“Sara always had a big heart.”
“She made me feel like I mattered. She was the sister I never had. Now I have a chance to do something for her.”
He seemed to contemplate her answer for a few moments. “I know from what Lewis told me that you attend church. Faith has always been important in my life. I attend church regularly. Sara and James made sure it was a part of the children’s lives, too.”
Annie liked the easy way he spoke about his faith. It was refreshing. Lately, professing it had become very out of fashion for a lot of people.
“Sometimes faith is all you have and then you realize it’s the one thing that is always there…that and hope.”
He nodded. “So…you feel at peace with your decision to marry someone you’re not in love with?”
Annie had thought long and hard about that very thing. She had prayed to find the peace and resolve she now carried in her heart about it.
“Marriage is a partnership, as the ceremony says, not to be entered into lightly…not to be falsified.”
“There are some people who would agree that was what we were planning to do…if they knew.”
Annie clasped her hands together on her lap. “I believe our reasons for getting married are valid. We are trying to keep three children together in the only family environment they have ever known.”
Annie wanted to do this…she was meant to do this and not just because it would give her back the one person it had torn her heart out to be parted from.
“If we get married for the sake of the children, Jared, we’re not mocking the sanctity of marriage. We aren’t in love with each other, but we share a commitment to family and I’m sure we can be friends.”
“Why do you feel so strongly about the kids?”
“Because of the childhood I had. I’m in a position to help them have a life that I wished for every day, and I want a family to care for,” she said honestly.
“You sound very certain.”
“I am.”
He looked at her as if seeing her in a new light. “You’re very young. Just twenty-one?”
“Yes.”
“I’m thirty-three,” he said. “I remember what it’s like to be your age. What a person wants at twenty-one won’t automatically be her goal when she’s twenty-five. I need to be sure that you won’t suddenly get the urge to travel or take off for some other reason and leave the kids. They need stability.”
Annie needed that, too—a place to belong, somewhere to be needed. She had wanted to go back to Guthrie for so long, to replace bad memories with good ones. Now faith had shown her the path she felt sure she was meant to take.
“I was an adult by the time I was twelve, Jared. There’s nothing like watching your mother sober up after a three-day drinking binge to make you grow up real fast.”
When he didn’t reply she ploughed ahead. “I’m not afraid of hard work. I can do any domestic chore you can think of. I can cook, I can keep a nice house and I love children.”
Annie leaned forward. “I won’t let you down. I won’t run off and leave you because there isn’t anywhere I want to go. My goals may change, Jared, but if you choose to go through with this, my commitment, to those children won’t. And if you want me to sign a legal and binding agreement, I will.”
Annie sat back in her chair. The ball was squarely in his court. She had messed up once in her life, had lost her faith, but God had given her a chance to make amends. And when she told Jared the main reason she wanted to marry him, Jared would see why it was so important to her.
When their meal arrived, Annie ate with reserved delight. It seemed Jared appreciated his meal with the hearty appetite of a man used to hard work and home-cooked food. And he must work hard. His long, lean body—all flat planes and masculine angles—showed not an ounce of fat. He was toned and healthy.
“No legal contracts,” he said finally, watching her eat for a few seconds more before giving her an indulgent half smile that threatened to take her breath away.
She paused, fork in midair. “I’m sorry, is something wrong?”
“It’s refreshing to eat a meal with a woman and not have to watch her nibble on lettuce leaves and celery sticks like a martyr.” Approval showed in his expression. “You like your food.”
“Absolutely,” she said, smiling for the first time since he’d arrived. “It comes from being nine years old and never quite sure when the next meal might be. I learned to appreciate it when I had it.”
He surveyed her silently for what seemed like an eternity. “You really did have a horrible time of it growing up, didn’t you, Annie?”
She heard no pity in his voice and that was just as well because she didn’t need any. She wasn’t that helpless child any longer. She made her own decisions, lived her own life.
She had come a long way from that horrid little shack with its dingy walls and stained, fading carpets. “No worse than a lot of other kids—and I survived.”
He thought about her answer for a moment then asked, “Is there anything you wanted to ask me?”
“Why did you tell the social worker you were planning to be married?”
He looked up from his meal and Annie almost fell off the chair when one side of his generous mouth lifted in a genuine smile.
“Desperation. Caroline and Luke are foster children. Sara and James were in the process of adopting them both.”
“Are they blood siblings?”
“No. Caroline’s mother gave her up to the state when she was five,” he said, his look hardening. “The man she married didn’t want any other children in his house except his own. He gave the woman a choice…him or Caroline.”
Annie was stunned. “How could she choose a man over her own child?”
“I gave up asking why a long time ago. All I know is that little girl has brought a truckload of joy and sunshine into our family. It’s that woman’s loss and our gain.”
There was a fierce determination in his tone. He wasn’t giving any of these kids up without a fight.
“Luke’s mother was unmarried and apparently very sick for most of the time she had him. When she died he became a state ward, too.”
“Lewis said to see them together you would think they had been brother and sister their whole lives.”
“That was the kind of love Sara and James instilled in them. The same as our parents instilled in Sara and me when we were adopted.”
That two children born to different families and raised by two loving, gentle people could become as close as Jared and his sister gave her hope that Toby, Caroline and Luke could find that, too.
“Toby’s adoption went through soon after he was born. Sara and James named me as legal guardian in their will.”
If he noticed her sudden stillness, the way her breath caught and held, he made no mention of it.
“I don’t want to be married, Annie. But if that’s what it takes to allow me to adopt Caroline and Luke myself, then that is what I’m prepared to do.”
“I know about your aversion to marriage. Lewis told me you would rather have your teeth pulled without anesthetic than say the words ‘I do.’”
Jared smiled slightly. “He knows me well.”
“But what happens if you meet someone and fall in love, if you meet ‘the one’? It won’t