McCarthys of Gansett Island Boxed Set Books 1-3 (31 page)

Her eyes fluttered closed.

He caressed her cheek, reveling in the soft skin he’d yearned for, and rested his forehead against hers. “You’re the only one I want, Maddie,” he whispered. “The only one I’ll ever want. I’m sorry I hurt you. I never meant for that to happen.”

She leaned into him. “I know that now.”

“Marry me, Maddie. I can’t live without you and Thomas.”

“Mac. . .”

“Just say yes.”

She studied him just long enough for Mac to realize his whole life had led to her and this moment.
 

“Yes.”

Shocked, he stared at her. “Really?”

“I have conditions.”

“Whatever you want.”
 

“You don’t want to hear them?”

“Later.” Even though he was dying to kiss her, he only held her, drowning in the scent of summer flowers and the feel of silky hair. Overwhelmed with relief, he swallowed the huge lump in his throat. “There’s something I need to show you. Can you and Thomas come with me? Is he asleep?”

“Not yet. He’s still chattering in his crib.”

“So will you come?”

“Okay.”

Mac loaded them into the truck and headed to the south end of the island, past Dominic’s and the Hydrangea House Bed & Breakfast, taking a right onto Sweet Meadow Farm Road.

Sitting between them in his backward-facing car seat, Thomas gripped Mac’s finger so tightly that Mac wondered if the baby was afraid to let go.

“Where are we going?” Maddie asked.

“You’ll see.” The paved road changed to gravel about halfway down.
I’ll need to get a plow for the truck before it snows
, Mac thought. He took the final turn, and the house came into view. “What do you think?”

“Oh, it’s beautiful! Whose is it?”

“Ours.”

She gasped. “It is not! Don’t make jokes like that, Mac!”

“Who’s joking?” He laughed at her as he parked. “Come check it out.” Before he got out, he reached under the seat for an envelope that he stashed in his back pocket.

Maddie got Thomas out of his car seat and met Mac in front of the truck.
 

As he wrapped his hand around hers, he felt a tremble go through her.

“What do you think?”

“You can’t be serious. This isn’t a house. It’s a mansion!”

“It’s got everything I wanted—lots of land, a good view and room for our family to grow.” He appreciated the dazzling glow the sunset had cast upon the property. “All that matters now is if it has everything
you
want.”

She looked at him as if he had three heads.

“What?”

“Are you seriously asking me that? Does it have two bedrooms?”

“Um, five actually.”

“Then I’m sold.”

“You haven’t even seen the inside yet.”

Tears spilled down her cheeks. “We’re really going to live here?”

Mac put his arm around her and kissed her forehead. “We really are.”

“It’s a palace,” she whispered. “I just never imagined. . .” She looked up at him. “You can afford something like this?”

“My father’s friend Ned gave me a sweet deal.”

“Still, it has to be a fortune.”

“I can handle it, honey. My business in Miami does really well. They’ll have to buy me out, and I have a condo to sell there.”

“I can’t imagine having that kind of money.”

“Well, you do now.”

She shook her head. “It’s yours.”

“Everything I have is
ours
. Everything.” He tipped her chin up and kissed her while Thomas squirmed between them. “You got that?”

“It’ll take some getting used to.”

“We’ve got nothing but time. Want to see the inside?”

She nodded, her eyes sparkling now with excitement, and Mac had never loved her more.

When he took her inside and gave her the tour, there were more tears.
 

“I was thinking,” he said, directing her to the deck that overlooked the ocean, “that the yard would be the perfect place to tie the knot. What do you say?”

“Oh yes! Absolutely.”

“I want to do it as soon as we can, okay?”

“About that. . .” She glanced up at him, her expression wary. “My mother is due home in a couple of weeks. I’d like to wait for her, if that’s all right with you.”

“Of course it is. Whatever you want.”

“Will you always be such an accommodating husband?”

“Maybe not
always
, but it’ll always matter to me that you’re happy.”

She bent to put Thomas down on the carpet and linked her arms around Mac’s neck. “I feel like I’m dreaming,” she said, drawing him into a kiss. “I missed you so much.”

“Me, too. I thought I’d go crazy without you.” Mac wanted to lose himself in the kiss, but he held back. “Hold that thought for a second, will you?”

Moaning in protest, Maddie released him.
 

“So, um, there’s something I have to tell you, and you might get mad at me for not telling you sooner, but I had a really good reason—”

“What’ve you done now?”

Mac withdrew the envelope from his back pocket and handed it to her.

“What’s this?”

“Open it.”

Giving him that wary look she did so well, she withdrew the papers from the envelope and scanned them.

He was about to explain when she gasped, and her hand flew up to cover her mouth.

“Before you freak out, will you listen to me?”

She couldn’t seem to speak, so she nodded.

“A couple of days after we ran into him on the ferry, he found me in the diner when I was there with Thomas. He said he’d asked around and knew we weren’t married and that we hadn’t been together long. He’d figured out that Thomas was probably his.”

“Oh God,” she whispered. The stricken look on her face broke his heart and confirmed he’d done the right thing by not telling her when it happened. “Oh my God!”

Mac rested his hands on her shoulders. “All he cared about was that we’d come after him for money.”

“I’ve never wanted his money!”

“And I told him that, but he wanted assurances. I said we’d sign something releasing him from financial obligation if he’d sign away his rights to Thomas so I can adopt him.”

She wrenched free of Mac’s hold and began to pace the big, empty room.

From the floor, Thomas watched them with that big-eyed solemn expression of his.

“This happened weeks ago! When were you going to tell me?”

“As soon as I had the signed papers from him, which Roseanne delivered to me with my mail. I was going to bring them to you tonight.”

“Why didn’t you tell me the day it happened? We’re right back to you keeping things from me!”

Mac forced himself to stay calm. “If I’d told you that he knew about Thomas, you wouldn’t have been able to breathe or sleep or eat for the two weeks it took him to get these papers to me.”

“Is this how it’s going to be?” She threw up her hands. “You’re going to take care of everything and leave me out of it?”

“Stuff like this? Absolutely.”

“That’s not how I want to live, Mac. That’s not the kind of marriage I want.”

“This is
me
, Maddie. It’s
who I am
. I see something that’ll make you sick with worry, and I make it go away. I love you too much to watch you suffer like that, and you would’ve suffered over this.” He went to her, slid an arm around her waist and brought her in close to him. “You would’ve suffered.”

She expelled a deep, shuddering breath as all the fight went out of her. “Yes. I would have.”

“Now you don’t have to. He signed his way right out of our lives.” Mac pressed his lips to her forehead. “Are you mad?”

“No,” she said softly. “I’m sad.”

“Because of what I did?”

She shook her head. “Because his father cares so little about him that he’d sign him away without ever even knowing him.”

Mac stepped back from her, picked up Thomas from the floor and hugged them both. “His father cares so much about him that there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for him. His father will love him and care for him and give him his name and protect him every day of his life.”

Maddie looked up at him with her heart in those caramel eyes.

He brushed a gentle kiss over her lips. “His father will love him and his mother forever.” He kissed her again. “Now about those conditions you mentioned. . .”

“Will Thomas’s father try very hard to not keep things from his mother?”

“He’ll do his best, as long as he’s allowed to occasionally surprise her.”

She raised that eyebrow of hers. “And these will be
good
surprises?”

“The very best surprises he can think of.”

“In that case, my friend, you’ve got yourself a family.”

“I guess it’s official, then.”

“Our engagement?”

“That, too.” Mac leaned in to kiss her once more. “Knocking you off your bike was the best thing I ever did.”

She smiled. “I couldn’t agree more.”

***

Turn the page to continue with Fool for Love, Joe and Janey's story!

Chapter 1

The phone call Joe Cantrell had waited half his life to receive came in around nine on an otherwise average Tuesday evening. He’d put in a twelve-hour day on the ferries, done four round-trips to the island, and had just sat down to eat when his cell phone rang. Since he’d been in a foul mood all day, tortured by images of Janey in Boston with her fiancé, he’d almost ignored the call. Thank God he grabbed it on the last ring before voicemail picked up.

“Joe.”
 

One word set his heart to racing. He’d know that voice anywhere. “Janey? Why are you calling me when you’re visiting David?” He kept his tone light, but just saying the guy’s name made Joe sick. He couldn’t stand the way David went weeks, sometimes months, without so much as a visit to his fiancée. Sometimes Joe wished he didn’t have front-row access to who came and went from the island. Some things he was better off not knowing.
 

He’d seen her earlier in the day, skipping onto the ferry on her way to surprise her doctor-in-training for their anniversary. Thirteen years together. Lucky thirteen, she’d joked. Joe had found nothing funny about it.

“I need. . .”

Was she
crying
? “Janey, honey. What do you need?”

“You.”

Joe almost swallowed his tongue. How long had he fantasized about hearing those very words from her? Forever, or so it seemed. “What’s wrong?”

“My car broke down on 95, just south of Foxboro.”

Why was she south of Boston when she’d gone to visit David for a few days? “Where’s David?”

“I’m calling
you
, Joe. Can you come?” More sniffling. “What was I thinking? It’s too far—”

He was already leaving a cloud of dust behind his red pickup as he peeled out of the driveway. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll be there in less than an hour.” Under normal circumstances, it would take much longer to reach her, but these were anything but normal circumstances. Something had happened. Something bad. If the bad thing was between her and David, then all of Joe’s dreams had finally come true. But hers had been crushed. He had to remember that. No matter what this night might bring, he couldn’t forget that she’d been with David for almost as long as Joe had harbored a secret, burning love for his best friend’s little sister.
 

On the way, he tried to keep her talking and his heart from leaping out of his chest. “You want to tell me about it?”

“No.”

“You aren’t hurt or anything, are you?”

“Not physically.”

Oh, man.
What the hell happened?
Joe was dying to know, but he didn’t ask again. He drove as fast as he dared and was stymied half an hour later by traffic in Providence.
 

“Are you still there?” she asked in a small voice. Janey McCarthy,
his
Janey, didn’t have a small voice.