The Baby Surprise (19 page)

“So she told him that he wasn't my father, and he said he didn't care. He didn't care about that fact any more than he cared about me. It was all about his rights.

“We were living in Germany at the time, and my mother told Serena that she didn't want to leave the country without me, but she believed it would be easier for her to petition to amend my birth certificate and get a court order for custody once she was back in the United States.”

“Obviously something fell through.”

“After months spent battling bureaucracy and cutting through red tape, just when she thought it was finally going
to happen, when she was finally ready to serve all of the required legal documents on her husband, she found out that his unit had been deployed to another country. By the time she tracked him down again, she'd been diagnosed with ALS and decided that she didn't want to bring me to live with her if it meant that I would have to watch her die.”

“I'm sorry, Paige. Not just because you lost your mother, but because the last thing you needed after having all of this dumped on you was for me to jump all over your back.”

“You didn't know,” she said.

“But I should have,” he insisted. “And I should have been there with you.”

“You're here with me now.”

He hugged her tight. “You've already forgiven me, haven't you?”

“I love you,” she said simply.

“I like hearing you say that.” He kissed the top of her head. “I like it even better when you don't stumble over the words.”

She smiled. “The point of all of that was to tell you that I do have a family of my own. Not just my aunt Lillian and Ashley and Megan, but now aunts and uncles and cousins on my mother's side, too.”

“So what are you saying—that you don't need my family now?” he teased.

“Maybe I don't need them, but I want them anyway.” She brushed her lips against his. “Although not nearly as much as I want you.”

“I could happily spend every day of the rest of my life with you just like this,” Zach told her, then sighed. “But I think, eventually, I'm going to have to get a job.”

“Have you ever thought about getting your commercial pilot's license?” she asked him.

“It's not the kind of job that would allow me to sleep at home every night,” he told her.

“Would you be gone for months at a time?”

“No.”

“Would you come home to me and Emma every chance you could?” she asked.

“Of course,” he answered without hesitation.

“Do you love to fly?”

He sighed. “Yeah.”

“Then you should do it,” she insisted.

“I'll think about it,” he said, and she knew that he already was.

“Because whether we're living in New York or California, we're going to be doing a lot of traveling back and forth,” she told him.

“So any airline discount would come in handy,” he guessed.

She nodded. “Especially when we're hauling three or four kids around.”

Zach's brows lifted. “Three or
four?
”

Paige just smiled.

“Well, then,” her husband said, a mischievous sparkle in his blue, blue eyes, “I guess we should get started.”

O
livia Lynn Crawford was born nine months later and christened on the one-year anniversary of her parents' wedding.

Since Ashley and Megan had both missed the nuptials, they made sure they were on hand—with husbands and children in tow—for the baby's baptism. Of course, it helped that Zach was able to get them all a great deal on flights through the airline for which he was now working.

And though Paige's cousins had planned to stay at a nearby hotel, Zach's parents had insisted that they could find room for everyone in the main house. It was a tight squeeze, but no one complained.

No one except Zach.

“I was hoping for a more private anniversary celebration,” he grumbled to his wife. “I haven't had any time alone with you since the baby was born.”

“We'll be alone when the kids go to sleep,” Paige said, and she knew that despite his protests, he was as happy as she
was to have their family around to celebrate a year that had been filled with adjustments for both of them.

She'd passed the California bar and was job sharing with another attorney who wanted to spend more time with her children. Though she'd worried about going back to work and putting Emma in day care, Kathleen and Justin had alleviated her concerns by offering to watch Emma. They had since extended the offer to include their newest granddaughter.

It was an arrangement that made Hayden as happy as her parents, because the time they spent with the grandchildren was time they weren't interfering in the business, and the winery was thriving under her management. It was also a convenient arrangement for Zach and Paige, since they were living in the guest cottage while they finalized plans for their own home to be built on property they'd purchased a few miles down the road.

As she looked around at everyone who had gathered, she said a silent thank-you to the friend after whom she and Zach had named their daughter, for helping her to discover the true value and importance of family.

For Paige, that included her aunts and cousins and their respective spouses and children, and Zach's parents and sisters and all the connections that flowed from them. But at the heart of her family was Zach, the man she loved enough to follow to the ends of the earth. And the man who loved her enough to understand how much she needed a place to call home.

As if he knew exactly what she was thinking, Zach put his arm across her shoulders and hugged her close. And she smiled up at him, knowing that in his arms, she was finally exactly where she belonged.