by Lisa Childs
To become a family man?
“Mark,” he said to his son, “bring your mother over here. She’s the only one who hasn’t opened a present yet.”
Heat rushed to her face, and she shook her head. “This isn’t the time,” she protested even as Mark, surprisingly strong for his size, tugged her toward the Christmas tree and Thad. “Everyone’s waiting for your answer.”
“And I’m waiting for yours,” he said, and he pulled a small box from his pocket.
Her heart began to pound out its own version of “Jingle Bells.”
“I don’t understand.”
He dropped to one knee in front of her and his entire family.
“What did Santa bring Mommy?” Mark asked his aunt, who lifted him up in her arms.
“Diamonds,” Natalie replied with a lusty sigh as Thad opened the box to reveal a solitaire on a delicate band of interlaced gold and silver.
“Looks like tinsel,” Mark said in delight. “It’s pretty.”
It was beautiful, but Caroline didn’t care about the jewelry. She cared about the man.
He stared up at her, his blue eyes full of hope and promise and love. Now she no longer feared what he wanted to tell her; she kicked herself for not letting him ask the night before. But somehow it was fitting that he propose here, on Christmas morning in front of their son and their family and the twinkling tree.
“I love you, Caroline Emerson,” he said. “I have loved you for years. Leaving you was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. And I’ve done a lot of hard things over the years. I thought of you every day, wondering what you were doing and if I’d forever lost my chance with you.”
Choked with emotion, she could only shake her head. There had never been anyone else for her. There never could be anyone in her heart but Thad Kendall.
“I never want to leave you again,” he said. “I want to spend the rest of my life making up for the hurt I caused you. I want to spend the rest of my life giving you the love and devotion you deserve…if you’ll have me.”
Caroline’s heart pounded harder at the look on his handsome face. She’d never seen it on him before: uncertainty. He didn’t know how much she’d wanted this, how much she’d wanted him.
“Marry me, Caroline,” he implored her. “Please, let me be your husband.”
She threw her arms around his neck with such force she nearly knocked him backward into the tree. “I love you, Thad.”
He kissed her.
But then one of his brothers pointed out, “She didn’t say yes yet.”
“Do you blame her?” Natalie asked. “He’s kind of a flight risk.”
“Not anymore,” he promised them all. “I’m going to take that job at Kendall Communications. I’m going to be a nine-to-five company man.”
Devin snorted. “Good luck getting those hours.”
“Are you sure?” Caroline asked. “Don’t give up anything for me. I’ll marry you if you work at Kendall or at the police department or even if you feel you have to go back—”
He pressed his finger over her lips as he rose up from his knee and hugged her close. “I’ll never go back. I’ve done what I can over there. I can do more good at Kendall and at home with you and Mark.”
She smiled. “I would like a little girl.”
“Good thing you’re retiring,” Angela said to her husband as she leaned against his side. “We’re going to be very busy babysitting.”
“Very busy,” he agreed. And the man who had run a multimillion-dollar corporation sounded delighted at the thought of playing with grandkids. He and his wife were more than uncle and aunt or guardians to the Kendall siblings—they were their real parents.
Thad slid the engagement ring onto Caroline’s finger. The diamond and metal twinkled nearly as brightly as the tree, or as his eyes as he stared at her. “Thank you for giving me exactly what I wanted for Christmas,” he told her. “Your love.”
“Santa brought me what I wanted, too,” Mark said, wriggling down from his aunt’s arms to hurl himself at her and Thad. His father lifted him up so that he snuggled between them. “A family.”
Thad kissed his forehead. “Santa did good this year,” he said, and he glanced around the room at his loved ones. “We all got what he wanted.”
Love and happiness. There were no greater Christmas blessings.
Special thanks and acknowledgment to Lisa Childs for her
contribution to the Situation: Christmas series.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-8227-8
DADDY BOMBSHELL
Copyright © 2011 by Harlequin Books S.A.
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