Carla pulled Luke’s head closer, returning the gentle kisses he had given her, loving him so much it was a sweet kind of pain.
"The Rocking M is part of you," she whispered between kisses. "If I hadn’t loved the ranch, I couldn’t have loved you. Not really. I could have had a schoolgirl crush on you. I could have been infatuated with you. I could have been fascinated by you. I could have been everything except in love with you. But I love the ranch, and I love you." Carla smiled suddenly, making the tears in her eyes sparkle like crystal in sunlight. "In fact, you should be worried that I’m marrying you for the Rocking M, not in spite of it"
"Sunshine," Luke said, his voice catching, "I want you to be happy. Are you sure?"
"As sure as I am pregnant"
He closed his eyes. "Are you happy about that?"
"Being pregnant?"
Luke’s eyes opened. "Yes."
"Oh, yes," Carla murmured, covering his hands with her own, cradling him against the new life growing within her body. "Are you?"
"I can’t – I don’t – have words." Luke bent down and kissed her hands, then sought the warmer flesh beneath that sheltered his baby. "When you left, I shut myself in the barn and made a cradle and a crib and a rocking horse for the child I would never have. And then I made a – rocking chair so that you – could – " His voice broke. He tried to speak, but all that came out was a raw whisper. "I looked at the chair – and dreamed of you nursing our child – and knew it would never – never – "
Carla felt the shudders that ripped through Luke’s control, felt the scalding heat of his tears against her skin and held him until she ached. For long minutes there was only the sound of his broken breathing and her own whispered words of love. Finally he stood up, carrying her with him, holding her as close as the beating of his own heart.
Then Luke looked down in Carla’s clear eyes. He felt something shimmer through him like sunrise, transforming him, freeing him from the darkness of the past, giving him a vision of a future more beautiful than his hungry dream. He wanted to tell Carla all that he saw – a girl with dark hair and golden eyes and her mother’s flashing smile, a boy with gentle hands and blue-green eyes and his father’s easy strength, a man and a woman sharing and building and creating together, giving back to life the gift it had given them.
The vision was so clear to Luke, so real, beyond question or doubt. He wanted to share it with Carla, to tell her that neither one of them would ever be lonely again. Yet of all the gifts that had come to him, of all the truths yet to be given and received, only one came to his lips when he bent down to her, for it was the only truth that mattered.
"I love you, sunshine."