Jill Shalvis - Long-Lost Mom

“Stone!” Jenna gasped, but Sara laughed.

“And you squalled,” he went on, unconcerned with Jenna’s growing horror. “Holy moly, could you yell. You practically brought the hospital walls down.”

“Stop it,” Jenna interrupted him with a laugh that helped dissolve some of her tension. She tore through her purse and pulled out the picture she’d treasured for so long. “Here. I look at this every day.”

Stone drew in a surprised breath. “You kept it.” A wealth of emotion weighed down the words.

“Yes,” Jenna said, meeting his gaze. “It’s my most prized possession.”

Sara stared down at herself as an infant. “You…really looked at this every day?”

“Yes.”

After a moment she handed it back. “You left me.”

The bell rang and Sara leaped up, but Stone stopped her with a gentle hand. “Honey, you wanted to know, and I felt you deserved that. I felt you were grown up enough to understand.”

“I am grown up enough.”

“I know it hurts,” he said with a tenderness that tore at Jenna. “It’s hard, it’s unfair, but everything we’re going to tell you is the truth. Don’t you want to hear all of it?”

Around them the school bustled with life as students wound their way back to class. Sara stared at Jenna.

“Do you love my dad?” she demanded.

Jenna was startled at the unexpected question. Both Sara and Stone’s gazes fell on her. Silent and waiting. So easy, but she’d never ever said those words out loud to anyone, not even to Kristen.

And yet she felt them. Oh, how she felt them.

She glanced at Stone, saw his heart and soul open to her, vulnerable, just there for the taking, and she suddenly understood what made him hold back.

As far as he knew, she was still unable to completely trust him, unable to allow herself to love him the way he needed to be loved.

Taking the biggest plunge of her life, she reached out for Stone’s hand and felt him grab on without hesitation. “Yes,” she told Sara proudly through a haze of tears. “I love your dad. With all my heart.”

Stone’s smile was dazzling, and the best reward she could have hoped for. “And you, Sara,” she said, turning to her daughter. “I love you, too, so very much.”

“You probably have to say that,” Sara said, shrugging.

“No.” Jenna grasped the girl’s shoulders, bending down a bit and holding on until their gazes met. “I’ve never said those words before.” She felt the resistance in the thin shoulders. “Never, Sara. I’ve saved them for you and your dad, and I’m sorry it took me so long. But I promise I’ll never stop telling you. Will you try to believe that?”

Another shrug, but something in the girl’s eyes was different. An awareness…and hope. “I suppose,” she muttered.

“Thank you,” Jenna said softly. “You’ve given me more than I could ever have hoped for.”

“I gotta go back to class now.” Sara tried to look nonchalant and failed miserably. “So…are you gonna, you know, like be around?”

“Yes,” Jenna replied. “I’ll be around. Every day of your life.” The tears she’d been trying to hold back fell freely.

“Mom!” Mortified, Sara glanced around to see who was watching them. “You can’t cry here!”

Jenna and Stone both burst into laughter as Jenna did her best to wipe away her tears of relief and joy. “Sorry!” But it was hopeless. She couldn’t control herself. The more she tried, the more she cried.

“Dad!” Sara pushed Stone toward Jenna. “Do something. Make her happy. Quick!”

Stone hugged Sara fiercely, his own eyes suspiciously bright. “She is happy, honey. And so am I. I’m so proud of you.” Sara squirmed in the tight embrace. “And I love you.”

“Just don’t kiss me,” she begged. “Not here in front of everyone.”

“You’re really okay with all this?” Stone pulled away to peer into her face. “You’re going back to class?”

“Yeah.” Sara stared at Jenna as she left her father’s arms. “I’ll…see you later. Right?”

“Right.” Jenna held her breath, didn’t dare ask for the hug she was dying for.

Sara looked carefully over her shoulder. Coast apparently clear, she shrugged again. “You can, you know…hug me. If you want.”

“Oh, I want,” Jenna whispered, pulling Sara close. Closing her eyes, she savored the feel of her daughter in her arms at long last. She was thin, smelled like soap and dirt and peanut butter, and she felt like the most precious bundle on earth.

Over Sara’s head she looked at Stone. And there in his gaze, she found all the love and acceptance she could ever need.

Sara pulled back, shot her a shy smile and ran off to make her class, leaving Jenna alone with Stone.

“I didn’t imagine this happening here, in a schoolyard,” he murmured, reaching for her.

Feeling his strong arms enclose her in his warmth, Jenna sighed with pleasure. “What? Telling Sara?”

“No. Telling you I love you.” He kissed her, a light sweet kiss filled with promise. “Have I told you how wonderful you are?”

Her heart filled, overflowed. Never had she felt such contentment. “Maybe you could tell me again?” Her voice caught on her happy tears.

“I’ll tell you every day of your life if you’d like. I love you, Jenna. Only you. Always you.”

Had she ever felt so wanted? So needed? So loved? “I meant what I said to Sara. I love you, Stone, so much. I think I always have.” Hugging him close, she promised, “And I won’t ever leave you again. We can be together, forever.”

“There is one thing.”

Butterflies ravaged her stomach at his serious tone, and she froze in his arms. “What?”

“How do you feel about changing your name one more time?”

Startled, she pulled back, but his hooded expression gave nothing away. His arms were banded tightly around her as if he was…uncertain. “Change my name?”

“To mine.” Lifting a hand, he slid a callused finger over a lingering tear before he bent and kissed her again.

Off guard, she still just stared at him. “Are you…asking me to marry you?”

“Yes, I am.” A grin tugged at his lips. “You sound so shocked. Is it that big of a surprise?”

“No. No, it’s just that I…” More tears, unstoppable this time. “I’d hoped,” she managed before flinging her arms around his neck. “Oh, Stone, how I’d hoped.”

“Is that a yes? You want to be mine?”

He asked so solemnly it brought fresh tears. “Yes,” she whispered. She’d never felt so right anywhere else as she did in his arms. The pure sense of sweet homecoming made it difficult to speak. “Yes to everything. But as for being yours, I already am. Forever.”

“Wow! Mom! Come look quick! He did it again, I swear!”

Jenna, who, even after two years still thrilled to hearing Sara call her Mom, came running, for the little he in question could have done anything from throwing up his carrots on the den rug-again-to eating the dog food.

Unfortunately Chase Cameron, ten-month-old tyrant of the household, had already learned that people took one look at his pudgy adorable self and turned to mush.

Jenna skidded into the room as fast as her eight-month pregnant body would allow. She eyed her son first, taking in the cherubic expression, the light blue eyes and dark curls almost too pretty to be wasted on a boy. “Did he tear up your book report again?” she asked Sara.

“Ah…no, but hey, that was a good one. I should have saved that excuse,” her daughter admitted.

“You haven’t even started it yet, have you?” Jenna sighed. “You’re supposed to be-”

“I know, I know.” Sara straightened, and in a perfect mimic of Jenna’s voice said starchly, “Studying. It’s the concrete paving the walk to my future.”

“Well it is,” Jenna insisted, with a laugh.

“I know, Mom,” Sara moaned, dragging the last word out.

Sara seemed to think she knew a lot lately, something that Jenna and Stone attributed to her new teen status. They considered themselves lucky they’d gotten married, settled in Stone’s house and had the baby before facing the new challenge of living with a twelve-year-old.

“Watch,” Sara commanded. Turning to the toddler in her lap, she smiled down at him as he happily chewed on his fist. At the sight of Jenna, Chase shot her a slow crooked toothless grin that reminded her very much of Stone. She sighed in contentment.

“Chase! Pay attention now,” Sara admonished, ruining it by kissing him sloppily on the cheek. Reaching around her brother, she picked up her basketball, which had suspicious-looking drool marks on it, and set it in Chase’s lap. “Do it again,” she urged, their two dark heads bending in concentration over the ball. “Show Momma.”

Watching Sara lavish attention on Chase brought a lump of pure joy to Jenna’s throat. Then strong warm arms wrapped around her from behind, and with a watery smile, Jenna leaned back into them.

“She’s so good with him,” she murmured.

“And you’re so good with both of them.” Slipping his hands around to support her bulging belly, Stone kissed Jenna, chuckling when, beneath his hands, the next Cameron baby stirred and kicked. “Ready for yet another, Mrs. Cameron?”

“Who would have thought?” she whispered dreamily, watching Chase lean forward to gum Sara’s ball with his very wet mouth, much to his older sister’s disgust. “Who would have thought I’d be a mom to two-point-five kids, a driver in the carpool and live in a perfect house with a white picket fence-”

“It’s not white.”

“-and be this happy,” she finished on a sigh of contentment.

Stone stilled, then hugged her fiercely, careful to take care with the unborn baby. “Any regrets?”

Before them, on the rug, Sara took the ball away from her brother, turned him in her arms and hugged him with the same fierce love that Stone was hugging Jenna.

Jenna’s heart squeezed tight with love, and in Stone’s arms, she turned to face him.

She kissed him with all her heart, then cupped his face, pulling back so she could see into his eyes. “No regrets. I have everything I ever dreamed about, all because of you.”

“Nothing missing?”

“Weeell…” She’d caught the teasing light in his eye, and knew he was referring to the way her hormones had reacted to this pregnancy.

With an eager grin she pulled him closer so she could whisper in his ear, telling him what was missing and exactly how he could fix it.

“Shame on you, Mrs. Cameron,” he whispered in mock shock. A wicked gleam lit his face. “But let’s hurry and put everyone to bed so I can help you out with that, er, particular need.”

She laughed, and they both raced into the den.

When pressed for an answer on why she writes romance, Jill Shalvis just smiles and says she didn’t realize there was anything else. She’s written over a dozen novels so far, and doesn’t plan on stopping. She lives in California, in a house filled with young children, too many animals and her hero/husband.