A Father for Her Triplets: Her Pregnancy Surprise (27 page)

But he was back, saying they needed to talk, sounding like a man ready to give, rather than take. Still, this time she had to be strong, careful. She couldn’t fall victim to the look in his beautiful dark eyes...or the hope in her heart.

She had to be strong.

“Danny, it’s late and our lawyers said everything we needed to say—”

“Not mine. He hardly said anything. And there are a few things I need to say. Put Sarah to bed. In
her
bed.”

The gentleness of his voice got to her. If nothing else, Grace knew with absolute certainty that Danny loved Sarah. Knowing her lawyer would probably be angry that she talked to Danny without counsel, Grace stepped aside so Danny could enter.

As she turned to walk up the steps with the baby, she saw Danny hesitate in her small entryway.

Remembering he was always more at ease in her home when she gave him something to do, she said, “I was just about to make cocoa. You could go in the kitchen and get mugs.”

“Okay.”

When she returned downstairs, Grace saw he had only gotten as far as the stools in front of the breakfast counter. Again noting his hesitation, Grace said, “Don’t you want cocoa?”

“I’d love some.”

He sounded so quiet and so unsteady that Grace didn’t know what to say. She set the pan on the stove and poured in milk and cocoa, waiting for him to talk. When he didn’t, she lowered the flame on the gas burner and walked to the breakfast bar.

“Did something happen with Sarah?”

“No. She was fine.” He caught her gaze. “Why did you do this? Why are you letting me have her every other week?”

She shrugged. “You’re Sarah’s dad. She loves you. You love her.”

He caught her gaze. “And that’s it?”

“What else is there?”

“You didn’t give Sarah to me to try to force my hand?”

“Force your hand?” She laughed. “Oh, my God, Danny, when have I ever gotten you to do anything? You didn’t believe I slept with you because I liked you. You were sure I had an agenda. You didn’t believe I was pregnant when I told you. You kicked me out of your office. You were so suspicious of me when I suggested shared custody that
you
insisted on the agreement. If there’s one thing I know not to do it’s try to force you to do anything.”

“You didn’t give me Sarah so that I’d be so grateful I’d fall in love with you?”

After a second to recover from the shock of that accusation, she shook her head sadly. He really did believe that people only did nice things when they wanted something from him. “Oh, Danny, I didn’t give you time with Sarah to drag you into a relationship with me.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I gave you time with Sarah because you’re her dad.”

“And you want nothing from me.”

Grace debated lying to him. She
wanted
them to be a normal family. She wanted him to be the happy, laughing guy who’d made love to her at the beach house. She wanted him to want her. To welcome her into his life with open arms. She wanted a lot, but she didn’t expect anything from him. The way she saw their lives unfolding, she would spend most of the time they had together just happy to see him unwind.

But if there was one thing she’d learned about Danny over the past weeks, it was that he valued honesty. So she took a breath and said, “I want a lot. But I’m also a realist. You won’t fall in love again until you’re ready. Nobody’s going to push you.”

He slid onto the stool. “I know.” Pointing at the stove, he said, “I think your pot’s boiling over.”

“Eeek!” She spun away from the breakfast bar and ran to the stove, where hot milk bubbled over the sides of her aluminum pot. “Looks like I’ll be starting over.”

“I think we should both start over.”

Not at all sure what he meant by that, Grace poured out the burned milk and filled the dirty pot with water, her heart pounding at the possibilities. “And how do you propose we start over?”

“The first step is that I have to tell you everything.”

She found a second pot, filled it with milk and poured in cocoa, again refusing to hurry him along or push him. This was his show. She would let him do whatever he wanted. She’d
never
misinterpret him again. “So tell me everything.”

While she adjusted the gas burner, he said, “Tonight I really thought through the things that had had happened to me in the past several years, and I realized something I’d refused to see before this.”

He paused again. Recognizing he might think she wasn’t paying attention, Grace said, “And what was that?”

“My marriage to Lydia was over before Cory’s accident.”

At that Grace turned to face him. “What?”

“Tonight when I was caring for Sarah in my brand-new nursery and thinking about how sad you probably were here alone, I realized that you are very different from Lydia. She and I spent most of our married life fighting. First she didn’t want children, then when we had Cory she wanted him enrolled in a school for gifted children in California. We didn’t fight over my pushing him into taking over Carson Services. We fought because she kept pushing him away. She didn’t want him around.”

“Oh.”

“I won’t say I didn’t love her when I married her, but I can now see that we were so different, especially in what we wanted out of life, that we were heading for divorce long before Cory’s accident. Tonight, I finally saw that I needed to separate the two. Cory’s accident didn’t ruin my marriage. Lydia and I had handled that all by ourselves.”

“I’m sorry.”

He laughed lightly. “You know what? I knew you would be. And I think that’s part of why I like you. Why I was drawn to you at the beach house. You really have a sixth sense about people. I saw how you were with Orlando and listened in sometimes on your conversations, and I knew you were somebody special. More than that, though, you respected the same things I did. Especially family and commitments. You and I had the thing Lydia and I lacked. Common beliefs. Sunday night when we were alone, I realized we also had more than our fair share of chemistry.” He paused, then said, “But I panicked.”

Since Grace couldn’t dispute what he said—or add to it—she stayed silent, letting him talk.

“Tonight, rocking Sarah, thinking about you, hating that you had to give up your child, I was angry that life had forced us into this position, but I suddenly realized it wasn’t life that forced us here. It was me because I didn’t think I could love you without hurting you.”

Too afraid to make a hopeful guess about the end of his conclusions, Grace held her breath.

“I guess thinking about my own marriage and Lydia and Cory while holding Sarah, I finally saw something that made everything fall into place for me.”

Grace whispered, “What’s that?”

“That if you and I had been married, we would have weathered Cory’s death. You might have honestly acknowledged my mistake in grabbing my cell phone, and even acknowledged that I would feel guilty, but you never would have let me take the blame. You and I would have survived. A marriage between us would have survived.”

Grace pressed her hand to her chest. “That’s quite a compliment.”

“You’re a very special person. Or maybe the strength of your love is special.” He shook his head. “Or maybe you and I together are special. I don’t know. I just know that through all this you’d been very patient. But I’m done running.”

She smiled. “Thought you didn’t run.”

“Well, maybe I wasn’t running. Maybe I was holding everybody back. Away. But I can’t do that anymore.”

She took a breath, her hope building, her heart pounding.

“Because I love you. I love you.” He repeated, as if saying it seemed so amazing he needed to say it again. “I couldn’t stand the thought of you here alone, and though I don’t want to hurt you I finally saw that unless I took this step, I would always be hurting you.”

Her voice a mere whisper, Grace said, “What step?”

“I want to love you. I want you to marry me.”

She would have been content to hear him say he wanted to try dating. His proposal was so far beyond what she’d been expecting that her breath stuttered in her chest. “What?”

“I love you and I want you to marry me.”

Dumbstruck, Grace only stared at him.

“You could say you love me, too.”

“I love you, too.”

At that Danny laughed. The sound filled the small kitchen.

“And you want to marry me.” He took a breath. “Grace, alone with Sarah I realized I had everything I needed and I could have talked myself into accepting only that. But I want you, too. Will you marry me?”

“And I want to marry you!” She made a move to launch herself into his arms, but remembered her cocoa and turned to flip off the burner. By the time she turned back, he was at her side, arms opened, ready for her to walk into them.

He wrapped his arms around her as his mouth met hers. Without a second of hesitation, Grace returned his kiss, opening her mouth when he nudged her to do so. Her heart pounded in her ears as her pulse began to scramble. He loved her.
He loved her and wanted to marry her.
It almost seemed too good to be true.

He pulled away. “Pot’s probably boiling over.”

“I thought I turned that off.” She whirled away from him and saw the cooling pot. “I did turn that off.”

“I have a better idea than cocoa anyway.”

He pulled her to him and whispered something in her ear that should have made a new mother blush. But she laughed and countered something equally sexy in his ear and he kissed her deeply, reminding her of her thoughts driving up I-64 the Monday they left Virginia Beach.
She’d found Mr.
Right.

She
had
found Mr. Right, and they were about to live happily ever after.

EPILOGUE

R
ESTING
UNDER
THE
shade of a huge oak, on the bench seat of a weathered wooden picnic table, Grace watched Sarah as she played in the sandbox with the children of Grace’s cousins. She could also see Danny standing in left field, participating in the married against the singles softball game at the annual McCartney reunion.

The CEO and chairman of the board of Carson Services didn’t look out of place in his khaki shorts and T-shirt, as Grace expected he might. It wasn’t even odd to see him punching his fist into the worn leather baseball mitt he found in his attic. Everything about this day seemed perfectly normal.

The batter hunkered down, preparing for a pitch thrown so hard Grace barely saw the ball as it sliced through the air toward the batter’s box, but her cousin Mark had seen it. His bat connected at just the right time to send the ball sailing through the air, directly at Danny.

With a groan, she slapped her hands over her eyes, but unable to resist, spread her fingers and peeked through. The ball sped toward Danny like a comet.

He yelled, “No worries. I’ve got it.” Punching his fist into his mitt twice before he held it up and the ball smacked into place with a crack.

Whoops of joy erupted from the married team because Danny had made the final out of the game. For the first time in almost twenty years, the married men had beaten the younger, more energetic singles.

Danny received a round of congratulations and praise. He was new blood. Exactly what the family needed. Grace sat a bit taller on the bench seat, glancing at eighteen-month-old Sarah, who happily shoveled sand into the empty bed of a plastic dump truck.

The married team disbursed to brag to their wives about the softball victory. The singles grumbled that Danny was a ringer. Danny jogged over to Grace looking like a man about to receive Olympic gold.

“Did you see that?”

“Yes. You were great.”

“I was, wasn’t I?”

Grace laughed. “Men.” She took a quiet breath and he sat down on the bench seat beside her.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“It’s just that the last time you were pregnant you were sick—”

She put her hand over his mouth to shut him up. “For the one-hundred-and-twenty-seven-thousand-two-hundred-and-eighty-fourth time, all pregnancies are different. Yes, I was sick with Sarah. But I’m only a little bit queasy this time.”

She pulled her hand away and he said, “Maybe you were sick because—”

She put her hand over his mouth again. “I was not sick because I went through that pregnancy alone. We’ve been over this, Danny.” Because he was so funny, she laughed. “A million times.”

“Or at least one-hundred-and-twenty-seven-thousand-two-hundred-and-eighty-four.”

She laughed again and he glanced around the property. “This is a beautiful place.”

“That’s why we have the picnic here every year. There are no distractions. Just open space, trees for shade and a brick grill to make burgers and keep our side dishes warm. So everybody has time to talk, to catch up with what the family’s been doing all year.”

“It’s great.”

“It is great.”

“And your family’s very nice.”

She smiled. “They like you, too.”

He took a satisfied breath. “Do you want me to watch Sarah for a while?”

“No. It’s okay. You keep mingling. We’re fine.”

“But this is your family.”

“And I’m mingling. Women mingle more around the food and the sandbox. At one point or another I’ll see everybody.” She grinned. “Besides, this may be your last day out with people for a while. You should take advantage of it.”

“What are you talking about? I have to go to work tomorrow.”

“Right.” She rolled her eyes with a chuckle. “Tomorrow you’re going to be suffering. Every muscle in your body will be screaming. You’ll need a hot shower just to be able to put on your suit jacket.”

He straightened on the bench seat. “Hey, I will not be sore.”

“Yes, you will.”

“I am an athlete.”

“You push papers for a living and work out at the gym a few nights a week.” She caught his gaze, then pressed a quick kiss to his lips. “You are going to be in bed for days.”

The idea seemed to please him because he grinned. “Will you stay in bed with me?”

“And let Sarah alone to fend for herself with Pickleberry?” They’d found Elise to be such a stickler for rules that Danny and Grace had nicknamed her after the governess in the storybook.

“Hey, you’re the one who said to keep her.”

“Only so we wouldn’t be tempted to overuse her.”

At that Danny laughed. He laughed long and hard and Grace smiled as she studied him. All traces of his guilt were gone. He remembered his son fondly now. He’d even visited the next-door neighbor who had been driving the SUV and they’d come to terms with the tragedy enough that Mrs. Oliver was a regular visitor at their home.

He’d also hired a new vice president and delegated at least half of his responsibility to him, so they could spend the majority of their summer at the beach house in Virginia Beach. He loved Sarah. He wanted a big family and Grace was happy to oblige. Not to give him heirs, but because he loved her.

Completely. Honestly. And with a passion that hadn’t died. Their intense love for each other seemed to grow every day. He had a home and she had a man who would walk to the ends of the earth for her.

Watching her other family members as they mingled and laughed, weaving around the big oak trees, sharing cobbler recipes and tales about their children, Grace suddenly saw that was the way it was meant to be.

That was the lesson she’d learned growing up among people who didn’t hesitate to love.

Somewhere out there, there was somebody for everybody.

* * * * *

Keep reading for an excerpt from
Little Cowgirl on His Doorstep
by Donna Alward