The man’s eyes twinkled at the child. He was the personification of acceptance and warmth.
“What?” Daniel finally asked.
“I understand what your uncle and your father want. Now I need to hear what you want.”
“What?” Daniel repeated.
“What do you want, young man? Where do you want your family to be? Where do you feel like you belong?”
Josh watched his nephew swallow the word family, and braced himself for the fallout. The kid had been pushed too far today. Too much had been unearthed from his past. It wasn’t a good time to ask for the impossible, like Daniel believing in the concept of family again after all he’d been through.
“I…” Daniel sat straighter in his chair and slid his knee away from Josh’s touch. “I don’t know.”
“Are you sure?” The judge folded his hands together. “Because it’s very important to me to understand what you think about all this.”
Daniel blinked and glanced sideways toward Josh.
“I want…” he stuttered. “I want…”
Josh held his breath.
For Daniel, admitting he wanted anything must seem like an open invitation for more pain. Watching Amy’s losing battle with her own insecurities had taught Josh that, if nothing else.
“It’s okay,” he said, knowing it would never be okay again if he lost this little boy. “You don’t have to want anything right now.”
“I want to belong…” Daniel crossed his arms and stared at his sneakers. “I don’t know… I guess want to belong in Sweetbrook.”
Judge Hardy smiled. “Mr. White, how does that sound to you?” he asked, keeping his focus on Daniel.
Josh couldn’t speak. He was certain his jaw was hanging somewhere in the vicinity of his knees. He scooted to the edge of his chair, as close as he could get to his nephew.
“Are you sure, son?”
“I…” Daniel’s chin wobbled. His mother’s chin used to do that when she was upset. “I want to stay with you, Uncle Josh.”
Uncle Josh.
Daniel had called him “Uncle Josh.”
Instincts drove care and reason from Josh’s mind as he scooped Daniel into his arms and held on as if he’d never let the kid go.
“I want you, too, son.” He sobbed when two little arms wound themselves around his neck. “I want you, too.”
* * *
AMY SAT IN THE TREE HOUSE, her business suit rumpled about her, trying to pull herself together before she ventured home to face her mother and Becky. Or was she saying goodbye to this peaceful place and the memories that filled it?
It was close to seven, and dusk was threatening, but the waning sunlight hit the openings in the wooden slats around her at just the right angle to keep the inside of the tree house illuminated. One particular beam of gold slanted across the tiny space, spotlighting the names she and Josh had carved in the wall as kids.
“Mom?” Becky’s voice found its way into the tree house from somewhere below. “Mom, are you up there?”
“You guys wait here.” Josh’s voice reached her ears, then the sound of him climbing the tree.
She didn’t want to see him, not now as she faced the reality of all she wanted but wasn’t strong enough to reach for.
This morning, she’d let herself believe there was a chance she could make love and family work with him. That she could find comfort and a new beginning in coming home each night to a partner, someone she could trust with her whole heart. Yet here she was, still running. And she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to stop.
Josh might be kind and loyal, but he’d never be happy with half of her heart. And that’s all she’d be able to give him. He’d already been burned by someone who couldn’t trust and believe in the things he believed in, and she wasn’t going to let herself hurt him that way, too. If she was too weak to believe in things like lasting love and commitment, then at least she could be strong enough to end this now, rather than causing him more pain down the road.
“Amy?” Josh squeezed through the kid-size door and then knelt beside her.
The lightness in his eyes, the tilt of his mouth gave her hope that things had gone well with the judge. Then his expression wrinkled into a frown.
“Barbara told me what happened with Curtis. I’m so sorry I left you to deal with him alone. I never meant for you to be frightened like that.”
The perfect smell of him tempted her to lean closer until he had no choice but to hold her. Instead, she wiped at her smudged makeup and sat as tall as she could.
“No, I’m fine,” she assured him. “Barbara took care of everything. I just couldn’t… I needed to…”
“You needed to climb a tree?” he teased, but even he couldn’t make her smile right now.
“The judge upheld my custody of Daniel.” Josh took her hand and squeezed. “All that’s left is the formality of a hearing. And Barbara’s filing a restraining order against Jenkins, that he’s not to come within a hundred feet of Daniel again. The last the court officer saw of him, he was peeling out of the parking lot, saying sticking around this hick town wasn’t worth the money.”
“I’m so glad, Josh.” Amy squeezed back, then made herself let go. “You and Daniel deserve to be happy.”
His smile slipped. “Just Daniel and me? What about you? Don’t you deserve to be happy?”
“Josh…”
“What are you doing up here alone and crying? We won. Daniel’s free, and I couldn’t have done it without you. The kids are waiting down on the ground. I told Daniel we’d go out for pizza to celebrate, and he actually smiled. But when I got to your mom’s to pick up you and Becky, you hadn’t made it home yet. I drove over here on a hunch, but for the life of me I don’t understand why you’d want to be up here alone at a time like this.”
“Maybe I like being alone,” she snapped.
“If you wanted to be alone so badly, why did you come back today?”
“Because…”
Because I couldn’t stay away.
“Because there’s something you need here, that’s why,” he finished for her. “Don’t bother to deny it. I saw your face when you were holding Daniel at the house. You belong here, Amy. You belong with us.”
She stood in a rush and bumped her head on the roof. Stooped over, she faced off against Josh.
“Do you need a new project to work on now that Daniel’s problems are solved? Is that it? I’m messed up, so you’re going to fix me, too—just like you did your nephew? Well, news flash, Principal White—I’m not fixable.”
“Amy, where is this coming from?” He tugged on her arm until she settled back onto the floor. “I don’t think you’re messed up. I’m not trying to fix anything. I—”
“Well, I am messed up. I’m broken, Josh. And I can’t do this. You and me and Becky and Daniel, making a family together. It’s a nice dream, but I can’t do it. It would never work between us, so back off.”
“Do you love me?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters a lot. What you think, what you want, that’s all that matters to me. If you’re saying that you don’t love me—”
The fierceness in his words, the insecurity in his eyes, drew her in.
“Of course I love you, Josh.” She folded her legs under her and fought for the right words. “And Daniel, too. I don’t know how I’m going to leave and never see him again.”
“Then don’t leave. Stay and we’ll work th
is out.”
“Josh—”
“I know you’ve been hurt, Amy. And you’re scared. You have every reason to be, but we can work through that. I’m not asking you to give up anything. Not even your career or your life in Atlanta.”
“Oh, so now you’re going to move to a city the size of Atlanta and be happy without all this?” She waved her arms to encompass the jewel-like textures the dusky sunset was painting on the walls around them.
“You did,” he said. “You’ve been gone for years. When you came back, I thought maybe there was something in Sweetbrook good enough to keep you here. But if you have to live somewhere else to be happy, then Amy, I’m going with you. I’m done losing the people I love. I don’t care what I have to give up.”
“Josh, listen to me. I can’t be part of the kind of relationship you’re looking for. I thought I could finally be free of my mistakes with Richard, but it’s not working. Everything still scares me. Becky’s and my new life in Atlanta. The thought of all of us together and everything that could go wrong… It all terrifies me. And you deserve better than that. You deserve a woman whose past doesn’t destroy everything she touches.”
“What if what I deserve is you?”
She sighed, her heart breaking for him. “You need to find someone else, Josh.”
“Not going to happen.” He leaned in and feathered a kiss across her lips, his taste filling her senses even as he moved away.
“Josh.” She had to stop him. “You make me want things I don’t think I’ll ever feel safe enough to believe in. Happy families. Sharing my dreams with someone and trusting him not to use them against me one day when things start not working.”
“Then we’ll figure out how to make you feel safe, Amy. Together. You can’t keep pulling away from me forever, and I’m sure not going to let you off the hook this easily.”
“Easy? You think this is easy?”
“No, I think it’s harder than I could possibly imagine.” His expression softened. “Today I watched a ten-year-old boy be more of a man than I’ve ever been. This kid, who hasn’t let me near him since his mother died, found a way to open up and accept that he wanted to try again. He told the judge he wants to be with me. He called me Uncle Josh. He…he let me hold him today, Amy. Can you believe that?”
“Yes.” Smiling at the new beginning he and Daniel had been given, she caressed his cheek. “You’re going to make a wonderful father, Joshua White.”
“And I’ll make just as good a husband this time around, Ms. Loar.” He trapped her hand against his face, then planted a kiss on her palm. “If Daniel’s willing to give me a shot, how can you say no?”
She tried to pull away, but he held firm.
“Josh, you don’t know what you’re saying. You’re just feeling grateful for my help with Daniel, or you’re feeling sorry for me, or you’re wrapped up in the moment. Either way, I don’t want to be there one day a month from now, or a year from now, when you wake up and realize that marriage to someone as messed up as me isn’t worth it. I can’t go through that again. Not with you.”
“Amy, because of you, because of what’s inside that heart you think is so messed up, I have a chance with Daniel. For that alone, I’d follow you up a thousand trees, or to Atlanta, or across the earth, if that’s what it takes to keep you. But that’s not why I’m here.”
“It—it’s not?”
“No, it’s not. I love you, and I’m done letting people I love slip away. We’ve been good for each other since we were children. I’ve never met a better match for me than you, even when you were calling me a butthead and trying to get me to do your homework for you.”
His smile turned her heart over, then his impossibly blue eyes filled with tears.
“I didn’t think there was any place in my life for love, either,” he said. “After Lisa left me, I figured I was better off alone. Better off not wanting to feel anything, because that way it wouldn’t hurt anymore. But you and Daniel came into my life, and you changed all that. And I want you, just as much as I want him, Amy. I want you shaking up my life for as long as I’m on this earth. I want to raise our kids together. I’ll be lucky if I can learn to be half the parent you are. And I want all that fearlessness and fire inside of you for my very own. I can’t live without you, Amy Loar. You’re everything I need. Everything I’ll never find again if you go away. Let me love you. Please, help me sweep away all the messes we’ve made and build something new.”
“I…I don’t know how to believe you.” Amy shook her head. “I tried. But I don’t know how to believe in any of this.”
“Then I’ll believe for you, how about that?”
Her breath caught on the familiar words. Words she’d used to encourage him not to give up on Daniel. And now Josh was asking her not to give up on him.
She felt the still-closed-off place inside her begin to crack open, just a tiny bit.
“And we…” Oh, how much she loved using that word. “We’d do this how?”
“One day at a time, sweetheart.” Josh’s earnest expression radiated the kind of love her dreams were made of. “Just like you told me to work things out with Daniel, we’ll take it one day at a time.”
The fact that Daniel was finally with his uncle for good was nothing short of a miracle, considering all the child and Josh had been through. It had seemed so hopeless not too long ago. Just as hopeless as making a happy family with Josh seemed for her now.
You’re everything I need.
Everything.
Could she really believe in everything? The closest she’d come to it had been when Josh kissed her. Or cuddling Becky close at Gwen’s. Or holding Daniel this morning as he’d cried away his fear.
Not when she was at work. Not when she’d shaken Hutchinson’s hand. Not even when she’d all but closed the Kramer deal, and with it had won her promotion and her independence from Richard. None of that had come close to the rightness of coming back home to Sweetbrook, to the people she couldn’t bear to be apart from.
She shivered deep inside, as the lonely place that had once protected her finally let go, freeing her of the doubt and the fear she’d clung to for so long.
She launched herself into Josh’s waiting arms and held tight to her very own miracle.
“I love you, too,” she said, still scared, but believing a little bit more by the second. Her breath mingled with his for another kiss. “I really do.”
And somehow, as Josh tenderly pressed her head to the shoulder that had always been there for her, for the first time in a long time love felt safe.
From almost out of earshot came the sound of the kids playing below, near the pond Josh and Amy had fished in as children. Birds chirped on every side of them, and the wind played tag with the leaves of the ancient tree that housed the secret hideaway that had first been hers and Josh’s, then had later comforted Daniel when he had nowhere else to turn.
And as Amy listened to the sounds of her home and hugged the man she loved closer, she realized that finally, after all this time, she was exactly where she belonged.
EPILOGUE
AMY FLICKED THE REMOTE to turn down her iPod in her home office so she could answer the phone. A quick glance at the clock told her she had fifteen minutes before the bus dropped the kids off from school. She picked up the receiver as she shut her computer down, straightening as she always did at the end of the day, when she took off her small-business owner’s hat and turned back into her equally favorit
e role—that of mother and wife.
“Hello,” she said, tucking the phone between her shoulder and ear so she could pack the contract she’d printed into an express envelope headed for her client in Raleigh, North Carolina.
“Ms. Loar… I mean, Mrs. White,” said a voice from her not-so-distant past.
“Mr. Hutchinson.” She sealed the postal envelope, her gaze skipping to the wedding photo of her and Josh that she kept beside her monitor. “What a surprise.”
“I’ve heard good things about your new business venture in South Carolina,” her former boss said.
Yet another surprise, that Hutchinson had been following her career since she’d left Enterprise Consulting at all.
She’d resigned six months ago, right after Hutchinson formally offered her the manager position she’d coveted. The Kramer Industries deal had closed without a hitch, despite her last-minute dash to Sweetbrook to help Daniel.
Doing it all on her own was no longer her goal, she’d found herself a new one. One where she would work for herself, but wouldn’t be in it alone. Where she could be committed to the career she enjoyed, but happily entrenched in the family life she loved, as well. Her job would still be a priority, but never again would she let work become a day-in, day-out fight for survival.
All because Josh had found a way through her hurt and fear as he continued to show her what it was like to feel truly cherished by the man she loved.
And so it was that she’d found herself six months ago thanking a stunned Phillip Hutchinson for his confidence in her, then telling him she couldn’t accept the promotion. And with a copy of her client database on a flash drive, she’d hugged a tearful Jacquie goodbye and had left her life in Atlanta behind.
“I have several steady clients,” she was pleased to report to her former senior partner. “And my twelve-month business plan is on track.”
A Sweetbrook Family (You, Me & the Kids) Page 23