Be Mine, Valentine

by Jennifer Johnson

  A rush of confusion furrowed her brows. “Brady Warren, did you make up that story you just told me?” Her voice sounded sterner than she’d intended.

  Shock flared in his eyes. The expression on his little face tightened. “No, Granny Lil.” He took the ring between his fingers and held in front of her, jeweler-style. “This one’s for you.” He looked at her with pleading eyes. “You can be my Valentine, too.”

  Lilly’s heart tumbled. The ring had a ruby-red stone, not a blue one like the ring he had given Katie. “Oh, sweetie. You got two rings?”

  Brady nodded. “For a quarter. I wanted it to be a surprise.”

  “Well it is a surprise.” Lilly hoped she could save this precious moment since she’d almost ruined it. “The most beautiful Valentine gift ever.” She held out her veiny, wrinkled hand, palm down, fingers splayed. “Let’s see if it fits.”

  Brady slipped the ring onto her finger.

  She fluttered her fingers. “Just right.”

  “Grandaddy Mac would want you to have a special Valentine while he’s away.” Brady hugged Lilly as a tear trickled down her cheek.

  “Now you’ve got one,” he said. “Me.”

  A Mother’s Heart

  Janet Eaves

  Frigid gusts did little for the hair she had so carefully styled, or for a throat that scratched just a little, but Jimmi pushed forward through drifting snow and wind. She was determined to make this meeting on time. She’d done her homework, had chewed over the right and wrong of it, and had finally told the man she’d hired to contact the parents of the child she’d given up for adoption.

  Or in this case parent—to see if he would be willing to meet with her.

  It wasn’t that she’d had huge expectations when she’d hired the investigator. Or any expectations at all, really, as she knew people were careful about such things. So she had been more than a little stunned to discover that not only was the man willing to meet with her, he was someone she already knew and thought highly of. And, that the little girl she’d hoped to meet one day was a child she’d taught letters and numbers to for the past six months.

  Thing was, he had no clue it was his daughter’s teacher, he was meeting.

  Jimmi inhaled a deep breath of courage as she reached the restaurant door. She knew what she was about to do could go badly if Gary Slade felt in any way threatened, once he discovered that she was his little girl’s birth mother. She hoped he would see that she was no threat to him, or to his family.

  If anything, she was grateful.

  Annie’s sweet and affectionate nature was clearly the result of Gary’s nurturing ways. He’d lost his wife, Annie’s mother, less than a year after she’d been adopted. And Jimmi had always been impressed with his kindness and helpfulness as a parent. He was as active with her class as any of the hands-on moms.

  He may not have baked the cupcakes he’d brought to class celebrations as the mothers did, but she, nor any of the other’s, complained that they’d had to eat fancy confections from an upscale bakery.

  He hadn’t only helped chaperone the field trips to the zoo in Nashville, and to the local theater when they’d produced a pretty good version of the Lion King, he’d treated the class and the chaperoning mothers to pizza and soft drinks after the first, and burgers and shakes after the second.

  Gary always stayed around after every event to help clean up and move things back where they belonged. He’d made himself available after the class studied the solar system to hang all the coat hanger mobiles the children had made with construction paper, crayons, and scissors.

  Jimmi had finally given up and stopped protesting that he was doing too much after he donated several computers and age-appropriate software to the school’s library. He’d told her he had to spend his free time and money somewhere, and there was no better place he knew to put it. She’d been humbled by his generosity, and because he was the parent of one of her students, she hadn’t allowed herself to crush on him like most of the classroom mom’s so obviously did.

  And that was a really difficult thing not to do.

  But the time had arrived to come clean and Jimmi knew she was stalling, standing in wind that was threatening to make the cold she’d felt coming on kick into life. She pushed the door open, entered the quiet atmosphere of the restaurant, and saw him immediately. Gary stood as she approached the table, but surprisingly, didn’t look shocked to see her.

  “Hello.”

  Jimmi couldn’t help but melt a little and smile back, even though she was certain he didn’t realize she was the one he was waiting for. “Hi.”

  “Please, sit here.”

  She hesitated, then settled into the seat he held and then pushed in for her. He sat opposite her and picked up a menu. Jimmi glanced from him, to the menu lying on the table in front of her, then back up to him.

  Gary was studying her, a slight smile on his lips. Finally he dropped the menu, leaned forward, rested his elbows on the table, and his chin on his clasped hands. “So?”

  “So… You know?”

  “That you are the woman I am here to meet?”

  She nodded, and furrowed her brows. “How long have you known?”

  Gary tilted his head slightly and shrugged his shoulders, almost as if he were embarrassed. “Fourth of July weekend Annie and I travelled here. I make my own schedule and I wanted to learn a little about Annie’s birth mother, thinking she might want to know about you one day. I figured it would be easier to learn about you now, rather than look you up years from now.”

  “Since I was here anyway and noticed that there isn’t really much in the way of a hotel here in town, I decided to make it a working vacation of sorts. The weekend turned into weeks of land purchase meetings, zoning meetings, contractor meetings, and so on.”

  “And you were having me followed during this time?”

  Gary shook his head. “No. I just asked people around town if they knew you, nothing creepy, I promise.

  “Anyway, so much time went by it was time for Annie to start kindergarten so I registered her in your school thinking I would just have her transferred back home after I knew enough about you, and I had the hotel construction started. I didn’t know she would be in your class, but wasn’t unhappy that she was, after everyone I met sang your praises. It’s new to me to be in such a small town, but I like it. Everybody seems to know everybody.” He grinned. “Pretty cool actually.”

  Jimmi didn’t know where to begin, there were so many questions she wanted to ask. Finally, she rested her chin on her own clasped hands and chose a safe place to start. “So, where are you from?”

  Gary smiled. “My hotel chain is based in San Francisco, but my family is from Dallas. Long story how I got from Texas to California to Tennessee. But this meeting isn’t about me. I was really happy to hear from your investigator that you were looking to meet Annie’s parents. But why now?”

  He was happy? Did the man have no sense of selfishness? “I’ve wanted to for a long time, well, since giving her up really. But I couldn’t keep her so I didn’t want to interfere in her life… And still don’t,” she hastily assured him. “I never expected Annie to be her. When Hal told me she was the child I’d given birth to, I was stunned speechless. And then little things, like the way she holds things, the way she laughs, her eyes and hair…”

  “She’s you.”

  The softly spoken comment startled Jimmi, then made her smile and shake her head. “No. She’s you. She has such a generous heart. When other kids fight over toys during playtime she offers one of them something else to distract them and then they will all end up playing together. She loves to help pick up. She loves to instruct; to teach the others. She has the entire class in love with her.”

  Gary laughed, obviously delighted. “So…nature versus nurture.” He reached across the table and unlatched Jimmi’s clasped hands, taking one into his own. “I think she got the best of us both.”

  The warmth of his hand, the gentle smile in his sap
phire eyes, the very nature of the man was a dangerous combination. Jimmi pulled her hand back and placed both in her lap. “I’m glad you knew. I was afraid you might pull her from my class. With all the snow… We haven’t had school since I learned the news and I was afraid I wouldn’t get a chance to see her again once you knew who I was.”

  “And yet you took the chance of telling me before seeing her again.”

  Jimmi locked onto his gaze with her own. “I would never intentionally deceive you.”

  “Ouch. I guess that is exactly what I did to you.”

  “Why did you? Why not, after a few months of being the best class parent any of my kids have ever had, didn’t you tell me who you were, who she was?”

  Gary blew out a breath. “Wow, thanks for that. But I guess it’s just…complicated.”

  “What can I get you folks to drink?”

  Jimmi shooed the waiter away without looking at him. “I’m listening,” she said softly.

  “Well, at first I just wanted to get to know you, and the more I did the more I liked you. Really liked you. And over the months, as I watched you with the kids, not just Annie but all of them, I couldn’t figure it out, so I thought maybe you wouldn’t want to know.”

  “Couldn’t figure out what? And why wouldn’t I want to know?” Jimmi couldn’t help the flutter that beat against her heart like butterfly wings. He liked her? As in, he liked her? This gorgeous, wonderful man?

  Gary bit his bottom lip as if he needed a way to keep from saying the words, then released it. “You gave her up for adoption so I expected to meet someone who was either destitute or hated kids.”

  “I was a freshman in college.”

  He nodded and quickly continued. “But then I met you and you were you—a kind, patient, loving woman who makes her entire life about taking care and teaching of a bunch of little kids.

  “I didn’t know what to think, or how to tell you. And then I just decided that maybe I could spend a lot of time helping you so I could spend time with you. And you could spend time with me. And we could get to know each other beyond the classroom.” He paused, searching her face. “But you weren’t into me. I could tell.”

  “So I decided to back off a little and then your guy calls me and tells me my child’s birth mother wants to meet me if I don’t object. And I think maybe you do care about her as more than her teacher. And maybe even if you aren’t interested in me romantically…we can be friends, and I can have you in my life, and in Annie’s. She adores you by the way.”

  Jimmi couldn’t speak over the tears threatening to choke her. She took a shuttering breath then reached across the table to take Gary’s hand back into hers. “I am honored to know you. I am thankful to know the child I couldn’t take care of was blessed enough to have you for her father. And I like you, too. So much that I had to make sure it didn’t show. It would have been inappropriate. I feared doing anything to make you feel uncomfortable because, even before I found out about Annie being the child I gave up, I wanted you in my life enough that I was willing to settle for friendship, too.”

  “So you like me, too?” The purely male gleam in Gary’s eyes matched the satisfied smile on his lips.

  A shyness she hadn’t felt since childhood heated Jimmi’s cheeks. “I do. I’m just not sure why you like me. I’m sure you are used to more glamorous women. I’m a plain little kindergarten teacher.”

  Gary lifted her hand to his lips where he gently placed a kiss. Shivers radiated through her body as heat spread to meet it. “How can I not be attracted to the woman who is the older version of the only other female on this planet that melts my heart? You say she is me, and to some extent that may be true. But she is you. All those nice things you said about me are the things I admire in you. And you aren’t so hard on the eyes, either. I think you are beautiful, as much on the outside as on the inside. And I know how rare and amazing that is. So…

  “I have a proposal for you.”

  Jimmi’s brows lifted in response, but she couldn’t say a word, could hardly breath.

  “In less than a week it will be Valentine’s Day, and Annie’s sixth birthday, which I know you know. What you don’t know is that my family is coming up from Dallas to celebrate with us, and I would like you to be there, too. As my date. As my girl. As the woman I have come to love.”

  “In other words, Jimmi, I’m asking if you will be my Valentine. I know it will only be the first of many to come.” He looked deeply into her eyes. “Many, many, many…”

  The smile was impossible to contain so she stopped fighting it, as well as the feelings that had been building for months for the father of her child. “I would love to be your Valentine, if you will be mine.” Jimmi didn’t stop him as Gary rose, pulled her from her chair, and placed a gentle yet sizzling kiss upon her lips.

  It was a promise, a seal, and Jimmi knew that everything that had happened in the past, some wrong, some right, had brought her to this perfect moment. And nothing could make her happier than to become someone important in Annie’s life.

  “Six years ago this coming Valentine’s Day I thought I had lost everything,” Jimmi confessed. “I have dreaded February fourteenth for so long now that I forgot it wasn't a day about pain and loss. Now, for the first time since giving birth to Annie, I can’t wait for that date to arrive. You've given me the greatest gift.”

  Gary continued to hold her close, oblivious to those watching their tender embrace. “And what is that?”

  With heated cheeks, and a warmer heart, Jimmi fought the tears of joy threatening to fall. “The gift of love.”

  His Other Valentine

  Elizabeth Chalkley

  “One embroidered red silk tie and matching handkerchief in gift box.” Dana Carson spoke the words under her breath as she made the entry on her list for the donation. She rubbed a knuckle over one of the small, white hearts, satin-stitched into the scarlet cloth. Pretty. Even…sensual.

  They were totally out of character for Clark Stephens, her staid, proper, bank vice-president father who wore dark suits with white handkerchiefs tucked in the breast pockets and sedate striped ties with white shirts. He had been dressed in one of those predictable uniforms when they buried him six months ago.

  “Look, Mama.” Dana slid the box across the dining room table toward her mother. The pile of personal items from her father’s bureau drawer lay on the surface between them. “Did you ever see Daddy in a red tie? We should have had him wearing this one with the hankie stuffed in his pocket for the funeral.”

  Margaret Stephens raised soft gray eyes to meet her daughter’s, although Dana could tell her mother was thinking of something else. Mom had done that a lot in the half-year since her husband’s death, seemed to be in a place or time apart from other people. Now Margaret ignored the tie box, holding up a pair of moonstone cuff links for Dana to see.

  “Erin and Charles gave these to Clark when they married,” Mama said. “I’ll send them back to Erin to keep for little Charlie when he grows up.” She smiled at Dana. “I am aware he’s nearly grown now and wouldn’t even consider putting on a shirt that required cuff links, but he’ll change a bit in the next few years.”

  “Maybe you should keep them for him. They’d make a nice graduation gift in a couple of years, and he’d be more likely to appreciate them as having belonged to his grandpa if they come from you.”

  “That’s a good idea. They’d always been so close, you know. Clark thought the sun rose and set on that boy, especially since we kept him so much when he was little. The last time Charlie was with his grandpa, Clark started on one of his silly tirades about long hair and guitars and drugs. I think it made Charlie very sad that he fought with his Poppie the last time they were together. I want him to remember his grandfather as the really wonderful man he was.”

  Margaret grinned and dropped the cufflinks into a wooden jewelry box. “At this rate, we’re not getting rid of much, you know.”

  Dana managed to nod, but was suddenly silenc
ed by a swell of tears at the long remembered resentment. Daddy and his boys. Clark and Charles and then little Charlie. It seemed to Dana she had tried all her life to be one of those boys, to be important to her father. He had been so very important to her. Clark Stephens had been her rock. He embodied everything that was noble and admirable, like a true knight. Every good and perfect thing in her life seemed somehow linked to him. She’d respected him, idolized him, wanted above all to be an essential part of his world. He had spoiled her, but he had withheld himself; he had been her father, but never her friend.

  She had thought she married Mike because she loved him, but he had reminded her of her father, and that was important, too. He wasn’t like Clark Stephens at all, though. She replayed the scene at her own breakfast table that morning, with Mike and the girls. Mike complaining about having to keep the kids when he wanted to play golf. Her yelling—it felt like screaming as she remembered it now—about her mother needing her, and him being so insensitive, and how could he think about golf when her father had just died and his mother not well? Him saying in that calm, reasonable voice, always so damned controlled, that it had been six months, and it was because of his concern for her and his mother that he needed some time to relax, and why were they doing this in front of the children….

  “I wish my husband was like yours.” Her hand moved to cover her mouth, but the words slipped out before she could stop them. Tears seeped out as she spiraled into a slow meltdown in her mother’s dining room.

  Her father’s cancer had been extremely virulent and diagnosed much too late. One minute he was robust, strong, in control of his world, of all their worlds. The next, he was confined to a hospital bed, and, very shortly, comatose. In the days that flew too quickly while he was able to talk and laugh and reminisce and dare any of them to cry in his presence, the family had tried to say the needed things, to become used to the idea that the husband, father, grandpa, friend they loved, was leaving on a trip from which he could not return. Then, during the interminable weeks when he had already left them, they stayed behind tending the body that had given up his spirit, but refused to stop functioning.