Ginger's Heart (A Modern Fairytale, #3)(147)

“Give me your hand,” he said, reaching out with his.

Her fingers trembled as she placed them in his.

“I love you,” he said. “You’re my childhood friend and my best friend and my girlfriend and my lover. And I’m thrilled that you’re movin’ in with me today, but it’s just not enough. Because I want to make love to you every day for the rest of my life. I want your name to be Virginia Laire McHuid Wolfram. I want my kids to have your blonde hair and my blue eyes. I want you to be my wife.” She raked her teeth over her bottom lip and reached up with her free hand to wipe her tears. “Will you marry me, princess?” Cain asked.

He’d seen Ginger McHuid smile a million times.

But this one was new. And it belonged to him.

“Cain!” she cried, her shoulders trembling with sobs, her smile blinding. “Oh my God, yes! Yes!”

He pulled the ring from its soft velvet bed and slipped it over her third finger, then he stood up, pulled her into his arms, and kissed his fiancée as they agreed to hold hands and jump together into forever.

***

Four years later



“Remember, it’s Momma’s birthday today,” said Cain, ruffling the blond hair of his two and a half-year-old son, Josiah.

“Momma,” he answered, his moss-green eyes the spitting image of the uncle he’d been named for. “She get baba for Keyee-anne.”

“That’s right, little man, because Miz Kelleyanne here sure does get mad if she wakes up without a bottle, doesn’t she?”

Josiah and Kelleyanne.

The two people who had been the guiding lights on the path that led Cain to Ginger and Ginger to Cain. Two strong spirits who would always, God willing, be with them.

He looked down at the sleeping baby girl in his arms—at the jet-black fuzz that covered her two-month-old head—and felt his heart swell, as it always did, with so much joy, he didn’t know how his chest contained it all.

“Uh-huh,” said Josiah, staring at his baby sister with a sour expression. “Mad Keyee-anne.”

Cain chuckled. “You remember the song we’re gonna sing to Momma, right?”

“The happy birfday song.”

“That’s right.”

“We all sing. Oma and Opa. Grampa Jim. Gramp and Gramma,” said Josiah. “And Auntie.”

Oma and Opa were Cain’s parents, Grampa Jim was his mother’s husband. Gramp and Gramma were Ranger and Magnolia, and Auntie was Cain’s Aunt Sophie.

Despite being invited, Aunt Sophie had refused to attend Cain and Ginger’s wedding, but when little Josiah was born a year and a half later, for reasons unknown to all but Sophie, she’d accompanied her sister, Sarah, to the hospital to meet her grandnephew. Maybe it was curiosity. Maybe it was that she couldn’t resist the chance to see her twin sister’s grandson.

Likely, she’d never expected for baby Josiah, named for her son, with his blond hair and green eyes, to snare her heart on sight. With tears of gratitude flooding her eyes, she thanked Cain and Ginger for honoring Woodman’s memory, and from that day she’d worked to mend her relationships with the McHuids and with Cain. Through her love for little Josiah, and now for Kelleyanne too, she’d found a way to be part of her family again, and Cain was grateful for it.

“That’s right,” said Cain. “We’re all gonna sing to Momma.”

“I wuv her, Dada.”

“Me too,” said Cain, smiling at his son with soft eyes, full of love. “She sure is easy to love, little man.”

The bathroom door opened.

“Lord, we’re gonna be late!” said Ginger, bursting into the sitting room of the tack room, holding out a pumped bottle of breast milk for Cain. She reached into her shirt to reclasp her bra, then smoothed her blouse, grinning at Cain. “Do I look all right?”

Cain nodded, blown away, as he always was, by his wife’s natural beauty. “You look stunnin’.”

“Byooteeful Momma.”

Ginger smiled at their son and leaned down to press a kiss to the top of his head just as someone knocked at the door to the tack room, where they always stayed as a family whenever they visited McHuid Farm overnight. Klaus, at Ranger’s insistence, had moved up to Kelleyanne McHuid’s old cottage a couple of years ago, and joined Ranger and Magnolia regularly for dinner at the manor house.

“I guess it makes sense,” Magnolia had said, finally welcoming Klaus into their social lives and inner sanctum, “since we’re family now.”

Ginger opened the door to find Magnolia, Sarah, and Sophie standing outside, three mother hens champing at the bit to spoil their grandbabies.

“Happy birthday, Ginger,” said her mother, pressing a quick kiss to her cheek before marching inside and beelining for Cain. “You give me that child, Cain. I’ll take her up to the main house so you and Ginger have a moment to breathe before the festivities begin.”

Carefully Cain handed over his daughter and gave her bottle to his mother. “Make sure she gets this when she wakes up, okay, Mom?”

Sarah smiled and nodded as her sister, Sophie, called, “Josiah Woodman Wolfram, you come on over here to your Auntie Sophie now.”

Josiah looked up at his mother for a second, waiting for her to nod before racing to his Oma and Auntie and taking their hands.