Page 114 of Love Me Boldly

Another player jumped off the ice and Jonah handed him another water, grinning broadly at something Graham said to him. These were the moments I treasured the most. The moments when Graham never failed to treat Jonah as if he was his, even if he now legally was. The moments when I got to watch the most incredible, loving, and patient husband treat our children with more kindness and grace than I’d ever remembered experiencing in my entire life.

Cold tears swamped my vision, and I sniffed them back. I probably only had one or two more years left of being able to sit in the stands and watch Jonah on the bench, handing players skates and grabbing water bottles and towels from the bench floor wherever they were flung when players jumped to the ice for their shift. At least, until he was hopefully sitting on the bench or on the ice as a player. If that happened, it wouldn’t be with his dad as his coach, which was a bummer.

Graham was decked out in his Crystal High School coaching colors. He still hadn’t been able to find a job in Deer Creek, but Crystal was only the next town over, so he was close. He landed his job teaching chemistry the summer he decided to stay for six weeks.

I truly had no idea when he did all that that he’d be here all these years or that we would have been married three years ago. That on that same day, Jonah would ask if he could be adopted so we could all share the Marchese name.

Or that a year and a half later, we would get the best surprise of our lives.

Somehow, the surprises kept coming, and life kept getting better.

“How’s she doing?”

Trina sat down next to me and flicked the tiny green ball on top of Anna Grace’s hat. She and Cole came to as many games as they could, which was a lot considering they now had their hands full with their own four kids. Two from Cole’s first marriage, and two with each other.

“Sleepy, cranky, and teething.” I grinned as I said it though. I didn’t take a moment of my life for granted, nor the fact I was able to have kids naturally in the first place. After years of surgeries, fibroids, and eventually losing an ovary, I had started doubting it’d ever happen for us, but at some point, in time, Lady Luck had decided to glance in my direction again, and there I was.

Spending a Friday night with my daughter, named after Graham’s mom, my best friend on one side of me, and my father-in-law on the other.

Who would have thought.

“Let me at her.” Trina wiggled her fingers and reached for the buckle on my baby carrier.

Next to me, Jordan scoffed. “Grandpa privileges come before friend privileges, Miss Paxton. We’ve discussed this.”

“Unfair.”

“Fair,” he stated, like he was getting ready to state in case in front of a judge. “You see her more. If anyone’s getting theirwell-washedhands on that baby, it’s me.”

I chuckled. It was possible I’d becomeslightlyneurotic after Anna Grace’s birth about germs and touching and hand washing.

“Not nice, Jordan.”

“Come on, come on. My turn.” He slapped his gloved hands together.

Graham wasn’t an exact replica of his dad, but man, it was close. Jordan was older, nearing sixty and had bought a condo on the mountain so he could visit on the weekends but still give us privacy. It was the best of both worlds, especially since he was nearing retirement.

I might not have had a good dad in my life, and there were moments the reality of what I missed out was a painful pierce to the heart, but being around Jordan had been healing. It took three visits with him to get over the awkwardness of who I was, how our paths would have initially crossed had I been at my father’s trial, but after the third visit, he pulled me aside and told me he was proud of the life I’d built. Enjoyed the person I was. He assured me he didn’t see me and think of missing Sophie, or become angry at my father, and somehow, slowly after that, I began trusting him too.

Hard not to trust a man who reminded me so much of Graham in the first place.

“All right, all right.”

I unbuckled my daughter from her carrier, and before I could tug her feet out of the holes, Jordan pulled her into his arms. She was eight months old, happy as a clam most days, and was born with Graham’s curly dark hair. Doctors had told me she’d probably lose it in the first few months, but it was still there, a fluffy little mop on her head when I didn’t make her wear a hair tie.

Jordan gently bounced her in his arms, and I glanced back to the game, to the man at the bench, and found his focus on me instead of the game.

A soft smile curled his lips, and I blew him a kiss.

He turned back to the game, and I sat back and enjoyed watching every moment. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t blown me a kiss.

I’d get one later.

A better one.

* * *

Graham

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