When You're Ready (Ready #1)(62)

And then I walked into an exam room and met two redheads that took my bitter, pathetic excuse for a life and turned it upside down. I was so afraid that I’d never be able to love anyone, and here I was, holding a child I desperately wanted to call my own and upstairs was a woman I would give my life for.

Turns out I was always capable of love, I just hadn’t found it yet.

“Hey,” Clare’s sleepy voice wafted in as she entered the family room and sat next to me on the couch.

“Hey.” I answered back, “She woke me. Said she didn’t feel good, so I took her down here. I hope you don’t mind.”

She smiled, looking at Maddie in my arms, as she placed her own hand over mine and we begin to stroke Maddie’s hair together. “It’s perfect. Seeing you there with her, it’s perfect,” she whispered.

“I love you.” I told her without hesitation, saying the words I’ve been holding inside of me for far too long, “I’ve loved you Clare, every minute of every day, since the very first day.”

A single tear escaped down Clare’s cheek before I heard the single greatest words of my life.

“I love you, too. Oh God, I love you too, Logan,” she said, her voice raw and heavy with emotion.

I pulled her toward me, kissing her gently, making sure not to wake Maddie who was still asleep in my arms. We kissed, hugged and cried for hours as we held Maddie throughout the night. Exactly like a family would do, because that’s what we were now, a family. After years of being ignored in my own family, I had found one of my own. I no longer needed anyone else, as long as I had Clare and Maddie in my life.

Chapter Fourteen

~Clare~

“This is where we’re supposed to be?” Logan asked as the cab pulled up to the curb. I looked at the hotel, admiring its beautiful exterior, complete with historic brickwork and elegant overhang.

“What’s wrong with it? It’s stunning,” I said as I helped Maddie out of the bright yellow cab.

“Yes, it is. It’s also subdued and understated,” he said with a frown. “Are you sure we’re at the right place?” He checked the address again and shrugged. He handed the cab driver several twenties causing the man to leap from his seat to help with our luggage.

The three of us waited on the New York street corner while the cabbie and valet unloaded our luggage. I looked down the busy street as cars zoomed by and peopled hurried along. New York was a different world. Seeing it now, I wondered how Logan survived the slow paced life of Virginia after living here. Looking over at him now, he was still busy staring at the hotel like it was a Rubix Cube he couldn’t solve.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Yeah, I guess. This just isn’t the place I would have envisioned. My mom is a certain type of woman,” he chose his words carefully.

“We’ll call her extravagant. She marries for money, and when the man she married stops giving her money, she moves on. Her last wedding was in Paris. Everyone was flown in for the week long affair, and it ended up costing her husband over a million dollars. They were married about a year.”

My jaw dropped to the floor. Who spent that kind of money on a wedding? I had that much sitting in the bank from Ethan’s life insurance and I was hoping to make it last a lifetime, but Logan’s mom had spent that and more for a wedding ceremony that rivaled Kim Kardashian’s.

“I guess we’ll never find out if we don’t go in, huh?” I picked up Maddie, who had been bouncing up and down gabbing about her first plane trip and entered the lobby. She had quieted down a bit, taking in the sights of New York as we drove here from the airport. It was adorable to see her tiny nose glued to the window of the cab as she tried to see the tops of the skyscrapers.

The lobby of the hotel was breathtaking, and everything you would expect from a historic New York hotel. Majestic marble floors led to a grand mahogany staircase. There were plush sofas and chairs grouped together making intimate seating arrangements. People wandered about reading and drinking coffee, speaking in just about every language known to man.

Logan went to the desk and checked us into our suite.

Once the valet escorted us to the elevator, I asked, “Is it weird to be back?”

“No,” he answered.

“No? Why?” I asked.

He shrugged, saying, “I have you and Maddie with me. I’m here, making new memories with you and that erases all the bad.”

I grasped his hand in mine, feeling the warmth seep into my skin. Sometimes I had to touch him just to make sure he was real and wasn’t a figment of my imagination. Why the universe had decided I was lucky enough to get this second chance, I would never know, but I wasn’t letting it go.

Exiting the elevator, the valet opened our suite and Maddie raced inside to one of the two bedrooms, immediately jumping up and down on the pristinely made bed.

“I guess that one is hers,” I laughed.

“I think they’re both fairly equal, so it doesn’t really matter. Besides, all I need is a bed...and you.” His voice suddenly became sexier and lower, taking on a rougher quality. I called it his “sex voice” and it was my favorite of all the different variations of his voice.

Logan had gotten over his fear of being intimate in the same house as Maddie very quickly. After Maddie’s bout with the stomach flu, he had spent every night with us and it had been pure bliss. Seeing him walk through the door after finishing his shift at the hospital, and waking up next to him made me never want to see him go. Maddie loved having him around. I secretly asked myself if we were moving too fast, having only dated for a few months, but it felt right. He fit in our world perfectly and we fit in his.