A Daring Vow (Vows) (22 page)

If Geraldine and Beau Matthews had been stunned to find Zelda here when they’d arrived, they were keeping their opinions to themselves. Beau hadn’t mellowed exactly, but he hadn’t made one single snide remark. In fact, thanks to Caitlin’s exuberance, there hadn’t been much time for conversation of any kind.

When she’d opened every last present, Caitlin sat back and announced, “This has been the very best Christmas I’ve ever had. Now, Daddy, you open your presents.”

Taylor ripped off paper with as much enthusiasm as Caitlin had, saving the box from Zelda until last. When he opened Caitlin’s gift to him, he hesitated for only a fraction of a second before proclaiming it the nicest shirt he’d ever received.

Then he picked up Zelda’s package. Holding her breath, she watched him slowly untie the ribbon, then remove the paper with far more care than he had any of the others. Slowly, as if he was savoring the anticipation, he lifted the lid on the box. “A shirt,” he said. “And two ties. They’re…”

“Show us, Daddy,” Caitlin demanded, shooting a conspiratorial look at Zelda.

Taylor held them up as if he weren’t too certain what to make of them. Zelda winked at him.

“Fancy,” Beau declared. “You’ll look like a real Hollywood entertainment lawyer in that.”

Taylor grinned. “What would you know about Hollywood entertainment lawyers, Dad?”

“I watch
L.A. Law,
” his father retorted. “It’s about time you stopped wearing those boring old white shirts.”

Zelda, Geraldine Matthews and Taylor all stared at him in amazement.

“What?” he said. “I’m too old to know about what’s in fashion for men?”

“Of course not, Dad,” Taylor said. He gave the shirt one more slightly suspicious look, then said, “Okay, Zelda, your turn.”

She picked up the package she knew Caitlin had wrapped. “Now what could this be? It weighs more than a butterfly.”

Caitlin came and stood by her knee. “You can’t give somebody a butterfly. Hurry up. Open it.”

Zelda took her time with the package, to Caitlin’s evident exasperation. When she unfolded the tissue paper inside, she found a lovely ceramic frame containing a portrait of Taylor and Caitlin.

“Oh, sweetheart, you couldn’t have given me anything I’d have liked more.”

Caitlin looked at Taylor. “See, I told you she’d like it.”

“Of course I do. Why wouldn’t I?”

Taylor regarded her ruefully. “She picked it out a month ago.”

“Oh.”

Geraldine Matthews handed over a silver-wrapped package then. “We have something for you, too.”

Zelda’s eyes widened. “You didn’t need to get me anything.”

“We wanted to give you this.” She glanced around at her husband. “Didn’t we, Beau?”

He nodded, his expression gruff, but no longer angry at finding her a part of their lives.

When Zelda had unwrapped the package, she found a delicate gold necklace inside with an antique locket. “It was my mother’s,” Geraldine Matthews told her. “She gave it to me on my wedding day and now I’m passing it on to you.”

Zelda felt tears brimming in her eyes. She blinked them back. “Thank you. I’ll treasure it.”

“We just want you both to be happy. That’s all we’ve always wanted for Taylor.”

“Now mine,” Taylor said, handing over a small package that looked suspiciously like a jewelry box. “Usually this is something that should be given in private, over candlelight, but I think we’ve pretty well dispensed with that tradition already.”

Caitlin was so excited she reached over to help untie the ribbons. “I helped Daddy pick it out.”

“Did you?” Zelda said, almost wishing she could delay opening the box for an eternity so she could treasure the joy she felt right this instant, the sweet shimmer of anticipation.

Unfortunately, Taylor was looking anxious and Caitlin was far too excited to be contained for long. She slowly lifted the lid on the velvet box. Inside was the most gorgeous diamond she had ever seen, surrounded by aquamarines.

“It’s like your eyes,” Caitlin told her.

“Not nearly so beautiful,” Taylor corrected. “Not the way they’re shining right now. You’re not going to cry on me, are you?”

“I just might,” she said.

“Does that mean you’re happy?”

“Happier than I have ever been.”

“Then you don’t want to take back your acceptance of my proposal?”

She slid onto his lap and put her arms around his neck. “Taylor Matthews, you couldn’t get rid of me now if you wanted to.”

He grinned at her. “Then that makes this good for a lifetime,” he said, sliding the ring on her finger.

Zelda glanced at his parents and saw that his mother had slipped her hand into Beau’s. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, but she was smiling. Zelda knew then that nothing would interfere with her happiness again. For the first time in her life, she would have a real family.

She looked into Taylor’s eyes. “I love you.”

“And me?” Caitlin chimed in.

Zelda opened her arms to invite Caitlin into the embrace as well. “And you, darling.”

“Have you picked a date for the wedding?” Mrs. Matthews asked.

“I was thinking New Year’s Eve,” Taylor said. “How does that suit you?”

“I couldn’t think of a better way to start a new year,” Zelda agreed.

“Not just a new year,” he whispered as his lips claimed hers. “A whole new life.”

Turn the page for a special sneak peak at Sherryl Wood’s new Sweet Magnolias novel,
Swan Point
.

Chapter One

Adelia watched with her heart in her throat as the moving van pulled away from the crumbling curb in Swan Point, one of the oldest and, at one time, finest neighborhoods in Serenity, South Carolina. With moss-draped oaks in perfectly maintained yards backing up to a small, man-made lake, which was home to several swans, the houses had been large and stately by early standards.

Now, though, most of the homes, like this one, were showing signs of age. She found something fitting about the prospect of filling this historic old house with laughter and giving it a new lease on life. It would be as if the house and her family were moving into the future together.

Letting go of the old life, however, was proving more difficult than she’d anticipated. Drawing in a deep breath, she turned to deal with the accusing looks of her four children, who weren’t nearly as convinced as she was that they were about to have an exciting fresh start.

Her youngest, Tomas, named for his grandfather on her ex-husband’s side of the family, turned to her with tears streaming down his cheeks. “Mommy, I don’t like it here. I want to go home. This house is old. It smells funny. And there’s no pool.”

She knelt down in front of the eight-year-old and gathered him close, gathered all of them close, even her oldest, Selena.

It was Selena who understood better than any of them why this move had been necessary. While they all knew that Adelia and their father had divorced, Selena had seen Ernesto more than once with one of his mistresses. In a move that defied logic or compassion, he’d even had the audacity to introduce the most recent woman to Selena while he and Adelia were still making a pretense at least of trying to keep their marriage intact. His action had devastated Selena and it had been the final straw for Adelia. She’d seen at last that tolerating such disrespect was the wrong example to set for her three girls and even for her son.

“I know you’d rather be in our old house,” she comforted them with a hitch in her voice. “But it’s just not possible. This is home now. I really think you’re going to love it once we get settled in.”

She ruffled Tomas’s hair. “And don’t worry about the funny smell. It’s just been shut up for a few months. It’ll smell fine once we air it out and put fresh paint on the walls.” She injected a deliberately cheerful note into her voice. “We can all sit down and decide how we want to fix it up. Then you can go with me to the hardware store to pick out the paint colors for your rooms.”

The girls expressed enthusiasm for the idea, but Tomas remained visibly skeptical.

“What about the pool?” he asked sullenly.

“We can use the town pool,” Selena said staunchly, even though there were tears in her eyes, too. “It’s even bigger than the one at home, and our friends will be there. And since we’re living so close to downtown now, we can walk to the bakery after school for cupcakes, then stop in and see Mom at work. Or go across the green to Wharton’s for ice cream.”

Natalia sniffed, but Adelia saw a spark of interest in her eyes.

“I like ice cream,” eleven-year-old Natalia whispered, then nudged Tomas. “You do, too.”

“Me, too,” Juanita chimed in. Until the divorce Adelia’s nine-year-old had been boundlessly enthusiastic about everything, but this was the first sign in weeks that her high spirits were returning.

Tomas continued to look unconvinced. “Will
Abuela
be able to find us here?” he asked doubtfully.

“Of course,” Adelia assured him. Tomas adored her mother, who’d been babysitting him practically from infancy because of all the school committees on which Adelia had found herself and, more recently, because she was working at a boutique on Main Street. “She helped me to find this house.”

Amazingly, for once, her mother had kept her lectures on divorce to herself and professed to see all the positives in the new life Adelia was fashioning for her children. She’d told stories about the days when the elite in town had lived in Swan Point. There had been lavish parties in this very house, she’d reported to Adelia. She’d stuck to focusing on the possibilities in the house and the quiet, tree-shaded neighborhood, not the negatives.

Her mother’s support had actually given Adelia the courage to move forward. To her surprise, Adelia had recognized that even in her early forties, she still craved her mother’s approval. It was one of the many reasons she’d waited so long to end her travesty of a marriage.

“Can we still go to
Abuela
’s house for cookies?” her son pressed.

“Absolutely,” Adelia said. “You can go every day after school if you like, the same as always.”

Though he was starting to look relieved, a sudden frown crossed his face. “What about Papa? Is he going to live here, too? He won’t like it, I’ll bet. He likes our real house, same as me.”

Selena whirled on him. “You know perfectly well he doesn’t live with us anymore. He’s not coming here. Not ever! He’s going to live in our old house with somebody else.”

Adelia winced at the disdain and hurt in her oldest’s voice. Ever since she’d realized that her father had been openly cheating on Adelia, Selena had claimed she wanted no part of him. Her attitude had hardened even more when she’d overheard Ernesto describing her as her mother’s child in a tone that made clear he wasn’t complimenting either one of them.

Adelia had even spoken to a psychologist about this rift between father and daughter, but the woman had assured her that it wasn’t unusual for an impressionable teenager—Selena had just turned thirteen—to react so strongly to a divorce, especially when Ernesto’s cheating had been so public and when he’d shown no remorse at all once he’d been caught. In fact, he’d remained defiant to the bitter end, so much so that even the judge had lost patience with him.

At Selena’s angry words, Tomas’s eyes once again filled with tears.

“Enough,” Adelia warned her daughter. To Tomas and the younger girls, she said, “You’ll still be able to see your father whenever you want to.” Like Tomas, Natalia and Juanita looked relieved, though they carefully avoided looking at their big sister, clearly fearing her disapproval. That was yet another rift she’d have to work on healing, Adelia concluded with a sigh. Ernesto certainly wouldn’t make any effort to do it.

As hurt as she’d been and as much as she’d wanted to banish Ernesto from her life forever, she’d accepted that her kids deserved to have a relationship with their dad. It would be selfish of her to deny them that.

Besides, she’d had enough explaining to do to the rest of her rigidly Catholic family when she’d opted for divorce. Then, to top it off, she’d insisted on moving out of the huge house on the outskirts of town that Ernesto had apparently thought was reasonable compensation for his infidelity. Her sisters had been appalled by all of it—the scandal of Ernesto’s cheating, the divorce and the move. Keeping her children away from their father—however distasteful his behavior—would have caused even more of an uproar.

Not that Adelia cared what any of them thought at this point. She’d made the only decision she could make. Her only goal now was to make this transition as easy for the children as possible. She’d do it with as much cheerfulness as she could possibly muster. She might not even have to fake it, since on some level she was actually eager for this fresh start.

For now, though, she forced a smile and looked each of them in the eye. “I have an idea,” she announced, hoping to turn this difficult day around.

“What?” Tomas asked suspiciously.

“I think we all deserve a treat after such a long day.”

“Pizza?” Natalia asked hopefully.

Adelia laughed. Natalia would eat pizza three times a day if she were allowed to.

“Yes, pizza,” she confirmed.

“Not here, though,” Tomas pleaded, wrinkling his nose in distaste.

“No, not here. The dishes aren’t unpacked,” she said. “We’ll go to Rosalina’s. I’ll call your uncle Elliott and see if he and Aunt Karen would like to join us with Daisy, Mack and the baby.”

This last was offered especially for Selena, who adored her uncle and who’d become especially close to his adopted daughter, Daisy. Adelia might not intend to keep Ernesto away from his children, but Elliott was the male role model she really wanted in their lives. Her younger brother was loving, rock solid and dependable. She’d be proud to see Tomas grow up to be just like him. And she desperately hoped her girls would eventually find men like him, too.

Once the decision to divorce had been made, Elliott had overcome all his own strong objections to offer her the support she’d desperately needed. She owed Karen for bringing him—and even her mother—around. Her own sisters continued to treat her as if she’d committed a mortal sin.