Rick eased the jeweler’s box from his pocket, lifted it in his hand and held it out as an offering. Lori Lee stared at the small velvet box, then looked down into Rick’s dark eyes and saw tears.
“Oh, Rick.”
He flipped open the box. Lori Lee gasped when she saw the golden topaz ring.
“I wish it could have been a big diamond,” he said. “But when I saw this ring, I thought it looked like it belonged on your finger.”
“It’s beautiful. The most beautiful ring in the whole world.”
Still on bended knee, Rick took her hand and slipped the topaz on her finger. “Lori Lee Guy, I love you, more than anything. I want you to be my wife.”
Falling to her knees, Lori Lee embraced him. “And I want to be your wife, but...but I can’t. I can’t marry you.”
Rick lifted her to her feet, then took her in his arms and carried her into the living room. Laying her head on his shoulder, she clung to him when he sat down in the Queen Anne chair and placed her on his lap. Tyke scampered across the room and lay down at Rick’s feet.
“Why can’t you marry me?” he asked.
“I...there’s something...” She gulped down the tears choking her. “I should have told you long ago, before you fell in love with me, before you—”
“There’s something you should have told me fifteen years ago?” Caressing her cheek, he wiped away her tears with his big, rough fingertips.
“Fifteen years ago?” she gazed at him, her blue eyes questioning what he’d said.
“Yeah, that’s when I fell in love with you. I didn’t know it was love back then. All I knew was that I wanted you. But when I finally got around to admitting to myself that I was crazy in love with you, I realized that I’ve been in love with you all these years.”
“Oh, Rick. Rick.” She cupped his face in her hands and stared at him, all the love in her heart showing plainly in her eyes. “You fell in love with a dream, with a girl you thought was perfect. You still think I’m perfect, but I’m not.”
“As far as I’m concerned you’re perfect. My perfect woman.”
Releasing his face, she grasped his shoulders and rested her forehead against his. Her body shook with the force of her sobs. “I—I’m not...not...perfect. I’m the most...most imperfect woman...”
Tilting her chin, he leaned over and kissed her forehead. “All right, honey, so you’re an imperfect woman. That just makes you all the more perfect for an imperfect man like me.”
“No, Rick, you don’t understand.” She dug her nails into his shoulders. “I’m infertile. I can never give you a child.” There, she’d finally been totally honest with him. Now that he knew the truth, he wouldn’t want her.
“That’s where you’re wrong, honey. You’ve already given me a child,” he told her.
“What? What did you say?” Disbelief shone in her bright blue eyes.
“I already knew about your infertility before I proposed to you,” Rick admitted. “Aunt Birdie told me, and she warned me to be damn sure and certain I loved you enough for your imperfection not to matter before I came over here.”
“You knew...before you... What did you mean about my already having given you a child?”
“All the way over here, while I was following you, I kept thinking about Darcie, about how much like you she is. And I don’t mean just her blond hair and blue eyes. I’m talking about her talent and her personality and the pure sweet goodness in her.”
“Your wife. Your ex-wife. Darcie’s mother was—”
“April Denton was a woman I picked up in a bar. The only similarity between you and her was the blond hair and blue eyes. Darcie is nothing like April. She’s always looked more like you, been more like you, ever since she was a toddler. I used to look at her and wish she was our child.”
Lori Lee gasped again and again as she tried to control the torrent of tears engulfing her. She could not bear the pain, the hungry, helpless pain, inside her. Dear God in heaven, Darcie should have been her little girl. Hers and Rick’s.
“Oh, baby, don’t do this to yourself.” Rick held her, caressing her, comforting her as she cried.
“Darcie should have been ours,” Lori Lee said.
“She is ours, honey. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Maybe April carried her in her body and gave birth to her, but she wasn’t April’s child. Not ever.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The night I had sex with April, the only time I ever forgot to use protection, I thought she was you.”
“You thought she was—”
“I’d been drinking, but I wasn’t drunk,” he said. “I picked April up in a bar because she reminded me a little bit of you. I was always finding girls with long blond hair and big blue eyes that reminded me of you. I suppose, in a way, every girl I was ever with was a substitute for you.
“What I’m trying to tell you, and doing a damn poor job of it, is that the night Darcie was conceived, I didn’t make love to April. I didn’t give her a child.”
“Oh, Rick. Rick. You were—”
“Making love to you, Lori Lee. I was making love to you. Seven years ago on a hot August night in South Dakota, I was making love to you.”
“Seven years ago? In August?” Lori Lee’s thoughts drifted back to the last time she’d had sex with Tory, the night she had pretended he was Rick Warrick. “Oh, my God!”
“You knew, that night. Somehow you knew, didn’t you, that I was making love to you?” Gripping her chin, he forced her to look at him. “Tell me, Lori Lee. Tell me!”
“In August, seven years ago, I—I suspected Tory was cheating on me, but I tried to convince myself he would never hurt me that way. It reached a point where I couldn’t bear for him to touch me. The only way I could endure having sex with him was to—to—”
“To pretend he was me?”
“Yes. Yes.”
“Don’t you see, honey? The night Darcie was conceived, you and I were making love to each other. I didn’t give April a child. I gave you a child. Darcie is the child of our love.”
Lori Lee dissolved into a swirl of pain and joy, happiness and grief, tears and sighs and boundless love. “Darcie’s mine. My little girl.” She kissed Rick’s lips softly, tenderly. “Our little girl.”
“Yeah, honey. Our little girl.” He took her mouth in the sweetest, most powerful kiss they had ever shared. When he lifted his head, he smiled, tears streaming down his face. “Don’t you think it’s about time Darcie’s parents got married.”
“Yes. Yes, I do. I will. I...”
“And if you want more children, we’ll find them. Kids nobody else wants. Kids like me. Bad boys trying to fight the world all alone.”
“And kids like me,” Lori Lee said. “Imperfect kids.”
Rick stood with Lori Lee in his arms and carried her up the stairs to her bedroom. Tyke bounded up the steps behind them, then rushed ahead of them and curled up in a ball beside Lori Lee’s bed.
There in the sweet darkness of night, they made love, committing their hearts and bodies to each other for a lifetime, and their souls to each other for all eternity.
Epilogue
A. K. Warrick, one of Tuscumbia’s most successful businessmen and a recently elected city councilman, had been chosen as the grand marshal of the Helen Keller Festival parade. He and his family rode in the lead car, Rick’s own classic 1956 blue-and-white Chevrolet convertible that he’d restored several years ago.
Lucie, their black-eyed, brown-haired four-year-old sat in her mother’s lap. Although Lucie had been born deaf, she was a bright and beautiful child, who could sign quicker than most people could talk. Six-year-old Brandon, who suffered a mild form of cerebral palsy, had learned to take his first steps with the aid of a cane this year. The little towhead sat in Rick’s lap and waved to the crowd every time his father waved.
Sitting proudly between his parents, thirteen-year-old Chris couldn’t keep the smirky little grin off his face. Half the preteen girls, a
nd a few teenage ones, were madly in love with Lori Lee’s young heartbreaker. The first time she saw Chris, she knew he was meant to be their child. He acted so much like the old bad-boy Rick that he broke her heart. He’d been an unwanted, unloved hellion who dared anyone to care about him. Their friends warned them not to adopt Chris. At eight he was already a hoodlum. But Rick and Lori Lee could not resist the challenge, Rick knowing better than anyone that love was the boy’s only hope. Now Chris was a popular, well-liked athlete and honor-roll student.
When they rode by the studio, Aunt Birdie, who stood on a stepladder so she could see over the crowd, waved her pudgy hand. She was excited about this year’s festivities more so than any other year. Just in time for the annual festival, the workers had completed renovations in the basement, restoring the Prohibition speakeasy to its former glory. Birdie’s Golden Cage, as she’d dubbed her pet project, had been listed on the tour of homes and local attractions. Where tourists would be greeted at every stop on the tour by lovely young girls in antebellum costumes, they were met at Birdie’s by a roly-poly, white-haired femme fatale in a black-and-red flapper costume.
The Dixie Twirlers, national and world champions, marched behind the Deshler band. Deanie Webber had volunteered to oversee their performance so that Lori Lee could ride with Rick in the grand marshal’s car.
The only member of the Warrick family not riding with them was seventeen-year-old Darcie. As Deshler’s head majorette, like her mother before her, Darcie marched with the band. Her best friend, Katie Webber, marched beside her. The Warricks’ oldest, who would be a high school senior when school started in the fall, was already making plans to follow in Lori Lee’s footsteps and try out for the majorette line at the University of Alabama.
Everyone who saw the beautiful mother and daughter together marveled at their striking resemblance, and those who personally knew them were constantly amazed at how alike in personality and temperament the two were. But Rick and Lori Lee weren’t surprised. They knew that Darcie was their own special miracle.
Of course, all of the Warrick children were special miracles. Each had been destined to be a part of their warm, caring family and to grow up surrounded by the love of a reformed bad boy and a slightly imperfect Southern belle.
ISBN : 978-1-4592-7165-4
A CHILD OF HER OWN
Copyright © 1997 by Beverly Beaver
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 editorial office, Silhouette Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017 U.S.A.
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 Harlequin Books S.A., used under license. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.
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