His face lined. “He’s gone now. It doesn’t matter. No one will ever know for sure.”
“You’re wrong. I’ll know.”
Jace held her close again.
After a while, Abbie lifted her head, her smile returning as she counted her blessings and a new wave of confidence in the future floated her heart. “Hey…don’t you have something to say to me?”
“Can’t think of anything,” he said teasingly.
Abbie traced the curve of his lower lip. “Come on, Rogan,” she murmured. “I showed you mine.”
Then he smiled, and the devotion in his eyes was unmistakable. “I love you. I think I have since the day Jim called me into his office and ordered me to help you with your term paper. I’ve loved you ever since I saw you in those faded fanny-hugging jeans.”
Abbie laughed softly. “Fanny-hugging?”
“Yep,” he whispered, parting his lips over hers. “But now that’s my job.”
Epilogue
A week later, Abbie and Stuart left the judge’s chambers, then strode down the hall, their footfalls echoing off the glossy floor tile.
“Well, my girl,” he said, smiling. “Now you can get on with your life.”
There’d been some censuring on Judge Wilcox’s part, but in the end, Abbie had felt almost validated for leaking information to A.D.A. Garrett. Though the judge stopped just short of admitting it, she and Stuart both knew he wouldn’t have let her withdraw as Danny’s counsel with the trial only a day from ending. Judge Wilcox hated waste, and to him, that’s what the court’s time and the county’s money would’ve been. After angrily cautioning her to keep her oath in mind from this day forward, he’d thrown them out of his office.
“Stuart, thank you so much,” Abbie said gratefully.
He nodded his graying head, then squeezed her hand as they walked. They were a Mutt and Jeff team, Stuart several inches shorter than she was in her heels. “I’ll miss you,” he said.
“I’ll miss you, too. But we’ll only be a few hours away by plane. I hope you’ll visit.”
“Oh,” he chuckled, “I imagine I’ll be seeing quite a bit of you with a wedding and babies in your future.”
Abbie stopped walking, stopped breathing. Her heart began to race and tears stung the backs of her eyes. “Babies?”
Stuart’s pale gaze twinkled behind his rimless glasses, and he nodded toward the end of the long hall where Jace stood, silhouetted against a long, arched, sunstruck window. “He gave me the honor of telling you. Apparently he thinks it would be a travesty to deny a child a mother like you.”
Abbie’s whisper was barely audible. “He said that?”
“Not precisely,” Stuart replied, “but, yes. Now, if this pleases you, perhaps you should let him know it.”
And, tears streaming, Abbie ran for that sunlit window and flew into Jace’s warm, wanting arms.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-6313-4
JUST A WHISPER AWAY
Copyright © 2006 by Edie Hanes
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