not give girls dresses, but showed them how to create them.
“I don’t just want to give them a dress,” Angie had told him in that earnest way of hers. “I want them to discover the power of their own creativity—their ability to use the force of creativity to make the world match their dreams.”
But really, for all those words, it was just a variation on love.
It had grown unbelievably. Angie taught seminars to teachers and clubs all over North America, showing them how to get sponsors to donate everything from thread to tiaras, how to reach out to the girls who needed this the most.
“There you are!”
Jefferson turned slightly. His wife—would he ever get accustomed to those words in relation to Angie—was glowing. For some reason, pregnancy had made her hair even curlier. How he loved the wild chaos of her hair. The maternity dress was of her own design, proudly hugging the huge roundness of her belly. She had been talking lately about starting a maternity division of Prom-n-Aid.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered of the color.
“It’s the same as it was before,” he said, just for the sake of argument, even though he could clearly see it wasn’t. The new shade had a delicacy and warmth that the old one had not had.
“Are you hiding?” she demanded, ignoring his invitation to argue with him, her eyes twinkling with the knowledge that she had his number.
“No. I just wanted to finish it, in case.”
She did not accept his answer, watching him.
“Maybe,” he admitted. “Maybe I’m hiding.”
“Why?” she whispered.
He put his hand to his face and pinched his nose at the bridge, as if he could stop the emotion he was feeling. “I don’t want everyone to see how scared I am to have this baby.”
Angie came and tugged his hand away and looked at him in that way of hers that made him feel as if he was the strongest man in the universe.
And just like that, something flared between them, the something that never cooled or grew old. That allowed his wife to wrap him around her finger!
He carefully balanced the paintbrush on the open tin and left his hand in hers.
He heard the noises from downstairs again, and Maggie’s laughter rose, joyous, above the others. She was so happy for him. They all were. It was as if he and Angie’s love had become a part of the house, and it drew people here, into its circle. This is what love did.
It expanded. It gave back. It served.
It made the world better in ways that were too numerous to count, in ways that were as infinite as the stars in the sky.
Suddenly, he didn’t feel afraid of having his own little girl at all.
Suddenly, he knew the biggest truth. His wife, his beautiful, wise, funny wife, could be wrong sometimes.
She had said, on the day she had come back for him, on the day she had refused to sacrifice him to the abyss of loneliness he would have chosen, that there was no love without courage. She had said to choose love, even when it wounded you, was the greatest courage of all.
But now, Jefferson saw a deeper truth.
It wasn’t the greatest kind of courage, after all.
Choosing love was the only kind of courage.
“Are you ready?” Angie said.
She could have meant anything. Was he ready to join the others? Was he ready for Christmas dinner? Was he ready to welcome a baby into their lives?
“Yes,” Jefferson said. He said it to the bigger question, the one that required the only kind of courage.
He said yes, again, just as he had three years ago, to the force that humbled a man completely, that was so much larger than anything he could ever be, that had plans for him that were so much bigger than anything he could have ever planned for himself. Jefferson Stone said yes to love.
* * * * *
Kate Hewitt
‘What are you hiding from me, Emma?’
‘Nothing …’ But it sounded feeble.
Larenzo took another step towards her. ‘Tell me the truth. You’re hiding something. I don’t know what it could be, but—’
‘What do you think I’m hiding from you?’ She cut him off scornfully. She nodded towards the stairs. ‘A baby?’
The words hung there, seeming to echo through the sudden silence of the room. Larenzo stared at her, saw how bloodless her lips were as they parted soundlessly. The thought hadn’t fully formed in his mind until she’d said the words. He’d sensed she was hiding something, had felt her panic and fear, had heard a baby cry … And yet it hadn’t all come together for him.
But it did now, crystallising with shocking clarity, and without a word for her he turned from the room and bounded up the stairs.
‘Larenzo—’ She hurried after him, one arm flung towards him in desperate supplication. ‘Larenzo, please, don’t—’
He could hear the child crying, the voice pitiful and plaintive.
‘Mama. Mama.’
He threw open the door and came to a complete and stunned halt as he saw the baby standing in her cot, chubby fists gripping the rail, cherubic face screwed up and wet with tears.
And Larenzo knew. He would have known just by looking at the child, with her ink-dark hair and large grey eyes, the cleft in her chin. He turned to Emma, who was gazing at him with undisguised panic.
‘When,’ he asked in a low, deadly voice, ‘were you going to tell me about my child?’
When one night … leads to pregnancy!
When succumbing to a night of unbridled desire it’s impossible to think past the morning after!
But, with the sheets barely settled, that little blue line appears on the pregnancy test and it doesn’t take long to realise that one night of white-hot passion has turned into a lifetime of consequences!
Only one question remains:
How do you
