You fit with us. I think I’d like being married to you.”

She didn’t even know how to respond to that. She couldn’t wrap her head around any of it. Stay here. Marry him. Be a surrogate mom to his kids.

She’d have a family. It’d be his family.

And that was the problem.

It’d be his family. She’d be the surrogate. The fill-in. He could replace her, too. She couldn’t bear being replaced, not again.

“It’s too soon,” she said. “Too fast. You don’t even know me. A month from now you might feel differently—”

“I won’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do. I’m not reckless. I don’t make promises and break them. If I make a promise, I keep it. And if I promise to love you and cherish you all the days of my life, I will.”

Just like he still loved Amy...

And perhaps that should have scared her, that he still loved Amy, but it didn’t. It reassured her. He had loved his wife. He had been faithful to her memory all these years. His steadfast love gave Harley hope that Brock could be faithful to her.

She closed her eyes, held her breath. It’d be so easy to capitulate. To just give in to the miracle of it all.

Christmas wishes, Christmas dreams...

But what would happen after the holidays were over and it was a new year? How would this work...?

Maxine.

The ranch.

The twins.

The twins.

She exhaled in a small painful puff of air. “Mack and Molly.”

“Yes?”

“They’ve never had to share you with anyone before. They could grow to resent me.”

“They won’t.”

“They could.”

He kissed her again. “Then we deal with it.”

“You make it all sound too easy.”

“Because I think it is easy, after everything we’ve both been through.”

She reached up to touch his cheek. His skin was so warm and his beard rasped her fingertips. Lightly she scraped her nails across his rough jaw. “My family will say I’ve lost my mind.”

“And mine will say the same thing, until they meet you, and then they’ll know what I know.”

“And what is that?”

“That you being here wasn’t an accident. You were meant to be here. You were sent to be here.”

Her chest burned, hot and tender. “Who knew you were so good with words?”

“Not selling you. I’m telling you what I know, what I believe. God brought you here to Marietta for a reason. He knew we needed you, and He knew you needed us, and He put his angels to work and produced a Christmas miracle.”

“Stop,” she whispered, tears filling her eyes.

“Never. Not if it means letting you go. Can’t lose you, Harley. I’ve waited too long for you. Have prayed too long for you.” The corner of his mouth lifted, but there were shadows in his dark eyes, and a hint of his old grief. “Don’t break my heart now, baby.