Bundle of Joy (31 page)

"I didn't," he said. "Not before I met you."

Her eyes closed for an instant. "No halfway measures," she said, cradling the baby against her. "It's all or nothing."

"I'll never let you go. You and Erin belong to me now."

"Say it, Charlie," she whispered. "Please say it." She needed to hear the words, feel them warming her heart, hold them close in memory for the rest of her days.

"I love you," he said. "I love your smile and your right hook and the way you've made something out of your life. I love the way you look at me when you don't think I know you're looking. And I love--" He said something intimate and she felt the heat in every part of her body. "Let's do it again, Caroline. Let's make those promises for real this time."

In sickness and in health until death do us part....

A promise that healed broken hearts, and brought families together. A promise that cast light into the darkness of the future and made the present a thing of wonder and joy.

"I love you, Charlie," she said, as their daughter slept blissfully in her arms. "More than you'll ever know."

"Forever?" His voice was husky, low with emotion.

She looked into his beautiful green eyes and saw the pattern of her future reflected in them and that future made her heart sing.

"Oh, Charlie," she said softly as he pulled both mother and child into his strong arms. "For always."

The End of
Bundle of Joy

Readers are everything.

Seeing your name in print is terrific. Good reviews put a smile on an author's face.

Royalties help keep the wolf from the door. But the absolute best thing about being a writer is being read.

Knowing that your words are making someone you're not even related to happy. Knowing that your story is helping to make a bad day better for a stranger who needed to escape for a few hours. Knowing that the imaginary friends you've spent the last few months with are out there in the world becoming just as real to a reader you'll never meet but know and love just the same.

See what I mean?

Readers are everything.

So this one is for the wonderful readers (and knitters) who have taken time over the last few years to let me know how much they enjoy my books.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

And if you're new to my work, welcome. I hope you'll check out these other titles and excerpts and let me know what you think. You can always reach me on Facebook or Twitter, or directly at [email protected] or [email protected]

Happy reading!

Barbara Bretton

Excerpts

Shore Lights

A New Jersey Shore Christmas

There's nothing more dangerous to a woman's heart than a man who is single, straight, loves his kid, and doesn't kiss and tell . . .

. . . except maybe her mother.

Maddy Bainbridge left her Jersey Shore home town right after high school, determined to put as many miles as possible between herself and her many meddling relatives.

Now she's back in Paradise Point -- an unemployed single mother whose only option is to accept her mother Rose's offer of a job and a place to live. But it doesn't take Maddy long to discover that the things about your mother that made you crazy at 17 make you even crazier at 32. Rose's critical comments bring out Maddy's inner teenager and by the beginning of December, the end is in sight. Maddy would stay there at the Candlelight Inn, her mother's popular B&B, through Christmas for her daughter Hannah's sake, but once the New Year rolled around …

And then fate, in the form of an online auction battle over a Russian samovar that looks like Aladdin's lamp, brings home-town hero Aidan O'Malley into her life and suddenly Maddy begins to believe anything is possible.

A child's dreams, an old woman's memories, the joys and heartaches that come with being part of a family, the thrill of new love and the deep comfort of love that stood the test of time -- it all comes together that one special holiday season when even the most battered hearts open just wide enough to let a miracle or two slip through.

USA Today bestselling author Barbara Bretton has been hailed as a "monumental talent" (Affaire de Coeur) and now she delves deeply into the mysteries of family and shows us that even the most independent woman is still a daughter at heart.

Home
: it's where your story starts.

Chapter One

Seattle, Washington – late summer

Once upon a time in the Emerald City there lived a woman named Maddy Bainbridge who believed she could move back home with her mother and not lose her mind.

Now, Maddy was old enough to know that the things that drove you crazy when you were seventeen would probably drive you even crazier when you reached thirty-two, but her mother's offer came at a moment when her defenses were down and her options extremely limited.

"I need help and God knows you need a job," Rose said during the fateful phone call that changed their lives. "The inn is doing turn-away business and I'd rather share the profits with my daughter than a perfect stranger."

"I appreciate the thought, Mother, but I'm just going through a dry spell here." An eight-month dry spell but Maddy wasn't about to put too fine a point to it. "I'm sure the voice-over work will pick up any day now."

"You're an accountant, Madelyn. You have a degree. You can do much better than voice-over work for a used car dealership."

"I
was
an accountant," she reminded her mother. "Not much call for bean-counters when there aren't any beans left to count." The great Dot.Com collapse of a few years ago had littered the landscape with the fallen careers of fellow accountants from Washington down to Baja.

"Be that as it may, you have a child to support and no husband to help you out. You need a chance to get back on your feet and I need someone I can trust to help me with the business. Give me one good reason why this isn't the perfect solution for both of us and I'll never broach the topic again."

Are you listening, God? Just one good reason . . .

On any other day, Maddy could've given her twenty, but that evening she couldn't come up with a single one.

"Hannah has a brand-new dog," she said finally, knowing her mother's negative stance on anything furry or four-legged. She had spent part of her childhood wishing she could turn Rose into an Irish setter. "Her name is Priscilla and she has a few issues."

"What kind of dog?"

Oh, how she longed for something large and prone to drooling. Bulldog! St. Bernard! Irish wolfhound with an overbite!

"A poodle," she mumbled, praying it sounded like bull mastiff on Rose's end of the line.

"Did you say poodle?"

"Yes," said Maddy. "A poodle."

"How big a poodle?" Rose sounded amused.

Maddy glanced down at the tiny bundle of curly fur asleep in her lap. Sometimes the truth was a royal pain. "Too soon to tell," she said, "but her paws are gigantic." For a stuffed toy. There was always the chance Priscilla might make it to a whopping five pounds if she pigged out on Purina.

"No problem," Rose said calmly. "Just so long as she doesn't piddle in the common areas."

Was this her my-way-or-the-highway mother talking, the woman revered in three counties as the undisputed Queen of Clean? Rose had been known to change her sheets after a fifteen-minute nap.

"Okay," Maddy said, "now I get it. My real mother is trapped in a pod in the basement behind the washer and dryer."

Rose's answer was a surprisingly long span of silence. No snappy comeback. No withering maternal observation. Just enough silence to unnerve her only child.

Maddy would have liked to match her mother silence for silence, but Rose had thirty years on her and she had no doubt her mother could stretch that silence until Christmas if she felt like it. "I was making a joke, Mother. You were supposed to laugh, not take me seriously."

Rose cleared her throat. "Quite frankly, I don't see what's holding you there in Seattle now that Tom has . . . moved away."

"He didn't just move away. You can say it. I promise I won't fall apart. Tom married somebody else. I've made my peace with it." Which, of course, was a big enough lie to grow her nose to a size worthy of the men of Mount Rushmore.

"Maybe you have," Rose said, "but Hannah certainly hasn't. She's the one you should be thinking about."

Instant guilt, supersized with fries. This was no pod person; this was her mother.

"Hannah is the main reason I'm staying in Seattle. This is the only home she knows." She paused, waiting for a response from her mother. Rose, however, remained silent which caught Maddy's attention. Her mother had never been one to play silence to such advantage. "Besides, Hannah will be starting preschool in a few weeks."

"We have schools here in New Jersey."

"All of her friends are here."

"She's four years old, Madelyn. She'll make new ones."

"Seattle's our home."

"Home is where your family is. What Hannah needs right now is to be surrounded by people who love her." People who won't leave her. Oh, Rose didn't say those words but then she didn't have to. She had already wheeled out the heavy artillery and aimed it straight at Maddy's heart.

Oh God, Mother, you're right . . . of course you're right . . . I can't argue the point with you . . . was this how you felt when Daddy went back to Oregon . . . did you lie awake every night and stare up at the ceiling and worry about me the way I worry about Hannah . . . it's been so long since I heard her laugh . . . I can't even remember how long it's been . . . I don't go to church any more but maybe I should because I'm beginning to think it will take a miracle to make Hannah happy again.

But she didn't say any of it. The words were trapped behind all the years they'd spent away from each other, all of their differences both large and small. The ghost of the lonely little girl she once was rose up between them and she wouldn't go away. Only this time, the little girl looked like Hannah.

How Hannah adored her father! Her world had revolved around their Sunday brunches, their excursions to the Space Needle and Mariners games, strolls along the waterfront where he taught her how to eat crab. The loss of those weekly visits had turned her happy child into a sad-eyed little girl Maddy barely recognized. How did you tell the child you loved more than life that not every man was cut out to be a 24/7 father?

"This wasn't part of the plan," Tom Lawlor had said the day Maddy told him she was pregnant. It hadn't been part of her plan either but sometimes life handed a woman a miracle and trusted her to do the rest. Tom's children had children of their own and he had been eagerly anticipating retirement from the company he owned and a life that didn't include potty training and the Tooth Fairy.

Not that Maddy had been ready to punch her ticket on the Baby Express herself. Children had been out there somewhere in the shadowy future, a concept to be dealt with at a later date. She had never doubted that somehow, some day, Tom would warm to the idea of another child but until then she was quite content with the life they shared. She took her birth control pills religiously, popping one each morning with her orange juice, trusting her future to God and country and modern pharmaceuticals.

A fierce bout with the flu – and one tossed pill – had shown her the folly of her ways.

The easy carefree relationship she and Tom had enjoyed before her pregnancy was soon nothing more than a memory. He still cared for her and she knew he loved Hannah, but sometimes it seemed to Maddy that he loved their daughter the way you would love a Golden retriever you had to send to college. A part of his heart remained distant and not even the sheer wonder of their little girl had been able to change that fact.

Why didn't they tell you the truth when they handed you that squalling, slippery, precious newborn? They congratulated you and wished you well. They gave you coupons for disposable diapers and baby wipes but they didn't so much as whisper about the things that really mattered. Why didn't they tell you that the feeding and diapering were the easy part; a baby cried when she was hungry and she fussed when she was wet. Even the newest of new mothers could figure that out without too much trouble. If only someone, somewhere, could tell you what to do for a little girl with a broken heart.

"Promise me you'll think about the idea," Rose urged as they said goodbye.

"I'll think about it," Maddy told her mother and then she did her level best to put the entire idea from her mind.

But a strange thing happened. The more Maddy tried not to think about Rose, the more often her thoughts turned to her mother. Twice in the next few days she found herself reaching for the phone, only to catch herself mid-dial. What on earth would she say? It wasn't like she and Rose were friends. They didn't share the same tastes in books or movies. Their child-rearing methods were poles apart. Rose was a realist who believed only in what she could see and hear and touch. Maddy believed in those things too but she knew there was more to this world than met the eye.