Just Like Heaven (33 page)

“Because I wanted to tell you—” Her throat closed against the enormity of the words. This was it. The point of no return. Once she said those words her life would be changed forever. She would be changed. “I wanted to tell you that I love you.”

There were kisses that turned a woman inside out. There were kisses that melted her bones. And then there were kisses that promised her a future more wonderful than anything she had ever hoped for.

“I want you to know what you’re getting into.”

“I read the Mitford books,” she said and he laughed. “I know it won’t be easy.”

“My days as a small-town parson are probably over. Right now I don’t know what the future holds for me.” He wanted to continue working with the elderly and people battling substance abuse, but he had closed those doors when he went back to Greenwood. Only time would tell which ones would reopen for him.

“I’m not exactly the ideal companion,” she said cautiously. “I’ve been poring over books about Episcopalianism, but nothing’s changed. I’m not sure what I believe in or why. I haven’t been to church in years. I don’t want to be a liability.”

“I know who you are, Kate, and I don’t want you to change for me or for anyone. We’ll figure it out as we go along.”

That was the most beautiful declaration of love she could ever ask for.

“Change is good,” she said. “If I hadn’t changed I wouldn’t be standing here with you right now.” Sometimes change hurt but it was all part of living.

“You Jersey girls don’t scare easy, do you?”

“The thought of losing you scares me.” The thought of how close she had come to living her whole life without knowing how it felt to be in love terrified her.

He dropped to one knee in the gravel driveway and took her hands in his. “You don’t have to give me your answer right away,” he said, “but I don’t want you to have any doubts about where this is going.”

He wanted her heart, her body, her soul, her future, and he was willing to give her everything he had in return. He wanted to build the rest of his life with her and he wasn’t afraid to put his own heart and soul on the line and tell her so.

Life didn’t come with guarantees. You never knew what the fates—or God—might have in store for you somewhere down the line. She could hide from love forever or she could take that leap and hope the net really would appear.

There were a thousand questions yet to be answered, but only one that really mattered.

It turned out she was her mother’s daughter after all, and so she did the only thing a French woman could do: she chose happiness.

She finally chose love.

Epilogue

The first time was always the hardest.

Daniel Mark Dempsey was eleven weeks and four days old and his very tired, very young parents were going to spend their first night without him.

“We should’ve stayed at your place,” Mark said as Andy lugged in the last of the baby bags. “Is there anything left at home?”

Andy grinned at his father-in-law. “Gwynnie wanted me to dismantle the crib and bring it along, but I had to draw the line somewhere.”

“Good thinking,” Mark said. “Any more stuff and you’ll have to hire a sherpa.”

“Gwynnie!” Andy shouted up the staircase. “If we don’t leave now we’ll miss check-in!”

“It’s a long drive,” Mark called out, “and lots of traffic. Better get moving.”

“She doesn’t want to leave the baby,” Andy said. “She wanted to bring him with us.”

Mark grinned at the young man he had come to respect and love. “I think Kate and Maeve might have something to say about that.” The two women had been counting down the hours until Danny was all theirs to fuss over and spoil.

Finally the baby was safely tucked into his travel crib and Andy was nudging his wife toward the door.

“Are you sure you have the diaper bag?” Gwynn asked for the tenth time.

“Both of them,” Mark said.

Gwynn cast her eyes around the foyer. “I don’t see them.”

Maeve gave her granddaughter a big hug. “One’s upstairs and the other is downstairs.”

“What about the milk I expressed?”

“Properly stored,” Kate said.

“His binky!” Gwynn clutched her husband’s sleeve. “We forgot his binky!”

Mark held up the little rubber object. “Binky,” he said and was rewarded with a wave of laughter.

“I wish I had that on tape,” Kate said. “They’d love to hear that down at St. Michael’s, wouldn’t they?”

Life had taken him down a few interesting professional roads in the last year. Not only was he doing his chaplain work with the elderly once again and keeping up with the program with his old crowd in New Hope, he had begun counseling men and women with substance abuse problems at St. Michael’s Hospital near Basking Ridge. It was a full life and a happy one.

“Maybe you’d better not bathe him tonight,” Gwynn said. “It’s a little chilly and—”

“Gwynnie,” Kate interrupted, “I think I know what to do.”

“And if she doesn’t, I do,” Maeve said. “Between us we have a lot of experience.”

“Don’t look at me,” Mark said, laughing. “I’m still in training.”

Poor Gwynn. His heart went out to her. She looked so young, so excited, so nervous, so much in love with the life she was living. “I know I’m being silly,” she said, “but it’s just this is the first time and—”

“It’s a long trip,” Andy said, holding the front door open. “We’d better hit the road.”

Gwynn was clearly torn between motherhood and the prospect of an unbroken night’s sleep complete with room service. “Do you have the number?”

“Of course we do,” Kate said.

“On speed dial,” Mark added.

“I’m keeping my cell on all night,” Gwynn said. “If you need me for anything, I don’t care what time it is, call me!”

Maeve walked them out to the car while Kate and Mark watched from the front porch.

“I’m off,” Maeve said after she helped them unpack all of the baby paraphernalia. “I have a lecture tonight at the Bernardsville Library.”

“Alone at last,” Kate said as her mother’s car disappeared down Indigo. “I thought they’d never leave.”

Mark pulled his wife close and buried his nose in her fragrant hair. “I was thinking maybe we could—”

Daniel Mark Dempsey was tiny, but he had a powerful set of lungs. His cry made them jump apart like guilty teenagers.

“Better get used to it,” Kate said with a smile. “Only four and a half more months until we’re the ones looking for a babysitter.”

“Happy?” he asked her.

She met his eyes. “Happier than I ever thought possible.”

Mark placed his hand on his wife’s rounded belly and felt the faint stirring of life deep inside her. Nothing he had learned in seminary had come close to explaining the basic wonder that was life. That was the one thing he had to learn for himself in his own time. Who would have guessed he would find his own glimpse of heaven in a carriage house on a country lane in central New Jersey?

“Uh-oh,” Kate said as Daniel Mark Dempsey tested his lungs once more. “I think he’s hungry.”

Mark took his wife’s hand and together they went inside to see what their grandson wanted.

Turn the page for a preview of Barbara Bretton’s next novel,

Its’ In His Kiss

Coming soon!

Hayley Maitland Goldstein was battling a sheet of rolled fondant when Trish, one of the counter girls, burst into the kitchen.

“There’s a guy outside and he’s unbelievably hot.” Trish was seventeen, the age when any biped with a Y chromosome rated a breathless announcement.

“That’s great, Trish.” She centered herself and draped the sugary sweetness over the bottom layer of carrot cake. Rolled fondant was like edible vinyl flooring. It required a sure touch and seamless application or else you might as well have your cakes decorated at Home Depot.

“Mrs. G.?” Trish handed her a pair of sharp kitchen shears. “About that guy—”

Hayley clipped the excess around the perimeter of the cake, then stepped back to survey her handiwork. Good thing it was the anchor layer and she would have five more chances to get it right. “Go back up front, Trish. You know Rachel doesn’t like being alone at the counter.”

“I know, but about that guy.” Trish was practically hopping in place with excitement. “He wants to see you.”

“And I want to see Russell Crowe.” Hayley smoothed a tiny ripple with the flat edge of a knife. This was her punishment for delaying the job until the last minute. What she really needed to do was start all over again, but there just wasn’t time. “We don’t always get what we want.”

Trish lowered her voice. “He looks like one of those rock stars from, you know, way back in the eighties.”

Ouch. She had been Trish’s age in the eighties.

“A rock star?” she asked, lifting a brow.

“A rock star,” Trish confirmed. “And he’s wearing leather.”

There was only one reason an aging leather-clad hottie would show up at Goldy’s Bakery at four o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon, and it had nothing to do with brownies, cheesecake, or bagels.

“Tell him to get lost,” she said. “I’m not bailing Michael out of another one of his messes.”

“But he didn’t ask for Mr. Goldstein. He asked for you.”

Of course he did. She was the one with a bank balance. Leather Boy was probably one of the half-dozen bookies her ex-husband was currently ducking up and down the Jersey Shore. She wished she had a dollar for every angry enabler who had shown up at Goldy’s in search of the reluctant Mr. Goldstein. She’d be able to buy him out once and for all and still have money to spare.

“Trish, I have a six-layer cake to finish for the Cumberland County Association of Female Realtors gala tonight. Tell him I’m not here.”

“But, Mrs. G., I already told him you were.”

“Then you’d better go out there and tell him you were wrong. If it’s that important he can leave a message.”

Trish rearranged her pretty features into an even prettier frown. “He really wants to see you, Mrs. G. Maybe—”

Hayley had no choice. She whipped out The Look, the same look every mother on the planet had down cold, and aimed it in Trish’s direction.

“I’ll tell him,” Trish said, then pushed through the swinging door to deliver the bad news.

The Look had stopped working on her daughter Lizzie, so it was nice to know she still had enough maternal fire power at her command to keep her young staff in line.

She couldn’t make out Trish’s words through the closed doors, just the high, apologetic string of sounds that was followed by a male rumble. Leather Boy, no doubt. He had a good voice, baritone, a little smoky. She couldn’t make out his words either, but Trish’s answering giggle conjured up some painful memories of herself at that age.

First a girl giggled, then she sighed, and the next thing you knew she was in Vegas taking her wedding vows in front of a red-haired Elvis with an overbite. You knew you had made a bad choice when Elvis slipped you his divorce lawyer’s business card while you were still shaking the rice from your underage hair.

She paused, a fresh sheet of fondant rippling in the breeze, and listened closer. Trish said something girly. Leather Boy rumbled something manly. This time Rachel, the other counter girl, giggled too, a sound that sent Hayley’s maternal early-warning system into DEFCON 3 mode.

Rachel was a serious straight-A student bound for Princeton next year on full scholarship. Rachel Gomez had probably never giggled before in her life.

If Rachel giggled, then even Lizzie might not be immune. She thanked the patron saint of single mothers for making sure her daughter was safely tucked away upstairs, working on her physics homework while her iPod pumped hip-hop directly into her bloodstream.

Lizzie was a good girl, a throwback to her maternal grandmother, who preferred the life of the mind over the pleasures of the flesh. But she knew even good girls had their limits.

Once upon a time Hayley had believed that the love of a good woman (her) could turn a bad boy (her ex) into a knight in shining armor (pure fantasy). Ten years of marriage to Michael Goldstein had finally drummed the truth into her head. People didn’t change with time. They just became more of who they were to begin with.

In the real world bad boys didn’t turn into knights in shining armor. Bad boys grew up to be even worse men, and the world would be a much happier place if little girls were taught that basic fact along with their ABCs.

Why didn’t women teach their young how to cope with the things that were really important instead of how to walk in your first pair of heels? Why didn’t they make a point of sitting their girl children down and telling them the truth about men instead of letting some guy in a leather jacket seduce them over a tray of black-and-white cookies?

Those idiotic girls out there were like ripe fruit on a very low-hanging branch. The slightest breeze would be enough to shake them from the tree and into the waiting arms of Leather Boy or someone just like him.

Well, it wasn’t going to happen on her watch. The Cumberland County Association of Female Realtors would have to get in line.

She laid the sheet of fondant down on a clean tea towel, then elbowed through the swinging doors.

Leather Boy was draped across the counter, all lean muscle and attitude. He might as well have had a skull and crossbones painted on the back of his jacket. He was too old, too jaded, too sure of himself, and if he so much as crooked one of those bony nicotine-stained fingers in their direction, those two idiotic little girls would follow him right out the door and into the biggest mistake of their lives.

Twenty years ago she had done the same thing, and it would be nice if somebody finally benefited from her mistake.