She wiggled her fingers. “Quite the stone.”
Laughing and teasing each other, they sat back down and continued to eat the delicious charcuterie board and sip their champagne. Faith felt as though she was dreaming, her head completely in a daze. Happiness filled her like pink soapbubbles, shimmering and sparkling in the light like the new ring on her hand.
She closed her eyes and imagined being married to Ryan, getting to wake up next to him every morning and getting to share a home with him in the evenings. She couldn’t help letting out a chuckle, and Ryan said, “What?”
“I was imagining us being married.”
“You were picturing me as an old man with a pot belly, huh? Are you sure you want to be married to me when all this hair is gone?”
She laughed, flopping down on the picnic blanket and smiling up at him. “Yes. I can’t wait to be married to little old Ryan, even if he has a pot belly and no hair.”
“Hey, let’s not rush that part.” He bent over and kissed her nose. “There will be plenty of things to enjoy before I lose my hair.”
“True.” She closed her eyes again, sighing with happiness. Life would continue on the way it always had, one day at a time. But now she knew that she would have the man she loved by her side for all of those days, and she couldn’t have been more overjoyed. “I don’t want to rush anything. I just want to savor every moment of tonight, and every moment that’s going to come afterward.”
“The hectic fuss of planning a wedding, facing the fact that my family members are going to be your in-laws, realizing that a goofy guy like me totally doesn’t deserve a smart, beautiful goddess like you –”
She snorted and swatted his arm. “You mean getting to plan one of the happiest days of our lives and having a blast doing it, getting a whole new family when I want one so much and I love yours, and feeling more and more every day that I’m the one who doesn’t deserve you.” He smiled down at her, stroking a strandof hair behind her ear. “Truce, we deserve each other. I’m going to do my best to make you happy, Faith.”
“I’m going to do my best to make you happy,” she said softly.
“You already do,” he said, and they shared another kiss. Faith closed her eyes, fingering the new circlet of gold on her finger and feeling like the luckiest girl in the world.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Julia stuck a finger in her mouth, sucking off a delicious glob of chocolate pie filling. She shut her eyes for a moment, savoring the rich, creamy taste.
“Yup,” she said to Quinn, who was lying down in her bassinet by the kitchen table. “I make a mean chocolate pie.”
Quinn made a gurling sound and wiggled her feet in the air. Julia laughed and replaced the spoon into the bowl of pie filling, her attention grabbed by the pasta sauce that had started to bubble on the stove. She turned it down, stirring it with another spoon and laughing at what a disaster it might have been if she’d used the chocolate spoon for the tomato sauce.
Macey let out a sound that sounded like a roar, and sure enough, when Julia looked over into the corner where she was playing, she saw that Macey was playing with a T-Rex toy which had apparently become best friends with her princess doll. Julia smiled, remembering the days when her own imagination had been that wild and that joyful. It brought her a burst of happiness to be so near to Macey’s magical little pretend world.
Macey looked up and started to dance in her sitting position when the song on the kiddie tunes playlist changed. Julia was playing it on her phone, which she’d turned up to full volume.It felt as though the kitchen had been turned into a disco for babies, but she’d found that she enjoyed the happy little songs. Sometimes she and Macey sang along, and she loved hearing her little girl’s exuberant, barely intelligible and off-key singing. It was adorable.
She tested the noodles next, noting that they were ready to be drained. She was just about to carry the strainer over to the kitchen sink when she saw that the sink was still full of baby bottles that were being soaked.
“Oh drat,” she murmured, but she kept smiling. It wouldn’t take her too long to remedy that. Their sink had a partition down the middle, and she quickly moved all of the baby bottles to one side. She didn’t know what kind of plastic they were made of, but she doubted it could withstand boiling water.
Once she’d drained the noodles, she stirred the sauce again and then went back to making the strawberry walnut salad. She had just finished chopping up the last of the strawberries when Cooper walked into the kitchen. For a moment he stared at the chaotic scene before him with wide eyes, and then he started to laugh with astonishment.
“Sweetheart,” he said, staring at the bowl of chocolate pie filling, the half-rolled pie crust, the bowl of lettuce, and the pan filled with bubbling tomato sauce. “What on earth are you up to?”
She turned down the volume on the baby songs playlist so she could hear him better. “Making dinner,” she said, laughing, too, and not understanding why he was so surprised.
“Are we having chocolate pie for dinner? I already heard you telling Macey that we’re having lemon squares for dessert, so I know that pie isn’t on the dessert menu.”
“Oh.” She grinned. “Good point. No, the pie is for Dean. As a sort of congratulatory, ‘Keep Getting Well As Soon As Possible’ gift. And I started making the pie, but then realized it was timefor me to start making dinner, so I ended up doing both at the same time.”
“Huh,” he said, leaning against the door frame. “Are you trying to make things as chaotic as possible?”
She knew he was teasing her, but she realized that it was also a valid question. “No,” she said, chuckling. “I know it looks like a lot in here. In theory, I should have cleaned up the sink first, then made dinner, then made the pie, then cleaned up the sink again. That’s what I would have done in the past.” She smiled. “But I can’t have order right now, it isn’t possible. These two little ones won’t hold to any kind of a set plan, at least not at their ages, so I just keep moving from task to task without worrying so much about what makes sense.”
“You’re not stressed out?” he asked, making eye contact. She loved that he cared enough to ask with such genuine concern.
“Oh, I am sometimes.” She laughed. “It’s okay, I know you are too. I think that’s a little inevitable right now. But I mean, this –” She gestured around her. “It’s not chaotic, it’s beautiful. I’m realizing that the busyness and even the messes are a blessing. This is such a special time, and the more I’m getting used to it the more fun it is. Even when it feels like we’re completely running out of space in our house and we’re even running out of enough time to sleep, I’m determined to soak in every moment.”
“Every moment?” Cooper smiled at her.
