Adding Up to Family

by Marie Ferrarella

  “I know you better than you think,” Steve told her. When Becky began to protest again, he started to enumerate all the different things.

  “I know you understand Boolean algebra. That you respect that I can’t always share things with you because the information I have is deemed classified. I know that I can talk to you about the things that aren’t classified and be confident that you understand what I’m saying. I also know that you put up with going camping and fishing with me because those things are important to Stevi, as well,” he allowed. “I know that my daughter is crazy about you, and trust me, that is no small thing.

  “And most of all, I know that the thought of holding you in my arms makes me go weak in the knees.”

  Please don’t do this. Please don’t make me put my guard down again. “Maybe you’re just allergic to the shampoo I use,” she told him.

  “Oh no, you’re not going to get out of this that easily,” he said. “I honestly didn’t think I’d ever love another woman after Cindy died. I felt that there was room in my heart only for Stevi and that I would never let anyone else in. But I was wrong,” he said, his eyes pleading his case to her. “I love you, Rebecca Reynolds, and I want you in my life.”

  Becky paused, wrestling with herself, afraid of what lay ahead. But she had no choice. She knew that.

  “All right,” she told him. “If you feel that strongly, I’ll come back to work for you. We can leave now if you want. I couldn’t get myself to tell Stephanie why I was leaving. That means I don’t have to explain anything to her when she sees me in the morning. She doesn’t have to know anything about this.”

  Steve let her say her piece, and then he shook his head. “I don’t want you to come back to work for me.”

  Well, that hadn’t taken long, she thought. He’d shot her down. “Then I don’t understand what this is all about.”

  “I don’t want you to work for me,” he repeated. “I want you to marry me.”

  Stunned, she could only stare at him, momentarily speechless. And then she finally found her tongue. “You want me to what?” she asked, certain that she’d either heard him wrong or that for some reason he was having fun at her expense.

  Maybe this was how he was making her pay for having left him without any notice.

  Rather than repeat what he’d just said, Steve took her hand and right in front of her astonished eyes got down on one knee. “Rebecca Reynolds, I know I don’t have the right to ask you this after the way I’ve treated you, but will you marry me and make me the happiest man on earth?”

  Because of the doubts he’d had earlier, she didn’t think it would be fair of her to say yes, the way she ached to do. Instead, Becky looked into his eyes and asked, “Are you really sure about this? Sure that you want to marry me?”

  Rather than answering her, he crossed over to the front door of her garden apartment. Opening it, he loudly announced, “From the bottom of my soul, I want to ask Rebecca Reynolds to marry me.”

  Within moments, several doors and windows in the immediate area opened.

  “So do it already!” one man shouted back.

  “Ask her to marry you!” another yelled.

  A woman joined in. “If she won’t, I will.”

  “Say yes so he’ll shut up! I’m missing my program!” another woman cried.

  Smiling, Steve closed the door and turned back toward Becky. “I believe the consensus is ‘yes.’ Your neighbors want you to marry me.”

  “You know, I never went along with public opinion,” Becky told him, placing her hands on his chest. Then she grinned as she added, “Until now.”

  Steve pulled her into his arms. “Finally!” he cried. “Remind me never to do anything stupid again. Atoning for it is way too hard.” His arms tightened around her. “You had me worried there for a while.”

  “Right back at you,” she said, thinking of the emptiness she’d felt when she’d believed he wanted to get away from her. “Well, now that that’s settled, we’d better be getting back to your house. I’m sure Mrs. Parnell wants to go home.”

  “She told me that she’d stay with Stephanie until I returned, and she didn’t seem to be in any particular hurry to go anywhere,” he told her.

  Becky had her own theory about that. “That’s because Mrs. Parnell is nothing if not polite. That woman wouldn’t tell you to hurry up even though she’d want you to.”

  “No, I’m pretty sure that my interpretation is right,” Steve stated. “Besides, I don’t intend to keep you here much longer. I just want to seal this with a kiss.” He fitted her snugly against him. “Did you know that engagements aren’t considered legitimate until the official engagement kiss takes place?”

  “I did not know that,” she responded, her eyes sparkling.

  “It’s true,” he told her solemnly. “I saw it written in a book of rules somewhere. You want this to be an official engagement, don’t you?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” Becky responded, weaving her arms around his neck.

  “That’s what I thought,” he said, just before he lowered his mouth to hers.

  And to make sure that there was never going to be any question in her mind about just how official her engagement was, Steve kissed her until they both finally had to break away in order to draw in some air.

  But that didn’t happen for a long, long time.

  Epilogue

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” Bonnie Reynolds gushed, clutching Celia’s hand as ushers in black tuxedos moved up and down the aisles, seating wedding guests in the church. “You’ve produced nothing short of a miracle.”

  “The miracle was your doing, Bonnie,” Celia corrected. “You’re the one who gave birth to Becky, and who worked hard to single-handedly provide for her while she focused on her studies.”

  “Celia, I’m talking about this wedding,” Bonnie told her. “I never thought I’d actually be the mother of the bride.”

  “It was all leading up to this, trust me,” Celia assured her, putting her hand over her friend’s and squeezing it.

  “And there’s more good news,” Bonnie told her. “Do you know that Rebecca’s even talking about going back to engineering? Part-time for now, but that’s better than turning her back on her education altogether. Steve said they had an opening in his company that she was perfect for. And I even get a granddaughter!” Bonnie cried, her heart swelling with utter joy. “I really don’t know how I’m ever going to be able to pay you back for what you’ve done.”

  “It was my pleasure, Bonnie. Our pleasure,” Celia amended, glancing at her friends Maizie and Theresa, who were already seated in a pew on the bride’s side. “And right now, I think you’d better take your seat up front. Something tells me the ceremony’s about to start.”

  “You’re right,” Bonnie exclaimed. She began to walk toward the front of the church. However, she turned back long enough to give Celia a quick kiss on the cheek and murmur, “Thank you again!” before she hurried up the aisle.

  Celia slipped into the pew with her friends. The look of satisfaction on her face was telling. “Well, ladies, chalk up another one,” she whispered.

  Leaning in, Maizie commented, “You carried this one all by yourself, Celia. You came up with both the potential bride and her groom, so the credit is all yours.”

  “Technically,” Celia agreed. “But I wouldn’t have been able to do this without you two for inspiration.” The music began to swell and she turned toward the rear of the church just as the doors parted. “Oh, look, there she is. Isn’t she beautiful?” she sighed.

  “All brides look beautiful,” Maizie told her friends. “I think it’s an unspoken rule.”

  The music grew louder and all eyes turned to watch Becky slowly move up the aisle, walking behind Stephanie, who was her flower girl.

  Stephanie appeared to be beaming as she scattered white rose p
etals in front of the woman who was in a matter of minutes going to become her stepmother.

  Stephanie was down to the last two petals as she reached the altar. Winking at her father, she stepped aside and went to stand by her new stepgrandmother.

  When Becky joined Steve at the altar and turned to face the priest who was officiating the ceremony, her groom leaned over and whispered, “I was afraid that at the last minute you’d change your mind and not come.”

  “And miss showing off this dress?” she teased in an equally low voice. “Not a chance,” she whispered back. Her eyes danced as she smiled up at him. “Let’s do this,” she said, her heart bursting with happiness.

  Steve more than happily concurred.

  * * * * *

  Don’t miss out on these other great romances

  in the Matchmaking Mamas miniseries:

  An Engagement for Two

  Christmastime Courtship

  A Second Chance for the Single Dad

  Meant to Be Mine

  Available now!

  And be sure to check out Marie’s next book

  in January 2019, the first in the

  Forever, Texas series to be released in

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  Keep reading for an excerpt from Show Me a Hero by Allison Leigh.

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  Show Me a Hero

  by Allison Leigh

  Chapter One

  The house was nineteen-point-six miles outside of town.

  “Incredible,” Ali Templeton muttered under her breath when she pulled up in front of the dated-looking two-story building that sat on a small knoll in what seemed like the middle of nowhere.

  Only nineteen-point-six miles.

  She exhaled and pushed open the door of her cruiser, sticking one sturdy boot out onto the frozen red earth. She was on personal time and probably shouldn’t be using the vehicle assigned to her by the department. It would be one more reason for her sergeant to give her grief, but her own little pickup truck was in the shop, and would be remaining there until she could scrabble together the money to pay for the new transmission it needed.

  She zipped up her jacket against the whistling wind as she studied the house in front of her. Sgt. Gowler had been annoyed with her ever since she stopped dating his son, so she was used to it by now. What was one more reprimand?

  Discovering that Grant Cooper was living just nineteen-point-six miles outside of her very own hometown was either the height of irony, or the proof that she wasn’t much of a cop, just like Sgt. Gowler seemed to think.

  Not that she was here for professional reasons.

  Not exactly.

  Her bangs blew into her face, obscuring her view, and she shoved her sunglasses up onto the top of her head to keep her hair out of her eyes. She should never have impetuously cut the bangs. It was taking forever for them to grow long enough to stay contained in the bun she had to wear because Gowler was a stickler for regulations.

  She’d been out to this abandoned ranch once before. Just over a year ago. Then, it had been at the behest of a single mom at her wit’s end over the wild crowd her fifteen-year-old son had fallen in with. Alongside one of the county’s deputy sheriffs, she’d rounded up Trevor and the rest of the kids, boarded up the broken windows that had allowed them access to the vacant house and hauled the kids back home to their parents.

  There were still no animals in the fields. But now the sheets of plywood were gone. All the windows were intact. And though there was no sign of any vehicles, there was a thin stream of smoke coming from the chimney that she hoped meant the man she sought was actually inside.

  When she went up the weathered porch steps, they creaked ominously, as if they hadn’t borne the weight of a human being in about half a century. Jabbing her gloved finger against the doorbell didn’t elicit any response, so she tugged off the glove, balled her fingers into a fist and pounded loudly on the door. A shelf of snow slid off the roof, landing with a plop next to her feet.

  She wasn’t going to take it as a bad sign. The snow could just have easily landed on her head.

  She swiped the pile sideways with her boot until it fell off the side of the small porch, and knocked again, a little more gently this time. Even if he didn’t answer the door, she wasn’t going to give up.

  Not now that she’d finally found him.

  She glanced at her watch. She couldn’t afford to be too long before she reported in, or Gowler really would have a legitimate reason to be all over her case. But she’d just discovered where Grant Cooper was and she wasn’t taking any chances. She knocked on the door again, then glanced over her shoulder, scanning the landscape around the house. It looked even more desolate than it had when she’d rousted the weed-smoking teenagers.

  But then again, it was the middle of January. In the middle of Wyoming.

  “Come on.” She lifted her hand to knock again, but the door was yanked open from the inside, startling her enough that she fell back a step.

  Annoyed with herself, she stiffened her shoulders and looked up into the face of the man who stood there.

  Six feet tall. A lean 170. Dark-haired. Dark-browed, dark-bearded. Her brain automatically categorized the details that she’d only seen in a photo in his DMV record.

  When she got to the eyes, though?

  She felt her brain short-circuit.

  Not blue.

  Not green.

  Aqua.

  Entirely heart-stopping, even though they were glaring at her.

  “I can’t believe I finally found you,” she blurted.

  His lips thinned. “It’s my only one.” He shoved something into her hands. “Now get off my property.” Before she could blink, he slammed the door shut. Right in her face.

  She was too stunned to react.

  At first.

  But annoyance quickly hit and she pounded on the door again, using the spine of the hardback book he’d pushed into her hand. It served one good purpose at least—it made an effective door-knocker.

  It didn’t matter to her if he turned out to be as strange as a three-dollar bill. She wasn’t going to just turn around and leave because he hadn’t greeted her with a big smile and howdy-do.

  So she banged with the book and pulled out her badge with her other hand. “Mr. Cooper, open the door,” she said loudly. “I’m not going away unt
il we’ve had a chance to speak.” She banged again. “Open up!”

  The door was yanked open again. “If Chelsea sent you—”

  Ali did the shoving this time and pushed her badge right in front of his face. “I’m Officer Templeton with the Braden Police Department, here on official business.” She was definitely stretching the truth about that, but oh, well. “I don’t know who Chelsea is, nor do I care, unless she has information about the whereabouts of Daisy Miranda.”

  Only because she was watching him closely did she catch the glint of surprise in his otherwise glowering expression.

  “Are you Grant Cooper?”

  He still looked like he wasn’t going to answer and she wiggled her badge a little, even as she tried to make herself as physically imposing as five foot two could ever be.

  “Yes,” he admitted through his teeth.

  “Then Daisy is your sister.” The woman might be a rolling stone, never staying in one place for more than three or four months at a time, but she seemed to have tried to always maintain some sort of contact with her brother.

  Which was the only reason Ali had found him right here at all. She’d literally followed a postcard to the man.

  Nineteen-point-six miles. He’d been practically under her nose all this time.

  His expression darkened even more. “My sister’s name is Karen Cooper. Not Daisy Miranda.”

  But he’d recognized the name. Ali had seen it in his eyes. She wished they had a photo of Daisy. But she didn’t. Just a general description provided by the people who’d known her during her brief stay in Braden. “Medium height. Slender. Red hair, green eyes? Maybe she married?”

  His expression revealed his disbelief. “No way.”

  “Does she often use an alias? Are there other names she goes by?”

  His lips were pressed together.

  She let out a little breath of frustration. “If you think your silence will make me give up, you’re wrong, Mr. Cooper. Regardless of what she’s calling herself these days, I’m looking for her. And I intend to find her.”