“What indeed,” Mitch agreed, giving in and kissing her again. This time, it took more of an effort to get himself to stop than it had just previously. “We’d better get out of here,” he told her, rising in the pew and taking her hand. “Otherwise, if we stick around here any longer like this, I might just forget I have a reputation to maintain.”
Melanie looked at him in surprise, although she would have been lying if she’d said that what he’d just admitted shocked her. Part of her was feeling the same thing, even though she pointed out the obvious deterrent. “We’re in a chapel.”
“We’re alone,” he countered which, right now, seemed more to the point to him than where they were.
Drawing her out into the hall, he said, “C’mon, let’s go see April and give her the good news.”
But then a slight bit of hesitation came over him. It was a feeling he was definitely unfamiliar with—as unfamiliar as what he experienced each and every time he was around Melanie these days, or even just thought of Melanie these days.
“She will see that as good news, won’t she?” he asked Melanie. “I don’t mean her being with you, but her getting me in the bargain as her dad.”
Rather than try to convince him, Melanie simply took his hand and said, “Let’s ask her.”
* * *
“Best news ever!” the little girl declared less than ten minutes later.
They’d found her in her room, awake and struggling not just to sit up, but to get out of bed. Apparently she hadn’t really been asleep when Jennifer Donnelly had made her intentions clear to the nurse who was there watching over her—the nurse who then called Mitch to alert him as to what was going on.
Afraid that she would be taken away at any moment, April was trying to get up and get dressed so she could make good her escape before the social worker came back to her room.
“No, honey, no,” Melanie had assured her once April had blurted out why she was trying to get away. Very gently she’d pressed April back into her hospital bed. “No one is taking you anywhere, especially since you’re not well enough to leave the hospital for a few days yet.”
“But then that lady with the big voice is going to come get me and I don’t wanna go with her,” April had cried, big tears sliding down her small face. “I want to be with you.” She’d looked at Melanie as she’d said it. Melanie had felt her heart twisting in her chest for what April had been going through.
“No, she won’t. Dr. Mitch saw to that,” Melanie had told her. “He won’t let her take you.” She’d taken April’s hand in hers before continuing. “April, how would you like to come live with me and be my little girl?”
“I could do that?” April had asked, her eyes wide with surprise.
“Most definitely. I’d like to adopt you so that nobody can ever take you away from me again.” She looked down into the little girl’s open face, thinking how much she loved her. It didn’t seem possible to love someone so much so quickly, and yet she did. Twice over, she thought, glancing toward Mitch. She had looked back at April and asked, “Would that be okay with you?”
“Yes!” April had cried, looking happy enough to burst.
“There’s more,” Melanie had went on, choosing her words carefully. “Dr. Mitch asked me to marry him.”
“What did you say?” April had asked, looking not at her but at Mitch.
“I said yes,” Melanie told her.
Instead of looking happy, April’s face had become pensive. It had been obvious that she was trying to sort some things out. “So that means you won’t adopt me?” she’d asked, confused.
“No, that means I—we both want to ask you how you feel about something,” Melanie began.
Impatient, Mitch cut in. “How would you feel about me becoming your dad?” he asked April, unable to stay silent and remain in the background any longer, not when something was this important.
And that was when the little girl had cried, “Best news ever! I mean, I wish Mama and Jimmy were here,” she added quickly, “but if they can’t be, I’m sure glad that you are. We’re gonna be a family?” she asked excitedly, looking from Melanie to Mitch and then back again, unable to contain her enthusiasm.
“Yes, we are,” Mitch told her. Everything felt right he thought. For the first time, everything felt as if it had fallen into place just where it belonged.
“Does this mean you’ll hug and kiss, too?” April asked out of the blue. “Mama said that when Daddy was alive, he used to hug and kiss her all the time. She said that was what she missed about him the most. That was why I used to hug and kiss her a lot, so she wouldn’t miss Daddy so much. But if Dr. Mitch is gonna be my daddy,” she went on in that innocently wise way that some children had, “that means he can hug and kiss you, right? I like hugging and kissing,” she told them, her voice growing smaller, “but I’m tired right now so if you need a hug,” she said to Melanie, then turned toward Mitch, “can you do it for me?”
“I think I can manage that, yes,” Mitch told April, doing his best not to laugh. “As a matter of fact, I can give you a little demonstration right now.”
“Okay,” April told him.
It was the last word she said before her eyelids, already heavy, closed and she fell asleep.
Mitch didn’t notice.
He was too busy fulfilling his new daughter’s request and hugging Melanie. He threw the kissing in for good measure.
There were no complaints from Melanie.
Epilogue
“Well, ladies, one more for our plus column,” Theresa Manetti whispered to her friends as she slid into the last pew of the Bedford Rescue Mission’s chapel, taking a seat beside Maizie and Celia Parnell.
Theresa had just finished checking—again—on the meal she had prepared and was catering for Mitch and Melanie’s wedding reception. She joined Maizie, who had just gotten into the pew a couple of minutes ahead of her, having given a final hearty congratulations to the groom’s mother, an utterly thrilled, and grateful, Charlotte Stewart.
The wedding, at both the bride and the groom’s insistence, was taking place here, at the Bedford Rescue Mission where they had first met and become, with the recently finalized addition of April, a family.
It was difficult to say who among the guests, and this included Polly, the shelter’s director, was the most thrilled about the union: the guests, the director, the groom’s mother, their newly adopted daughter, or the two main participants of the ceremony. From all indications, it appeared to be a multi-way tie.
Celia leaned in toward her friends, keeping her voice extra low so that only they heard her. “That worries me,” she confided.
The other two exchanged glances before looking in unison at their friend. Although thought to be the more thoughtful and somber of the trio, Celia wasn’t exactly anyone’s idea of a pessimist.
“How so?” Maizie asked.
Celia was not happy about the reason she offered. “Well, so far, we’re batting a thousand, agreed?”
“That’s what it’s called when there’s a hundred percent success, yes, dear,” Maizie confirmed indulgently.
And, as amazing as it might seem to the outside observer, every single one of the couples they had stealthily brought together using dozens of pretexts had not only hit it off, but had gotten married and were still happily married.
Celia hesitated, searching for the right words. “Well, don’t you think that’s kind of like, tempting fate?”
“Tempting fate to do what, exactly?” Theresa wanted to know. She was still unclear about their friend’s reasoning.
“Tempting fate to have our efforts fall short and fail,” Celia finally said, looking less than happy about putting her feelings into actual words.
Maizie looked totally unfazed by Celia’s theory. “I don’t know, I’d rather say that it puts the odds in our favor.”
“Yes, but—” Celia began.
But Maizie waved the woman beside her into silence—at least for now.
Th
e opening strains of the wedding march had begun to swell through the mission’s chapel and as the rear entrance doors parted, April, fully recovered and dressed in a frilly pink dress Melanie had let her pick out herself, was doing her version of a two-step, proudly strewing pink rose petals from the open basket that was slung over her small forearm.
There was a huge pink bow on the basket and a smaller one jauntily tied in her hair.
A moment later Melanie entered on the arm of Theresa’s son. The latter had offered to give the bride away since own her father was deceased.
“What a beautiful bride,” Celia sighed.
“Each one of them looks more beautiful than the last,” Theresa whispered as tears began to slide through her lashes.
“As it should be,” Maizie murmured to her friends. “As it should be.”
“Shhh,” Celia warned, not wanting their voices to carry and distract the bride as she walked by.
There seemed to be little danger of that. Melanie only had eyes for the man standing tall and proud at the front of the altar. The man for whom her heart had broken all of her rules.
Dr. Mitchell Stewart, her second chance at love and happily-ever-after.
Blowing a kiss to April, who was watching her intently from the sidelines now, Melanie took her place beside Mitch, a place from which she planned to face the rest of her life.
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from A SOLDIER'S PROMISE by Karen Templeton.
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A Soldier's Promise
by Karen Templeton
Chapter One
Sweat streamed down Levi Talbot’s back as he sat in his pickup across the street, watching Valerie Lopez paint the window trim of a house he hadn’t set foot in for... Damn. Ten years, at least.
She was even skinnier than he remembered, sharp shoulder blades shifting, bunching over the scoop of a white tank top that teased the waistband of her low-rise jeans. Her pale hair was still long, wadded on top of her head, pieces sticking out every which way. In a nearby play yard a dark-haired baby sat gnawing on a plastic toy, while her older sister lay on her belly on the mottled floorboards, quietly singing as she scribbled, bare feet swinging to and fro. Then the little girl shoved to her knees, thrusting the open coloring book toward her mother.
“Mama! I gave her hair like mine! See?”
Levi saw Val glance over, her smile gentle as she bent to get a better look. Chuckling softly, she fingered the girl’s deep brown curls.
“A huge improvement, I’d say,” she said. The child giggled, making Val smile even bigger, and Levi flinched.
How the hell was he supposed to do this? Whatever this was.
And why the hell had it never occurred to him he might actually have to make good on that dumb-ass promise he’d made to Tomas when they’d first enlisted?
A breeze lanced his damp shirt, making him shiver. Squinting in the bolt of sunlight glancing off the sharply angled tin roof, Levi frowned at the house, which seemed to frown right back at him. An uneasy cross between Victorian and log cabin, the house seemed to slump in on itself, like it was too tired to care anymore. Or had finally succumbed to its identity crisis. And slapping some paint over what was most likely rotting wood wasn’t going to change that.
He could relate.
He waited for an SUV to pass—not much traffic on this stretch of Main Street, the last gasp of civilization before miles of nothing—before getting out of his truck, his boots crunching on asphalt chewed up even worse than usual after last winter’s heavy snow. A hawk keened, annoyed, from a nearby piñon, whose branches tangled with the deep blue sky. From inside the house, a dog exploded into frenzied barking. Val and the child turned, the little girl’s gaze more curious than concerned. Her mother’s, however...
Yeah. Considering she hadn’t exactly been a fan before he and Tommy had enlisted, Levi sincerely doubted that was about to change. Promise or no promise. In fact, what he saw in those blue eyes could only be described as... Well, fierce would work. Pissed off was more likely.
He stopped at the bottom step.
“Levi.” Val hauled the baby out of her little cage, tucked her against her ribs. Close-up, she seemed even smaller, probably not even coming to his shoulders. He remembered, though, how her smile could light up the whole town. Not that she’d ever given him that smile. “Heard you were back.”
He nodded, unsure of what came next. Hating that this puny little blonde was unnerving him more than driving supply trucks along dusty mountain roads that might or might not have been booby-trapped by the Taliban.
“Last week, yeah.”
The baby grabbed hold of a hank of her mother’s hair, tried to stuff it in her mouth. The older girl—seven, he thought—sidled closer; Val looped her arm around the girl’s shoulders as dark eyes exactly like her father’s regarded Levi with that same intense gaze. Had Val ever mentioned Levi to her daughter? Had Tommy?
“For good?” Val said.
“For now, anyway.” The dog’s barking grew more frantic. “So. These are your girls?”
Val shot him an are-you-nuts look, but she played along. “Yes. This is Josie,” she said, giving the older girl’s shoulders a quick squeeze. “And this is Risa.”
Laughter in Spanish. Levi’s heart knocked—Tommy had never even seen his second daughter.
“I’m sorry—”
“Don’t,” Val whispered, her eyes shiny.
“I couldn’t get back at the time,” Levi finished through a clogged throat, remembering his shock when he’d gotten the call from Tommy’s dad. “I asked, but they said no.”
Her face said it all: And exactly what good would that have done?
Along with: You can leave now. Except he couldn’t. Because he’d made a promise. One he fully intended to keep.
Whether his best friend’s widow was good with that idea or not.
* * *
Val’d figured she’d run into Levi eventually—his parents didn’t live far, and there was only one halfway decent grocery store in town—but she hadn’t counted on him actually seeking her out.
Of course, her rational side knew Levi Talbot wasn’t responsible for her husband’s death. That particular honor went to whoever had planted that roadside bomb near some godforsaken Afghani village with a name Val couldn’t even pronounce. But if Levi hadn’t joined the army six years ago, Val highly doubted that Tommy—who’d worshipped his best friend since high school for reasons Val had never understood—would’ve decided to enlist, too.
A thought that ripped open barely healed wounds all over again.
“Josie, why don’t you go inside?” she quietly asked, smiling down at her daughter. At least this one might remember her daddy. Although considering how much he’d been gone...
“Mama?”
“Levi and I just need to talk alone for a sec, baby. And don’t let the dog out, okay?”
Josie shot Levi a questioning look before shoving open the stubborn door and wriggling past the dog to get inside. Only after the door clicked closed did Val turn back to Levi, as muscled and tall as Tomas had been slight. All the Talbot boys were built like their father, tough and rough and full of surprising angles, like they’d been hastily hewn out of the mountains holding silent watch over sleepy Whispering Pines
. Oh, yeah, Levi Talbot was one good-looking sonofagun, despite badly needing a shave and a half-grown-out buzz cut that wasn’t doing him any favors—
“So you’re living here now,” Levi said. Carefully, like she was a horse who might spook. Val set Risa back in her play yard and handed her a toy, then crouched, gripping the top of the pen.
“Temporarily. Since Tommy’s grandmother moved in with his folks, the family said we can stay as long as we need.” She heard a creak behind her as he came up onto the porch.
“Big place for three people.”
As in, way bigger than Val needed. Five bedrooms, three baths. Dark. Dreary. “Yeah. It is,” she said, straightening in time to see Levi’s gaze flick over the worn porch floorboards, the gap-toothed porch railings.
“Needs a lot of work.”
Despite the situation, a smile pushed at Val’s mouth. “Part of the deal was that I get it fixed up. So they can get top dollar when it goes on the market. After everything they’ve done for me, I couldn’t exactly say no. Besides—” she almost smiled “—it would break Lita’s heart if I wasn’t here.”
Levi’s brows dipped. “They expect you to foot the bill?”
“Of course not. It’s not my house, is it?”
He was staring at her. Not rudely, but intently, his muddy green eyes focused on her like lasers. Exactly like he used to do when they were younger, as though he couldn’t figure her out. Or more likely, why his best friend would prefer her company to his. And damned if it didn’t make her every bit as uneasy now as it did then—
“For pity’s sake, Levi—why are you here?”
If her outburst threw him, he didn’t let on. Although his Adam’s apple definitely worked before he said, “Tommy was my closest friend, Val. I was best man at your wedding. Did you think I’d come home and not check on you?”
Risa began to fuss; Val picked her up again, pressing her lips into her curls, cool and soft against her hot face. “At least you got to come home,” she murmured, then lifted her gaze to Levi’s, the hurt in his eyes almost enough to make her feel like a bitch. Almost. Because there were days when her anger was about the only thing keeping her from losing it. That, and love for her daughters, she thought as Risa yawned, then plugged her thumb in her mouth and settled against Val’s chest.
Dr. Forget-Me-Not (Matchmaking Mamas) Page 17
