by Day Leclaire
The final one wasn’t postmarked. “You... you wrote this last night, didn’t you?” she asked unevenly. “When you were locked up in your office with Jack.”
“No Jack Daniels. Just a stack of writing paper and a pen. It takes me a while to get the letters right. Most of the night, usually. But for some strange reason, I found this one a lot easier. Which left plenty of time for a few other chores.”
He meant the tree and decorations, she realized. As she had with all the others, she turned the envelope over and pried it open, removing the single sheet of paper with hands that trembled. Sure enough, it bore yesterday’s date.
To My Newly Found Bride,
There’s only one thing left to say. Only one thing I’ve neglected to say. Only one thing that would have been said if I hadn’t been so afraid.
I love you.
My wife. My one true love. My Forever Love.
By the time she’d finished reading, she was so overcome with emotion, she couldn’t speak. “There’s one last item,” he said. “It’s in the bottom of the box.”
Barely able to see through her tears, she pulled aside the tissue paper. Two golden tickets glittered in the subdued lighting. Tickets to next year’s Anniversary Ball. “Oh, Chaz,” she whispered.
“I know it’s ten months away, but I thought maybe we could make it a date. Right now.”
“I don’t understand.” She stared at him in bewilderment. “You were so sure you couldn’t love anyone.”
“I was wrong. I loved you from the first moment I set eyes on you. I’ve always loved you. Fear held me back.” His mouth tightened. “I never thought of myself as a coward. But denying how I felt for you was easier than facing the truth. Safer than admitting that without you I was only living half a life. And I was furious, Shayne. Down to the bones, raw with anger. Angry at your brother for parting us. Angry at you for not coming back to me. Mostly, angry at myself for not finding you.”
She offered a look of utter understanding. “I know all about fear and anger, remember?”
He met her gaze then, straight and earnest and totally frank. “I love you, Shayne. I always have and I always will. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to come to my senses.”
She slipped into his arms and kissed him, a kiss of love and forgiveness. A kiss of promise. A kiss of passion. When they drew apart, she handed him the present she’d wrapped for him. “I don’t know how you’ll take to this,” she confessed.
“I’m sure I’ll love it, whatever it is.” He used far less care than she had opening the box. He ripped the paper away and pulled off the top. And then he simply sat, not uttering a word.
She regarded him apprehensively. “Aren’t you going to say something?”
He picked up the baby rattle. “You’re pregnant? For real?”
She nodded. “For real.”
Without a word, he tipped her backward onto the bed and pushed up her sweater, baring her stomach and cupping the slight swell with gentle hands. “This—” He blinked hard. “This is the best present you could have given me.”
“Are you sure?”
A blissful smile touched his mouth. “Oh, yeah, sweetheart. I’m real sure.” Then he frowned. “There’s only one problem.”
“What’s that?” she asked nervously.
“You don’t suppose...” He broke off and shook his head. “Naw. It’s too ridiculous.”
“What?”
“I just had this terrible thought.”
“Chaz!”
He slanted her a teasing glance. “You don’t suppose this means Mojo really does have the eye, do you?”
She chuckled. “I’ll tell you how we’ll know for sure.”
“Yeah? How’s that.”
She sat up and wrapped her arms around his neck. “We’ll know for sure if he ‘sees’ our next baby before Mother Nature confirms it.”
“Our next baby? You mean the one after this?”
“That’s generally what ‘next’ means.”
Laughter rumbled through Chaz’s chest, a happy, contented sound. “Okay. You’re on.”
EPILOGUE
SHAYNE sat curled up in the leather chair behind Chaz’s desk and grinned at her husband, blinking a suspicious moisture from her eyes. He lay on the floor in front of the Christmas tree, overwhelmed by a flurry of pigtails and giggles. Even Sarita, so grown up at eight years, wasn’t too big to wrestle her daddy to the ground. And she was such a loving big sister to Caitlin and the babies—twin girls that Mojo had “seen” long before the doctors. Despite his original terror at the notion, Chaz had gotten his house full of girls, after all.
The past five years had been the best of Shayne’s life, years of love and laughter and incomparable joy. Years of richness with Chaz and the girls, Isabella and Mojo and Jumbo and Penny. Her youngest toddled over to her, looking for her mother’s lap, and Shayne was only too happy to accommodate.
Nibbling the end of her pen, she returned to her yearly letter. By Christmas morning, Chaz would find the envelope hidden somewhere on the tree, a tradition that had started on their first anniversary. She didn’t doubt it was a tradition that would continue for the rest of their lives. Cuddling her daughter close, she rested her cheek against the silky curls and put pen to paper.
To My Forever Love... she began.
ISBN : 978-1-4592-5292-9
LONG-LOST BRIDE
First North American Publication 1999.
Copyright © 1999 by Day Totton Smith.
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.
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