Dreaming of His Snowed In Kiss - Jessie Gussman Page 0,59
you thinking that this was some weird partnership that we were going to do, with the kids between us. I’m not thinking like that at all. I wanted to marry you, and I wanted to ask Minnie if she’d give us the honor of raising her children if anything were to happen to her.”
His eyes moved to Minnie, and Poppy appreciated the fact that he didn’t assume Minnie wasn’t going to make it.
Not that anyone held any hope, but without hope, there was no point. She wanted to keep a hold of hope.
Minnie’s head shook back and forth. “The honor is all mine. My children would be in better hands than they would be if I were to live. Maybe that was the Lord’s doing.”
“Don’t say that. It’s not true. You’ve been an excellent mom. And you’ve done the best you can.” Poppy reached out and put her hand over top of Minnie’s.
“I made a lot of mistakes. I wish I could go back and undo them.”
“We’ve all made mistakes. All we can do is learn from them and move on. I love the way you’ve handled this,” Poppy said. “I’ve not heard you complain one time.”
“Isn’t me getting angry at what God is giving me the same as me saying I know better than God? We all know that’s not true.”
Poppy’s mouth snapped closed.
She probably wouldn’t have said she was angry, exactly, at God. But she’d never articulated it that clearly. She resented the fire and the things that happened to her, and that was, truly, the same as her saying she knew better than God.
Guilt tightened her neck.
“That’s almost exactly what I’ve done,” West said quietly beside her. “The things that happened to me, my parents dying, what I’d done after it happened, I was definitely angry at God. And even though, maybe once Race and Penny adopted me, I did a better job of hiding it. I was still angry. And you’re right. That’s me saying I know better than God does.”
He huffed out a breath of frustration. “How arrogant. How completely self-centered and arrogant I was that I could tell the Being that created everything I see when I look outside my window, and so much more, that I know better than He does how to run my life. It’s embarrassing when I think about it now.”
He looked down at the frail woman with the sunken cheeks and the dark shadows under her eyes and the bony shoulders sticking out underneath her blanket.
“Thank you. I needed that lesson tonight. I needed it for my life.”
“Me too,” Poppy said. “I needed it as well. I decided exactly what I could and couldn’t handle after my loss, and I had decided exactly what I was going to do and wasn’t going to do, and I didn’t give God any say.”
She turned and looked up at West.
“That was me being arrogant too.”
“What did I say? We might be opposites on the surface, but underneath, we’re exactly alike. Funny, neither one of us saw our arrogance and stupidity yesterday.”
“No. We needed today, the Christmas, the celebration, the kids, but most of all, we needed you, Minnie. Thank you for being wise in spite of our foolishness.”
Looking back, it was easy to see now how the Lord was working. If it hadn’t been for the fire and the loss of her siblings, and even her mother’s depression, she wouldn’t have ended up where she was, with the irritating smile that caught West. And without his parents’ car accident and, yeah, even the sin he got in because of it, and of course Race and Penny adopting him, they wouldn’t have met. And they probably wouldn’t have...fallen in love?
Maybe they really were exactly the same, because no sooner had the thought popped into her head when West said, “I guess this might be as good a time as any for me to tell you that I love you.”
Normally, West’s words were confident and sure, even if they were soft. But these were spoken with a touch of hesitation, and even though they both knew that the Lord had been working through it all, it was never easy to bare one’s heart.
“I love you too,” she said simply and easily and quickly. She didn’t have to examine her heart. She’d just done it. And that’s exactly what she saw.
Love for the honorable man in front of her.
Epilogue
As funerals went it wasn’t terribly sad.
It could have been.
After all, four small children had just lost their mother.
But, as Blakely and Martin sat together just a couple rows from the front, they both agreed that the fact that West and Poppy had married so quickly – just a couple of weeks ago – and had gotten all the paperwork together to adopt the children – even if it hadn’t gone through yet, and, most of all, that Minnie had been given the gift of one last, special Christmas with her children – and a first Christmas with Gabriella...okay, maybe it was sad.
Martin shifted as Blakely wiped her eyes.
“Here,” he whispered, handing her a tissue that he’d stuffed in his pocket earlier, figuring she’d need.
They’d been inseparable since their teen years and every single wedding and every single funeral they’d attended together, Blakely had cried. Although she would deny it.
She was an accomplished horsewoman and trick rider, soon to audition for the most prestigious travelling trick riding show in America. She would never admit to the weakness of a few tears.
Being that he was her best friend, he’d let that little blip in her personality slide.
She was fun and funny and completely loyal, as well as hard-working and the only person who knew pretty much everything about him. She liked him anyway.
He could give her just as much grace.
“I never thought my brother would find happiness like this,” Blakely whispered softly, around a small sniff.
“Me either.” Martin leaned over to her ear. The faint scent of fresh outdoors and wildflowers came to his nose.
When had Blakely ever smelled so good?
Martin tried to focus. “I would never have paired Poppy and him together, but any fool can see they’re perfect together.” He meant that, too. West sat in the front pew, a little boy on his lap, and his arm around his new wife who held the baby girl.
Neither of them smiled, but there was a glow about them that indicated as clearly as a neon sign that the two of them were deeply, passionately in love.
“I have a lot of things I want to do first, but I hope I find a love like that someday,” Poppy whispered, before sniffling again and quietly blowing her nose in the tissue he’d given her. Thankfully, he’d picked up several. She was as predictable as sunrise.
About some things.
Like her determination to ace the audition for the stunt riding show.
He totally supported her, even though it meant she’d be away from home for eighteen months straight. That’s if the European part of the tour didn’t go through. It would be three years if the show got that contract.
For Blakely’s sake, he hoped it did.
He sniffed. Not because of the water in his eyes, but because he wanted to memorize the scent of the woman beside him.
He couldn’t imagine being without her for three whole years. He also highly suspected Blakely hadn’t thought the whole thing through, because, as much as she loved to compete, she was a homebody and wouldn’t want to be gone that long.
His hands tightened in his lap as he watched Poppy’s head bend over the child on West’s lap. West’s lips landed softly on the blonde hair in a gesture so loving, so at odds with everything he’d thought of West, that it almost gave Martin chills.
He suspected he knew someone that he could be so comfortable and so in love with.
It wasn’t even a thought he could begin to entertain, so he settled down in the pew, handed Blakely another tissue and tried to focus on Pastor Race’s message, which wasn’t helpful. It was all about letting God have his way in your life.
Prophetic, maybe.
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