* * *
“Heddy...”
“Hi...”
That was the extent of the exchange at Lang’s front door when he opened it after Heddy rang his doorbell that Saturday evening.
Then, before she could say anything, a stark-naked Carter charged around Lang’s legs and ran out of the house as Lang stood there frozen in surprise, staring at Heddy.
“Oh, Carter!” she said when she found her voice, being the first to step into action to grab the toddler’s hand before he could get off the front stoop.
His hair was damp and even though it was a nice April night, it wasn’t warm enough for the child to be outside without clothes on and with a wet head.
Apparently that finally registered with Lang because he quickly ushered Heddy inside with the little boy, closing the door behind them.
Then he picked Carter up from Heddy’s grasp and held him like a football against his side. Facing the floor, his tiny round rump in the air, the toddler was giddily laughing.
“Hi...” Lang belatedly answered Heddy’s greeting, his tone full of questions.
“I’m sorry to just show up,” Heddy said, still unsure what to say at all, having not been able to come up with something smooth and clever in the hours since her mother and cousin had left or on the entire drive to Cherry Creek. “If you have plans—”
“I plan to put this wild child to bed, but that’s it,” Lang said.
Heddy had worried that she might come here and find him with a date. Or out on a date. Or dressed in that gray suit he’d worn to the country club, looking amazing, and on his way out the door to pick up a date.
Even in a pair of old jeans and a nondescript, tan crew-necked sweater with the sleeves pushed up to his biceps, he still looked amazing to her. And she was terribly relieved that none of her date scenarios were true.
“I wondered if we could talk...”
“Okay,” he said, sounding leery and not altogether eager to hear what she had to say. “I just have to get him into his pajamas and read him to sleep—”
“Hetty read’a me!” Carter demanded from Lang’s side, just to be contrary.
“Or you could read him to sleep,” Lang said.
“Sure,” Heddy agreed, grasping at straws and hoping that maybe by the time Carter nodded off she would know what to say to Lang.
All adult focus went to Carter from that moment until the little boy was snoozing in his bed. Then Heddy and Lang tiptoed out of Carter’s room and made their way downstairs to the living room without speaking. Heddy was still too worried that he might have changed his mind about her and clueless as to how to tell him what she’d come to tell him.
“Want to sit down?” he asked when they reached the living room.
“I don’t think I can,” Heddy answered, stopping just inside the entrance to the room and suddenly sounding every bit as nervous as she felt in spite of the care she’d put into her own appearance. She’d showered, shampooed her hair and left it wavy and loose. Then she’d put on her best-fitting jeans and the two layers of body-hugging T-shirts—navy blue over white—that showed off the benefits of her best-fitting bra.
Lang went farther into the room to sit on the arm of the white leather sofa, facing her, watching her, waiting.
“This is really hard,” Heddy muttered.
“Did you come to complain about Cade or Jani? Are they not doing something the way you want it done?”
“No! They’re great,” she assured him. “This isn’t business. What’s between you and me is only personal, remember?”
She was making reference to what he’d said when he’d showed up at her house with Jani and Cade on the speaker of his smartphone. But she just thought what she’d said sounded dumb.
“I thought you didn’t want anything else personal between us,” Lang pointed out.
“Yeah. I know that’s what I said...” She swallowed, reminded herself that she’d rejected him and now the only way to put this back together—if there was any chance at all—was for her to be open and honest with him. And run the risk of being rejected herself.
So she sighed and said, “It might sound ridiculous or stupid or something, but even after I lost Daniel and Tina I still kept telling myself that I was—and would always be—Daniel’s wife, Tina’s mom...” She shrugged and wondered why she’d gotten so overly emotional again when tears threatened at just saying those words. “I guess it sort of helped me get through the past five years and let me go on feeling...I don’t know, connected to them. Then you came along and...” Another shrug. “I guess a part of me went back to just being Heddy and that part of me...”
Just say it! she ordered herself.
“I did what I didn’t think I could ever do again, with anyone else,” she said very softly. “I fell in love with you.”
“And then found a whole world of guilt.” Lang supplied the words for her.
“Yeah. And the worst feeling that I was being disloyal.”
“Disloyal?” He laughed a humorless laugh. “You’ve been loyal to people who haven’t even been here for the past five years. I’d say you’re one of the most loyal people I’ve ever known.”
“It just isn’t easy, you know?” she said, opening up to him the way she’d come to do over the course of getting to know him.
“Giving in to what I feel for you,” she said then, “letting myself have a future with you, was putting an end to them, to what I had with them, which was more than I could let myself do. If that makes any sense at all...”
“It does, actually,” he said quietly.
“But the past two weeks...” she continued. “I lost you, too. And Carter. And that caused me to do a whole lot of crying and moaning to Clair, who finally brought my mother into the picture this afternoon and...” Yet another shrug. “When my mother got on board with me moving on even if it meant moving on with a Camden, I knew I had to think about some things.”
“Ah, the evil Camdens,” he said, not seeming to take offense.
“She conceded that the Camdens of today aren’t who did her wrong. I wouldn’t say that she’s forgiving anything—particularly your father or what he did or the way he handled it—but she is excusing the rest of you from blame and giving you all a pass,” Heddy said, managing a small smile as she relayed that news. “And I think I have to give myself one, too. Or permission, maybe, to go on, to have what I want now.”
“Which would be...?”
He knew. She could see it. But she could also see that he needed to hear it. Hopefully not just so he could throw it back at her.
“You,” she said. “I want you. And a life with you. And with Carter. A home together. Even other kids...” Though that last part was especially difficult for her to say.
Lang seemed to understand how hard it was for her. He stood and came to her then, taking her upper arms in his hands, offering comfort and support.
“You can plaster the walls with pictures of them both, if you want. We can set places at the table for them at every meal. They can be as much a part of us as you need them to be, if there can just be an us.”
God but she loved this man...
Her eyes welled up again and she shook her head while she blinked back the tears.
“Don’t make me out to be too crazy,” she said. “It’s enough that you aren’t asking me to act as if they never existed, that I don’t have to be afraid of talking about them or mentioning them. That you recognize and honor that they were my life before you...” She looked up into those warm blue eyes of his. “But now I want to have a life with you. If that’s still what you want.”
He dropped his head forward and pressed his lips to her hairline, then breathed out a hot gust of air before he said, “I love you, Heddy. So yeah, it’s still what I want. More than I could even begin to tell you.�
��
Tears again. She really had become a soggy mess. But once more Heddy blinked them away and, through a clogged throat, said, “I love you, too.”
She tipped her head back, away from his so she could look at him, and he kissed her. A long, deep kiss where passion blossomed and grew.
But before it went too far Lang ended the kiss, wrapped his arms tightly around her and pulled her up against him so closely that—with her head pressed to his chest—she could hear his heartbeat.
“You’ll stay? Tonight and maybe from here on?” he asked her.
“I’ll stay tonight. Beyond tonight—we’ll have to talk about that.”
“Good because I’m going to spend the whole night ravaging you.”
Heddy smiled. “Okay.”
“But for now I just want to hold you.”
“Also okay. Really, really okay,” she said, her arms wrapped around him, holding him as tightly as he was holding her.
“And you’ll marry me?” he asked as if he were only confirming it.
In for a penny, in for a pound.
But still it was with a hint of guilt and a twinge of disloyalty that she said, “I will.”
“We don’t have to rush,” he said softly, again understanding that getting all the way to the altar with someone other than Daniel would not be easy for her. “Whenever you’re ready. But I want us to at least be engaged. To be together.”
“Me, too,” she said, knowing that the longer they were engaged without getting married, the more it would worry him, the more it would remind him of the woman who had strung him along only to dump him rather than become his wife. And she appreciated that he was setting aside feelings that had to be difficult for him just to help her.
But as she stood there in his arms, Heddy knew that she would only need a little time to get used to the idea of actually becoming Lang’s wife. She just wanted it too much herself. She wanted him too much.
And she could only hope that if Daniel was looking down on her, he was as understanding as Lang was.
But she had the sense that he was. That he wouldn’t have wished her to have an entire lifetime of living the way she’d lived for the past five years, of clinging to a past that was lost, of barely existing in the present. And she thought that Daniel would be glad that she’d found happiness again.
And she had.
“I do love you, Lang,” she whispered again, the feelings she had for him welling up inside her now rather than tears.
“I know. I can feel it,” he joked, holding her even tighter, almost melding their bodies together.
But what he didn’t know was that she loved him more than she’d thought she could ever love anyone again.
This man who came complete with a little boy. A little boy she loved, too, for himself and for every glimpse—even those shadowed with pain—that he gave her of what Tina might have been like.
And while she knew that she would never totally escape the sadness of losing Daniel and Tina, while she would always love them and miss them, while no one could ever replace them, she also knew in that moment that becoming a family with Lang and Carter was the gift of a second chance.
A gift she’d turned away once.
But would never ever turn away again.
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from Wanted: A Real Family by Karen Rose Smith
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Chapter One
Sara Stevens took her eyes from the long driveway nestled between rows and rows of grape trellises, colorful rose gardens and mountains in the distance. Glancing over her shoulder into the back where her four-year-old daughter sat in her car seat, she noticed Amy was staring out the window. Amy was as shaken as she was. She could tell when her little girl was quiet any length of time. She’d been quiet since Sara had awakened her a few nights ago in a house filled with smoke and carried her to safety.
Had that only been a few nights ago?
They’d lost everything they’d possessed, except their car. The loss weighed heavily on Sara. But right now, what weighed on her most was the decision she’d have to make regarding their living arrangements. Going through the channels of The Mommy Club, an organization in Fawn Grove, California, that helped parents in need, Jase Cramer had invited her and Amy to stay in the guesthouse at the nearby Raintree Winery.
But she and Jase had a history. She was just coming to look at the guesthouse today. Maybe she could find another place to stay.
Or maybe not.
As she drove up to the gravel parking area at the guest cottage, she spotted Jase standing by the door in the mid-May sun. His wavy black hair was shaggy, his gray eyes still intense. Craggy lines had etched his face, no doubt from the sights he’d witnessed in his former career. His physical therapy had ended two years ago. What had happened to him since?
She was about to find out.
He was so tall and muscular, now tanned from his work on the vineyard rather than his former profession as a photographer and journalist who told the rest of the world about children in refugee camps.
She shouldn’t be so unsettled about this meeting. She was a widow now, after all. But seeing him again took her back two years to a time when her life had been different, to a time when she’d thought she’d been happy, to a time before her marriage had been rocked and her world as she’d known it had blown up.
She opened her car door, and he offered her his hand. “Sara. It’s good to see you again. I’m just sorry it’s under these circumstances.”
His voice was still that deep warm baritone that seemed to vibrate through her. “How did you know about the fire?”
“I saw your interview on the news.”
Sara nodded. “Right after the fire. That reporter wouldn’t stop asking questions.”
“You were the news. You saved your daughter from a burning house. That’s heroic.”
“Not heroic. I couldn’t have left her. She’s my heart.”
After studying her for several long moments, Jase peered into the backseat. “How is she doing?”
“She doesn’t understand what happened. Kaitlyn Foster has made us feel at home in her guest room, but Amy is confused by it all.”
“Why don’t we take a look at the guesthouse? Maybe she’ll like the cottage and the vineyard.”
A few minutes later, Sara held Amy’s hand as they stepped over the threshold of Raintree Winery’s guesthouse.
“What do you think?” Jase asked, motioning to the exposed beams, the empty living room with a native stone fireplace and kitchen and dining area beyond. The golden polished flooring, the rough plastered walls and the birch cabinets she could glimpse in the kitchen added lightness to the space already glowing with sunlight from the windows.
Amy burrowed into her mother’s side and Sara crouched down, hanging her arm around her daughter’s shoulders. “Isn’t this pretty?”
Amy just poked her finger into her mouth and looked down at her sneakers.
Jase crouched down with Sara. “You can have your own bedroom here. There a
re two, one for your mom and one for you. And, if you’re lucky, you might even catch sight of a deer outside your window. Or a hummingbird. Have you ever seen a hummingbird? They’re tiny and flap their wings really fast.”
Sara could see Jase had caught Amy’s attention now, and her daughter actually gazed over at him.
“They like to flit around the columbine.”
“Can I catch a hummingbird?” Amy asked.
“Probably not. But if we hang a feeder on the porch, you might see them more often.”
Sara rose to her feet, the idea of catching a glimpse of a hummingbird entrancing her, too.
After another smile for Amy, Jase also rose. “Kaitlyn told me furniture won’t be a problem. Apparently The Mommy Club has storage sheds full of stuff for emergencies like this, as well as people donating.”
With a sigh, Sara closed her eyes.
Jase stepped a little closer. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t want to accept all this help. I don’t want to be a charity case.”
“Sara,” he said with so much gentleness, tears almost came to her eyes. “This is temporary. Living here and accepting help is temporary. Didn’t you once tell me I had to get over my pride and rethink my life to make it work again?”
The fact that he remembered her words from when she’d been his physical therapist touched her. He’d been at an emotional as well as a physical low, not ready to give up the life he’d wanted to pursue. While photographing children outside a refugee camp in Kenya, he and a few other aid workers had been injured by a marauding band of criminals. For some reason, the last thing he’d wanted to do was return to his father and Raintree Winery and make a place for himself here. She’d never known the real reason why, but she had known other details about Jase’s life, details that now made her wonder if everyone experienced betrayal at one point or another. His fiancée had been unfaithful.
“Your memory is too good,” she murmured, wondering what else he remembered about what she’d told him while he was in treatment with her.
It's a Boy! Page 18
