Miracle Baby (Harlequin American Romance) (16 page)

“I'm sorry. But you have to know that you've been on my mind, too. And slowly but surely, I've come to realize that denying the undeniable is no better…no easier than losing a part of yourself. Besides, loving you doesn't mean you're going to disappear from my life on an icy road just because it happened before. In fact, loving you is meant to be.”

He nuzzled her forehead with his chin, her sweet scent seeping into every fiber of his being. “Meant to be?”

“Meant to be,” she whispered, before leaning forward and extracting a familiar brown book from inside her bag. “Here.”

“You've done more pages?” he asked in a gentle voice.

She nodded.

“May I see?”

Again she nodded, her gaze still locked on his.

He flipped open the book, noting each new page she'd added. One by one, he was treated to the memories that had shaped the woman seated beside him, memories he could now share thanks to the pictures and experiences she'd selected. When he got to the page she'd denoted as Natalie's Only Christmas, he looked up to find the expression in her eyes unreadable. “I'm so sorry, Maggie.”

“Flip it over,” she whispered as a lone tear ran down her cheek. “There's one more.”

He did as he was told, confusion enveloping him as he looked at the next page. “What's this?”

“A new beginning.”

“A new…” His mouth dropped open as his attention moved from the picture of the pregnancy test to the date written underneath.

“That's today's date,” she stated.

“Today's date,” he repeated, as his eyes sought to confirm her words. He sucked in his breath. “Is this real? I mean really, truly real?”

“As real as real can get.”

Pushing the journal off his lap, he grabbed her face in his hands, his thumbs catching the tears that streaked her cheeks. “You're pregnant?”

“
We're
pregnant.”

Maggie listened to the soft sigh of his breath beneath her ear as he slept. Her face was pillowed by his muscular chest, her body protected by his powerful arms. Any reservations she'd had about his reaction to the pregnancy had vanished the second she'd told him. His whoops of joy had been nearly loud enough to wake the neighborhood.

But it was the part
after
that told her everything she needed to know. The part where he simply held her while the second most beautiful smile she'd ever seen stretched across his face.

Wiggling out of his arms, Maggie quietly slipped out of bed and made her way downstairs, where the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree guided her into the hearth room. For weeks she'd resisted the notion of Christmas, convinced it could never be as special as the one before. Yet the powers that be had shown her differently. What was special and wonderful about her past would remain special and wonderful in her memories. They were gifts she'd unwrap and treasure for as long as she could.

Now, there were new gifts to unwrap, like surprises
waiting to be unleashed. And just like before, she had someone to open them with. The face might be different, the relationship might be new, but love and hope linked them together.

“There you are.”

She turned at the sound of his voice, a smile instinctively tugging the corners of her mouth upward.

“I was worried when I didn't feel you next to me.”

Maggie stepped into Rory's arms when he approached, the warmth she found there bringing a mist to her eyes. “From the moment I moved into my uncle's suite, I saw my Christmas tree as a reminder of what wasn't. Yet here in your home, I see your tree as a symbol of what might be.” Turning in his arms so her back was to his chest, she looked up at the tree, at the childhood ornaments he'd pointed out the night she'd come to dinner. “The way you've decorated it is like looking through a photo album—watching the progression of a life. And for some reason I find a comfort in that, one I haven't been able to find in a long time.”

Tightening his arms around her, he rubbed his chin across the top of her head. “It won't be long before our little one has a handprint hanging from that tree, too.”

Oh, how she hoped he was right. But Maggie knew there were no guarantees. Only hope.

As if reading her thoughts, he turned her to him once again, tilting her chin upward until they made eye contact. “We've both learned a thing or two about the precariousness of life. That alone will make us treasure every single second even more.”

She rose up on tiptoe and brushed a kiss across his lips. “I love you, Rory.”

“Oh, Maggie, I love you, too.” Grabbing hold of her hand, he led her to the sofa they'd sat on earlier. “Looking at the tree just now reminded me of something.”

“What's that?” she asked, as she settled into the crook of his arm.

“I want to hear all about Natalie's Nook.”

She looked up at him, the tenderness in his eyes blanketing her heart with happiness. “You know?”

He nodded. “Delilah drove me by the shop today.” He glanced at the clock on the DVD player, noted the early morning hour. “I mean, yesterday.”

“And you didn't stop in?”

“I didn't think you'd want me to.”

“I'm sorry, Rory. For everything.”

“Don't be.” He touched her face with the side of his hand and stroked it ever so gently. “You needed to learn to walk on your own before you were ready to trust someone else.”

She considered his words. “I—I think you're right. But how? How did you know that?”

“I didn't. Delilah did.”

Ahhh. Delilah.
“I like her. A lot. She's a very special person.”

“Agreed.”

“Do you know that she talked Iris into letting me lease the building rather than buy it, enabling me to get in and open up before the holiday?”

He squeezed her tight. “I didn't know she had a hand in it. But I'm not surprised.”

“The whole process has been like nothing I ever imagined.” Maggie snuggled still closer, relishing the beat of his heart against her back. “And when that first customer walked in…well, it was…I don't know. I'm not sure I can even describe it.”

“A dream come true?”

A dream come true.

“Yes. Like a dream come true. Only I'd stuffed it so far inside my heart I didn't even know it was still there.” She swiveled around to face him. “But you…you not only uncovered it, you gave it wings.”

He shook his head. “You gave it the wings, Maggie, not me.”

She thought about that for a moment. “All right. Maybe I'm the one who flew…but I'm not sure I would have realized my wings were there if you hadn't pointed them out.”

“I like looking at your wings,” he teased, before covering her lips with his own.

Snaking her arms around his neck, she molded her body to his, the tenderness and strength she found there rocking her world for the umpteenth time. “Coming to Lake Shire was the smartest thing I've done in a long time,” she said as their lips parted. “It gave me the shop, it gave me Delilah as a friend, it gave me clarity about my past and how it will always be present in my heart, it gave me you.” She touched her stomach. “And it gave me—gave
us
—a new beginning.”

“Lake Shire didn't give you those things.”

“It didn't?” She planted a trail of kisses up the side of his face. “Are you sure?”

“I'm sure.” His voice, husky with desire, made her body tingle in all the places he'd satisfied less than an hour earlier.

“Then who did?”

“Your uncle.”

She pulled back to study Rory's face. “My
uncle?
”

“Well, technically, yes. Though I tend to put it more on his gift.”

“Ahhh, the wishing ball.” She thought back over the things she'd listed and the wishes the ornament had spawned. “Okay, I'll concede that his gift got the notion of wishes going. And I'll even concede that those wishes helped guide me toward the clarity I needed, but—”

“And they got you crafting again,” he reminded her. “Which led to the store…”

“True. But I can't really say it brought me you or the baby. Not from a wish standpoint, anyway.”

“Who said you were the only one allowed to make a wish?”

The teasing lilt to his voice, coupled with the lopsided grin that called his dimples into action, sucked her right in. “I'm sorry?”

“You did lend me the wishing ball for a few days, remember?” Rory pulled his hand from her face and gestured toward a bare spot in the center of the tree. “In fact, it hung right there, if you'll recall.”

She followed the path of his finger. “I remember.”

“If you think about it, you might also recall the fact that
I
actually filled out one of the slips it came with, and put it inside for safekeeping.”

She looked back in his direction, his words pulling at
her heartstrings and sending her curiosity into overdrive. “And?”

“And what?”

She made a face at him. “And what was the wish?”

“I'd rather save that until you can read it with your own two eyes.”

Shrugging, she grabbed her purse off the floor and stood. “If you say so. But I'll need to stand by the tree so I can read the words. It is kind of dark in here.”

He jumped to his feet beside her and captured her hand before she could reach into her purse. “You brought it?”

“I did. In fact, I've had it in my purse to give back to you since…” she stared up at him “…since our child was conceived.”

With his hand still on hers, she extracted the wishing ball that had put them in each other's path, forever changing their lives as a result. She held it up for him to see. “It really is beautiful, isn't it?”

His gaze left the ornament to focus on her, and she saw the tree's lights reflected in his eyes. “Yes, it is. In fact, she's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.”

“We're talking about the wishing ball, remember?” Maggie prompted.

“You might be, but I'm not.”

She felt her face warm. “May I?” she whispered. Cocking her head toward the wishing ball, she waited for his permission.

Without saying a word he took the ornament from her hand and opened it, revealing its red velvet interior. Slowly, she took the small slip of white paper it held and
unfolded it, her attention moving from it to Rory and back again.

She stared down at his bold handwriting, which stretched across the white surface like a shooting star across a night sky.

I wish for Maggie to find hope. With me. And in me.

“Hope,” she repeated in a broken whisper. “Hope.”

Wrapping his arms around her, he pulled her close once again, bringing tears to her eyes. “Have you found it?”

“Are you standing here next to me?” she asked.

His eyebrows furrowed. “Yes…”

“Is our child growing inside me?”

Reality dawned in his answering smile. “Yes.”

“Then yes, Rory, I've found hope.”

Twenty-One Months Later

She peeled the piece of tape off Delilah's outstretched hand and positioned it across the last of the streamers that traversed the dining-room ceiling. “How does it look?” she asked from her spot on the ladder. “Do you think it looks good?”

Delilah's face lit up. “With your eye for style and decorating? How could it not?”

Step by step Maggie descended the ladder, studying the room closely. “It's one thing to slap glue on a wooden picture frame or to create a centerpiece of candles, but it's quite another to pull off a first birthday party.”

“You make them all look easy.” Delilah crossed the room, her weathered hand gliding along the table Maggie had decked out in what could best be described as early Elmo. “She's going to love it.”

“I hope so. But it might be hard to tell, since she smiles 24/7 anyway.” And it was true. In fact, despite what the baby books claimed, she and Rory were convinced their precious angel had made her arrival with a smile planted on her face.

“That is true.” Delilah led the way into the hearth room, stopping to tighten down one of the half-dozen balloons they'd tied around the space. “How is she holding up at the shop now that she's taking steps? Is it getting harder to have her there when you work?”

Maggie stopped beside the mantel, her eyes drawn to the picture of the birthday girl, her soft brown hair a mirror image of her half sister's. Even their noses favored one another. But her eyes? That ocean-blue color belonged to no one but her daddy. “She's doing great. It helps that I'm there only two days a week…but even on those days, her presence is a joy.”

“I have it on good authority you're not the only one who feels that way.”

Pulling her focus from the assortment of pictures that dotted the pine shelf, Maggie fixed it, instead, on the woman who had come to mean as much to their daughter as she did to her and Rory. “What are you talking about?”

“Just the other day, at the diner, a smattering of women came into the diner raving about Natalie's Nook. They talked about the hand-painted shelves, the seasonal hooks, the frames, the hand-painted window boxes, you name it. But they also talked about the baby. How she was the most precious thing they'd ever seen.”

Maggie couldn't help but grin. “I wish they could have met.”

“They?”

“My girls.” Looking back at the mantel, she drank in the picture of Natalie she'd taken at the zoo nearly three years earlier. The similarities between the babies were
striking at times, while in other ways they were different. And it was in those differences that she was reminded of the blessing she'd been given by having both Jack and Rory in her life.

Rory.

Drawing her thoughts back to the present, she glanced at her wrist. “Where are they? We've got a party to throw.”

“Knowing Rory, he got caught up in showing his daughter to everyone in the park.” Delilah crossed to the window and peered out at the road. “You know how he is.”

And she did. Rory was amazing—as a father
and
a husband.

Smiling to herself, Maggie took a step to her left, reaching for the silver ball that had started it all—a wishing ball that sat in a place of honor on the mantel twelve months out of the year.

Footsteps in the hallway made her turn. “Rory, is that you?”

When he didn't answer, she peeked around the corner, the sight of her husband holding their sleeping child bringing tears of joy to her eyes. “She's
sleeping?
” she whispered.

“Like a baby.”

He shifted their daughter to his other shoulder, then leaned forward to plant a kiss on Maggie's lips. “We can wake her in a few minutes. In the meantime, I can kiss you in private.”

Delilah stopped midstep, cleared her throat and then spun around. “I'll go check on the cake now…make sure
Doug hasn't decided to have a piece before the party starts.”

“Oh, hey, I didn't see you there,” Rory rushed to explain. “I just got caught up in my wife, here.”

“I remember what it was like to be young,” she called over her shoulder. “So have your quiet smooch and call me when you're done.”

Maggie watched as their friend disappeared into the kitchen, then looked back at Rory, the news she'd been holding in all morning begging to be shared. “I have something for you.”

“You do?” he echoed, his voice light. “Shouldn't we wait until tonight for that?”

She rolled her eyes skyward. “Well, of course we'll wait until tonight for that…but that's not the something I'm talking about.”

The baby shifted in her sleep, prompted, no doubt, by Rory's laugh. His eyes rounded as his hand went into automatic back-patting mode. “Can it wait? I think the birthday girl might be ready to party soon.”

“It'll only take a moment.” Maggie scurried into the hearth room, only to return to the hallway with the wishing ball in her hand. Holding it in his direction, she stared up at her husband. “Last time this helped us out. But this time I think we need to consult a book.”

“A book?”

She nodded, her gaze never leaving his. “Uh-huh.”

“What kind of book?”

“This kind.” She reached into the hall closet and pulled out the paperback she'd purchased just that morning. Its title made the subject matter obvious.

He looked down at the volume, and his dimples flashed as he gave a smile that lit up her world. “Are you sure?”

Again she nodded.

Before he could say another word, the baby popped her head up. “Ahhh-bahh.”

“Hello, there, sweet pea. Did you have a good rest on Daddy?” Maggie reached toward the baby and plucked her from Rory's arms. “Mmm, you smell so good, little one.”

Rory stepped forward, the feel of his arms around them like nothing she could ever describe. “It may not be able to help with the name this time, but it sure has a knack for granting wishes.”

“Granting wishes?”

He nodded.

“What are you talking about?” she asked, confusion knitting her brows.

“We're having another baby, right?”

“Yes.”

With his eyes still fixed on hers, Rory opened the wishing ball and held it up for her to see a lone slip of paper against the red velvet interior. “Then it granted another wish.”

“Ahhh-bahh!!”

Maggie blinked against the familiar sting of tears—a sensation that came because of joy these days rather than sorrow. “I think it's time, don't you?”

Rory nodded. “I agree.”

“Are you ready?”

“I'm ready.”

“Should we wait for Delilah?” She looked from Rory to the baby and back again, her happiness so complete it was almost too good to be true.

But it was true. As true as true could get.

He shook his head. “Nah. We'll just do an encore with her later. This one is for us.”

“Okay, us it is.” She shifted the baby in her arms so they could both see her face. “Ready?”

“Ready,” he echoed.

“One…two…three…”

Their voices melded as their favorite smile of all brightened the space between them. “Happy birthday, Hope.”