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  Chapter Eight: Page Three

  Then, her voice straining through a throat thick with tears, “This is where you get to kiss me,” she prompted, sliding her hand into his hair, tangling it in her fingers to draw him closer to her. “And the orchestra plays the violins.”

  His smile was slow, but his eyes were heating her from the inside out. “To tell you the truth, Mollie, I wasn’t planning on an audience for this next bit.” Then, with his mouth an inch from hers, he stopped. “No, wait.”

  “I’ve been waiting four years…”

  “There’s one more thing I don’t understand. Who the devil’s Jerry? And what were you doing driving his Porsche?”

  She groaned and leaned against his shoulder. “Thanks a lot, Tom. You’ve just ruined the perfect moment by reminding me that I’ve got to confess to my publisher that his car is a wreck.”

  “Your publisher? That is serious.” Then he grinned. “Don’t worry about it, sweetheart. I’ll get it fixed, I’ll even tell him that it wasn’t your fault — “

  “It wasn’t…” she began, but he pulled her close, stopped her protest with the most tender of kisses.

  And then, once he had her undivided attention, he murmured, “Now cue the violins.”

  ***

  “Daddy?”

  Tom jerked awake, thought for a moment he’d been dreaming. Then he saw Harry standing beside the bed peering anxiously at him pre-dawn light.

  “What is it, Harry? Does your arm hurt?”

  “No. I just wanted to make sure you were still here.”

  Not a dream. This small anxious little boy with his hair tousled from sleep, his arm in a sling, was his son, the child he thought forever lost.

  “I’m home, son,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere without you ever again.” He lifted the cover and Harry needed no encouragement to scramble into bed beside him, his anxious frown immediately transformed into a wide grin.

  “Do you know any stories?”

  “A few,” he said, trying to think of something a four year old would enjoy.

  At his back Mollie moved closer to nuzzle his neck. “Once upon a time…” she prompted, propping herself up on her elbow, so that the three of them were all together, a real family. Tom doubted that this was what his publisher had in mind when he’d advised getting in touch with his feminine side. But it worked for him and his own grin must have set some kind of record.

  “Okay, here goes,” he said. “Once upon a time…”

  The End