quiver and her eyes filled with tears, too. They were both overtired and undoubtedly aware of the tension in the room, even if unaware of the reason for it. Renata, not wanting to cause them distress, hadn’t told them where she was going, she’d only said that she had to go out and that Uncle Marco and Jordyn would look after them for a while.
Marco sighed. “Okay, girls, let’s get this game picked up and get you into the bath.”
Bella, sobbing theatrically, pushed herself between his knees to snuggle against his chest. He put one arm around her and kissed her forehead.
Anna approached more tentatively. “Is everything okay, Uncle Marco?”
He wrapped his other arm around her and drew her into his embrace. “It’s going to be,” he promised.
“I’ll put the game away while you deal with bath time,” Jordyn suggested.
“Sounds like a plan.”
After the girls were bathed and dressed in their pajamas, they were given a snack before bed.
“Why don’t you go to the hospital?” Jordyn suggested to Marco, while Anna and Bella were occupied brushing their teeth.
“Because I promised Nata that I’d stay here.”
“You don’t think I can handle two little girls?”
“I don’t know why you’d want to,” he admitted wryly.
She touched her lips to his. “Because it’s the one thing that I can do to help you.”
“They’ll want a bedtime story,” he told her.
“I do know how to read.”
He managed a smile. “Are you sure you don’t mind?”
“I’m sure.” She squeezed his hand. “Go—be with your sister and the rest of your family. I can hold down the fort here.”
And she thought she did pretty well with it. She read the girls a story—actually two. Since they couldn’t agree on one story, she let them each choose a favorite book, but she didn’t mind—especially when they sat quietly and listened attentively while she read.
It was only when she closed the cover of the second book that Bella ventured to ask, “Are you Unca Mahco’s girfwiend?”
She decided that was the easiest explanation for their relationship—or at least the most appropriate one to share with his nieces. “I guess I am,” she said.
“Are you gonna get married?” Anna asked.
“We don’t have any definite plans,” she hedged, though she hoped that would change soon.
“Uncle Gabe is going to marry his girlfriend.”
“So I hear.”
Bella chimed in
again, “We’s gonna be fwower girs.”
“That sounds like fun.”
“Mama says it sounds expensive,” Anna confided.
Jordyn smiled. “It’s probably that, too.”
“Where is Mama?” Bella asked.
“She went out with your grandparents,” she reminded them.
It struck her as both lucky and sad that because of the shifts their dad worked as a firefighter, they were accustomed to him being away overnight and didn’t even ask about him.
She turned off the light. “Sweet dreams, girls.”
“Jo’dyn.” Bella’s soft entreaty stopped her at the door.
“What is it, honey?”
“If Unca Mahco mawies you, could we be fwower girs ’gin?”
“I think you probably could,” she agreed.
She was cleaning up the dishes from the girls’ snack when her phone rang. Recognizing Marco’s number, she snatched it up immediately.
“Hi,” she said, then held her breath as she waited for an update.
“There’s no news on Craig yet,” he told her. “But Renata’s water just broke.”
* * *
Jordyn couldn’t think of an appropriate response to the situation. She only knew that she ached for Marco—for his whole family. What should have been a joyous celebration—the impending birth of a new child—was now inextricably tangled up with grief and fear. Renata, she knew, had to be going out of her mind, not knowing if her husband would even live to see their baby born.
The tragic possibility made Jordyn’s own throat tighten. “Is there anything I can do?”
“You’re doing it,” he said. “Taking care of Anna and Bella so the rest of the family can be here.”
“I wish I could do more.”
“You could pray.”
“I’ve been doing that, too.”
When she disconnected the call, she went to check on the girls and found they were both fast asleep.
Back downstairs, the house was quiet. Too quiet. She turned on the television for background noise while she thought of Renata and what she was going through.
Was it a blessing or a curse that the baby had decided to come now? How was Renata supposed to focus on bringing a new life into the world when her husband’s life was hanging in the balance?
With everything that was happening, maybe it wasn’t surprising that Jordyn’s mind drifted back to the hours that she’d spent pacing the hospital corridors, praying and pleading and waiting to hear if her fiancé would live or die.
Weddings and funerals; births and deaths. She wondered if it was a cruel trick of fate that so many beginnings and endings were linked. One day she’d been addressing wedding invitations, the next she was writing Brian’s obituary and feeling as if her heart had been ripped out of her chest.
She’d loved Brian, but their time together had been a brief interlude. They hadn’t had anywhere near the kind of history that Marco’s sister had with her husband, but still Jordyn had grieved for a long time. She’d had family support, but she hadn’t had to worry about anyone but herself. If Craig didn’t make it, Renata had two little girls who would be grieving for and missing their father—and another child who would never know him.
No—Jordyn refused to consider the possibility that Craig wouldn’t survive. He was young, he was strong, and he had so much to live for, so many people who were praying for him.
Jordyn added herself to that number.
* * *
Marco should have known that his sister was too stubborn to let something like the start of labor pull her away from the surgical waiting room.
Understanding her need to stay as close to her husband for as long as possible, her mother took the necessary documentation to Labor and Delivery to get her registered. Apparently the triage nurse was anxious for her to be checked out, especially since this wasn’t her first child, but Renata kept insisting that there was time and that she needed to be with Craig.
“Your contractions are five minutes apart,” he noted. “I really think we need to get you to Labor and Delivery.”
“Not yet,” she insisted. “I can’t have the baby yet.”
“I don’t think you have much choice,” he told her.
Tears spilled onto her cheeks. “Craig promised he would be with me when I went into labor. He promised.”
Marco felt his own eyes burn. “Come on, Nata, you can’t fall apart now. The doctors are taking care of Craig—he needs you to take care of yourself and your baby.”
She shook her head. “I can’t do it without him. I don’t know how.”
He knew she wasn’t just referring to the process of labor and childbirth—she was thinking about the whole life she shared with her husband and the family they’d built together. He slid an arm across her shoulders and silently prayed that her claim wouldn’t be tested.
* * *
Renata was in labor twenty-seven hours with Adrianna, nine with Isabella and only three with the son who was born at 11:49 p.m. that night, weighing eight pounds and eleven ounces and measuring twenty-two inches.
Marco had stayed with her throughout, a poor substitute for his brother-in-law but at least she wasn’t alone. Not that there had been any shortage of volunteers—their mother, Nata’s mother-in-law and Nonna had all offered to coach her through the delivery, but his sister had taken hold of his hand and refused to let go, conscripting him into service.
He got through it by focusing on her face, talking her through the contractions, and trying not to think about what was happening under the sheet that was draped over the lower half of her body. Then they placed the baby on her belly, all pink and slimy and screaming at the indignation of being naked under the bright lights.
“Nonna was right,” Marco said. “It’s a boy.”
The baby was weighed and measured, then swaddled and given back to his mother. She’d barely settled him into her arms when there was a knock on the door and another doctor, dressed in faded hospital scrubs, walked in.
Marco recognized him before he was halfway across the room, and when the doctor paused, he realized Jordyn’s cousin had recognized him, too, from the Fourth of July celebration in the park. Justin nodded a brief acknowledgment, then went directly to Renata’s bedside. “Congratulations, Mrs. Donnelly.”
“Thank you.” Her response was automatic, her body already tensed for what was to come next.
“I’m not sure if you remember me, but I’m Dr. Justin Garrett,” he continued in the same even tone that was no doubt intended to put patients at ease. “I was in the ER when they brought your husband in.”
“Craig...” It was all she could manage, and that, barely a whisper.
“He’s going to be fine,” the doctor assured her. “He had a pretty severe concussion, which is why we’ll need to keep him here to monitor him for a few days. Aside from that, he suffered some bruised ribs and a broken clavicle, so he’s not going to be much help to you with the little guy for at least four to six weeks, but afterward, there’s no reason he can’t do his share of diaper duty.”
Renata nodded as the doctor detailed the extent of her husband’s injuries, but Marco suspected she hadn’t really heard anything after the first words. A suspicion that was confirmed when the doctor left and she turned to him and echoed those words, “He’s going to be fine.”
Marco nodded.
And his sister, who had valiantly held herself together from the moment she got the harrowing call about her husband, who’d barely muttered any sounds of discomfort through labor and delivery, finally let go of her emotions and bawled like a baby.
* * *
Jordyn fell asleep on the sofa sometime during the fifth episode of a Ryder to the Rescue marathon she’d found on TV.
She didn’t hear Marco come in,
but she woke up cradled in his lap with his arms tight around her. It took a minute for her mind—clouded with worry as much as sleep—to clear enough to ask, “How’s Craig?”
“He’s going to be okay.”
She exhaled an unsteady breath. “Thank God.”
“Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “We’ve been doing a lot of that.”
“And Renata? The baby?” she prompted.
“She’s good. He’s good.”
“It was a boy?”
He nodded. “Ethan Salvatore Donnelly.”
“Has Craig seen his son?”
“Yeah. Renata was allowed to take the baby into his room for a few minutes.”
She could imagine how emotional that scene must have been for all of them and felt the sting of tears in her own eyes.
He tipped her chin up. “You okay?”
She nodded. “Better now that you’re here.”
“It’s been a hell of a day,” he acknowledged.
She nodded again. The events of the past several hours had reminded her how quickly things could change, how fragile life was, and that it was truly a precious gift to experience and share love. She couldn’t deny her feelings for him any longer, and she didn’t want to.
She took a deep breath and, lifting her eyes to meet his, finally said, “I love you.”
He stared at her, as if he couldn’t quite believe what she was saying. “Can you repeat that?”
She framed his face in her hands and held his gaze steadily. “I love you, Marco.”
“Is this one of those impulsive posttrauma, adrenaline-crash declarations?”
She felt a smile tug at the corner of her lips, because she understood why he sounded a little bit skeptical, a little reluctant to accept her words at face value. “Have you been the recipient of many of those?”
“No,” he admitted. “I’m just trying to understand where this is coming from—why now.”
“I had always planned to tell you tonight. Last night,” she amended, when she glanced at the clock on the fireplace mantel and saw that it was almost 2:00 a.m. “I was just trying to find the right words—and the courage—to admit my feelings.
“When I met you, I didn’t want to fall in love—to open myself up to potential heartache again,” she admitted. “But your grandmother was right—the head cannot control what the heart wants.”
The Bachelor Takes a Bride (Those Engaging Garretts!) Page 20