Falling into Forever (Falling into You) (32 page)

She winks at me.

“One week. Hallie has one week before I start calling every hour on the hour,” he calls out over his shoulder, just as Eva drags him onto the dance floor.

Just as I’m about to follow Eva’s advice,
I feel a light tugging at the corner of my jacket. Grace is staring up at me with huge, sad eyes.

“
No one will dance with me.”

“Well, let’s
remedy that immediately. Shall we?”

I swing her into my arms and
she lets out a little gleeful shriek. We make our way past a few of the dancing couples, and I set her down on the dance floor and twirl her under my arm.

“Again,” she pronounces.

I’m only too happy to oblige, at least until the constant spinning starts to make me dizzy. Grace shows no signs of slowing down. Obviously, she inherited her mother’s dancing prowess, shimmying around the floor like an old pro.

“Uncle Sam is a better dancer than you are,” Grace says, sticking her chin out and grinning up at me.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

“That’s my princess,” Sam says,
as he and Hallie come to a stop near us. “How about a dance, Gracie?”

“Yes. Please. Just one thing first, Uncle Sam.”

She reaches out her arms for me and I pull her into them, relishing the way they clasp around my neck.

“
I’m really glad that you married Mommy,” she whispers. “There’s lots and lots of dancing, and I like dancing.”

I laugh and kiss her cheek before placing her down again and handing her over to Sam, who promptly swoops her into his arms.

“Are we really going to Disneyland tomorrow?” she calls out hopefully.

“Yes, we really are going to Disneyland tomorrow.”

I hear her jabbering away at Sam as they float across the dance floor.

“She’s wrong, you know,” Hallie says, nestling herself into my open arms. “You’re a better dancer than Uncle Sam any day.”

“Liar.”

“Nope. And besides, I have an obligation to defend my husband’s honor,” she whispers into my ear, her fingers curling around my hair.

“I like the sound of that.”

“Me, too.”

She beams up at me and she’s incandescent, basking in the glow of the white candles placed all around the edges of the rooftop garden of the apartment that we had bought together, because, as she put it, “We needed a place to make our own, the three of us.”

“Want to dance?”

“With you?”

“Yes. With me.”

“You kind of have two left feet.” She gives me a mischievous smile before settling herself into my arms. “But I suppose I can make the sacrifice.”

“What happened to defending the honor of your husband?”

“Eh. Overrated. Teasing is better. Lots of teasing.”

I feel the curves of her body relax against me as we start to move slowly to the music.
I touch the barely visible swell of her stomach with my fingers, still disbelieving that we had created a new life together, in more ways than one. She gives me a secret little smile as her enormous blue eyes fix on mine.

“I love you, Hals.
And Grace. And Buster. And the yet-to-be-named Jensen. I was thinking…maybe Samuel Benjamin? I think that’s a good name for a kid.”

She touches the side of my face and looks deeply into my eyes.
“That is a good name for a kid.”

“Then it’s decided.”

“I love you, Chris.”

“You know, I think I could get used to this perfectly happy thing.”

“How on earth did you remember that?”

“I remember everything.”

Her lips cover mine and we share a long, lingering kiss before she draws back, a soft smile playing across her features.

“I think I could get used to being imperfectly happy with you. As long as it’s still a forever kind of thing.”

“Imperfectly happy it is, then.”

If you enjoyed this book,
you’ll want to check out
Falling into You
, which details the beginning of Hallie and Chris’s story…

When Hallie Caldwell, normal girl extraordinaire, perpetual wingwoman, and queen of the friend zone, accepts her college roommate's invitation to spend winter break in New York, she figures it’s a chance to live out her childhood fantasies of a life in the big city. Instead, thrust into a world of glittering parties and oversized bank accounts, she immediately feels like an outsider.

Chris Jensen’s Hollywood agent keeps telling him that he’ll be the next big star, just as long as he gets the lead role in the reboot of a classic action franchise. When he returns to New York after a two-year absence, he has other things on his mind—his dying father, an irate sister, and the beautiful, seductive, infuriating, and ruthless Sophia Pearce. He's not exactly thrilled when she asks him to be her roommate's tour guide, but he reluctantly agrees.

When Hallie and Chris meet, they're irresistibly drawn to each other. However, Chris’s meteoric rise to stardom and long-suppressed secrets from Hallie’s past threaten to destroy their tenuous connection, and each is forced to examine whether happy endings are nothing but a Hollywood fantasy.  

Lauren Abrams lives in St. Louis, Missouri with her husband and a small menagerie of four-legged children. She spends most of her days trying to convince her high school students that reading is fun, although she’s still not sure quite what to say about
The Scarlet Letter
. She is the author of
Falling into Forever
and
Falling into You
.

She’s currently
writing her third novel, a contemporary romance. It will be released in the late summer or early fall of 2013.

There are a number of people who contributed to this book, both directly and in a thousand little ways that I’m not sure I could ever acknowledge. First and foremost, I was lucky enough to find my soul mate when I was eighteen years old, and my greatest wish is that I’ll have enough time on this planet to grow old and wrinkly and wise right by his side. Every time I think about the fact that I get to wake up every morning next to the most kind-hearted, supportive, loving, wonderful, fantastic man in the world, I get overwhelmed by my really fucking good luck. I love you.

My mother first put a book in my hands when I was three years old. She told me to read every day, because reading takes you to faraway worlds and to new places, but most importantly, reading brings you closer to the person you want to become. I’m sorry for being such an angsty brat for the teenage years, and I hope that you think maybe I’ve turned out okay.

Also, I really do have the best friends ever. They’re always willing to sit and ponder the mysteries of the universe with me over a few glasses (or bottles) of wine. Okay, so maybe we spend more time talking about the various pros and cons of The Real Housewives. It only makes us more fabulous.

I need to send a huge thank you out to everyone who read
Falling into You
. It totally makes my day every time I get a note from a reader who tells me that reading my book let them escape from their everyday reality for a few hours or days. I’m completely overwhelmed by the incredibly kind words and well wishes. Thank you so, so, so, so much.

And last (but never least), I want to thank all of the teachers who
know that telling stories is its own kind of art, its own kind of escape, who tell their students that making words appear on paper is nothing short of magic. As Mrs. Bittle used to say at the start of every third-grade day, “You are a writer. All you need to do is find your story.”

I never set out
to write a book for anyone but myself to read. But I think I’ve found some stories, and I can’t wait to tell more.