LITMIR.BIZ

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little angel I’ve ever seen!”

      I struggled to sit up and tear away the sheet that kept me from my baby. However, the entire hospital seemed to know of my adoptive decision, and the burly nurse grabbed my shoulders gently and pinned me back down.

      “It’s better you don’t look, Kelli,” she murmured. Though I begged her to free me, she shook her head and pressed me to the bed. In my weak-limbed condition, I could not fight her. All I could do was grieve, and taste the sour, regretful tears that dripped down my face.

      Looking again at Luke, my utter misery must have broken his heart. His face contorted and I saw wetness collect in the corners of his eyes. For one quick moment, he turned back toward the baby, his finger tracing her delicate, soft mouth. Luke kissed her forehead and breathed in her newborn scent. With paternal-like reluctance, he stepped away from the child, then moved to stand beside me.

      With his lips to my forehead, his fingertips on my lips, he gave me my baby’s kiss.

      A primal, bestial sob ripped from my deepest being, my heart shattered into a million, blood-dipped shards. Luke caught me to his chest, and bore the heartbreaking torrent of my dying soul.

      After some scuffled footsteps and muted orders, my baby was gone—spirited away, torn from my body, withheld from my sight, and completely erased from my life.

      I continued to struggle and scream. Even Luke’s tight hug could not placate me. Even my hero, Luke, could not diminish the sorrow that swallowed me whole.

      “It’s okay, Kelli,” Luke wept, his tears mingled with mine. “It’s okay, you are doing the right thing.”

      But before I could tell him he was wrong, explain how deeply in love I was with my unseen child, another compassionate nurse bustled at my IV, pumping yet another dulling drug into my veins. Blackness swirled around me as conscious thought drifted away.

      I’ve no idea how long I slept. It could have been an eternity, or a timid half-second. Nevertheless, when I awoke, my entire body throbbed. My hospital pillow was saturated, yet my eyes were puffy and dry. On my bedside table stood a stack of official papers—papers that, once signed, would seal my baby’s fate forever. I couldn’t stand the thought of her receiving some other mother’s love. . . .

      I wrestled to an upright position and saw Luke sitting in a chair at the foot of the bed. When he realized that I was awake, he offered a gallant, but vacuous, smile.

      “How are you feeling, Kelli?”

      “Like I was hit by your semi!” I managed a feeble grin, then felt the blurring of tears. I wondered if I would ever stop crying.

      “Your folks came by.”

      “Did they see the baby?”

      “No.”

      A deafening silence seemed to smother the room and I shuffled the papers, pushing them farther away from me. Of course, Luke noticed and picked them up with trembling hands.

      “You haven’t signed them yet, sugar.”

      “I love my baby and I want what’s best for her. But. . . .” My voice cracked and I just couldn’t continue.

      Luke patted my hand and pulled his chair close to my side. For a time, he just hung his head, studying the floor. At last he looked at me, wiping a tear from my cheek.

      “I love her, too, Kelli. I have since—I don’t know when. The nurse was right, though, I shouldn’t have touched her. I shouldn’t have stared into her eyes or kissed her tiny forehead.” His voice broke; his face blanched ominously. “In my heart, I’m sure that giving her to a good family is best for her. With babies so scarce and in demand, no doubt, she’ll go to a wonderful family with plenty of money. She’ll have everything a kid could ever want or need. Orthodontia, college, ballet lessons—”

      “A pony,” I added. I tried with all my soul to mollify my broken heart with the glorious picture he was painting. I crossed my fingers and prayed like never before. Despite my best efforts, however, it didn’t work.

      Apparently, Luke wasn’t buying it, either. With a single, callous sneer, he decimated any hope I had for giving my baby away.

      “No, she’ll never have a pony. Her new parents will live in the city where she can’t have one!”

      “Luke!” I blinked, my bottom lip quivered.

      Mindless to my bewildered plea, he was building steam, working himself up into a belligerent, heart-wrenching fury. “No pony, ever. Not only that, but that darling, precious baby will be damned to a lifetime of wondering who her biological parents were and why they didn’t love her enough to keep her! She’ll always imagine that there is something wrong with her, something that made her so detestable that they had to give her away—hand her off to strangers!”

      “Luke!” Again, my own precarious sentimentalities took a backseat to his inconsolable ranting. Now, it was I who had to comfort him. “But look at your family, Luke. Your folks love you, and your brothers and sisters adore you. You’ve been happy, Luke. You know you’ve had a good life, despite being adopted.”

      “That’s true,” he agreed heartily. “But I’ve wasted years wondering why. Why didn’t my real mom and dad want me? I’ve spent so much time wondering what was wrong with me that prevented them from keeping me.”

      “But there is nothing wrong with you. I suspect your birth mother may have been just like me: a reckless girl, old enough to conceive, but too young to raise you herself. No doubt, Luke, your mother made the best of a bad situation. Just like I’m trying to do. You’ve got to believe that.”

      “In here, Kelli.” Luke tapped his head. “I know you are right.” Then, he stabbed a self-castigating finger into his chest. “But here, I always wonder. Your baby doesn’t have to do that, not ever. I have another option for her—for us. One I thought of before, but didn’t have the guts to present to you.”

      He picked up the papers that littered my table and heaved a great sigh. Placing my baby’s birth certificate on top of everything, Luke’s voice lowered, his eyes penetrating mine. His knuckles whitened as they seized the rail of my bed.

      “I know ours has not been a traditional, romantic courtship, Kelli. I also know that there are eight years between us. But what I feel for you is genuine and lasting. What I feel for your baby is unquestionable and lifelong. We’ve been through so much, your baby feels like mine. Marry me, Kelli. Let me claim fatherhood to your little girl. I love her, and I love you even more.”

      My mouth hung open and I couldn’t speak. As he waited for my answer, he found a pen and began writing in the baby’s legal birth papers.

      Under Mother, he wrote my name, hyphenating my last name with his. Beneath Father, and though he knew the truth, he wrote his own name. Once the deception was made, he bit his lip and gave me a quavering look.

      “Say, yes, Kelli. Say yes and I can have a justice of the peace here this afternoon. As soon as you and the baby are ready, we can drive down to Michigan and live in a mobile home behind my folks’ place. Just temporarily,” he amended hastily, “until we can afford a home of our own. Someday, when the baby is older, we can explain the truth to her, and, God willing, to her little brothers and sisters.”

      Although his proposal seemed haphazard on the surface, deep in my heart, I knew it was not. He’d thought this “option” out meticulously. It was Luke’s nature, part of what made me feel so anchored, so safe, when I was near him.

      And despite the cautious fluttering of my own heart, I was not too uncertain, either. For, in truth, I’d spent more time with Luke, understood the workings of his mind and soul, far better than I did my baby’s father—a man whose face I could hardly recall, a man I had never loved and could never love, now that I’d been so touched by Luke.

      I took Luke’s hand, kissed its palm, then cupped it

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