He shook his head. “No.” He moved to kneel in front of her. “Are you serious about living here? You’d leave people behind and come live with me? How can I ask that of you?”
“You didn’t ask it of me. You big jerk. I asked you. Besides, you go out occasionally, right? We’d take trips, visit friends?”
“What about school for Toby?”
“They send buses from Gunnison, don’t they? If you don’t trust ’em in bad weather, we can take him on the snowmobile. Or I can homeschool him.”
“Shaine, you want to marry me?”
Seeing the hope and joy in his eyes, she nodded, her heart close to bursting. “I love you,” she whispered.
He took her hands, brought her fingers to his lips and kissed them. “And I love you.” He pulled her against his chest and hugged her fiercely. “Oh, I love you, too.”
He buried his fingers in her hair and held her close. He kissed her, and she knew she’d done the right thing, the only thing. Getting to the truth had been her challenge from the beginning: the truth about Maggie and Toby; the truth about Austin, about their feelings for one another.
The kiss grew as warm as the fire at her back. She pulled away enough to ask, “S’pose it’s started snowing yet?”
“I don’t know. Want to go see?”
She checked on Toby and ran up the stairs ahead of Austin.
Sometime later, she lay in his arms, gazing at the snow flurrying across the mountain sky. He stroked her bare shoulder.
“You know,” he said thoughtfully. “We could always build a bigger place.”
“We’ll need one,” she said. “We’re going to have another little boy in a year or so.”
His hand stilled. “Really?”
She nodded.
“What will he look like?”
“Dark hair like yours. Adorably cute and chubby.”
“Wow.” His hand moved again. “I was thinking about a bed-and-breakfast retreat. Like a hotel.”
She pushed up to look at his face. “Really?”
“All new, of course,” he said. “No antiques.”
“No,” she agreed. “Nothing with impressions.” She ran her finger over his lips.
“If Toby and our other children have the gift, we’ll teach them early,” he said. “They’ll never have to use it if they don’t want to.”
“And they can use it without feeling like a freak if they do choose to,” she added.
He hugged her tightly, as though he never wanted to let her go.
“We’re going to have a wonderful life together,” she said.
He held her head and kissed her nose. “How can you tell?”
Beneath her palms his heart beat steadily, the heart of the man she was going to spend the rest of her life loving. “I have the gift, remember?”
ISBN : 978-1-4592-7249-1
THE TRUTH ABOUT TOBY
Copyright © 1997 by Cheryl Ludwigs
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents
AVAILABLE THIS MONTH FROM SILHOUETTE INTIMATE MOMENTS
“Everything you see...happens,”
Letter to Reader
Books by Cheryl St John
About the Author
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Copyright
The Truth About Toby Page 23