The Baby Miracle

by Rayner, Holly

  He laughs. “Or we could call her Boulder, for the place we finally agreed to renew our relationship. Mariel Boulder Harker.”

  “Definitely Tala,” I agree, giggling. “Mariel Tala.”

  A nurse comes in with a camera. “Ready for your first family photo?”

  Our first family photo.

  It brings to mind a future full of family photos, pictures in which Mariel will get older and bigger. I allow my imagination to take flight. Chase and I standing beside her in a Girl Scout uniform. Chase and I standing beside her in a cap and gown. Maybe, someday, Chase and I sitting on either side of her while she cradles her own baby in her arms.

  Our family.

  The nurse snaps the picture, bringing me back to the present and the beautiful little girl in my arms. Mariel Tala Harker. I take Chase’s hand in mine, feeling as if my heart might burst with love and joy.

  Epilogue

  Two Years Later: Chase

  “Daddy!”

  Mariel comes flying down the hall of the rental cottage the minute she hears the front door. She moves as fast as her stubby toddler legs can carry her, arms flung out to me, knowing I’ll catch her. And I do. I scoop her up and spin her around, kissing her on both cheeks, and she squeals with delight.

  Kendall follows behind her. “How was the meeting?” she asks after giving me her own kiss.

  “It wasn’t really a meeting,” I clarify. “Amir and I weren’t talking business or anything. We were just getting drinks and catching up.”

  “Okay,” Kendall says, smiling. “How was the meetup, then?”

  “It was good. Amir’s doing well. He has some new projects in the development stages, and one of them sounds like it might amount to something.”

  “What is it?” She lifts Mariel out of my arms so I can take off my suit jacket.

  “It’s a beach cleanup app. Teams can go out to clean up trash on a section of beach and then check in for the areas they’ve cleaned, so if other users want to go do beach cleanup, they’ll hit spots that need it more. The app lets users take pictures, too, so you can show off your work. That kind of social sharing is definitely going to motivate people to get out there and pick up some trash.”

  “Are you going to invest in it?” Kendall asks.

  “What do you think?” I ask her.

  She looks surprised by the question. “What do you mean, what do I think?”

  “What’s mine is yours, remember?” I ask her. “I’m not going to make a major financial investment without the approval of my wife.”

  Kendall still smiles when she hears the word wife. We’ve been married for a year now, but it still feels so new to both of us.

  The wedding was tiny. We each invited our families and a few close friends, but that was it. Afterward, we rented out the steakhouse where we never got to have dinner the night Mariel was born and threw a reception party. The tables were pushed back around the perimeter to create a dance floor, and Kendall and I danced all night long.

  It was one of the most romantic nights of my life. As the sky began to lighten, I finally carried her up to bed, and we enjoyed hours of slow, passionate lovemaking.

  “Well,” she says now, “I think you should invest. It sounds like a good cause. And Amir is a friend of yours.”

  “Despite everything,” I say, laughing. “All right. I’ll call him and ask him about investment opportunities. But tomorrow.” I zoom in at Mariel and tickle her cheeks. “Today we’re celebrating a birthday, aren’t we?”

  Mariel squeals. “Down!” she orders her mother.

  Kendall sets her on the floor and Mariel races back to her room.

  “Where’s she going?” I ask.

  “I told her we could go to the beach when Daddy got home,” Kendall says. “She’s probably going to put on her swimsuit. You should really do the same.” Kendall herself is already clad in a black and gold bikini with a sarong around her hips. “Mariel’s going to want you to swim with her.”

  I laugh and head off to the bedroom Kendall and I share to get changed. Once there, I throw open the shutters of the window and look out at the ocean below.

  This beachside cottage is one of the less expensive properties on Tala, mostly because of its size and its distance from the center of town. But that’s perfect for our little family. I bought it for Kendall as a wedding gift, but this is the first time we’ve been able to make it out here.

  It’s also Mariel’s first trip abroad, and so far she’s loved every minute of it. She loves playing in the waves, whether it’s standing in the breakers and letting them crash over us or going out to deep water and lying on a boogie board with my hand on her back to ride over the swells. She likes digging holes in the sand and filling up her pail, tipping it over and pouring lumpy wet sand out onto the beach. This has turned out to be the perfect destination for her second birthday.

  I get changed into my swimsuit and go back out to the kitchen. Mariel is in her blue swimsuit with white polka dots and white fringe, a gift from her great aunt Mariel for this trip. Between Kendall’s aunt and my parents, Mariel’s received so many swimsuits, sundresses, and hats that she hasn’t had to wear the same thing twice all vacation. I lift my daughter up and settle her on my shoulders and she laughs.

  “Swim!”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I say, teasing her. “Maybe swimming wouldn’t be fun today.”

  “Swim!” she insists.

  “Maybe we should stay inside annnnd…vacuum the carpet. What do you think? I think we’d better do that. That would be more fun than swimming, right?”

  “Nooo! Swim!”

  I laugh, swing her down to the floor, and open the door. Our house opens right onto the beach, and Mariel tears out onto the sand.

  “Hot!” she squeals, but that doesn’t stop her from pelting toward the water.

  Kendall is already outside, her umbrella and beach chair set up, and she watches as Mariel takes to the surf and kicks at the waves that wash up on the sand.

  “No going into the water,” she calls down to our daughter.

  “She knows the rules,” I say as I walk by. “I’m going to take her out for a little bit. She’s really excited about swimming today.”

  “Be careful,” Kendall says.

  “We’re always careful.”

  I jog down the beach and scoop Mariel up in my arms, and she shouts happily. I toss her lightly in the air and let a wave catch her, making sure that my arms are still right beneath her so I can pluck her from the water.

  She comes up sputtering. “Again!”

  I toss her again, and she laughs and squeals with joy. One thing I’ve learned about my daughter since coming on this trip is that she has no fear. The waves are big in Tala, and the ocean is powerful. Another child might be intimidated. But Mariel constantly wants to return to the sea, to play in the waves. “You might be part fish,” I tell her now.

  “Fish!” she agrees and puts her hands together to make a fin, wiggling them about to show me how fish swim.

  I settle her in the water on her stomach and she kicks her feet frantically and windmills her arms. She isn’t really, swimming, of course, but I know enough to know that’s it’s good for her to practice these movements in the water. When she’s ready to really learn how to swim, she’ll be acclimated.

  “Under,” she orders me.

  “You sure?”

  “Under?”

  “Okay.” I lift her up above the next wave. “One…two…three!”

  Mariel takes a deep breath in and squeezes her eyes shut, and I dunk her under the water and bring her back up. She’s laughing, so I count down from three and dunk her again.

  There’s nothing in the world as miraculous as Mariel’s laugh. Any time I’m the cause of it, I feel like the smartest man alive. She makes me feel like a hero, like I’m strong and important. I guess this is what it’s like to be a father. It’s more fulfilling than I ever could have imagined.

  I can’t believe there was a time in
my life when I’d nearly made my peace with the idea of never having children. Even though I thought I had no choice in the matter, it seems insane now that I could have accepted that diagnosis.

  Now that I have Mariel, I can’t imagine a life without her. The thought of not having her is like some half-remembered nightmare, some parallel universe that would have swept me away had it not been for the perfect sequence of events keeping me exactly where I needed to be and when I needed to be there.

  My plane putting down in Applewood that night.

  Kendall choosing to go to the same movie I went to.

  And the perfect, beautiful chemistry between us that lit a spark medical science had convinced me couldn’t be ignited and created the amazing little girl I’m holding in my arms right now.

  “I love you, sweetheart,” I tell my daughter.

  She kisses me on my cheek. Mariel has been going through a kissing phase lately. She kisses her mother and me of course, but every one of her stuffed animals gets a kiss good night each night, and yesterday she wanted to kiss the sand as we were coming in from the beach. Kendall put a stop to that one, thankfully.

  “Got it!” comes a voice from the beach.

  I look up. Kendall is standing in the surf, grinning and waving her camera. I know what she’s referring to immediately. We keep a scrapbook of Mariel’s development, and we’ve been trying to document this kissing stage, but it’s hard to capture organic moments on film. The process is made harder by the fact that Mariel has caught on to what we’re doing and enjoys giving us a hard time, laughing and refusing to kiss when she sees a camera present.

  “Ha,” I tell her now, tapping her nose. “Mama got your picture.”

  “I see it?” Mariel asks.

  “Yeah, let’s go see it.” I scoop her out of the water and sit her on my hip, wading in to the shore.

  “Hot sand,” she announces as I step out of the water.

  “I know,” I tell her. “It’s okay.”

  We make our way over to Kendall, who’s been photographing us nonstop as we’ve come walking up out of the water.

  “Let’s see this picture you took,” I say.

  Kendall scrolls back through the pictures in her camera until she gets to it. She tilts the camera to show me, and Mariel leans over so she can see too. Kendall used her zoom lens for a close up of our faces. Kendall is turned toward me, kissing me high on my cheek, and my face is split in a wide grin.

  “This is a great picture,” I say. “Definitely one for the album.”

  “Down!” Mariel demands.

  I set her on the sand and she sets to digging a hole. I’m pretty sure she’s going to want to be buried in it eventually—being buried in the sand is one of her favorite activities—but we have a few minutes before the hole is deep enough and she’s ready for us to start.

  Kendall snaps a few more pictures of Mariel, who’s too enraptured by her project to object. Then she turns to me. “Strike a pose.”

  “What? No!”

  “Come on, Chase, you’re a model.” She holds up the camera. “You don’t even have to sell a sports car.”

  “I’m not a model,” I say. “I’m retired. Did you forget?”

  “Oh, believe me,” she says, “I’ve been through all your print ads.”

  “Are you stalking me?”

  “Completely. Yes. And they’re hot, but you’ve never looked as utterly handsome as you do right now. It would be a crime not to document it. I owe it to society to photograph you on this beach. Come on.” She holds up the camera.

  I laugh, persuaded, and then angle my body away from the camera and toss her a sultry look. She snaps the picture and I give her a wicked grin. Then I look off into the distance broodily, and then flex all my muscles. Finally, I face the camera head-on and look directly into it, smirking slightly.

  “Perfect,” Kendall says, capping the lens and returning the camera to her bag.

  “What are you going to do with those?” I ask her.

  “I don’t know. Maybe put them in our family’s holiday newsletter and send them out to everyone we know.”

  I laugh. “That’s one way to lose friends.”

  “No, more likely I’d have to start charging people a subscription fee.”

  “Come here.” I take her by the hand and pull her close, catching her in my arms and setting us rocking slowly.

  “Dancing?” Kendall asks.

  “Is that okay?”

  “The last time we danced on Tala, it didn’t exactly end well.”

  “But everything’s different now,” I point out.

  “Mmm. That’s true.”

  She rests her head on my shoulder. The sun has warmed her skin and she feels wonderful against me. But then, she always does.

  For about the thousandth time, I marvel at the fact that I’m lucky enough to have Kendall in my life, that I’m the one who gets to hold her in my arms every night. It seems impossible that one man could be so fortunate. It’s really thanks to Kendall that things have gotten so good for me over the past couple of years. Without her, I wouldn’t have any of the most important things in my life.

  “Thank you,” I say softly to her. “Have I thanked you lately?”

  “For what?”

  “Making all my dreams come true.”

  “Chase.”

  “I mean it. I know it sounds over-the-top. But I truly mean it, Kendall. I wouldn’t let myself admit for the longest time that I wanted somebody to love, but I did. It’s because of you that I was able to open my heart again to that possibility. If you hadn’t fought for me the way you did, I might have stayed closed off forever. I might never have understood what I was missing. I know I didn’t make it easy on you, and I owe you so much for never giving up on me. I’m thankful for you every day. I’ll never take it for granted.”

  She looks up. Her eyes are filled with tears. “I love you, Chase.”

  “And thank you for our beautiful little girl,” I say. “Thank you for giving me a daughter. I dreamed of being a father, but I didn’t believe it could happen for me. And if it weren’t for you, it wouldn’t have. I won’t take that for granted either.”

  “That wasn’t just me,” she says.

  “If it weren’t for you—”

  “No,” she interrupts me. “You need to take credit for your part, Chase. Mariel was born because of both of us. Because of something between us…something chemical or physical, I don’t know—that’s compatible. Something that’s stronger than your diagnosis. And that’s something both of us share. It’s not just me. It’s between us.”

  I pull her to me again and kiss her, long and deep. For a moment I’m lost in it. How is it she always knows exactly what to say?

  “You gave me a daughter too,” she whispers, breaking the kiss but staying so close to me that I can feel her soft breath on my face.

  I nod.

  “Bury me!” Mariel yells, interrupting the moment.

  Kendall chuckles and leans in to kiss me again lightly before sinking to her knees.

  I join her on the sand. Mariel has stretched out in her finished hole and is wriggling about like a fish, waiting to have sand piled up on her. The first few scoops shake right off as she giggles, but soon piles of sand begin to accumulate on her legs, arms, and torso.

  “You know,” Kendall says to me, “what you said just now? It goes both ways.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “You made a lot of my dreams come true too,” she says. “I hadn’t exactly given up on love, not in the way you’re describing it, but I did have a hard time believing it would ever happen for me. I’m so grateful that I met you, Chase. I feel like a whole side of me is unlocked thanks to knowing you. I never would have realized the kind of love I was capable of.” She grins down at Mariel. “And there’s no one I’d rather be raising a family with, either.”

  I nod. “I feel the same way.”

  “I hope so,” she says and smooths away some loose sand on top
of the mountain covering our daughter. “Hey, Mariel. I have a birthday surprise for you.”

  “What!”

  “How would you like to be a big sister?”

  I stare at Kendall. Does she mean what I think she does?

  Mariel shouts, “Yaaay!” and bursts out of the sand, running in circles around us.

  I can’t take my gaze off of Kendall. “Do you mean it?” I ask.

  Her hand comes to rest on her stomach, and she nods, a shy smile creeping onto her face.

  “You’re pregnant?”

  “I am.”

  I jump to my feet and pull her up to meet me, and as our daughter runs and celebrates the news, I bring my wife in for a passionate kiss.

  The End

  * * *

  I hope you’ve enjoyed Chase and Kendall’s story! In case you missed it, keep reading for the first chapter of the first book in my Billionaires of Europe series, Fake Bride Wanted

  Love, Holly x

  Fake Bride Wanted

  Holly Rayner

  Chapter 1

  Julian

  As far as gene pools go, I come from one of the finest. Not to brag, but that’s what I’m thinking as I stride through the doors of De Bij and walk toward my father and grandfather. They’re both tall, fit, well-dressed, and smiling. I’m not exactly looking forward to aging, but as I survey them, I realize I’ve got nothing to worry about. Genetics are on my side.

  My father spots me first.

  “Julian!” he calls. “Son, you made it! How was your flight?”

  “Smooth. No hiccups.”

  I don’t want to dwell on my recent flight from Germany back to the Netherlands, since I’m not ready to tell the two exactly where I was or what I was doing. They think I was on a business trip, and that’s just fine with me.

  I give my dad a quick hug and then face my grandfather. “Opa, happy birthday.” I wrap my arms around my ninety-year-old grandfather. He hugs me tight.

  “Thank you, Julian. Good to see you here. Quite a turnout.”