Page 65 of Rejected
“Then whatever in the heck was I afraid of?”
Laurie laughed and cried at the same time. His hand came up to her face, his finger wiping away a tear that was spilling down her cheek.
“Happy tears?” he asked.
“Happy,” Jo confirmed. “And angry as well.”
“Why angry?” His voice was impossibly tender again, the way it got right when he was about to make her fall apart in his arms. A delicious trembling started in spreading down her body in anticipation.
“Are you telling me that I have missed six months ofthiswithyou,” she said, breathless, because the kissing had begun the minute she’d opened her lips, “and you expect me not to beincandescentlyangry?”
“I expect you,” Laurie murmured between kisses, his voice drawling as if he were about to lose control of his faculties, “to be nothing but what you are.”
Then he moaned a little as her hand found its way to the small of his back.
His words barely made sense to her, as she was too busy getting lost in his kisses. But it did not matter.
She had all her life to decipher their meaning.
Epilogue One
Two years later, Justin came back from the war for good.
By then, Jo and Laurie had settled into what Meg called ‘the chaos of married life’ most comfortably. Meg, her John and their nearly two-year-old twins were living in London, and Amy had finally married her French suitor—the reason for that cryptic billet about betrayal that had started it all.
Jo and Laurie were busy managing both Orchard Hall and the Lowry estate, which was a source of constant guilt for Jo, but did not appear to bother Laurie in the least. He was constantly so radiant with happiness, it almost hurt to look directly at him. He’d been this way for two years, and did not show signs of stopping anytime soon.
Absurd boy.
On this particular evening in late December, they were sitting at their favorite spot in Orchard Hall’s smaller library, Laurie dictating business letters with his secretary, and Jo at her own desk, working on the second volume ofDear Beththe publisher had practically begged her for.
It had been raining softly for the better part of the day, an icy rain that almost kept turning to snow. The fire was burning in the corner, the Christmas wreaths were alight with white candles, and Jo and Laurie kept on working in companionable silence. In Jo’s stomach, the baby was sleeping, waiting. Getting ready.
“I need your opinion about this sentence I just wrote,” she told Laurie. “Am I interrupting you?”
“Never, love,” he replied immediately, lifting his head from his papers. A curl had fallen down his forehead, and he looked like a boy. Tired. Happy. That perpetually hungry look was long gone from his face—except when they went upstairs to their bedroom. Then it returned with a vengeance. “Let’s hear the sentence.”
She read it out loud to him. He closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair, as if he were enjoying the finest beverage he’d tasted in his life.
“Perfection,” he murmured when she finished.
“It is not,” Jo insisted. “It needs something in order to be—”
She was interrupted by a servant, discreetly entering the room.
“Lord Vidal is here, m’lady,” he said.
Laurie jumped to his feet, at once tense. “We are not at home for his lordship,” he said sharply. “Send him away.”
Jo came up behind him, covering his hand with hers. His fingers were clenched whitely in a fist.
“This is his house, Teddy,” she said quietly into her husband’s ear. “And he has been away at war for the better part of two years. Show him in,” she said more loudly to the servant.
“I shall murder him,” Laurie grit his teeth. “He left you here all alone. He let you manage his affairs, his responsibility! I could kill him for treating you thus.”
“So you shall,” Jo replied, in consoling tones. “Only let me ascertain whether he is in one piecefirst, and then you can do any kind of violence you prefer to him.”
Teddy tried to smile but he couldn’t. His expression had turned darker than she had ever seen it.
