Rock Wedding(79)

“About the baby?” Pure joy in those words. “I’m so happy for you both. And for myself. I’m already planning how I’ll spoil my first grandbaby.”

Knees a bit shaky, Sarah leaned against the wall to catch her breath. She wanted to say so many things, admit her fears, but the words wouldn’t come. So she finished putting on the dress before walking out into the bedroom.

“You’re lovely.” Getting up with that sweet comment, Diane put her cup on a bedside table, then took a seat on the bed so Sarah could sit at the vanity to do her makeup.

Sarah’s hands threatened to shake as she picked up her compact.

“Losing a child is difficult.”

The quiet words had Sarah forgetting all about the makeup. Dropping the compact, she turned to face the other woman’s eyes, eyes that held an old, deep sadness. “Yes.” It came out raw, torn out of her.

Abe’s mother just held out her arms.

Sarah went into them in a jerk of emotion, let herself be held in a soft maternal embrace by a woman who understood the loss of her baby as even Abe couldn’t. She and Diane didn’t speak, just held each other.


LATER, AFTER SARAH HAD WASHED OFF HER FACE and hidden the ravages of tears with makeup, she glanced at her hair and sighed. If she tried to fully dry and straighten it now, they’d miss their dinner reservation. So she got out the curly-hair goop she kept on hand for emergencies and worked it into her wildly kinky hair so that at least it wouldn’t go fuzzy.

That done, she picked up her treasured pearl necklace from the special velvet-lined box where she always kept it… and saw Diane dab away another tear of her own.

It made her smile, hope a bright flame in her heart now.

Necklace on, she found her shoes, her purse. “Thank you,” she said as the two of them prepared to go downstairs, Abe and Flossie having returned ten minutes earlier.

Diane turned to tuck Sarah’s hair behind her ear, cup her cheek, her next words intense with emotion. “I’m here for you, Sarah. Anytime you want to talk about the baby, ask my advice, anything at all. Even if it’s Abe you’re angry with, don’t feel you can’t come to me and talk.” Dark shadows in her eyes. “And call me Mom, okay? I so terribly miss having a daughter.”

Sarah nodded jerkily, swallowed back the surge of emotion inside her, and—after a quick hug—they both headed down the stairs. The big man who waited at the foot of those stairs looked at Sarah in a way that tangled her up until she could hardly breathe.

Flushing, she stopped so that they were eye-to-eye. “What?”

He ran his fingers through her curls. “You.” A quiet murmur, his touch a possessive promise. “I’m not letting you go ever again.”

Sarah sucked in a breath, the flame of hope white-hot.





PART FOUR





CHAPTER 29



SAFELY PAST THE TWELVE-WEEK mark in her pregnancy with no signs of complications, not even any morning sickness, the baby still safe inside her, Sarah couldn’t imagine being happier. Her and Abe’s relationship made her heart hurt in the best way, Diane had become a cherished maternal figure in her life, she had a beautiful circle of friends, and her business was growing in exactly the way she wanted.

She felt like she was walking on air.

Then Abe asked her if they could tell his bandmates about the baby. Because, somewhat shockingly, she and Abe had managed to fly under the radar with the media—at least on that point. Handlebar-mustachioed Basil had gotten a payday with his reunion   story, but sadly for him, it hadn’t been a big one because of a political sex scandal that had broken the same day.

That scandal had very quickly buried the news of Abe and Sarah’s reunion  , and they’d done nothing to reignite that interest. Sarah had known they couldn’t keep the news of the pregnancy quiet forever, but she still wasn’t ready for Abe’s request—though, of course, he was right: it was time.

Especially since she’d already told Lola—the other woman knew Sarah well enough to have picked up the delicate changes in her face and body. A week earlier, she’d asked point-blank if Sarah was “cooking up a tiny human-shaped bun in a certain oven.” It had made Sarah laugh, admit to it.

“Yes,” she said to Abe now. “I want Molly, Kit, and Thea to know too.”

A day after that conversation, however, she fidgeted in the passenger seat of Abe’s SUV.

Abe closed his hand over her thigh, bared because she wore shorts paired with a floaty top. “Hey, you good?”

“No,” she admitted, folding her arms and slumping into the seat. “I should’ve let you announce the pregnancy without me.”