She considered one of the very best things about her relationship with Sam was how seamlessly he and Ethan had merged into her family. They all loved him, from her mother to her sisters and even the brothers-in-law. He, in turn, loved them all back. While her big, loud, boisterous family sometimes drove her bonkers, Sam reveled in all of them.
If she wasn’t completely convinced he loved her— much to her constant joy and wonderment—she might have thought he had only proposed to her so he could become a permanent part of the McKnight clan.
Mary Ella suddenly appeared in the doorway and Harry immediately muted the football game with the remote that he probably wouldn’t relinquish to anyone.
“All right, gang. I think everything’s ready.”
Alex probably should have been helping set everything out but she figured she had done her part by cooking most of the food.
The kids cheered.
“Finally!” Ethan exclaimed in that dramatic tone again.
“Agreed,” Harry said with a chuckle and led the way to his dining room, with its sweeping views up the canyon to the Silver Strike Resort.
She reluctantly relinquished Emma to Claire and followed Sam and Ethan to find a spot at the table.
Harry was probably the only one in town with a house big enough to comfortably contain all her siblings and their respective families. Even so, it was a squeeze around his massive dining table to accommodate everyone.
As host, Harry stood at the head of the table until everyone was settled.
“It’s been quite a few years, hasn’t it?”
Alex looked around at her family and thought of the many changes they had seen—tragedies and joys, heartaches and second chances.
“We have much to be grateful for,” Harry said. “New opportunities. New life. New marriages.”
He reached for her mother’s hand and, with a courtly sort of gesture quite incongruous to his bluff personality, he kissed the back of her fingers. Mary Ella blushed and a few of the younger kids made exclamations of disgust.
Beneath the table, she felt Sam’s hand on her knee, strong, firm, comfortable. On her other side, Ethan nudged her arm with his shoulder and tried his best to wink at her over their little secret, though he hadn’t quite perfected the expression and it came out more as a funny little spasm of half his face.
“Despite the past,” Harry went on, “you have all welcomed me into your family and I must thank you for that.”
He paused, looking around at them, and in any other man she might have thought he was a little choked up. Not Harry, of course. He had probably just swallowed an olive the wrong way or something.
“Life is a strange thing,” he said quietly. “We make our choices, pick our course and usually have to live with the consequences. But sometimes we’re given the rare and precious chance to take a different path. When that happens, we often can discover what truly matters. Not money, power, land. Not grand houses. It’s this.”
He cleared his throat, the old coot, beaming at all of them but especially at his son, Jack, from whom he had spent so many years estranged.
“This,” he repeated. “Family. Friends. Love.”
“Don’t forget food,” Alex added.
“Hear, hear,” came a chorus around her.
Harry was right, she thought after grace had been eloquently offered by Angie’s husband and they all began to fill their plates with her delicious food.
Until Sam came into her world, she had been certain her course was set, that she was on her way to grabbing everything she needed.
She had convinced herself she had all she could ever want. Sam and Ethan had given her the chance to venture onto another path, one filled with laughter and joy and life.
Now she refused to have it any other way.
* * * * *