by Brenda Novak
“So what do you think?” he asked. “Can Mendocino support another attorney?”
The soothing tenor of his voice and the sight of him standing there so close sent Jenna’s pulse into high gear. “What happened to your practice? To San Francisco?”
He shrugged. “I closed up shop.”
The breeze carried the barest hint of his aftershave to her, making Jenna want to close her eyes and simply breathe in the scent of him and revel in his being there. “But…why?”
“Because the woman I love is in Mendocino.”
His voice, his words, caressed her, and before Jenna knew it, she was in his arms, only half-aware that his sweet grandmother was watching them with a look only a few degrees short of the rapture Jenna felt.
“I love you, Jen,” Adam murmured, holding her tight. “I have always loved you.” Putting his hands on her shoulders, he drew back, and the intensity of his gaze felt like the sun on her face. “Will you marry me? We’ll buy a little house here, any one you want, and raise Ryan and our new baby where they can be close to Gram and Pop. You can make your windows in a little studio I’ll build off the back, one that’ll give you plenty of light. And while we both live and love and work, we’ll make more babies, maybe a dozen, because I already know I’ll never be able to keep my hands off you.”
The white flag snapped in the wind overhead, and suddenly Jenna understood the significance of it. “Uncle,” she said.
“What?” He followed her gaze to the flag. “That’s right, my love. I surrender my heart to you now and forever.”
“My only complaint is that forever could never be long enough,” she whispered, and his lips brushed hers, softly and gently at first, then with an urgency that made Jenna feel as though he’d just flung her heart up in the air, to fly freely and joyfully through space. Only this time, she had no fear of a hard landing.
EPILOGUE
LEROY TOTTERING had just returned home from his heating and air-conditioning shop when the invitation arrived. Puzzled by the heavy white paper and elaborate scroll print, he shoved the rest of his mail aside and squinted to make out the return address, thinking he must have gotten his neighbor’s mail by mistake.
But the envelope was clearly addressed to him. Hmm…He didn’t know anyone who was getting married.
Relinquishing his easy chair and the TV remote lying in his lap, LeRoy searched the kitchen counter for his reading glasses. Finding them beneath a section of newspaper, he slid them on and tore open the seal. As he pulled the invitation from its envelope, a picture fell out and fluttered to the ground.
Bending down to retrieve it from the worn shag carpet, LeRoy gazed at the pink and wrinkled face of a newborn. On the back was written, “Alexa Lauren, April 19, 7 lbs. 2 oz.”
Whose little girl was this?
He went back to the wedding invitation, which also sported a picture, and stared down at his daughter Jenna. She’d been a skinny little girl, but she’d turned into one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen. Next to her stood the man he’d met at the Victoriana, both of them smiling as though they’d found heaven.
“Well, she deserves it. It’s not as if I did anything to make her life any easier,” LeRoy muttered. There was no one around to hear him. Now that all the kids were gone, he lived alone with only his memories and his regrets to keep him company.
Removing a delicate sheet of tissue paper, he studied the inside of the card. In the formal manner of a wedding invitation, Adam Durham and Jenna Livingston requested the pleasure of his presence at a wedding reception to be held in their honor three weeks from Saturday, the weekend after the Fourth of July, at the Victoriana. But LeRoy had a hard time believing they really wanted him to come—until he read the neat handwriting at the bottom.
Dear Father,
May the sorrows of the past be lost in the happiness of the future. Please come and meet your new granddaughter.
Jenna
And though LeRoy hadn’t shed a tear since he was a boy, he cried like a baby.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-4020-3
EXPECTATIONS
Copyright © 2000 by Brenda Novak.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.
Visit us at www.romance.net
