“You’re being quiet. Are you asleep?” Harlow called out from her bath.
I picked up the letters and walked to the bathroom. She noticed them immediately, and a smile touched her lips. If I didn’t have her, these letters would have been golden. But she was here.
“Are you going to read them?” she asked.
I looked down at them and then back at her. “No,” I replied. “I don’t need to. They were for a Grant who didn’t have his Harlow. I have my Harlow. That Grant doesn’t exist. The broken, empty man you wrote these to will never exist. But I’m going to keep them. Pack them away. Maybe one day, we’ll pull them down and remember. Just not today.”
She tilted her head to the side, and a wet curl brushed her neck. “You wouldn’t have been empty. Lila Kate would have filled the emptiness I left behind.”
Maybe she would have. But she never could have made up for the fact that the women who owned my soul was gone. “Lila Kate will always be my baby girl. I will cherish and love her until the day I die. But you . . . you’re the love of my life. You’re my forever. I’ll grow old loving you.”
Harlow sighed, but it was a happy sigh. “You are a smooth talker, Grant Carter. A real smooth talker.”
“Harlow?”
She sat up in the water. “Yes?”
“Will you marry me?”
She giggled and held up her ring finger, which had the diamond ring on it. “We already did this. Remember? I said yes.”
“Tomorrow. Will you marry me tomorrow?”
She looked at me a moment like I had lost my mind. “We just got home from the hospital.”
I nodded. “Yes, but I want to call you my wife. I want your last name to be Carter. I want you to be mine.”
“I am yours. I have been for a very long time now.”
“Please.”
She bit her bottom lip and looked like she was contemplating it. Finally, she let her bottom lip free. “Three weeks. Give me three weeks. I can get Blaire’s help to get a dress, and it will give your parents, my dad, and the Colts time to make plans to get back here. It doesn’t have to be fancy. I actually prefer simple. But I want the people we love here.”
I could give her three weeks if that was what she wanted. “Deal.”
She stood up and pointed to the towels. “Could you hand me one of those? I need to call Blaire.”
The bubbles and water running down her na**d body commanded my complete attention. I couldn’t touch her until her cardiologist cleared her. But looking at her was so damn nice.
“I’m getting cold.” The laughter in her voice snapped me out of my lusting. I reached for a towel and walked over to her and wrapped it around her. Just as I was leaning in to kiss her, the cries of our daughter filled the room through the baby monitor.
Harlow gently shoved me. “Hurry, go check on her.”
I turned and ran.
Stepping into her room, I turned on the light dimmer so the bright light didn’t hurt her eyes. When she saw me standing over her, she stopped crying and kicked her feet and sucked hungrily on her fist. That was her hungry sign. The nurses had taught me that.
I picked her up and carried her over to the changing table to freshen her up, and then we went to see Mommy. I needed to go downstairs and fix a bottle, and Harlow wouldn’t be OK with me leaving a fussing Lila Kate in her room.
“Someone’s hungry and wants to visit with her mommy while I fix a bottle,” I said, carrying Lila Kate over to her mother, who quickly slid her nightgown on and crawled up onto the bed so I could lay Lila Kate beside her.
“Hey, you,” she cooed at our daughter. “You ready for something to eat? That hand won’t taste good for long.”
I left them upstairs and headed downstairs to get the bottle ready.
Harlow
I had been forced to shove Grant out the door this morning. He had been pacing and talking on the phone with a contractor. It had been forever since he’d worked, and he was spending a great deal of the time on the phone. The frustration etched on his forehead was hard to miss. Lila Kate was still sleeping a good portion of the day, and I rested when she did. When she was awake, we normally lay on my bed and talked and played. It wasn’t difficult.
It was time for lunch, and she was getting fussy, so I brought her downstairs and laid her in the bassinet while I fixed her bottle. The doorbell rang just when I had her bottle warm enough. I pulled it out of the hot water and dried it off, then headed for the door.
A man I had never met before stood on the other side, but I didn’t have to know him to figure out who it was. The similarities were too strong—his face was an older version of Grant’s. This was his father. The man we never talked about.
Whenever I tried to mention him, the hurt look in Grant’s eyes made me back off. I knew he had no idea where his mother was, and he said that when she called him, he’d let her know about the baby. I had gone through seven months of pregnancy, and two weeks had passed since Lila Kate’s birth, and she still hadn’t called to check in.
“Hello,” I said, breaking the silence.
He smiled, and I could see he was nervous. Even his smile was like Grant’s. “I’m, uh, I’m Brett Carter. Grant’s dad.”
I nodded. “I gathered that. The resemblance is uncanny,” I said.
Brett chuckled. “No nonsense. Figured you’d be the type who won Grant over. He’s had enough fake and flighty in his life.”