The Foster Girls
Page 26
Vivian found them there at four a.m. when she let herself into the farmhouse and walked back to her room to drop her bags.
She stood there amazed for a moment at the sight of them both on her bed.
“Keep it down or you’ll wake Sarah Louise up,” Scott whispered into the dark. “And don’t turn on the light, either.”
“Where did you find her?” Vivian asked softly, coming up to the bed to sit down beside him. She reached a hand out first to touch him and then over to touch Sarah.
“She was in that tree, being Ophelia Odelia just like you said.”
Vivian smiled in the dark.
“Lean down here so I can kiss you,” he instructed her. “Sarah has herself wrapped around my arm over here, and I don’t want to move too much and wake her up.”
Vivian leaned over to press her mouth to his. Their light kiss deepened, and Scott pulled Vivian over on top of him, murmuring to her and running his hands over her, loving the feel of her again. She sighed and moved against him as the old familiar magic rolled over them.
“God, I love you,” he whispered to her.
“And Scott is working on loving me, too, Vivian,” came a sleepy little voice from beside them.
Vivian pulled Sarah over into their embrace. “Oh, Sarah, I’m so glad you’re all right. Please don’t run away like that ever again. Promise me that. It scares and worries everyone terribly.”
“Ophelia and I were worried, too, because there was an owl,” Sarah explained to Vivian. “But Scott came and then it was okay. And he says we can be a family so you can be happy and not sad. Scott said he is almost starting to love me and he had tears because he was happy.”
The moonlight was drifting through the window enough so that Vivian could study Scott’s face then. She saw him grin.
“I changed my mind,” he said to Vivian, shrugging. “She got to me.”
“She’ll do that.” Vivian smiled and wrapped her arms around them both.
Sarah piped up again. “Vivian, Scott says I can be with you forever except on your honeymoon when married people need to be alone and private.”
Even in the dark, Scott knew Vivian was blushing.
“Well, that is sort of a special time,” she attempted to explain.
“Actually, you just don’t have any idea how special and fine it will be,” Scott whispered huskily in Vivian’s ear.
Their hands managed to find ways to touch each other then, almost forgetting about Sarah bunched to the side of them.
“Scott says I get to help take care of your babies, Vivian,” Sarah announced, reminding them both of her presence.
Vivian gasped, but Scott only chuckled.
“Better not be making any more plans to move off to California, Vivian,” Scott said. “Sarah and I both need you right here.”
“At our home,” said Sarah on a sigh.
“Yeah, so welcome home, Vivian Delaney. It looks like I’m going to get two foster girls for the price of one.”
Epilogue
The wedding theme, Sarah’s idea of course, was an elaborate fairy kingdom. Keeping in the spirit of that fanciful notion, the celebration was held outdoors in the camp amphitheater at dusk, the local fireflies adding their light to the twinkling artificial lights of the caterers. From the stone amphitheater seats and the surrounding hillside, guests watched the wedding progress down a flower-draped bower.
Sarah, Chelsey, Scott’s niece Abby, and Vivian’s Delaney niece, Melanie, all served as flower girls. Decked out in tulle skirts of pale pink, yellow, green, and blue with matching diaphanous wings, the girls skipped down the arched aisle in front of the bride. Flower garlands with ribbon streamers adorned their hair.
The four bridesmaids who preceded them, Ellen, Nancy, Patti Delaney Hale, and Vivian’s friend from California, Jan Paulson, wore similar pastel dresses with circlets of flowers in their hair. They formed a colorful parade as they marched down the aisle.
Vivian wore a simple, ankle-length white dress with a gauzy train and a garland of flowers over a filmy veil. Scott, and the four groomsmen - his three brothers and Quint Greene - wore traditional black tuxes, but each had pastel ribbon sashes draped over their shoulders and wore floral boutonnieres.
Everyone in the valley attended, along with a large contingent of Vivian’s new family from Dandridge and many of her old friends and family from California –including the press. It was just the sort of wedding that the Hollywood journals and tabloids loved to document and photograph. And, as Scott told Quint after the wedding, “The publicity certainly didn’t hurt the camp.”
The McFee girls, Loreen and Betty Jo, were thrilled to be a part of what they called a ‘real Hollywood wedding right in Wear’s Valley, Tennessee’. Both of them hoped to catch Vivian’s bridal bouquet and were real annoyed when it fell unexpectedly into the arms of a dark-haired young woman visiting from New York City. Shocked when the bouquet dropped into her hands, the girl, later identified by the press as Jenna Howell, quickly tossed it over into the arms of the woman standing next to her - who happened to be Alice Graham. The press had a heyday trying to follow it all with their cameras.
The McFee girls were miffed for the rest of the day that neither one of them caught the bouquet. Both vocally protested that it was unfair for an outsider to catch the bridal bouquet at a valley wedding and even more unfair for her to throw it off to a woman with six foster children in tow. “After all,” Loreen complained, “who would marry someone like Alice with all those foster kids.”
Sarah, listening in, put her hands on her hips primly. “Men can marry outsiders if they want to. Scott did,” she told them. “And men can marry women with children, too, if they want to – even foster girls.” This brought a laugh from all, and Sarah’s words were even printed in one of the Hollywood journals.
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…..Are you interested in meeting the New Yorker, Jenna Howell, who caught Vivian’s bouquet? … Then watch for the next book in the Smoky Mountain series, Tell Me About Orchard Hollow. … And for more about Alice Graham and the six foster children … keep an eye out for the third book in the series, For Six Good Reasons.
Cover Art
The beautiful work of art, featured on the front cover of this book, was painted by the well-known regional artist Jim Gray. It is entitled I Look To The Hills.
Jim Gray is a nationally recognized artist who has been painting Smoky Mountain scenes and southern landscapes for over thirty years. In 1966, Gray and his family moved to East Tennessee so that Jim could explore and paint the beauty of the countryside surrounding the Smoky Mountains. Today, Jim Gray has three galleries in East Tennessee and one in Alabama. He has sold over 2000 paintings and 125,000 prints to collectors in the United States and abroad. Jim is listed in Who’s Who in American Art and has been featured in many publications, including National Geographic and Southern Living.
Prints of I Look To The Hills, or other fine works of art, can be purchased in Jim Gray galleries or ordered through Jim Gray’s website at: http://www.jimgraygallery.com
Jim Gray’s business address is:
GREENBRIAR INCORPORATED
P. O. Box 735, Gatlinburg, TN 37738
Business Phone: (865) 573-0579
Acknowledgments
Warm thanks and gratitude go to those who helped to make this book a reality …
… To Patsy Daniel, who thought I was a great writer with promise and introduced me to another fine area writer, Christy Tillery French;
… To Christy French, who became my writer friend, loved the concept of my stories, and suggested I submit my book series to a regional publisher in North Carolina;
… To Parkway Publishers in Boone, North Carolina, who did like my books and decided to publish them;
… To the wonderful staff at Parkway who have now become my publishing family: Vice President of Marketing, Wendy Dingwall; Founder and President, Rao Aluri; manuscript editor and friend, Sandy Horton; graphic artist and t
ext designer, Ann Thompson Nemcosky, and fellow author and mentor in North Carolina, Rose Senehi;
… And to the Lord, who, undoubtedly, orchestrated it all.
Author Bio
Dr. Lin Stepp is a native Tennessean, a business woman, and an educator. She is on faculty at Tusculum College where she teaches a Research writing sequel and several Psychology courses, including Developmental and Educational Psychology. Her business background includes over 20 years in marketing, sales, production art, and regional publishing. She and her husband began their own sales and publications business, S & S Communications, in 1989. The company publishes a regional fishing and hunting guide magazine and has a sports sales subsidiary handling sports products and media sales in East Tennessee. She has editorial and writing experience in regional magazines and in the academic field. The Foster Girls is the first of twelve contemporary Southern romances in a series of linked novels set in the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee and North Carolina.
AUTHOR’S WEBSITE
Special thanks go to my talented daughter, Katherine Stepp, who created my author’s website. Visit me there to read more about my life and interests and to keep up with signings, events, and future publication dates for the continuing books in The Smoky Mountain series.WEBSITE ADDRESS: http://www.linstepp.com
OTHER BOOKS BY LIN STEPP
Tell Me About Orchard Hollow – The 2nd book in the Smoky Mountain Series
Coming Spring 2011
For Six Good Reasons – The 3rd book in the Smoky Mountain Series