“Having a baby.”
I reach for his hand and press it to my stomach. For a second, he just stares at me. His gaze moving between my face and my stomach until finally the information registers and he smiles wide.
“Lilly… really?”
“Really.” I laugh.
He’s on his feet, his hands on my face, kissing me between whoops of laughter and joy.
When he finally releases me long enough to accept congratulations from Tessa and Holt, who are watching our announcement with smiles of their own, and tears in Tessa’s case, my friend hugs me tight.
“Thank you,” she says.
“For what?”
She doesn’t bother swiping at the tears streaming down her face. “For bringing my dad back. Thank you, Lilly.”
“No, Tessa.” I grip her arms, but my eyes travel the room to find my mountain man watching us with nothing but love on his face. “I should be the one thanking you. I wouldn’t be here right now if it weren’t for you.”
She pulls me tight one more time before I go back to Luke’s arms.
Exactly where I belong.
Ten Years Later…
Luke
The house is quiet. Strangely so.
The thing about working from a home office when you have five young children at home, there isn’t much in the way of quiet.
Lilly and I have become masters at arranging meetings and phone calls around nap times and coordinatingplaydateswith the other young families on the mountain. Fortunately, there are plenty of them to trade off with.
And I don’t mind.
Not at all.
I couldn’t even have begun to imagine the chaos my quiet, reclusive life would turn into after Lilly burst through my door tenyears ago, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
She saved me from myself in so many ways. Without her and our beautiful family, life would look a lot different, and not in a good way.
The truth is, I still can’t believe this is my life some days.
The business I’d started so long ago as a small, one-man show has turned into a full-fledged firm. We had a full roster of advisors now, all of them working remotely, and more clients than I could have imagined back then. Mostly because I never had any of the systems in place to manage them.
Lilly changed all that.
She made sure we were ready for the explosion of work and handled the transition smoothly.
The way she handles everything.
I glance toward the door, listening to the quiet a little longer than I should. With five kids, it’s unusual.
Five.
I huff out a breath that turns into a laugh.
Some days, it’s still hard to believe I got a second chance at being a father. Hell, I barely deserved the first one.
