She wanted to block out his words, knowing they would only make this harder, but each one seemed to imprint itself on her heart.
“You treat my son with respect and affection and see beyond that brain of his to the reality that despite it, he’s still just a boy who loves brownies and dogs and having fun.”
“He’s a wonderful boy, Sam. How can anyone who meets him help but love him?”
“He doesn’t respond to everyone the way he has to you, believe me. He can be stiff, awkward, even downright rude. But when you talk to him, he knows your interest is genuine.”
He paused and his hand caressed her cheek with such sweetness she almost cried again. “You care about everyone like that. You tell me how prickly and difficult you are. I see a woman who gives her love freely and generously. Who prepares food for people who can’t take care of themselves, who helps a dying friend with her garden, who takes in a dirty, bedraggled stray dog because that’s just the kind of person she is.”
Leo, curled up at their feet, slapped his tail against the floor of the porch, almost as if he understood Sam was talking about him.
“I love you, Alexandra. Nothing you’ve told me tonight changes that. I love you in spite of all the reasons you think I shouldn’t. In part, maybe, because of those reasons. You’re the person you are today because of everything that has happened to you.”
She gazed at him in the slanted moonlight as his words and the tenderness in his eyes seemed to slide through her, shining the brilliant beacon of hope in all those dark corners.
He loved her. He knew the very worst about her but somehow he loved her anyway. This man, who understood all about pain and loss and regret, was offering her a miraculous chance to move beyond the hurt.
She had been stupid when she was twenty-five, yes. She wasn’t twenty-five anymore and she wanted to think she had learned a little something along the way.
If she walked away from this, from Sam and Ethan and the chance he was offering her to embrace a future with them, she deserved to spend the rest of her days miserable and alone.
Love, bright and joyful, bloomed in those once-dark corners like the most brilliant flower garden, like a perfect, crisp-on-the-outside, springy-and-light-on-the-inside soufflé.
It was so big, so sweet and lovely as it swelled and burst inside her, she couldn’t contain it. She did the only thing she could. She reached up and kissed the corner of his mouth, this man who had seen beneath her sharp, thorny edges to the woman she wanted to become.
She felt the sharp inhalation of his breath against her cheek but beyond that, he didn’t move for several long moments and then finally his mouth moved on hers and he returned the kiss with dazzling sweetness.
His familiar Sam-smell of laundry soup and cedar shavings filled her senses and she had to fight down a bubble of laughter, of pure happiness. She kissed him fiercely, arms tightly around his neck as if she feared the swing would topple them both to the floor.
When she finally broke the kiss and eased away long moments later, his dazed eyes reflected the starlight.
“Just so you know,” he said, his voice gruff, “I don’t think I will ever understand the way that mind of yours works.”
“You do understand me. Better than anyone ever has.”
He smiled that slow, sexy smile she loved so much and she had to kiss him all over again.
“Does this mean you’re not going to be taking a job in Park City?” he asked sometime later.
She thought of all she had been willing to give up—and, more importantly, what she would gain now if she stayed. But first, she needed to be completely clear.
“What about Charlotte?” she had to ask.
He stared. “Charlotte Caine? There’s a non sequitur for you. What does she have to do with any of this?”
“I saw the two of you. The night of the gala. You were at her house on the porch. She was in your arms.”
He looked shocked first, then his features lit up with as close to a grin as she had ever seen there. “You were jealous!”
“No, I wasn’t....” Her voice trailed off and she sighed. “Okay. Yes, I was. Insanely jealous. But only because I thought she was so perfect for you. I love Charlotte but, right at that moment, I wanted her to choke on some of her own blackberry fudge. Which is fantastic, I must admit.”
He blinked. “Wow.”
“What? I would have done the Heimlich. Eventually.”
He laughed and she didn’t think she had ever heard a more beautiful sound. How could she have moved so abruptly from utter despair to this sweet, bubbling joy?
She thought of Caroline’s advice to her. This was what she meant. Take a chance. Embrace life.
Caroline had been afraid to risk being hurt again so she had spent most of her life alone. Alex was afraid, she would be lying if she didn’t admit that, but she also knew with all her soul that Sam was a man she could count on.
“So,” she said lightly. “Back to Charlotte and the gala.”
“You might have seen us embracing,” Sam said, a little cautiously.
She could be jealous here but she wasn’t. She had complete trust in him, which she found breathtaking.
“That was probably right around the time I told her that I happened to be in love with someone else. You, for the record.”
“You did not.”
“Ask her. She mentioned, by the way, that she thought you just might share those feelings. Something about you being entirely too quick to assure her how wonderful I was.”
She blushed, remembering that scene with Charlotte after they had decorated the ballroom together.
“There’s that ego again,” she teased.
“Was she right? About your feelings?”
She heard a thread of uncertainty in his voice and realized this big, tough soldier could be as vulnerable as she was when it came to laying his heart bare.
She was overwhelmed, consumed, with love for him. He was such a good man and she knew she didn’t deserve him, but in that moment, she didn’t care. She wanted him, whether she deserved him or not.
Maybe that was the very best part of loving someone. Wanting to do anything she could to become the kind of woman who could feel worthy of a man like him.
“Charlotte can be an amazingly astute person,” she finally said, her voice prim.
His laugh held joy and a trace of relief. He kissed her, his mouth warm against the cooling air.
“Say it,” he ordered against her skin. She wanted to respond in some light, teasing way but sensed he needed the words as much as she did.
She eased away and slid a hand to the curve of his cheek. “Yes, I love you, Sam. I loved you then, I love you now. I probably fell in love that very first night we spent together at the Lizard. I flirted and teased and joked but I think I was tumbling hard, even then.”
“Yet you wouldn’t even agree to see me again.”
“Because you scared me to death! You were so...well, you.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do much about that.”
Her hand curled into a fist and she trailed it down to his hard chest, where she could feel each pulse of his heart. “I don’t want you to change anything. I love you exactly as you are. Big, tough, scary. Wonderful. I love you more than I ever imagined possible. You’re everything I never knew I needed.”
He smiled with pure joy and wrapped his arms around her, then he kissed her there on his porch swing while the creek rippled past and his son slept peacefully inside and the lights of their town twinkled in the moonlight.
EPILOGUE
“ARE YOU COMPLETELY exhausted yet?”
“Who, me? You must be joking?” Alex grinned at her mother across the work island in Harry Lange’s gleaming, gorgeous kitchen, with its gourmet appliances and extravagant cookware. “I’m in heaven. Who wouldn’t be?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe somebody who’s been on her feet since 5:00 a.m.”
Actually, the clock beside her bed had read four-thir
ty when she tumbled out to take care of the turkey, but she wasn’t about to admit that to her mom. “Not me. I’m full of energy. Why wouldn’t I be? I’m surrounded by two of my favorite things, food and family.”
She was completely in her element, even if she did feel a little odd and off-kilter to be cooking somewhere besides her mother’s small kitchen, where she had helped prepare dozens of Thanksgiving dinners.
She had always believed traditions were meant to shift and morph to meet new circumstances, though, and this wasn’t such a bad change. Harry’s spacious kitchen was tricked out better than her own place at Brazen, with all the very best culinary toys.
Just now, the kitchen was lushly redolent of delicious things cooking: her garlic smashed potatoes, her grandmother McKnight’s famous stuffing recipe, with her own twist of using venison sausage instead of pork, and of course the huge tom turkey resting on the sideboard, ready to be carved in a few moments.
“Well, everything looks and smells divine,” Mary Ella said, leaning in to kiss her cheek and tuck a stray blond strand of hair behind her ear. “But of course, you already knew that.”
“I did quite outdo myself, didn’t I?” she preened.
“The modesty of my daughters is always so heartwarming.”
She grinned. “Okay, okay. We both know I can’t take all the credit. This is a team effort, as always. I’m just the traffic cop, telling everybody what to do. Anyway, I have a feeling the pies Claire and Rose made last night are going to steal all my poor turkey’s thunder.”
She gestured to a nearby counter where pumpkin, blackberry and pecan pies waited in all their glory, golden crusts and all.
“The crowd is growing restless out there. How much longer, do you think?”
She added one more shake of coarse ground sea salt to her potatoes. “That does it for my part. The only thing left is the gravy.”
“I guess that’s my cue.”
Alex made a mean turkey gravy, but she was also honest enough to admit it couldn’t compare to her mother’s.
“I’ve already transferred the drippings for you.” She pointed to the Wolf range.
“Perfect. You’d probably like a minute to freshen up while I finish up here and then we can let everyone know we’re ready.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
She took off her apron, hung it on a hook inside the pantry and headed for the powder room conveniently located just off the kitchen. Her dressy white blouse glimmered in the tasteful lighting of the bathroom, accented by a necklace she had made in one of Evie’s classes a few months earlier. It was made of semiprecious stones and Czech glass beads floating at intervals on a nearly invisible fragile silver wire.
Hidden beneath it, she pulled out another length of chain nestled between her breasts. Threaded along it was an exuberantly beautiful emerald ring, so lovely it stole her breath every time she saw it.
She couldn’t wait to wear the bling all the time— except when she was cooking, of course.
But not yet.
Three days from now, Harry and Mary Ella would be marrying in this very house. All her family was already in town for the big event, including Rose and her family and Lila from California.
As silly as it might seem, she figured her mother deserved to have these magical three days of attention without Alex intruding with her own news, stealing a little of her thunder. When things calmed down a little, maybe at Christmas, she and Sam would announce their engagement—though she doubted anyone in the family would be particularly surprised, since they had become inseparable these past months.
Since that far-distant summer night when she had hovered on the edge of despair and had yanked herself back to find a shining future waiting, everything with Sam and Ethan had come together perfectly. They were like a new recipe with disparate elements that somehow seemed to meld and complement each other to breathtaking effect.
Who would ever have guessed she could be so utterly, completely, outrageously happy?
She studied the ring for a moment more, then tucked it back against her heart and walked out into the great room of Harry’s estate. The room was vast and high-ceilinged but the McKnight brood still managed to fill the space.
Lila and Rose, the twins, were chattering in the corner while Sage seemed to be chiding her grandfather about something as Harry’s son, Jack, looked on with an amused smile. Her oldest sister, Angie, was deep in conversation with her two daughters and Maura, and several of the men were loudly protesting a ref’s call in the football game showing on Harry’s retractable big-screen television.
Sam was in the middle of the action, of course, on the sofa watching the game. He looked big, hard, tough—and completely adorable cradling a little pink-wrapped bundle in his arms.
By some unerring sense, he seemed to know when she started to head in his direction. He looked up from his game-related conversation and smiled at her over the head of three-month-old Emma, daughter to Claire and Riley, and the most beautiful little cherub around.
Her insides did a long, slow melt and she was suddenly awash with love for him and so happy she didn’t quite know what to do with it.
“Give,” she ordered when she reached him.
“Do I have to?” he asked. When she nodded he complied, reluctantly handing over her goddaughter, who smelled of baby lotion, milk and heaven.
He slid over on the sofa to make room and she plopped down beside him, savoring this perfect, crystalline moment—surrounded by family, with a baby on her lap and Sam’s arm across her shoulders.
A moment later, a herd of the younger children came galloping through with many squeals and much laughter as they chased Owen, who seemed to be holding a sought-after toy just out of their reach.
One of the laughing children broke away from the pack and veered in their direction.
Ethan leaned against her knees, looking down at Emma with that slightly fascinated, slightly terrified expression only a seven-year-old boy can wear while looking at such a tiny creature.
“I’m starving, Alex,” he announced dramatically. “When are we eating?”
She smiled and rested her free hand on his sweaty curls. “It shouldn’t be long now. My mom is finishing up the gravy and then I think we’re good.”
“Yay! If I don’t eat something soon, my blood sugar is going to plummet and I’m seriously going to fall over!”
She laughed. “We wouldn’t want that to happen. Can your blood sugar hang on a few more moments?”
“I suppose.”
He raced off after the other kids, apparently staving off his impending collapse by force of will.
Alex watched him go, crazy for him. He had accepted her in his life with a sweet willingness that still made her want to cry sometimes.
In a way, Ethan had actually been the first to propose to her the night before.
He and Sam had set the stage beautifully. They had all gone for an evening walk, bundled against the cold and with Leo leading the way, to enjoy some of the twinkly holiday lights that had begun peeking out around town.
She had known something was up, since Ethan had just about been bursting with excitement, as what had appeared to be a casual, random walk had eventually led to Sam’s latest renovation site, a decrepit old warehouse he was working to turn into a small indoor mall a few blocks off Main Street.
Sam said he had to check something and suggested they all come inside to warm up a little.
When he flipped the lights on, she saw a huge message across the length of one wall, two-foot-high letters written in chalk in childish handwriting: Will you marry us?
“I love you, Alex. I want to spend forever with you,” Sam had said.
“I really, really, really want you to be my second mom,” Ethan had added.
Her heart bursting with joy, she had sniffled and laughed and hugged them.
She sighed with contentment now, and Sam caught her gaze with that secret, sexy little smile she loved, before he turned back to argue with Riley abo
ut a call.
She considered one of the very best things about her relationship with Sam was how seamlessly he and Ethan had merged into her family. They all loved him, from her mother to her sisters and even the brothers-in-law. He, in turn, loved them all back. While her big, loud, boisterous family sometimes drove her bonkers, Sam reveled in all of them.
If she wasn’t completely convinced he loved her— much to her constant joy and wonderment—she might have thought he had only proposed to her so he could become a permanent part of the McKnight clan.
Mary Ella suddenly appeared in the doorway and Harry immediately muted the football game with the remote that he probably wouldn’t relinquish to anyone.
“All right, gang. I think everything’s ready.”
Alex probably should have been helping set everything out but she figured she had done her part by cooking most of the food.
The kids cheered.
“Finally!” Ethan exclaimed in that dramatic tone again.
“Agreed,” Harry said with a chuckle and led the way to his dining room, with its sweeping views up the canyon to the Silver Strike Resort.
She reluctantly relinquished Emma to Claire and followed Sam and Ethan to find a spot at the table.
Harry was probably the only one in town with a house big enough to comfortably contain all her siblings and their respective families. Even so, it was a squeeze around his massive dining table to accommodate everyone.
As host, Harry stood at the head of the table until everyone was settled.
“It’s been quite a few years, hasn’t it?”
Alex looked around at her family and thought of the many changes they had seen—tragedies and joys, heartaches and second chances.
“We have much to be grateful for,” Harry said. “New opportunities. New life. New marriages.”
He reached for her mother’s hand and, with a courtly sort of gesture quite incongruous to his bluff personality, he kissed the back of her fingers. Mary Ella blushed and a few of the younger kids made exclamations of disgust.
Beneath the table, she felt Sam’s hand on her knee, strong, firm, comfortable. On her other side, Ethan nudged her arm with his shoulder and tried his best to wink at her over their little secret, though he hadn’t quite perfected the expression and it came out more as a funny little spasm of half his face.
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