Once Around
Page 26
"I did," he said, "but investigators cost money. I tried twice, and both times the guy got nowhere. I've been putting money aside to try again early next year."
Something inside her heart shifted, and she turned slowly to meet his eyes. "You won't have to do that now," she said. "You've found her."
"I've found her," he said, and she could hear the wonder in his voice, see the happiness in his eyes. Karen was married to her fourth husband and living outside Seattle with Sarah and her two other children.
He wasn't going to rush into anything. The one thing he didn't want to do was drop a bomb in the middle of his daughter's life. He had to find out if she even knew he existed then proceed from there.
It was enough for the moment to know she was alive and well.
"This picture was taken six months ago." He pulled a snapshot from the pocket of his leather jacket. There was no mistaking his pride.
"She looks just like you," she said. Her voice broke on the last word, and she turned away. He didn't leave . . . he didn't leave. She felt as though someone had handed her the keys to heaven.
It was coming back, that miraculous sense of connection that she'd experienced the first moment she saw him. He was right. Leaving was easy. Dangerously easy. Staying together required understanding and patience and so much love.
We can work past this, she thought. They were working past it. He'd made the wrong decision with the best of intentions. He'd done what he thought was best for his child, and look at what it had cost him.
"You're doing the same thing, Molly," he said. "You're making the same mistakes."
She spun back around. "What did you say?"
"Your husband's a son of a bitch. I'm not going to argue that with you. But he wants a chance to be a father. Don't—"
"Robert walked out on us," she snapped. "It was his choice. I'll be damned if I reward him for it."
"You're right," Rafe said. "The bastard doesn't deserve either one of you."
"Then why should I do it?" she asked. "Why should I let him be part of my life?"
"For the baby," he said simply. "Because the baby deserves all the love she can get."
"Damn." She quickly wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "I wish you wouldn't say things like that." She looked up at him. "Why do you care? What difference does any of this make to you?"
He looked awkward and vulnerable, and in that instant it all came clear for her: the secret to life. Sometimes, if you were very lucky, you found it in a man's dark blue eyes.
"You haven't figured it out yet?" he asked.
"No," she said. "I want you to tell me."
"I love you," he said. "I've loved you from the first moment r saw you standing right where you're standing now. I wanted to kiss away your pain. I wanted to carry you off to the carriage house and keep you safe. I love the baby you're carrying as much as I loved Sarah, as much as I'll love any babies we have together." He stopped, her quiet man, and cradled her face between his hands. "I love you," he said again, "and I'll never leave."
She'd never been good at making speeches, sweeping declarations of love and longing like the ones she read in books, but this time it was easy. All she had to do was let her heart speak for her.
"I love you," she said to him. "I never knew just what that meant until I met you." It went beyond sex and beyond friendship and beyond anything she'd ever imagined possible between a man and a woman. "You're my family, Rafe. You and the baby. The two of you are all I've ever wanted."
"You're going to marry me," he said. "Now."
"I'm still a married woman," she, said, laughing softly.
"Then we'll have to do something about that as soon as possible."
"I think that can be arranged." Not on Robert's time schedule, but on theirs.
"And then we'll get married," Rafe said, "and this dine we're going to do it-right."
"As in forever?" she asked.
"As in for always."
Love.
The secret of life.
Love made all things possible, even happiness. She looked at the welcome candle twinkling in the living room window, at her belly bursting with life; and Rafe's beloved face, and she finally surrendered herself to joy.
Epilogue
"What do you think?" Jessy Wyatt Mackenzie performed an awkward pirouette in front of Molly. "It's terrible, isn't it? I look like a whale."
Molly crossed her arms over her belly and peered closely at the very pregnant doctor. "You're nine months pregnant, Jess. You're supposed to look like a whale."
Jessy eyed her grimly. "You're not exactly a sylph yourself."
"I know," Molly said. "Isn't it wonderful?"
Jessy groaned as she studied her reflection in the fitting room mirror. "Three babies, and you're still glowing about the process. You should have been the obstetrician, Molly, not me."
"Oh, quit griping," Molly said. "You know you love everything about being pregnant. Why don't you just, admit it? I won't tell Spencer."
Jessy's serious expression dissolved into the brilliant smile that had become her trademark over the last five years. "You're right," she said. "I love every single thing about it, even the fact that my ankles look like drainpipes, my stretch marks have stretch marks, and that I no sooner get one out of training pants than I'll have another in diapers."
Molly threw back her head and laughed. "No sympathy here, old friend." Her hands cradled her belly, a gesture that was second nature to her now. "Three in five years."
Jessy pretended to shudder. "Look at you," she said with affection. "You're a glutton for punishment."
Jessy and Spencer had celebrated their fifth anniversary last month with a trip to Paris. Molly wouldn't have given them a one-in-a-million chance, but they'd defied the odds and found happiness together. Spencer had become a devoted family man, while motherhood had opened Jessy's heart to both her family and her career. As much as you could tell anything about the state of someone else's marriage, Molly guessed the Mackenzie union was in fine shape.
"Mommy!" Four-year-old Lizzie burst into the fitting room. Her tumble of red curls was gathered up in a big bright blue ribbon the color of her eyes. "Daddy says to hurry. He wants pizza."
Robert was Lizzie's father, but Rafe was her daddy in every way that mattered.
Molly opened her arms wide, and the little girl hurled herself into her embrace. "Did Daddy tell you to say that?"
Lizzie nodded vigorously then looked up at Jessy, who was trying to wriggle back into her own clothes. "Charlie wants pizza, too." Charlie was Jessy and Spencer's four-year-old son. He and Lizzie were best pals and sworn enemies. It depended on what time of day you asked them.
"How about you, Tizzy Lizzie?" Jessy asked. "Do you: want pizza, too?"
Lizzie buried her face against Molly's chest and giggled. Lizzie was prone to bouts of shyness, even with the people she loved most.
"I think that's a yes," Molly said. "No daughter of mine ever missed a chance for pizza and ice cream."
A few minutes later they joined their men outside. Rafe leaned against the side of the new red truck they'd bought with the proceeds of his first showing of handmade furniture. Two-year-old Josh sat on his daddy's shoulders. Father and son both wore jeans and cranberry-colored sweaters. Molly's heart almost burst with pride. Their son was the mirror image of Rafe, right down to the dark blue eyes and stubborn chin. Sometimes late at night she'd get up while the house slept. She'd go from room to room, marveling at Lizzie, exulting in Josh, and glorying in the new life growing once again inside her body. That cradle Rafe made had served them well, and would for many years to come.
She thanked God every day for bringing Rafe Garrick into her life. From that chance encounter on the worst day of her life a brand-new family had been created. Miracles were everywhere if you opened your eyes and your heart to the possibilities..
"Daddy!" Lizzie tugged on Rafe's sleeve. "Mommy bought a new dress."
Rafe met Molly's eyes over their daught
er's head. "I hope Mammy bought a pretty new dress," he said with a wicked grin.
"Mommy bought a very pretty new dress," she said, "and she'll be happy to model it for you when we get home."
He put his arm around her shoulders and brushed her ear with his lips. "Better be careful," he murmured low. "That's how you ended up this way." He gloried in each of her pregnancies and seemed to genuinely find her just as sexy with child as without.
Jessy and Spencer each took one of little Charlie's hands. "Come on," Spencer said in his best lawyerly tone of voice. "There's a double pepperoni at Tony's, and it's got the Mackenzie name on it."
"Me, too," Lizzie said, lifting her hands toward her own parents. "I want pizza."
"I guess I want pizza, too," Molly said, taking her daughter's right hand.
"Won't catch me arguing with a double pepperoni," Rafe said, taking his daughter's left hand.
"Pizza!" crowed Josh, and they all laughed.
"Happy?" Rafe asked her as they waited for the light to change at the corner.
"Very," she said. "Are you?"
He looked at their children then met her eyes; 'I think you know the answer to that."
"Hey!" a familiar voice called out. "Wait for me!" Sarah, Rafe's teenage daughter, popped out of the knit shop and joined them. She was tall and slender, with her mother's light brown hair and Rafe's beautiful blue eyes.
"I thought you were meeting us at Tony's," Molly said, smiling at the girl.
"I got sidetracked," Sarah said with a grin. "Some new Noro worsted silk came in and I had to check it out."
Rafe launched into a rant on crazy yarn prices that had Sarah rolling her eyes, Lizzie giggling, and little Josh pulling on his hair.
"I give up," Rafe said finally. "I know when I'm outnumbered."
"Come on, you guys." Sarah put Josh on her shoulders and took Lizzie's hand. "I think the parental units feel like singing some Barry Manilow."
"Barry Manilow!" Rafe bellowed. "The day you catch me—"
"She's only kidding, sweetie." Molly winked at Sarah. "She knows you don't listen to Barry Manilow."
"She thinks I'm an old man," Rafe muttered as Sarah and the kids moved away from them.
"She's supposed to think you're an old man," Molly said. "You're her father.'
"Next thing you'll tell me the rest of our kids will feel the same way."
"If we're lucky," Molly said. "That's the way these things usually go."
"Mothers get a free ride?"
"No such luck. Sarah reminded me that Engelbert was playing down in Atlantic City this weekend. She thought I might like to know."
"Looks like we're in this together," he said as they walked hand in hand toward the pizzeria. "Us against them."
She squeezed his hand. "I like those odds."
"Would you do it again?" he asked as they stopped to wait for the light to change. "I might never be able to give you Paris."
She thought about how it felt to fall asleep in his arms each night, how it felt to wake up to the sweet sound of her children's voices. She thought about the laughter that filled the house and the warmth and the love.
"I don't need Paris," she said as he drew her into his arms. "I already have everything I'll ever need right here."
A home. A family. A man who loved her the way she'd dreamed of being loved. Paris couldn't compare to what she'd found right there in New Jersey.
"Guys!" Sarah's voice floated toward them from across the street. "Come on! The pizza's waiting on us."
He cupped her face between his hands, the way he had the first time he ever kissed her.
"You heard what she said." Molly touched a finger to her husband's lips. "The pizza's waiting on us."
"Let it wait."
He kissed her long and slow and sweetly, right there at the corner of Main and Church streets with the late-afternoon sun warm against their backs and the delighted laughter of their children filling their hearts.
"Daddy, stop kissing Mommy!" Lizzie's high-pitched little voice rang out from the other side of the street. "We're hungry!"
Their kiss ended in gentle laughter.
"I think she means business," Rafe said, brushing a lock of Molly's hair back from her face.
"She always means business when there's pizza on the horizon." Molly rubbed away a smudge of lipstick from the corner of his mouth.
He took her hand in his, and together they crossed the street to catch up with their future.
The End
More eBooks by Barbara Bretton
The Crosse Harbor Time Travel Trilogy
Somewhere in Time
Tomorrow & Always
Destiny's Child
The PAX Romantic Adventure Series
Playing for Time
Honeymoon Hotel
A Fine Madness
All We Know of Heaven - coming soon
The Sugar Maple Chronicles
Casting Spells
Laced with Magic
Spun by Sorcery
Charmed: A Sugar Maple Short Story
Spells & Stitches
Paradise Point, New Jersey - women's fiction
Shore Lights
Chances Are - coming soon
Other Titles
At Last
A Soft Place to Fall
Her Bad Boy Billionaire Lover
Bundle of Joy
The Edge of Forever
Second Harmony
Mother Knows Best
Midnight Lover
Just Like Heaven
Once Around
Novellas
I Do, I Do . . . Again
The Marrying Man
About Barbara Bretton
Barbara Bretton is the USA Today bestselling, award-winning author of more than 50 books. She currently has over ten million copies in print around the world. Her works have been translated into twelve languages in over twenty countries and she has received starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Booklist.
Barbara has been featured in articles in The New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Romantic Times, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Herald News, Home News, Somerset Gazette, among others, and has been interviewed by Independent Network News Television, appeared on the Susan Stamberg show on NPR, and been featured in an interview with Charles Osgood of WCBS, among others.
Her awards include both RT Reviewer's Choice and Career Achievement awards; a RITA nomination from RWA; Gold and Silver certificates from Affaire de Coeur; the RWA Region 1 Golden Leaf; and several sales awards from Bookrak. Ms. Bretton was included in a recent edition of Contemporary Authors.
Barbara cooks, knits, and writes in New Jersey with her husband,
How to contact Barbara:
Barbarabretton.com - website
Barbarabretton - Facebook, Twitter
Wickedsplitty - Ravelry
Barbarabretton AT gmail DOT com - email
Table of Contents
Copyright 1998, 2013 by Barbara Bretton
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Epilogue
Copyright
More eBooks by Barbara Bretton
About Barbara Bretton
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Epilogue
More eBooks by Barbara Bretton
About Barbara Bretton