From Midwife to Mommy, page 16
The man who walked into her office wasn’t Trent, but she had no doubt that he was a Montgomery. His face was so like his son’s, in all its lines and angles, but it was aged and hardened. His brown eyes were cold, so unlike the warm blue of Trent’s, and the straight line of his lips showed no hint of humor.
He wore an expensive suit that screamed power, and his large six-foot frame overwhelmed her small office. Now she understood why Trent had been so worried about his father’s interest in Maggie. If this man wanted something, he’d take it. But he wouldn’t be taking her daughter anywhere.
“Mr. Montgomery—come in.” Surprised when her voice came out with no trace of a tremor, she indicated the chair in front of her desk with a wave of her shaky hand.
“Please have a seat,” she said, then waited till he sat before sitting down in her own chair.
“Thank you,” he said as he folded his body into the small chair.
She watched as he looked around the room, taking in the setting as if preparing for battle. His eyes stopped on the bulletin board behind her, where she displayed pictures of the babies that she had delivered. She knew the second his eyes found the picture she had added just that morning.
It had been taken on one of their trips to the park and it showed Maggie giggling with joy on one of the toddler swings. But it had been the look on Trent’s face that had caused her to pull her phone out of her purse and snap the picture. He looked so relaxed and free. And happy—as if spending the day pushing a swing in the park was just what he wanted to be doing.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Montgomery?” she asked.
“I’m sure you know I’m here about my granddaughter,” he said.
“Maggie’s fine. She’s a beautiful, healthy little girl,” she said. “If you’d like to meet her I’m sure me and Trent can arrange it.”
“I was under the impression that you had sole custody of the child at this time.”
“I do, but Trent has become a very important part of our lives,” she said. “We discuss everything concerning Maggie together.”
His cold eyes melted with the heat of the temper that flared there now. Why? Why couldn’t the man just be happy that his granddaughter was going to be taken care of?
Being studied like a bug under a microscope was uncomfortable and she was tired of it. “Mr. Montgomery, if you didn’t come here to arrange to see Maggie then why did you come?”
The smile on his lips didn’t touch his eyes. How could a man so cold and calculating have raised a son like Trent? Of course the obvious answer to that was that he hadn’t raise him.
“I came to make you an offer.”
An offer?” she said. What was he going to do? Offer to buy her daughter?
“My youngest son...”
“Michael... Maggie’s father,” she said, with a hint of annoyance evident in her voice.
“I do know my son’s name, Ms. Sanders. No matter what Trent has told you...” he emphasized the name “...I do care for my sons. Both of them.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “And I’m sorry for your loss.”
He accepted her apology with a nod of his head.
“As I was saying, Michael made certain stipulations in his will concerning his daughter—Maggie.”
His lips parted in a small smile at this acknowledgement of the little girl’s name.
“My son apparently wanted to make sure his child was taken care of financially on a long-term basis. Simply put, he left her all his shares in my oil business—shares that could be used to gain control of the company. I’m willing to make an arrangement that would allow you to keep Maggie and still have the financial stability her father wanted for her. I just want the control of the shares—not the ownership.”
Disbelief filled her. No, this man didn’t want to buy his granddaughter—instead he was willing to sell her for the right to control some of the shares in his company. No wonder Trent was scared to trust anyone with a father like this man.
“I’m sorry.” She stood up abruptly, surprising both of them. She grabbed the top of the, desk using it to steady her. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave. If you want to discuss Maggie’s inheritance you’ll need to talk to Trent.”
He stood and reached into his pocket, then pulled a card from a case and laid it on her desk.
“Here’s my contact information. Hopefully we will be able to come to an agreement. I’m sure neither one of us would like to have to take this to court.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
TRENT PULLED THROUGH the gated entrance. He was tired and he needed to grab a shower. He’d barely slept since he’d left Lana’s house two days ago, and his mind was swirling with thoughts of life without her and Maggie. The only thing that had gone right that day had been with baby Hope’s progress. The baby girl was showing herself to be a fighter and if she kept up the progress she had shown in the last couple of days he had no doubt he’d be able to take her off the ventilator by the end of the week. He couldn’t help but be inspired by the fight in one so small. He laughed to himself. Baby Hope gave him hope.
The long black car sitting in his driveway had him taking his foot off the gas pedal. There was only one person who would be waiting for him in that limo. His father was in town. That was just what he needed to have to deal with today.
He left the front door open for his father to follow him. It was rude, but it was the mood he was in. Why couldn’t his father have called and at least informed him of his visit? Instead now he’d have to deal with everything between the two of them when he was already as tightly wound as a rattlesnake about to strike.
“And hello to you too,” his father said as he followed him into the living room.
Trent turned around to face him. He tried to corral the anger that sprang up within him, but it was too strong. He’d held it under such tight control for so long that he was afraid of its power. But he couldn’t afford to let his anger at his father take him back to that black hole he had been in when he’d left Texas—before he had met Lana.
Lana and Maggie. They were what was important now.
“Father, I wasn’t expecting you.” With his thoughts on Lana and little Maggie he felt the anger subside to a manageable irritation.
“Weren’t you?” his father asked.
His father took a seat on the sole chair in the room, leaving him to the couch. It was a move he had seen him carry out before. His father was holding court and he was just another one of his subjects, expected to bow down to him.
Trent remained standing.
“I knew you’d be coming eventually, but I expected to hear from your team of lawyers first.”
“I find out I have a granddaughter and you expect me to send my lawyers? This is something of a personal nature, wouldn’t you say?”
Things of a personal nature? Was that what his father was calling family matters now?
“If you’d like to meet Maggie I can see that it is arranged,” Trent said.
“The child’s foster mother has offered to let me see her and, yes, I would like to meet her. But first I’d like to know what your intentions are concerning the girl and the shares she is to inherit.”
“So you’ve met Lana?”
“Yes, she seems a lovely young woman who has no idea of the worth of my grandchild’s inheritance.”
“Lana doesn’t care about Maggie’s portfolio. She loves Maggie for herself.”
Just like she loved him for himself, he thought.
He bit down on his anger as it returned. “She’s one of the most caring women I’ve ever met and we both owe her our thanks for the way she has taken care of Maggie. She’s a genuinely good person. And, unlike most of the people you’re used to dealing with, she’s honest and sincere.”
He could go on and on about what a good person Lana was, but his father would never understand. In his father’s world Lana would be considered weak and easy prey. But in the new life Trent had found Lana was all the good things he’d never had in his life. She and Maggie had shown him a whole new world that he could have if he was willing to take a chance.
“And what are your feelings for this woman?” his father asked. “Apart from gratitude.”
“I...” He stopped with the word love sitting on his tongue. Love... Not a word he was comfortable with, or one that he really understood, but it had come to him so easily, so naturally. Was it possible that these crazy feelings he had for Lana were more than just friendship? More than just desire? Could it be love? Was he in love with her? How would he even know?
But he did. Somehow he knew—had known for a while, if he was honest with himself, that what he felt for her was more than he had felt for anyone else in his life.
“No, Father, it’s not gratitude, and it has nothing to do with Maggie or with Michael’s will.”
He heard his voice rise as he felt joy such as he had never known fill him. Hell, yeah, it was love. How had he not known it? If just thinking about her made him feel this good, how could it not be? He loved Lana Sanders. Not only did he love her, but he was going to marry her if she’d have him. They were going to be a family—him and Lana and Maggie. His family.
He looked at the man sitting in the chair inn front of him. He had never understood his father—probably never would—but he couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. With all his wealth and power, he was living his life all alone.
They’d both isolated themselves emotionally from others, never letting anyone get close. But then Lana had come into his life and now he was a different man. His life was nothing like his father’s and it never would be again.
He needed to tell her. Let her know what she meant to him, how she’d saved him. That he was willing to take a chance on marriage even though it still scared him.
“Look, I don’t have time to explain it right now. If the only thing you came for was to see what my intentions are as far as Maggie’s shares in the company are concerned, you can relax. I no longer have any plan to use her shares to make a move against you. As long as you agree to let me and Lana adopt her, Maggie’s shares will be under the control of the lawyers I’ll be setting up for her trust fund. Neither one of us will be able to use them. I won’t use your granddaughter against you unless you decide to fight us for custody.”
He watched his father’s shoulders relax and for the first time noticed how tired his father looked. The man was working himself into an early grave. And for what? More money? More power? Would this have been him thirty years down the road if he hadn’t found Lana?
“And now that’s settled, I really need to get a shower,” said Trent.
He headed off down the hall, then turned around and caught up with his father, who was heading out the door. As his father turned toward him he felt a surge of guilt. He’d dug up a lot of memories lately, and he had to admit that not all of them had been bad. There had been a time before their family had been torn apart when his father had been close to both him and Michael. There was no going back to those times, but he owed it to his brother to give Maggie a chance at a relationship with her grandfather.
“Let me know when you want to meet Maggie. She’s a special little girl. I think you’ll like her.”
“I’m sure I will,” his father responded, then started back out the door.
“She has Momma’s eyes,” Trent said.
His father stopped, then turned back. The glimmer of dampness that filled his father’s eyes told him what he needed to know. His father had loved his mother.
He watched his father get into the car, its door being held open by a uniformed driver. No, there was no going back. But maybe with the help of a little girl they could go forward on a different path than the one they had been following all these years.
* * *
Lana had folded the same washcloth three times, but she just hadn’t got the energy to stop her toddler from playing in the clean laundry. The visit from Calvin Montgomery had sent her into autopilot. She couldn’t even remember the trip home. And, while she’d tried to act normal while she fed and bathed Maggie, she just couldn’t keep up the act.
She finally put the child to bed after a quick game of peekaboo with one of the clean towels.
Her whole conversation with the senior Montgomery had been surreal, the man’s attention blinded by his greed. How could anyone be so calculating as to offer their granddaughter to a stranger for strictly financial reasons? And how dared he threaten to cause trouble for her with the courts?
She had no intention of letting him intimidate her. She just hoped that she could still depend on Trent to back her up after she’d scared him with her confession of love for him.
A knock on the door startled her out of her dark thoughts.
Opening it, she found a different Trent from the one who had left her house two nights ago. His eyes were bright, his body full of nervous energy, and his smile was dangerous and sexy.
“Can I come in?” he asked as he stood there, one hand in his pocket.
“Of course,” she said, and she stepped back from the door, turning her back toward him, unable to meet his eyes.
Having a man run from your house after a declaration of love had a tendency to make things a little awkward.
“Lana, I heard that my father came to see you. I’m sorry if he upset you.”
“Upset me?” she said as she walked over to the couch and sat down. “The man was ready to bulldoze me, and when he couldn’t do that he threatened to make trouble with my adoption case. I take it he came to see you?”
Trent took a seat on the other end of the couch. She noticed he didn’t try to move closer. She’d known there would be no going back after she bared her heart to him. Their relationship was bound to change.
“You won’t have to worry about my father anymore. We discussed his concerns and I settled things in a way that he understood. He won’t get involved with our adoption of Maggie.”
“Our adoption?” she asked. Did he still think she was going to go through with his fake marriage plan? “I thought you understood that I can’t marry you, Trent?”
* * *
If she sent him away now he’d be lost forever.
“Lana, I will do whatever it takes to protect you and Maggie—that will always be a priority in my life. But I know I messed up, asking you to fake a marriage to me. You were right. A marriage built on lies wouldn’t have been fair to either of us. I know that now. And that’s not what I want.”
Trent rose from the couch and looked down at Lana. What a lucky man he was to have a woman like her love him. He didn’t know how to talk about his feelings. It was something they’d have to work on together. But for now hopefully the three little words that had scared him into running away from her just two days ago would be enough.
He knelt down in front of her and pulled the ring he’d been carrying with him for days from his pocket. “Lana, I love you. I want to marry you. And it has nothing to do with my father, the will, or even the adoption. I want to marry you simply because I’m in love you.”
“Will you marry me, Lana? Marry me for real?”
* * *
Trent had reached out and taken her hand. He loved her? He was the prince she had always dreamed of and he loved her. The life she had always wanted was just within her reach. But she had to know for sure that he understood what he would be getting.
“We’ll never be able to have biological children of our own,” she said, feeling her wounded heart stutter as he raised her hand to his lips, then placed it over his heart.
“I’m sorry you had to go through so much when you were young, but I’m thankful that the treatments saved you,” he said. “You and Maggie are more family than I ever thought I would have. More than I deserve. The two of you are all I need.”
“Are you sure? What if you decide you want to have more children later?”
“We can always adopt—just like we’re doing with Maggie,” he said. “Lana, we can’t build our family on a past that neither of us can change, but we can build it on our future together...on our love for each other.”
Could life really be that simple?
“I love you, Trent,” she said as she wiped tears from her eyes. “And there’s nothing more I want than to marry you.”
She watched as he took her hand in his and slid a sparkling ring on her finger. Standing up, he reached down and scooped her up in his arms, silencing her surprised scream with his mouth as he carried her down the hall.
She’d gotten her fairy tale prince and her cowboy all roped together in this man she would soon call her husband. And whether they rode off into the sunset or she was carried away in her prince’s arms, she knew they would find their happily-ever-after together.
EPILOGUE
LANA RUSHED UP the courthouse steps. She was going to be late again.
“Don’t even say it,” she said to Amanda, who was standing at the front door waiting for her.
“Say what? That I told you running off to a delivery wasn’t a good idea?” Amanda said.
“You know I had no choice. I’ve been there for every one of Lacey’s deliveries. The fact that this one was going to be a Caesarean section was freaking her out,” Lana said as she rushed down the hall toward the courtroom.
Stopping outside the door, she straightened the hemline of the tea dress, then checked her hair in the mirror that Amanda had pulled out of her pocket. The nurses on the unit had all helped her get dressed. Even Kat had helped with her hair and make-up.
“You look beautiful,” Amanda said.
Lana smiled at the woman looking back at her from the mirror. It wasn’t the perfectly applied make-up, or the hair combed into a flawless knot. No, what she saw was the beauty that only real happiness could bring.
He wore an expensive suit that screamed power, and his large six-foot frame overwhelmed her small office. Now she understood why Trent had been so worried about his father’s interest in Maggie. If this man wanted something, he’d take it. But he wouldn’t be taking her daughter anywhere.
“Mr. Montgomery—come in.” Surprised when her voice came out with no trace of a tremor, she indicated the chair in front of her desk with a wave of her shaky hand.
“Please have a seat,” she said, then waited till he sat before sitting down in her own chair.
“Thank you,” he said as he folded his body into the small chair.
She watched as he looked around the room, taking in the setting as if preparing for battle. His eyes stopped on the bulletin board behind her, where she displayed pictures of the babies that she had delivered. She knew the second his eyes found the picture she had added just that morning.
It had been taken on one of their trips to the park and it showed Maggie giggling with joy on one of the toddler swings. But it had been the look on Trent’s face that had caused her to pull her phone out of her purse and snap the picture. He looked so relaxed and free. And happy—as if spending the day pushing a swing in the park was just what he wanted to be doing.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Montgomery?” she asked.
“I’m sure you know I’m here about my granddaughter,” he said.
“Maggie’s fine. She’s a beautiful, healthy little girl,” she said. “If you’d like to meet her I’m sure me and Trent can arrange it.”
“I was under the impression that you had sole custody of the child at this time.”
“I do, but Trent has become a very important part of our lives,” she said. “We discuss everything concerning Maggie together.”
His cold eyes melted with the heat of the temper that flared there now. Why? Why couldn’t the man just be happy that his granddaughter was going to be taken care of?
Being studied like a bug under a microscope was uncomfortable and she was tired of it. “Mr. Montgomery, if you didn’t come here to arrange to see Maggie then why did you come?”
The smile on his lips didn’t touch his eyes. How could a man so cold and calculating have raised a son like Trent? Of course the obvious answer to that was that he hadn’t raise him.
“I came to make you an offer.”
An offer?” she said. What was he going to do? Offer to buy her daughter?
“My youngest son...”
“Michael... Maggie’s father,” she said, with a hint of annoyance evident in her voice.
“I do know my son’s name, Ms. Sanders. No matter what Trent has told you...” he emphasized the name “...I do care for my sons. Both of them.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “And I’m sorry for your loss.”
He accepted her apology with a nod of his head.
“As I was saying, Michael made certain stipulations in his will concerning his daughter—Maggie.”
His lips parted in a small smile at this acknowledgement of the little girl’s name.
“My son apparently wanted to make sure his child was taken care of financially on a long-term basis. Simply put, he left her all his shares in my oil business—shares that could be used to gain control of the company. I’m willing to make an arrangement that would allow you to keep Maggie and still have the financial stability her father wanted for her. I just want the control of the shares—not the ownership.”
Disbelief filled her. No, this man didn’t want to buy his granddaughter—instead he was willing to sell her for the right to control some of the shares in his company. No wonder Trent was scared to trust anyone with a father like this man.
“I’m sorry.” She stood up abruptly, surprising both of them. She grabbed the top of the, desk using it to steady her. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave. If you want to discuss Maggie’s inheritance you’ll need to talk to Trent.”
He stood and reached into his pocket, then pulled a card from a case and laid it on her desk.
“Here’s my contact information. Hopefully we will be able to come to an agreement. I’m sure neither one of us would like to have to take this to court.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
TRENT PULLED THROUGH the gated entrance. He was tired and he needed to grab a shower. He’d barely slept since he’d left Lana’s house two days ago, and his mind was swirling with thoughts of life without her and Maggie. The only thing that had gone right that day had been with baby Hope’s progress. The baby girl was showing herself to be a fighter and if she kept up the progress she had shown in the last couple of days he had no doubt he’d be able to take her off the ventilator by the end of the week. He couldn’t help but be inspired by the fight in one so small. He laughed to himself. Baby Hope gave him hope.
The long black car sitting in his driveway had him taking his foot off the gas pedal. There was only one person who would be waiting for him in that limo. His father was in town. That was just what he needed to have to deal with today.
He left the front door open for his father to follow him. It was rude, but it was the mood he was in. Why couldn’t his father have called and at least informed him of his visit? Instead now he’d have to deal with everything between the two of them when he was already as tightly wound as a rattlesnake about to strike.
“And hello to you too,” his father said as he followed him into the living room.
Trent turned around to face him. He tried to corral the anger that sprang up within him, but it was too strong. He’d held it under such tight control for so long that he was afraid of its power. But he couldn’t afford to let his anger at his father take him back to that black hole he had been in when he’d left Texas—before he had met Lana.
Lana and Maggie. They were what was important now.
“Father, I wasn’t expecting you.” With his thoughts on Lana and little Maggie he felt the anger subside to a manageable irritation.
“Weren’t you?” his father asked.
His father took a seat on the sole chair in the room, leaving him to the couch. It was a move he had seen him carry out before. His father was holding court and he was just another one of his subjects, expected to bow down to him.
Trent remained standing.
“I knew you’d be coming eventually, but I expected to hear from your team of lawyers first.”
“I find out I have a granddaughter and you expect me to send my lawyers? This is something of a personal nature, wouldn’t you say?”
Things of a personal nature? Was that what his father was calling family matters now?
“If you’d like to meet Maggie I can see that it is arranged,” Trent said.
“The child’s foster mother has offered to let me see her and, yes, I would like to meet her. But first I’d like to know what your intentions are concerning the girl and the shares she is to inherit.”
“So you’ve met Lana?”
“Yes, she seems a lovely young woman who has no idea of the worth of my grandchild’s inheritance.”
“Lana doesn’t care about Maggie’s portfolio. She loves Maggie for herself.”
Just like she loved him for himself, he thought.
He bit down on his anger as it returned. “She’s one of the most caring women I’ve ever met and we both owe her our thanks for the way she has taken care of Maggie. She’s a genuinely good person. And, unlike most of the people you’re used to dealing with, she’s honest and sincere.”
He could go on and on about what a good person Lana was, but his father would never understand. In his father’s world Lana would be considered weak and easy prey. But in the new life Trent had found Lana was all the good things he’d never had in his life. She and Maggie had shown him a whole new world that he could have if he was willing to take a chance.
“And what are your feelings for this woman?” his father asked. “Apart from gratitude.”
“I...” He stopped with the word love sitting on his tongue. Love... Not a word he was comfortable with, or one that he really understood, but it had come to him so easily, so naturally. Was it possible that these crazy feelings he had for Lana were more than just friendship? More than just desire? Could it be love? Was he in love with her? How would he even know?
But he did. Somehow he knew—had known for a while, if he was honest with himself, that what he felt for her was more than he had felt for anyone else in his life.
“No, Father, it’s not gratitude, and it has nothing to do with Maggie or with Michael’s will.”
He heard his voice rise as he felt joy such as he had never known fill him. Hell, yeah, it was love. How had he not known it? If just thinking about her made him feel this good, how could it not be? He loved Lana Sanders. Not only did he love her, but he was going to marry her if she’d have him. They were going to be a family—him and Lana and Maggie. His family.
He looked at the man sitting in the chair inn front of him. He had never understood his father—probably never would—but he couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. With all his wealth and power, he was living his life all alone.
They’d both isolated themselves emotionally from others, never letting anyone get close. But then Lana had come into his life and now he was a different man. His life was nothing like his father’s and it never would be again.
He needed to tell her. Let her know what she meant to him, how she’d saved him. That he was willing to take a chance on marriage even though it still scared him.
“Look, I don’t have time to explain it right now. If the only thing you came for was to see what my intentions are as far as Maggie’s shares in the company are concerned, you can relax. I no longer have any plan to use her shares to make a move against you. As long as you agree to let me and Lana adopt her, Maggie’s shares will be under the control of the lawyers I’ll be setting up for her trust fund. Neither one of us will be able to use them. I won’t use your granddaughter against you unless you decide to fight us for custody.”
He watched his father’s shoulders relax and for the first time noticed how tired his father looked. The man was working himself into an early grave. And for what? More money? More power? Would this have been him thirty years down the road if he hadn’t found Lana?
“And now that’s settled, I really need to get a shower,” said Trent.
He headed off down the hall, then turned around and caught up with his father, who was heading out the door. As his father turned toward him he felt a surge of guilt. He’d dug up a lot of memories lately, and he had to admit that not all of them had been bad. There had been a time before their family had been torn apart when his father had been close to both him and Michael. There was no going back to those times, but he owed it to his brother to give Maggie a chance at a relationship with her grandfather.
“Let me know when you want to meet Maggie. She’s a special little girl. I think you’ll like her.”
“I’m sure I will,” his father responded, then started back out the door.
“She has Momma’s eyes,” Trent said.
His father stopped, then turned back. The glimmer of dampness that filled his father’s eyes told him what he needed to know. His father had loved his mother.
He watched his father get into the car, its door being held open by a uniformed driver. No, there was no going back. But maybe with the help of a little girl they could go forward on a different path than the one they had been following all these years.
* * *
Lana had folded the same washcloth three times, but she just hadn’t got the energy to stop her toddler from playing in the clean laundry. The visit from Calvin Montgomery had sent her into autopilot. She couldn’t even remember the trip home. And, while she’d tried to act normal while she fed and bathed Maggie, she just couldn’t keep up the act.
She finally put the child to bed after a quick game of peekaboo with one of the clean towels.
Her whole conversation with the senior Montgomery had been surreal, the man’s attention blinded by his greed. How could anyone be so calculating as to offer their granddaughter to a stranger for strictly financial reasons? And how dared he threaten to cause trouble for her with the courts?
She had no intention of letting him intimidate her. She just hoped that she could still depend on Trent to back her up after she’d scared him with her confession of love for him.
A knock on the door startled her out of her dark thoughts.
Opening it, she found a different Trent from the one who had left her house two nights ago. His eyes were bright, his body full of nervous energy, and his smile was dangerous and sexy.
“Can I come in?” he asked as he stood there, one hand in his pocket.
“Of course,” she said, and she stepped back from the door, turning her back toward him, unable to meet his eyes.
Having a man run from your house after a declaration of love had a tendency to make things a little awkward.
“Lana, I heard that my father came to see you. I’m sorry if he upset you.”
“Upset me?” she said as she walked over to the couch and sat down. “The man was ready to bulldoze me, and when he couldn’t do that he threatened to make trouble with my adoption case. I take it he came to see you?”
Trent took a seat on the other end of the couch. She noticed he didn’t try to move closer. She’d known there would be no going back after she bared her heart to him. Their relationship was bound to change.
“You won’t have to worry about my father anymore. We discussed his concerns and I settled things in a way that he understood. He won’t get involved with our adoption of Maggie.”
“Our adoption?” she asked. Did he still think she was going to go through with his fake marriage plan? “I thought you understood that I can’t marry you, Trent?”
* * *
If she sent him away now he’d be lost forever.
“Lana, I will do whatever it takes to protect you and Maggie—that will always be a priority in my life. But I know I messed up, asking you to fake a marriage to me. You were right. A marriage built on lies wouldn’t have been fair to either of us. I know that now. And that’s not what I want.”
Trent rose from the couch and looked down at Lana. What a lucky man he was to have a woman like her love him. He didn’t know how to talk about his feelings. It was something they’d have to work on together. But for now hopefully the three little words that had scared him into running away from her just two days ago would be enough.
He knelt down in front of her and pulled the ring he’d been carrying with him for days from his pocket. “Lana, I love you. I want to marry you. And it has nothing to do with my father, the will, or even the adoption. I want to marry you simply because I’m in love you.”
“Will you marry me, Lana? Marry me for real?”
* * *
Trent had reached out and taken her hand. He loved her? He was the prince she had always dreamed of and he loved her. The life she had always wanted was just within her reach. But she had to know for sure that he understood what he would be getting.
“We’ll never be able to have biological children of our own,” she said, feeling her wounded heart stutter as he raised her hand to his lips, then placed it over his heart.
“I’m sorry you had to go through so much when you were young, but I’m thankful that the treatments saved you,” he said. “You and Maggie are more family than I ever thought I would have. More than I deserve. The two of you are all I need.”
“Are you sure? What if you decide you want to have more children later?”
“We can always adopt—just like we’re doing with Maggie,” he said. “Lana, we can’t build our family on a past that neither of us can change, but we can build it on our future together...on our love for each other.”
Could life really be that simple?
“I love you, Trent,” she said as she wiped tears from her eyes. “And there’s nothing more I want than to marry you.”
She watched as he took her hand in his and slid a sparkling ring on her finger. Standing up, he reached down and scooped her up in his arms, silencing her surprised scream with his mouth as he carried her down the hall.
She’d gotten her fairy tale prince and her cowboy all roped together in this man she would soon call her husband. And whether they rode off into the sunset or she was carried away in her prince’s arms, she knew they would find their happily-ever-after together.
EPILOGUE
LANA RUSHED UP the courthouse steps. She was going to be late again.
“Don’t even say it,” she said to Amanda, who was standing at the front door waiting for her.
“Say what? That I told you running off to a delivery wasn’t a good idea?” Amanda said.
“You know I had no choice. I’ve been there for every one of Lacey’s deliveries. The fact that this one was going to be a Caesarean section was freaking her out,” Lana said as she rushed down the hall toward the courtroom.
Stopping outside the door, she straightened the hemline of the tea dress, then checked her hair in the mirror that Amanda had pulled out of her pocket. The nurses on the unit had all helped her get dressed. Even Kat had helped with her hair and make-up.
“You look beautiful,” Amanda said.
Lana smiled at the woman looking back at her from the mirror. It wasn’t the perfectly applied make-up, or the hair combed into a flawless knot. No, what she saw was the beauty that only real happiness could bring.
