in the bright sunshine.
Edward opened his present from Lissa.
She giggled and looked at Adele.
He lifted the handkerchief with his initials carefully embroidered on two corners. “Why, Lissa, this is beautiful. Did you embroider it yourself?”
She climbed up on her daddy’s lap. “Yup. Mama taught me when she was still Adele. She didn’t even mind helping me redo it when I messed up.”
Adele smiled at her. “You hardly ever messed up. You learned very quickly how to make this gift for your father.”
Adele handed Lissa a large box. “From me.”
Lissa carefully untied the string that held the cloth covering closed and her eyes got very wide. “Is she mine? Really my baby?”
“Yes.” Adele chuckled. “She is yours. Your daddy and I have another present for you.”
She looked around but no presents remained under the tree. “What present?”
Edward took Adele’s hand in his. “Your mama and I and you are having a baby who should arrive around the end of July.”
“A baby brother or sister, for me?” Lissa bounced on both of her feet while singing, “A baby for me. A baby for me.”
“Yes, for you.” Adele laughed at her daughter’s antics thinking she looked a little like a bunny.
Edward reached out and took Lissa’s hand in his. “Lissa and I have something special for you, too.”
“How sweet, but you didn’t have to.”
Lissa nodded hard. “Yes, we do.”
Edward knelt on one knee in front of Adele.
Lissa knelt on one knee beside him.
“Adele Wharton,” said Edward. “We would like for you to marry us, Lissa and me, and promise you’ll always be our wife,” he looked down at his daughter.
Lissa grinned wide. “And Mama, forever.”
Tears rolled in torrents down her face as Adele slipped from her chair to kneel in front of her family. “I am the happiest woman in the world, and I would love to marry both of you.”
“That’s good because I’ve asked Flint Carroll if he’d perform the ceremony tomorrow.”
Adele pressed a hand to her belly and laughed. “If they hadn’t already had baby James, that would have sent Ginger into labor. She’d be so tickled that you and I found love, like she and Flint did.”
Edward hugged her close. “Now, that you have accepted, do you think we can get off our knees?”
Laughing, the three of them stood.
Edward relaxed on the sofa with his pipe and tobacco. He filled his pipe, tamped it down and lit it.
Adele loved the smell of pipe tobacco. She sat next to him, with his arm around her shoulders.
And Lissa played with her new baby doll.
He turned to Adele. “Are you truly happy, my love?”
She kissed him deeply. Her heart was filled to overflowing. “I never knew I could be so happy. I’ve got everything I ever wished for, a family who loves me and who I love more than anything.”
Edward used a single knuckle under her chin to lift her face.
He tilted his head and covered her lips with his.
The kiss she received was one of the most searing kisses she’d ever received.
“I love you, Edward. With almost all my heart. The rest of my heart is given to Lissa and our new baby, when he gets here.”
He ran his knuckle along her cheek. “You are so soft and yet so strong. I love you, too. Thank you for bringing me back to life. Ginger said to thank you, too. She said she’d about given up on me.”
“At times I almost gave up, but I couldn’t, I just loved you too much.”
“Now we’re together, the three of us, almost the four of us. Forever.”
Adele’s thoughts ran back to leaving her parents, being sold by her father, Richard, when she’d thought she was in love with him, leaving to travel to Montana. Nothing could have prepared her for the change her life would take. Nothing could have prepared her for the love and family she found in Angel Creek.
EPILOGUE
August 7, 1872
“Edward. When is Doc Walker arriving?” Adele walked back and forth in their bedroom from the end of the bed to the door and back again. She’d been doing so since after dinner. Now it was almost midnight and she was tired of walking but the movement was the only thing that seemed to help.
She held the small of her back with both hands. The heat from the August air wafting in through the open window made every part of her body perspire so much even the nightgown she wore felt damp. “I feel the baby coming. I know he is.”
“Then why don’t you