Beneath a Southern Sky - By Deborah Raney Page 0,50

those words from your lips—but please don’t say it until you’re absolutely sure.”

She nodded and, feeling chastened, lowered her gaze.

He put a finger under her chin and lifted it toward his face. “I’ll see you in the morning?”

She nodded again. Then he was off the porch and driving away before she could respond.

She climbed the stairs and unlocked the door to her apartment. The letter was still lying on the table in the dining area. Daria walked past it and went to the closet to hang up her coat.

One lovely thought rang through her head: Colson Hunter wanted to marry her.

He loved her. He loved Natalie like his own child. Her mind was suddenly crystal clear. She loved this man. She wasn’t a schoolgirl. She knew what love was. She had known a true, abiding love with Nathan Camfield, and what she felt for Cole was every bit as deep and mature and right. She didn’t need to ask anyone for advice on this. This she knew more surely than she’d known anything in a very long while.

She went over to the dining table and picked up the letter. She unfolded it slowly and forced her eyes to skim the paragraphs. But she did not try to analyze the words any longer—they had no meaning for her after what Cole had told her.

God had given her her answer. She would be loved again. Her daughter would have a father. She would know true happiness once more. She couldn’t have dreamed of a more perfect answer. Soon she would hold Cole’s hands and speak the words she’d wanted so badly to say to him tonight—I love you too, Colson Hunter.

That night Daria dreamed the same dream she’d had the night before. It seemed so real that she could almost smell the dank floor of the rain forest. She felt that if she opened her eyes she’d find herself in Timoné, that Nate would be standing in front of her and she could reach out and touch him.

Then Nate’s face melted into Cole’s, and Daria startled, fully awake now. The clock on the nightstand read 9:30 A.M. Beside it, Nate stared at her from the framed photograph. She could feel her heart thumping beneath the thin flannel of her nightgown.

She threw her legs over the side of the bed and sat up, breathing hard.

Disoriented and agitated, she grabbed the frame that contained Nathan’s picture and opened the pocket door that led from her room to Natalie’s. Her daughter had spent the night with her parents, but the crib still held the faint scent of her.

Daria set the photograph on Natalie’s dresser and picked up a rumpled baby quilt. She held it to her nose for a minute, studying Nate’s picture, fighting a menacing feeling that she couldn’t identify.

Then she dropped the quilt into the crib, walked back through her bedroom, and down the hall to the shower.

Her parents would be bringing Natalie home in twenty minutes, and Cole would come by to pick them up for church shortly after that. She desperately needed to see him. She needed to be with someone who loved her. Someone who was real and alive.

Daria slid the silver ribbon off the box and carefully peeled the tape from the shiny foil wrapping. “A Christmas present already? Cole, are you sure you don’t want me to wait?” she asked him for the second time.

“Daria! Would you just open the package,” he laughed. “You’ll understand when you see what it is.”

She folded the paper neatly and set it on the sofa beside her, then she lifted the lid on the shiny white box. “Oh!” she gasped, when she saw what was inside. “Cole! You didn’t! You remembered!” She took the little ceramic cottage from the box and held it in the palm of her hand, admiring it.

“Do you like it?”

“You know I do! I love it.”

“I couldn’t afford the whole village, but it’s a start.” He knelt down beside her and took out the little brochure that was folded up in the box. He spread it out on her lap, pointing to a photograph of the display she had seen in the gift shop the day they’d gone shopping for Natalie. “There are forty-eight pieces in this collection, Daria. This is the first one.” He took her hand and squeezed it tightly. “If God answers my prayers, there will come a Christmas someday when I’ll have to choose something else to give you because this whole village will