Page 126 of The Coppersmith Farmhouse (Jamison Valley 1)
Not that I didn’t think Jess would be great with her, but it had been just the two of us for so long, I wanted to make sure she knew that I loved her and that Jess and I getting married would never change that.
“Roe?” I called as she finished a bite of Froot Loops.
“Yeah, Mommy?”
“I wanted to talk to you about something, baby girl. Something about me and Jess.”
“What is it?”
“Well, Jess asked me if I would marry him last night. In a wedding. That means he would become a part of our family forever. I want to marry him but I also want you to be okay with that.”
“Isn’t he a part of our family already?” she asked.
I let out a small chuckle. “Yes, sweetie. I guess he is already a part of our family.”
“If you have a wedding to Jess, does that mean I get to wear a pretty dress?”
“Of course. Any dress you want,” I promised.
“Yay! Can it be purple?”
“You bet. Whatever you want.”
I smiled as she went back to her cereal. Not much fazed my Rowen. Or maybe she didn’t get what I was telling her. But it didn’t matter. She’d understand it eventually. All she needed to know right now was that we were her family and we loved her.
While she finished eating, I gave my gleaming ring another thorough inspection.
A round-cut diamond, about a carat and a half, sat in a solid white-gold band. The edges of the diamond were encased in white gold so that the stone wouldn’t snag on anything. The band itself had smaller diamonds all the way around, inset into the metal.
“Mommy?” Rowen called, taking my attention away from my ring.
“Yeah?”
“Does that mean Jess can be my daddy?” she asked quietly. Her fingers were drumming on the table and she wasn’t looking up from her cereal.
“Do you want him to be your daddy, Roe?”
“Yeah. If he wants to,” she said.
“I think he’d really like that, sweetie. Maybe tonight when he gets home you can ask him.”
A huge smile broke across her face. “Okay.”
I smiled too, letting a warm wave of happy course right through my body and settle straight in my heart.
“Help! I need help! My son, he’s in trouble!” I heard shouted from the ER doors.
A tall, lean man rushed in with a teenager at his side. The kid was barely moving. His father had ahold of him underneath one of his arms, the other braced behind the kid’s back. The kid’s head was hanging down and his feet were dragging on the ground.
I shot up from behind the desk and ran to the wall to grab a wheelchair, pushing it over as fast as I could so the father could drop his son into the seat.
“Come this way,” I ordered, immediately wheeling the kid to an ER room. The second I cleared the doorway, I pushed the call button for Everett.
When we got into the room, the father helped me get the kid into the bed. Once he was lying back against the pillow, I got a look at the kid’s face.
Him?
It was the face of the asshole punk kid who had come to my house on Halloween and broken all my pumpkins. The same asshole punk kid who had threatened me on my lawn before Jess had shoved him into the back of a police car.
