you’re strong enough to survive anything on your own, but there’s a part of me that would like you to need it, I guess. Because I want to be able to give it to you.’
They were passing the carousel now, the brightly coloured horses rising and falling under bright lights. There were children riding the horses and they could hear shrieks of glee.
‘The boys are missing you,’ Charles added quietly. ‘They were drawing pictures for you this morning and I said that you’d love them and probably put them in a frame and Max said...he asked if you’d come back then.’
‘Oh...’ Grace had a huge lump in her throat.
‘We need you, Grace. The boys need you. I need you.’
He took his hands from beneath the warmth of the blankets to cradle her face between them.
‘I love you, Grace Forbes. I think I always have...
The lump was painful to swallow. It was too hard to find more than a single word.
‘Same...’
‘You were right in what you said—I will always protect my family above everything else. But you’re part of my family now. The part we need the most.’
They didn’t notice they had left the carousel behind them as they sank into another slow, heartbreakingly tender kiss.
When Grace opened her eyes again, she found they were going past the Wollman skating rink. Dozens of people were on the ice, with the lights of the Manhattan skyline a dramatic backdrop.
‘I thought I had to ignore how I felt in order to protect the people around me,’ Charles told her. ‘But now I know how wrong I was.’
He kissed her again.
‘I want everybody to know how much I love you. And I’m going to protect that love before everything else because that’s what’s going to keep us all safe. You. Me. The boys...’ He caught Grace’s hand in his own and brought it up to his lips. ‘I can’t go down on one knee, and I don’t have a ring because I’d want you to choose what’s perfect just for you, but...will you let me love you and protect you for the rest of our lives—even if you don’t need it and even if I don’t get it quite right sometimes? Will you...will you marry me, Grace?
‘Yes...’ The word came out in no more than a whisper but it felt like the loudest thing Grace had ever said in her life.
This sleigh ride might have been a dream come true but it was nothing more than a stage set for her real dream. One that she’d thought she’d lost for ever. To love and be loved in equal measure.
To have her own family...
She had to blink back the sudden tears that filled her eyes. Had to clear away the lump in her throat so that she could be sure that Charles could hear her.
‘Yes,’ she said firmly, a huge smile starting to spread over her face. ‘Yes and yes and yes...’
IT WAS A twenty-minute walk from the apartment block to the Rockefeller Center but the two small boys weren’t complaining about the distance. It was too exciting to be walking through the park in the dark of the evening and besides, if they weren’t having a turn riding on Daddy’s shoulders, they got to hold hands with Grace.
‘Look, Daddy...look, Gace...’ It was Max’s turn to be carried high on his father’s shoulders. ‘What are they doing?’
‘Ice skating,’ Charles told him. ‘Would you like to try it one day soon?’
‘Is Gace coming, too?’
‘Yes.’ Grace grinned up at the little boy, her heart swelling with love. One day maybe he would call her ‘Mummy’ but it really didn’t matter.
‘Of course she is,’ Charles said. ‘Remember what we talked about? Grace and I are going to be married. Very soon. Before Christmas, even. We’re a family now.’
‘And Gace is going to be our mummy,’ Cameron shouted.
Max bounced on Charles’s shoulders as a signal to be put down. ‘I want to hold my mummy’s hand,’ he said.
‘She’s my mummy, too.’ Cameron glared at his brother.
‘Hey...I’ve got two hands. One each.’ Grace caught Charles’s gaze over the heads of the boys and the look in his eyes melted her heart.
Mummy.
It did matter.
Not the name. The feeling. Feeling like the bond between all of them was unbreakable.
Family.
A branch of the Davenport family of New York—something which she still hadn’t got used to—but their own unique unit within that dynasty.
Charles had shown her the Davenport ring last week, after that magical sleigh ride in the park.
‘I’ve told Zac it’s waiting for him, if he ever gets round to needing it. It belongs to the past and, even before you agreed to marry me, I knew it wouldn’t suit you.’
‘Because it’s so flashy?’
‘Because it represents everything that is window dressing in life, not the really important stuff.’
‘Like love?’
‘Like love. Like what’s beneath any kind of window dressing.’
He’d touched her body then. A gentle reminder that what her clothes covered was real. Not something to be ashamed of but a symbol of struggle and triumph. Something to be proud of.
So she had chosen a ring that could have also made its way through struggle and triumph already. An antique ring with a simple, small diamond.
‘We’re almost there, guys.’ Charles was leading them through the increasingly dense crowds on the Manhattan streets. ‘Let’s find somewhere we’ll be able to see.’
Grace could hear the music now. And smell hotdogs and popcorn from street stalls. People around them were wearing Santa hats with flashing stars and reindeer antlers that made her remember the horse that had pulled her sleigh so recently on the night that had changed her life for ever.
They couldn’t get very close to the Rockefeller Center in midtown Manhattan but it didn’t matter because the huge tree towered above the crowds and the live music was loud enough to be heard for miles. Charles lifted Cameron to his shoulders and Grace picked up Max to rest him on her hip. He wrapped his arms around her neck and planted a kiss on her cheek.
‘I love you, Mummy.’
‘I love you, too, Max,’ she whispered back.
A new performance was starting. If it wasn’t Mariah Carey singing, it was someone who sounded exactly like her. And it was her song:
