excerpt
Through a mouthful of peanut butter and jelly, he mumbled, “Twen’t nothin’.”
Rachael padded to the door and opened it but stopped when she heard him whisper her name. She turned around.
“You’re a nice girl, Rachael Conrad.”
She still had a happy smile on her face when she crawled into bed.
“I’m going to get gifts for the children.” Tyne turned from the half-decorated pine tree with a Christmas ornament in her hand, and looked at Morley. She didn’t have to say which children she meant. Rachael and Bobby were never far from either of their minds.
Morley looked up from the farm accounts he was working on at the dining table. “Why am I not surprised?” He grinned at her, and sat back on the chair. “But how will you deliver them?”
“I’ll take them to the house,” Tyne said with a shrug as she hung the bauble on a branch. “How else?”
“And you think Ruby will let you give them to the kids?”
She picked another glittery ball out of a box. “As much as I hope she will, I really have my doubts. But I’ll just have to be content to leave the gifts there, and trust that Rachael and Bobby will get them on Christmas morning.” Tyne secured the ornament to the tree and reached for another.
Morley got up and, going to stand behind her, wrapped his arms around her. “You’re a wonderful woman, Mrs. Cresswell, you know that?”
She smiled and covered both his hands with her own where they rested on her abdomen. “And you’re a wonderful man who says such nice things, Mr. Cresswell.”
Gently he turned her around and looked intently into her smiling face. “You miss the kids, don’t you, hon?”
Tyne sighed and nodded. “Um um, I still do.”
“And so do I,” Morley said seriously, “and even when we have our very own, I know we’ll still miss them.”
This brought a smile to Tyne’s lips and eyes.
Libros Libertad 