by Cara Colter
She laughed. It was the small things that she had come to love the most: him coming through the door at night, playing a Scrabble game together, watching TV and eating popcorn together, him licking her fingers, slick with butter.
Sometimes she wondered, if they had never had a bad spell, if she had never known what it was like to live without him as part of her daily life, would she love these little things as much as she did? Would she have known to appreciate them?
She had moved into his place at River’s Edge after her house had been turned over to the new owners. Eventually, after the baby was born, they would buy a house for the three of them.
But at the moment, they were both cautious about making decisions based on a baby. This caution remained, even though her due date was looming large. They didn’t even have a nursery, and the guest room was untouched. No lavender paint or murals this time. No crib, no mobiles, no teddy bears.
They had a beautiful handmade crate they could line with blankets and put beside their bed. When the time came. She loved the idea of the baby sleeping next to them, so close they could breathe in each other’s breath, exchange air, become even more a part of one another.
Kade came over and put his hand on the gentle swell of her belly under the paint smock.
He put his head down and spoke directly to her stomach. “Hello, baby. Do you hear me in there? Moving,” he said with satisfaction. “A football player.”
“Or a ballerina.”
“Nah, it’s a boy.”
It was only in the past few weeks that they had dared to play this game, so afraid were they of jinxing this incredibly magical and miraculous experience. But this time, the fear was different. They would lie awake with it, deep into the night, holding hands, leaning on each other.
They had chosen not to know the sex of their child. This baby was a miracle, boy or girl. Besides, it was endlessly fun debating it, even as they carefully avoided the baby sections of the stores. It was like a superstition, but she did not care. She was not buying one thing for that baby until she had held it in her arms.
She had barely set foot in Baby Boomer since selling it to Macy. But she knew Macy had her covered. She knew there was a shelf there filled with things Macy was quietly selecting for her: bottles and blankets and tiny disposable diapers and little outfits. If the time came this time—that hope fluttered in Jessica’s chest, they were so close now, and the doctor smiled and shook his head at Jessica’s fears—they had a whole nursery that could be put in a box and delivered to them.
There was an unexpected new dimension to Jessica’s relationship with Macy and with her old place of business.
Macy was selling paintings almost as fast as Jessica could produce them. Jessica was working largely in abstract, the colors and motion flowing out of her like rivers of light. It was as if this part of her, dammed up for too long, was bursting forth now that it had been set free.
And for some reason, that kind of art appealed to people shopping for baby stuff, not for nurseries, necessarily, though there was a whole move away from the cute traditional look of babies’ rooms.
No, people having babies these days, and especially the ones who shopped at an upscale store like Baby Boomer, were largely established professional couples. They had whole gorgeous big houses to decorate, not just nurseries.
And the name Jessica Brennan was causing a surprising stir in the Calgary art scene.
“I like it,” Kade said. Having greeted the baby, he turned his attention to the canvas. “What’s it called?”
She didn’t have a studio. The light pouring through the windows of his apartment had proved perfect. When it was too strong, she closed the curtains and had lights set up to point to the canvas. Between the canvases, paints, lights and paint tarps on the floor, the place looked very messy. Add to that a sock of Kade’s, menus out on the counter and magazines on the coffee table, and the effect was one of moderate disarray. And she loved it.
Kade had, with gentle strength, helped her probe the origins of that terrible need to feel in control.
Perhaps, she thought, eyeing their space, she had gone a little too far the other way.
She lifted her shoulder. Oh, well.
She turned her attention to the canvas. She was not sure where this came from, this endless current of inspiration, but she was pretty sure it came from love.
“Today it’s called Joy Rising.” She shrugged. “Who knows if it will still be called that tomorrow.”
“Joy Rising,” Kade said, and stood back from it.
The backdrop of the canvas was a light gray neutral. The rest of it was filled with hundreds of bubbles—like soap bubbles—rising, starting small at the bottom left of the canvas, growing larger at they reached the right-hand corner.
“It’s good,” he said. “Now, what’s for dinner?”
It was a standing joke between them, a light tease about what she liked to call her Martha Stewart phase. “The pizza menu is on the counter.”
He laughed.
And his laughter shivered along her spine. They had almost lost this. They had almost walked away from it. And that was what made it even more precious today.
And maybe that was what all loss did, if you were brave, if you were open to its lessons. Maybe all loss sharpened your sense of the now, of the gifts of this very moment.
He had moved over and was studying the menu.
“Kade?”
“Huh?”
Jessica put her hand to her swollen belly. “Ah.”
He was at her side in an instant, scanning her face.
“It’s time,” she said. “Oh, my God, it’s time.”
And even this moment, with intense ripples of pain possessing her body, was awash with light, with joy rising. Jessica looked into the face of the man who was her husband, and she read the strength there and knew, together, whatever happened next, it would be just fine.
* * *
Kade woke up. His neck was sore. He had fallen asleep in the chair. For a moment, he was disoriented, but then he heard a little sound, like a kitten mewing, and it all came back to him.
His eyes adjusted to the dark, and there they were. His wife and his daughter, the baby on Jessica’s chest.
He had thought over the past few months with Jessica as they came together as a couple again, as they celebrated their second chance, that he had come to know the depth and breadth of love completely.
Now, looking at his child, he knew he had only kidded himself. He had only scratched the surface of what love could be.
The baby made that mewing sound again.
Jessica stirred but did not wake.
Jessica. How could someone that tiny, someone who appeared that fragile, be so damned brave? Men thought they were courageous, but that was only until they’d seen a baby born. And then they had to admit how puny their strength was, how laughable this thing they had passed off as courage was.
Courage certainly was not tackling a thief!
Kade got up from his chair. Jessica needed to rest. She had done her bit. Thirteen hours of the most unbelievable pain Kade could imagine.
How he had wanted to take that pain from her, to take her place.
But that was one of the lessons of this remarkable second chance. He could not take her pain away. He could not fix everything, or really, even most things.
He had to be there. He had to stand there in his own helplessness, and not run from it. He had to walk with her through her pain, not try to take it away from her. Admitting his own powerlessness sometimes took more courage than anything he had ever done before.
The baby mewed again, and stirred again.
He touched the tiny back of his baby girl. It was warm beneath his fingers. He could feel the amazing miracle of the life force in that tiny little bundle.
He had been the first to hold her, the nurse showing him how. He had looked into that tiny wrinkled face, the nose crunched and the eyes screwed tightly shut in outrage, and he had recog
nized her.
Love.
Love manifest.
And so, summoning his courage, he lifted the baby off the gentle rise and fall of his wife’s sleeping chest.
He could hold her in the palm of one hand, his other hand supporting her neck, as the nurse had shown him.
Destiny.
They had decided to call her Destiny.
Her eyes popped open, a slate gray that the nurse had told him would change. They didn’t know yet if she would have green eyes like Jessica’s or blue like his, or some amazing combination of both.
The nurse had said, too, that this little baby probably could not see much.
And yet, as Kade held her, her eyes seemed to widen with delighted recognition.
“That’s right, sweetie, it’s me. Daddy.”
Daddy. The word felt incredibly sweet on his tongue, and the baby squirmed in his hand. He drew her close to his chest and went and sat back down on the chair, awkwardly stroking her back.
He was so aware of how tiny she was, and helpless. How she was relying on him.
He felt a moment’s fear. The world always seemed to be in such a fragile state. The weather changed and wars broke out, and floods came and fires.
People could be fragile, too, held in the trance of long-ago hurts, hiding the broken places within them.
There was so much that he was powerless over, and yet this little girl would see him as all-powerful. Her daddy.
This was what he needed to teach her: that yes, the world could be fragile and easily broken. And people could be fragile and easily broken, too.
But there was one thing that was not fragile, and that was not easily broken.
And that thing was love.
It was the thread that ran, strong, through all the rest. It was what gave strength when strength failed, what gave hope when it was hopeless, what gave faith when there was plenty of evidence that it made no sense at all to have faith. It was what healed the breaks, and made people come out of the trance and embrace all that it was to be alive.
“Welcome to this crazy, unpredictable, beautiful, amazing life,” Kade whispered to his little girl. “Welcome.”
He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, Jessica’s hand was on his shoulder, and she was awake, looking at them both.
“I need to confess something to you,” Kade growled.
“What?”
“I’ve broken one of my vows to you.”
“Impossible,” she whispered.
“No. You are not my one and only true love anymore. I have two of you now.”
And the smile on Jessica’s face—radiant, a smile that shamed the very sun—said it was worth it. Every piece of pain they had navigated was worth it.
Because it had brought them here.
To this place. To this moment.
Where they knew that all else might pass away, but that love prevailed.
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from A BRIDE FOR THE RUNAWAY GROOM by Scarlet Wilson.
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CHAPTER ONE
SOMETHING WASN’T RIGHT.
No, scratch that. Something was very, very wrong.
Everything should be perfect. Her sister’s wedding yesterday had been beautiful. A picture-perfect day with a bride and groom that truly loved each other. It was a joy to be a part of a day like that.
But, by midnight, the days of jet lag that she’d been ignoring had finally caught up with her and she’d staggered to bed and collapsed in a heap, catching up on some much-needed sleep.
Her new brother-in-law, Seb, had a house to die for. Hawksley Castle, a home part Norman, part Tudor and part Georgian. The room she was in was sumptuous and spacious with the most comfortable bed in the world.
At least it would be—if she were in that bed alone.
She could hear breathing, heavy breathing, sometimes accompanied with a tiny noise resembling a snore.
Right now, she was afraid to move.
She hadn’t drunk much at all yesterday—only two glasses of wine. Because of the jet lag they’d hit hard. But not so hard she’d invited someone into her bed.
She’d attended her sister’s wedding alone. No plus-one for Rose.
There had been no flirtations, no alluring glances and no invitations back to her room. And this definitely was her room. She opened her eyes just a little to check.
Yes, there was her bright blue suitcase in the corner of the room. Thank goodness. She hadn’t been so tired that she’d stumbled into the wrong room. Seb’s house was so big it might have happened.
But it hadn’t.
So, who was heavy breathing in her bed?
She didn’t want to move. Didn’t want to alert the intruder to the fact that she was awake. She could feel the dip in the bed at her back. Turning around and coming face-to-face with a perfect stranger wasn’t in her plans.
She needed to think about this carefully.
She edged her leg towards the side of the bed. Stealth mode. Then, cringed. No satin negligee. No pyjamas. Just the underwear she’d had on under her bridesmaid dress that was lying in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the bed. Brilliant. Just brilliant.
Her painted toenails mocked her. As did her obligatory fake tan. Vulnerable. That was how she felt. And Rose Huntingdon-Cross didn’t take kindly to anyone who made her feel like that.
Just then the stranger moved. A hand slid over her skin around her hip and settled on her stomach. She stifled a yelp as her breath caught in her throat. Something resembling a comfortable moan came from behind her as the stranger decided to cuddle in closer. The sensation of an unidentified warm body next to hers was more than she could take.
She slid her legs and body as silently as possible out of the bed. The only thing close to hand that could resemble a weapon was a large pink vase. Her heart was thudding against her chest. How dared someone creep into bed with her and grope her?
She held her breath as her feet came into contact with the soft carpet and she automatically grasped the vase in both hands.
She spun around to face the intruder. In other circumstances, this would be comical. But, right now, it felt anything but comical. She was practically naked and a strange man had crept into bed beside her. How dared he?
Who on earth was he? She didn’t recognise him at all. But the wedding of an earl and a celebrity couple’s daughter was full of people she couldn’t even take a guess at. Undoubtedly he was some hanger-on.
If her rational head were in place she would grab her clothes and run from the room, getting someone to come and help with the intruder.
But Rose hated being thought of as a shrinking violet. For once, she wanted to sort things for herself.
She padded around to the other side of the bed in her bare feet, hoisting the vase above her head just as the stranger gave a little contented moan.
It was all she needed to give her a burst of unforgiving adrenaline. The initial fear rapidly turned to anger and she brought the vase down without a second thought. ‘Who do you think you are? What are you doing in my bed? How dare you touch me?’ she screamed.
The vase shattered into a million pieces. The guy’s eyes shot open and in one movement he was on his feet—fists raised and swaying.
He blinked for a few seconds—big, brigh
t blue eyes with a darker rim that didn’t look the least bit predatory, but a whole lot shell-shocked—then dropped his fists and clutched his head.
‘Violet, what on earth are you doing? Are you crazy?’ He groaned and swayed again, one of his hands reaching out to grab the wall—leaving a bloodstained mark on the expensive wallpaper.
She couldn’t breathe. Her heart was thudding against her chest and her stomach was doing crazy flip-flops. ‘What do you mean, Violet? I’m not Violet.’
This just wasn’t possible. Okay, Violet was her identical twin. They didn’t usually look so similar, but a few years stateside and not seeing each other on a daily basis meant she’d shown up with an identical hairstyle to her sister.
This clown actually thought he was in bed with her sister? What kind of a fool did that?
He was still shaking his head. It was almost as if his vision hadn’t quite come into focus. ‘But of course you’re Violet,’ he said.
‘No. I’m not. And stop dripping blood on the carpet!’
They both stared down at the probably priceless carpet that had two large blood drips, and the remnants of the vase at his feet and across the bed.
He grabbed his shirt from the chair next to the bed and pressed it to his head. It was the first time she’d even noticed his clothes—discarded in the same manner as her yellow and white bridesmaid dress.
His eyes seemed to come into focus and he stepped forward, reaching one hand out to her shoulder. He squinted. ‘Darn it. You’re not Violet, are you? You haven’t got her mole on your shoulder.’
His finger came into contact with her skin and she jumped back. One part of her knew that this ‘intruder’ wasn’t any danger to her. But another part of her was still mad about being mistaken for her twin and being felt up by her twin’s boyfriend. How on earth could this be explained? This guy was obviously another one of Violet’s losers.
Violet burst through the door. ‘What’s going on? Rose, are you okay?’ Her eyes darted from one to the other. The guy, in his wrinkled boxer shorts and shirt pressed to his forehead, and Rose, in her bridesmaid underwear. The broken vase seemed to completely pass her by.
