Forever, With You (The Inn at Sunset Harbor-Book 3)

CHAPTER ONE

Emily looked down at the beautiful girl sleeping peacefully in Daniel's bed. Her blond hair was splayed across the white pillow. Her features were unmistakably Daniel's. She looked angelic.

It was dark outside, the only light in the room a moonbeam creeping through the curtains, turning the room a muted blue. Emily had lost track of the time but judging by the exhaustion she felt deep in her bones it was close to dawn.

She heard the door creak open and glanced over her shoulder to see Daniel standing in the crack, warm light from the carriage house's fireplace illuminating his silhouette. Just the sight of him made her heart skip a beat. He was like a mirage, like a soldier returned home from war.

"She's still sleeping?" he whispered.

Emily nodded. Even though he was back and standing in front of her after a six-week absence, Emily still couldn't quite believe it, couldn't fully let her guard down. It was as though she were anticipating the moment he announced that he was leaving once more, that he was sweeping Chantelle out of her life just as swiftly as he'd brought her into it.

They left the room together, closing the door quietly in order not to wake the sleeping child.

"It must have been a long drive from Tennessee," Emily said, hearing how stilted her voice was, how unnatural she suddenly felt in Daniel's company. "You must be exhausted."

"I think we all are," Daniel replied, acknowledging in one statement the ordeal he had put her through.

As they sat together at the table, Daniel looked at Emily intently, an earnest expression in his eyes.

"Emily," he began, his voice cracking immediately, "I don't know how to say this, how to get the words out. You know I struggle with that sort of thing."

He smiled weakly. Emily returned the smile but felt her heart hammering with anguish. Was it coming? Was he announcing his and Chantelle's departure? Had he just come back to her to tell her to her face that it was over? She felt tears begin to swim in her eyes. Daniel reached across the table and patted her hand. The gesture was all it took to make the tears she was trying to hold back flood from her eyes, down her cheeks, and plop onto the table top.

"I am so sorry," Daniel said. "It's not enough, I know, but it's all I've got, Emily. I am so sorry about what I put you through. About running off like that."

Emily stammered, surprised that the words she'd been braced for hadn't come.

"But you did the right thing," she said. "You went to your daughter. You accepted your responsibility. I wouldn't have expected any different."

Now it was Daniel's turn to look confused, as though the words he was expecting from her had not been uttered. "But I left you," he said.

"I know," Emily replied, feeling a stab of pain in her heart that hurt as keenly as it had the moment he'd first left. "And it hurt, I won't lie. But what you did, that makes you a good man in my eyes." Finally, she could see through her tears. "You rose to the occasion. You became a father. Do you really think I would hold that against you?"

"I... I don't know," Daniel said with a gasp.

He was wearing an expression Emily had never seen on his face before. It was a look of utter relief. She realized then that he had been expecting her to be mad at him, to unleash a torrent of anger at him. But Emily had never been mad, she had just been terrified that there would be no way the two of them could forge a life together now that Daniel had a daughter to care for.