and she was suddenly awash with love for him and so happy she didn’t quite know what to do with it.
“Give,” she ordered when she reached him.
“Do I have to?” he asked. When she nodded he complied, reluctantly handing over her goddaughter, who smelled of baby lotion, milk and heaven.
He slid over on the sofa to make room and she plopped down beside him, savoring this perfect, crystalline moment—surrounded by family, with a baby on her lap and Sam’s arm across her shoulders.
A moment later, a herd of the younger children came galloping through with many squeals and much laughter as they chased Owen, who seemed to be holding a sought-after toy just out of their reach.
One of the laughing children broke away from the pack and veered in their direction.
Ethan leaned against her knees, looking down at Emma with that slightly fascinated, slightly terrified expression only a seven-year-old boy can wear while looking at such a tiny creature.
“I’m starving, Alex,” he announced dramatically. “When are we eating?”
She smiled and rested her free hand on his sweaty curls. “It shouldn’t be long now. My mom is finishing up the gravy and then I think we’re good.”
“Yay! If I don’t eat something soon, my blood sugar is going to plummet and I’m seriously going to fall over!”
She laughed. “We wouldn’t want that to happen. Can your blood sugar hang on a few more moments?”
“I suppose.”
He raced off after the other kids, apparently staving off his impending collapse by force of will.
Alex watched him go, crazy for him. He had accepted her in his life with a sweet willingness that still made her want to cry sometimes.
In a way, Ethan had actually been the first to propose to her the night before.
He and Sam had set the stage beautifully. They had all gone for an evening walk, bundled against the cold and with Leo leading the way, to enjoy some of the twinkly holiday lights that had begun peeking out around town.
She had known something was up, since Ethan had just about been bursting with excitement, as what had appeared to be a casual, random walk had eventually led to Sam’s latest renovation site, a decrepit old warehouse he was working to turn into a small indoor mall a few blocks off Main Street.
Sam said he had to check something and suggested they all come inside to warm up a little.
When he flipped the lights on, she saw a huge message across the length of one wall, two-foot-high letters written in chalk in childish handwriting: Will you marry us?
“I love you, Alex. I want to spend forever with you,” Sam had said.
“I really, really, really want you to be my second mom,” Ethan had added.
Her heart bursting with joy, she had sniffled and laughed and hugged them.
She sighed with contentment now, and Sam caught her gaze with that secret, sexy little smile she loved, before he turned back to argue with Riley about a call.
She considered one of the very best things about her relationship with Sam was how seamlessly he and Ethan had merged into her family. They all loved him, from her mother to her sisters and even the brothers-in-law. He, in turn, loved them all back. While her big, loud, boisterous family sometimes drove her bonkers, Sam reveled in all of them.
If she wasn’t completely convinced he loved her— much to her constant joy and wonderment—she might have thought he had only proposed to her so he could become a permanent part of the McKnight clan.
Mary Ella suddenly appeared in the doorway and Harry immediately muted the football game with the remote that he probably wouldn’t relinquish to anyone.
“All right, gang. I think everything’s ready.”
Alex probably should have been helping set everything out but she figured she had done her part by cooking most of the food.
The kids cheered.
“Finally!” Ethan exclaimed in that dramatic tone again.
“Agreed,” Harry said with a chuckle and led the way to his dining room, with its sweeping views up the canyon to the Silver Strike Resort.
She reluctantly relinquished Emma to Claire and followed Sam and Ethan to find a spot at the table.
Harry was probably the only one in town with a house big enough to comfortably contain all her siblings and their respective families. Even so, it was a squeeze around his massive dining table to accommodate everyone.
As host, Harry stood at the head of the table until everyone was settled.
“It’s been quite a few years, hasn’t it?”
Alex looked around at her family and thought of the many changes they had seen—tragedies and joys, heartaches and second chances.
“We have much to be grateful for,” Harry said. “New opportunities. New life. New marriages.”
He reached for her mother’s hand and, with a courtly sort of gesture quite incongruous to his bluff personality, he kissed the back of her fingers. Mary Ella blushed and a few of the younger kids made exclamations of disgust.
Beneath the table, she felt Sam’s hand on her knee, strong, firm, comfortable. On her other side, Ethan nudged her arm with his shoulder and tried his best to wink at her over their little secret, though he hadn’t quite perfected the expression and it came out more as a funny little spasm of half his face.
“Despite the past,” Harry went on, “you have all welcomed me into your family and I must thank you for that.”
He paused, looking around at them, and in any other man she might have thought he was a little choked up. Not Harry, of course. He had probably just swallowed an olive the wrong way or something.
“Life is a strange thing,” he said quietly. “We make our choices, pick our course and usually have to live with the consequences. But sometimes we’re given the rare and precious chance to take a different path. When that happens, we often can discover what truly matters. Not money, power, land. Not grand houses. It’s this.”
He cleared his throat, the old coot, beaming at all of them but especially at his son, Jack, from whom he had spent so many years estranged.
“This,” he repeated. “Family. Friends. Love.”
“Don’t forget food,” Alex added.
“Hear, hear,” came a chorus around her.
Harry was right, she thought after grace had been eloquently offered by Angie’s husband and they all began to fill their plates with her delicious food.
Until Sam came into her world, she had been certain her course was set, that she was on her way to grabbing everything she needed.
She had convinced herself she had all she could ever want. Sam and Ethan had given her the chance to venture onto another path, one filled with laughter and joy and life.
Now she refused to have it any other way.
* * * * *
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ISBN: 9781460309780
CURRANT CREEK VALLEY
Copyright © 2013 by RaeAnne Thayne
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
EPILOGUE