I smiled.
“Then, we’ll make a big, family breakfast together. I want it more than anything in the world.”
“No more quiet holidays?”
“Nope! We’ll fill up all the bedrooms.”
“C’mon! There’s like twenty of them!”
He laughed. “We’ll breathe life into that lonely mansion. And I want to live this dream with you, and only you.”
A tear fell down my face. “I love you. And I would love to start a life with you, Marcus Taylor.”
He grinned. “And I love you, Rebecca White. There’s nothing I’d rather do than marry you and start a family.”
Another kiss.
There was a sudden screech of tires and a faint hum of people that grew exponentially louder over the course of just a few seconds.
“Great,” I murmured, glancing around, “one of the neighbors must have called the press.”
“Come home with me. We need to start this dream right now,” Marcus said with a steady smile.
I glanced at Amanda and Barry who gave me a thumbs-up and a winking grin.
“Let’s do it, baby!” I shouted, jumping into his arms.
Marcus beamed back at me.
“I just have to straighten out one critical detail,” he said.
“Can’t it wait?” I asked anxiously. Reporters were starting to gather in a tiny crowd at the base of the driveway, and I pulled automatically into the house.
“Nope.” He took my hand firmly and marched us down to the gate. “It’s gotta be now.”
I had no idea what he was doing. Literally—none. But I followed along beside him, cringing anxiously behind his shoulder at the flashbulbs until he pulled me to his side.
“Good morning!” he said cheerfully to the buzzing crowd.
They shot each other astonished looks before bombarding him with questions and cameras. But after only a moment, he held up his hand for silence.
“I know you’re probably all looking for a statement after what happened on Good Morning America. Well, all there is to say is this…”
You could have heard a pin drop in the suddenly breathless crowd.
“My lovely fiancée Rebecca and I are expecting our first child.” He met my gaze with a radiant, euphoric smile. “And I couldn’t be any happier.”
Chapter 18
My lovely fiancée Rebecca and I are expecting our first child, and I couldn’t be happier.
The words were still ringing in my ears as we got onto Marcus’s plane. They were still ringing in my ears when we touched down in Napa for a surprise—a getaway from all the wedding/media chaos—weekend. They were still ringing seven hours later as we strolled hand in hand through the vineyards under the stars.
Bright, silver moonlight painted the open countryside in magical hues. A soft celestial glow clung to my future husband’s dark hair and sparkled in his eyes as I turned to him shyly. We hadn’t said much since we’d gotten on the plane. We’d mostly just held on to each other as we made our way into the luxury resort in thoughtful silence. It wasn’t until Marcus asked me on this midnight walk that I realized it was one of our first real sentences to each other since the impromptu press conference this morning. Don’t get me wrong, the silence wasn’t a bad thing. I think that with the enormity of everything that was about to happen…we both just had a lot on our minds.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me all that about your parents?” I asked quietly.
His shoulders stiffened, and I braced for a rebuke, but he merely hung his head and sighed. “I didn’t have the easiest childhood. My father raised me how his father saw fit to raise him and…well, let’s just say it’s nothing I’ll be passing on to our child.”