Chapter 15 #3
“Everything I have is ours. Everything.” He tipped her chin up and kissed her while Thomas squirmed between them. “You got that?”
“It’ll take some getting used to.”
“We’ve got nothing but time. Want to see the inside?”
She nodded, her eyes sparkling now with excitement, and Mac had never loved her more.
When he took her inside and gave her the tour, there were more tears.
“I was thinking,” he said, directing her to the deck that overlooked the ocean, “that the yard would be the perfect place to tie the knot. What do you say?”
“Oh yes! Absolutely.”
“I want to do it as soon as we can, okay?”
“About that. . .” She glanced up at him, her expression wary. “My mother is due home in a couple of weeks. I’d like to wait for her, if that’s all right with you.”
“Of course it is. Whatever you want.”
“Will you always be such an accommodating husband?”
“Maybe not always, but it’ll always matter to me that you’re happy.”
She bent to put Thomas down on the carpet and linked her arms around Mac’s neck. “I feel like I’m dreaming,” she said, drawing him into a kiss. “I missed you so much.”
“Me, too. I thought I’d go crazy without you.” Mac wanted to lose himself in the kiss, but he held back. “Hold that thought for a second, will you?”
Moaning in protest, Maddie released him.
“So, um, there’s something I have to tell you, and you might get mad at me for not telling you sooner, but I had a really good reason—”
“What’ve you done now?”
Mac withdrew the envelope from his back pocket and handed it to her.
“What’s this?”
“Open it.”
Giving him that wary look she did so well, she withdrew the papers from the envelope and scanned them.
He was about to explain when she gasped, and her hand flew up to cover her mouth.
“Before you freak out, will you listen to me?”
She couldn’t seem to speak, so she nodded.
“A couple of days after we ran into him on the ferry, he found me in the diner when I was there with Thomas. He said he’d asked around and knew we weren’t married and hadn’t been together long. He’d figured out Thomas was probably his.”
“Oh God,” she whispered. The stricken look on her face broke his heart and confirmed he’d done the right thing by not telling her when it happened. “Oh my God!”
Mac rested his hands on her shoulders. “All he cared about was that we’d come after him for money.”
“I’ve never wanted his money!”
“And I told him that, but he wanted assurances. I said we’d sign something releasing him from financial obligation if he’d sign away his rights to Thomas so I can adopt him.”
She wrenched free of Mac’s hold and began to pace the big, empty room.
From the floor, Thomas watched them with that big-eyed, solemn expression of his.
“This happened weeks ago! When were you going to tell me?”
“As soon as I had the signed papers from him, which Roseanne delivered to me with my mail. I was going to bring them to you tonight.”
“Why didn’t you tell me the day it happened? We’re right back to you keeping things from me!”
Mac forced himself to stay calm. “If I’d told you that he knew about Thomas, you wouldn’t have been able to breathe or sleep or eat for the two weeks it took him to get these papers to me.”
“Is this how it’s going to be?” She threw up her hands. “You’re going to take care of everything and leave me out of it?”
“Stuff like this? Absolutely.”
“That’s not how I want to live, Mac. That’s not the kind of marriage I want.”
“This is me, Maddie. It’s who I am. I see something that’ll make you sick with worry, and I make it go away.
I love you too much to watch you suffer like that, and you would’ve suffered over this.
” He went to her, slid an arm around her waist and brought her in close to him. “You would’ve suffered.”
She expelled a deep, shuddering breath as all the fight went out of her. “Yes. I would have.”
“Now you don’t have to. He signed his way right out of our lives.” Mac pressed his lips to her forehead. “Are you mad?”
“No,” she said softly. “I’m sad.”
“Because of what I did?”
She shook her head. “Because his father cares so little about him that he’d sign him away without ever even knowing him.”
Mac stepped back from her, picked up Thomas from the floor and hugged them both. “His father cares so much about him that there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for him. His father will love him and care for him and give him his name and protect him every day of his life.”
Maddie looked up at him with her heart in those caramel eyes.
He brushed a gentle kiss over her lips. “His father will love him and his mother forever.” He kissed her again. “Now about those conditions you mentioned. . .”
“Will Thomas’s father try very hard to not keep things from his mother?”
“He’ll do his best, as long as he’s allowed to occasionally surprise her.”
She raised that eyebrow of hers. “And these will be good surprises?”
“The very best surprises he can think of.”
“In that case, my friend, you’ve got yourself a family.”
“I guess it’s official, then.”
“Our engagement?”
“That, too.” Mac leaned in to kiss her once more. “Knocking you off your bike was the best thing I ever did.”
She smiled. “I couldn’t agree more.”