Second Chance Mom

“Adoption saves so many children from never knowing love,” she said, and began gathering the courage that had allowed her to contemplate marrying him. “You’re adopted. You know how well it can work. You’ll be able to help the three children through any transitions they have to make.”

She opened her mouth to tell him the secret only two other people had known, but the dark expression on his face, and the narrowing of his blue eyes, stopped her.

“My life turned out better than I could have hoped when I came to live with the Campbells,” he said, an odd note of emotion gone before she could identify it.

“But I will never understand how a mother—any mother—can give up her child.”

MARY KATE HOLDER

is a transplanted Aussie now living in sunny Florida. She married her husband four years ago after meeting him online in a karaoke chat room. They live with their dog and three cats who laze around the sunroom all day and think the Florida climate is so much better than rural Australia’s temperatures. When she’s not writing, Mary Kate likes to putter around in her garden or go fishing and is slowly learning to do home improvements—but it’s not quite as easy as it looks. She also is now a full-fledged karaoke fiend.

Second Chance Mom

Mary Kate Holder

MILLS & BOON

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He gives the childless woman a family,

making her a happy mother.

—Psalms 113:9

To my husband, Tom with love—

thank you for asking me.

This book is dedicated to Pamela Hodder,

Mary Holder and Patricia Dick,

three incredibly strong and loving women

who inspire me every day. They are,

I’m proud to say, the mothers I have

been blessed with in my life.

Thanks to my dear friend Ada, whose kind

and gentle heart is an example to us all.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Epilogue

Letter to Reader

Chapter One

Annie Dawson sat alone in the crowded restaurant Today could very well change her whole life and bring her back into her little boy’s life. Toby…a child she’d thought she had given up forever.

What was he doing today? She looked out one of the large windows at the glorious sunlight, and blue sky in the distance. Was he outside right now playing with his brother and sister?

There wasn’t anything more pretty, more filled with possibility, than the lazy days of an Australian spring.

“Annie?”

Startled from her thoughts, she looked up at the sound of her name. Deep blue eyes, narrowed and questioning, surveyed her.

“It’s been a long time.” She shook the hand he held out to her. He pulled out a chair and sat down.

Jared Campbell hadn’t changed a lot over the years. His face still wore that serious look. Even as a boy he had seemed far too somber.

The dark suit was perfectly tailored. The shirt seemed even whiter against the bronze of his skin and the dark green tie was a conservative splash of color. From the top of his dark head to the tips of his shined shoes—about six foot four if she didn’t miss her guess—he exuded the confidence of a man in total control of his world.

Clean-shaven, yet there was just a hint of five-o’clock shadow on his lightly tanned face. His hair, a deep brown with gold flecks scattered through it, was cut short on his neck.

She felt helplessly casual in her knee-length khaki skirt and plain white cotton blouse that buttoned down the front.

“I apologize for being late. There was an accident on the motorway and traffic was stopped for miles.”

He filled her water glass and then his own from the crystal carafe on the table. He picked up his menu. “Would you like to order now?”

Annie nodded, ravenous despite the apprehension that twisted and tightened her stomach. In a few minutes their waiter arrived, scribbling down their order before hurrying off.

“I’ll admit right now I’m a little nervous,” she said.

“There isn’t anything to be nervous about,” he replied calmly. “Just tell me about yourself.”

She bit her bottom lip, wondering how it was that he didn’t already know everything there was to know about her.

“You’ve lived in Guthrie all your life, Jared. I know how well the local grapevine works. You probably know all there is to know.”

Being reminded of the life she had tried so hard to leave behind made her sad and angry. The sadness was a natural emotion. The anger was something altogether different. She struggled with it many times, calling on the Lord to help her let it go.

“Do you have any contact with your mother?”

“I haven’t seen her in almost a year.”

He frowned. “She doesn’t visit you?”

“My mother spent years trying to forget I existed. Why would she be interested in me now that she isn’t legally required to be?”

“She still drinks?”

“She did the last time I saw her,” she said truthfully. “It has ruled her life for as long as I can remember.” Alcohol was the only friend and companion she could ever recall her mother wanting.

“I’d like to know why you agreed to do this. I’m not offering money and I know for certain what I’m getting out of the deal. But Lewis wouldn’t reveal anything about your reasons for agreeing to marry me.”

Annie smiled at the mention of their mutual friend, the lawyer who knew more about her than anyone alive.

“You know what my childhood was like. Just about everybody in the town knew. Do you remember all those times you’d come home from football practice and I’d be at your house?”

He nodded. “You were so quiet, you barely said two words.”

“When your sister joined the Big Sisters’ mentor program at school, she changed my life. I could look in her eyes and not see the pity I saw from others.”

“Sara always had a big heart.”

“She made me feel like I mattered. She was the sister I never had. Now I have a chance to do something for her.”

He seemed to contemplate her answer for a few moments. “I know from what Lewis told me that you attend church. Faith has always been important in my life. I attend church regularly. Sara and James made sure it was a part of the children’s lives, too.”

Annie liked the easy way he spoke about his faith. It was refreshing. Lately, professing it had become very out of fashion for a lot of people.

“Sometimes faith is all you have and then you realize it’s the one thing that is always there…that and hope.”

He nodded. “So…you feel at peace with your decision to marry someone you’re not in love with?”

Annie had thought long and hard about that very thing. She had prayed to find the peace and resolve she now carried in her heart about it.

“Marriage is a partnership, as the ceremony says, not to be entered into lightly…not to be falsified.”

“There are some people who would agree that was what we were planning to do…if they knew.”

Annie clasped her hands together on her lap. “I believe our reasons for getting married are valid. We are trying to keep three children together in the only family environment they have ever known.”

Annie wanted to do this…she was meant to do this and not just because it would give her back the one person it had torn her heart out to be parted from.

“If we get married for the sake of the children, Jared, we’re not mocking the sanctity of marriage. We aren’t in love with each other, but we share a commitment to family and I’m sure we can be friends.”

“Why do you feel so strongly about the kids?”

“Because of the childhood I had. I’m in a position to help them have a life that I wished for every day, and I want a family to care for,” she said honestly.

“You sound very certain.”

“I am.”

He looked at her as if seeing her in a new light. “You’re very young. Just twenty-one?”

“Yes.”

“I’m thirty-three,” he said. “I remember what it’s like to be your age. What a person wants at twenty-one won’t automatically be her goal when she’s twenty-five. I need to be sure that you won’t suddenly get the urge to travel or take off for some other reason and leave the kids. They need stability.”

Annie needed that, too—a place to belong, somewhere to be needed. She had wanted to go back to Guthrie for so long, to replace bad memories with good ones. Now faith had shown her the path she felt sure she was meant to take.

“I was an adult by the time I was twelve, Jared. There’s nothing like watching your mother sober up after a three-day drinking binge to make you grow up real fast.”

When he didn’t reply she ploughed ahead. “I’m not afraid of hard work. I can do any domestic chore you can think of. I can cook, I can keep a nice house and I love children.”

Annie leaned forward. “I won’t let you down. I won’t run off and leave you because there isn’t anywhere I want to go. My goals may change, Jared, but if you choose to go through with this, my commitment, to those children won’t. And if you want me to sign a legal and binding agreement, I will.”

Annie sat back in her chair. The ball was squarely in his court. She had messed up once in her life, had lost her faith, but God had given her a chance to make amends. And when she told Jared the main reason she wanted to marry him, Jared would see why it was so important to her.

When their meal arrived, Annie ate with reserved delight. It seemed Jared appreciated his meal with the hearty appetite of a man used to hard work and home-cooked food. And he must work hard. His long, lean body—all flat planes and masculine angles—showed not an ounce of fat. He was toned and healthy.

“No legal contracts,” he said finally, watching her eat for a few seconds more before giving her an indulgent half smile that threatened to take her breath away.

She paused, fork in midair. “I’m sorry, is something wrong?”

“It’s refreshing to eat a meal with a woman and not have to watch her nibble on lettuce leaves and celery sticks like a martyr.” Approval showed in his expression. “You like your food.”

“Absolutely,” she said, smiling for the first time since he’d arrived. “It comes from being nine years old and never quite sure when the next meal might be. I learned to appreciate it when I had it.”

He surveyed her silently for what seemed like an eternity. “You really did have a horrible time of it growing up, didn’t you, Annie?”

She heard no pity in his voice and that was just as well because she didn’t need any. She wasn’t that helpless child any longer. She made her own decisions, lived her own life.

She had come a long way from that horrid little shack with its dingy walls and stained, fading carpets. “No worse than a lot of other kids—and I survived.”

He thought about her answer for a moment then asked, “Is there anything you wanted to ask me?”

“Why did you tell the social worker you were planning to be married?”

He looked up from his meal and Annie almost fell off the chair when one side of his generous mouth lifted in a genuine smile.

“Desperation. Caroline and Luke are foster children. Sara and James were in the process of adopting them both.”

“Are they blood siblings?”

“No. Caroline’s mother gave her up to the state when she was five,” he said, his look hardening. “The man she married didn’t want any other children in his house except his own. He gave the woman a choice…him or Caroline.”

Annie was stunned. “How could she choose a man over her own child?”

“I gave up asking why a long time ago. All I know is that little girl has brought a truckload of joy and sunshine into our family. It’s that woman’s loss and our gain.”

There was a fierce determination in his tone. He wasn’t giving any of these kids up without a fight.

“Luke’s mother was unmarried and apparently very sick for most of the time she had him. When she died he became a state ward, too.”

“Lewis said to see them together you would think they had been brother and sister their whole lives.”

“That was the kind of love Sara and James instilled in them. The same as our parents instilled in Sara and me when we were adopted.”

That two children born to different families and raised by two loving, gentle people could become as close as Jared and his sister gave her hope that Toby, Caroline and Luke could find that, too.

“Toby’s adoption went through soon after he was born. Sara and James named me as legal guardian in their will.”

If he noticed her sudden stillness, the way her breath caught and held, he made no mention of it.

“I don’t want to be married, Annie. But if that’s what it takes to allow me to adopt Caroline and Luke myself, then that is what I’m prepared to do.”

“I know about your aversion to marriage. Lewis told me you would rather have your teeth pulled without anesthetic than say the words ‘I do.’”

Jared smiled slightly. “He knows me well.”

“But what happens if you meet someone and fall in love, if you meet ‘the one’? It won’t be very convenient being married to me.”

“I believe in love, I believe in what my parents have, in what my sister and her husband had,” he said resolutely. “But I also believe it isn’t for everyone. My commitment to the children is the most important thing in my life.”

That commitment was evident. “How is your dad?”

“The cancer is in remission and the doctors are optimistic.”

“I’m pleased,” she said sincerely.

“Any other questions?”

“Not a question, really…”

“Go on.”

“Lewis said you do have a sense of humor, but I’d need a pick, a shovel and funding from a major mining corporation before I found it.”

His lips twitched but he managed not to give in to a smile, which, judging by the two he had already bestowed on her, was a real shame.

“Lewis is a good friend and a fine lawyer but he talks too much.” He motioned for the waiter. “Are you ready to leave?”

Annie nodded. She reached for the bill but Jared beat her to it, casting a frown that would have intimidated a lot of people in this room.

“Call me old fashioned, but when I take a lady out for a meal, I pay the bill.” He left enough to cover the cost and a generous tip. “If we go ahead with this, you’ll find I’m old-fashioned in a lot of ways.”

Annie felt a surge of pleasure to know that the man who very well could be her future husband believed in chivalry.

“You mean like opening doors, and waiting until a woman is seated before sitting down?”

“Among other things,” he replied, tucking his wallet back in his trouser pocket. “So if you’re a rabid feminist who believes men shouldn’t protect their women or try to make life easier for them, now is the time to say so.”

“I can live with that. Just so long as you remember that I’m no wilting violet, Jared. I’m capable, intelligent and more than willing to pull my own weight.”

“I think we’ll make a good team,” he said finally. “Lewis told me you don’t have a vehicle. I’ll save you the bus ride and drive you.”

The drive back to her apartment in the city was slowed down by rush hour traffic. “How big is your farm?” she asked.

He checked the rearview mirror of his four-wheel-drive truck and indicated before changing lanes. “Dad’s place has thirty thousand acres but I’m also working the land that James and Sara owned and it’s about the same size. A lot of it is just grazing land and some of that I lease out to other farmers, but I’ve got crops in.”

His words sparked a memory and Annie smiled. “When I was young and Mum was passed out I’d climb the big hill behind our old house and sit there looking out at the fields. The purple Patterson’s Curse. Yellow rapeseed. The brown of newly turned earth. And then the green fields. It always reminded me of a patchwork quilt.”

“You and my mother will get along like a house on fire. She calls our little corner of the world God’s canvas. According to her, the shades of nature are His watercolors and the goodness of men is His inspiration.”

“Your mother always was a wise woman. Very few people take the time to see the world like that.”

“She’s one in a million, all right.”

Later, when she was alone, she would sort through her emotions, but she couldn’t help but wonder what his life had been like before the Campbells had taken him into their family.

“What kind of animals do you have?”

“Sheep, milking cows, hens and horses.”

“Milking cows?” she queried. “You milk them and use it?”

That got an amused grin out of him. “Where did you think we’d get our milk?”

“I was hoping you’d say you stock up regularly from the store in town. I guess it’s too much to hope that you don’t butcher your own meat.”

He chuckled again. “Afraid so.”

He pulled into the parking garage under her building.

“Once we’re married—if we get married—will you teach me about being a farmer’s wife?”

“You won’t need teaching,” he replied, his eyes softer, his voice a deep baritone. “You’ll learn it as you live it.”

He got out of the vehicle and came around to her side, helping her down and escorting her to the elevator. As they waited, Annie knew the time had come to tell him about her past.

“Adoption saves so many children from never knowing love,” she said and began gathering the courage that had allowed her to contemplate marrying him. “You’re adopted. You know how well it can work. You’ll be able to help them through any transitions they have to make.”

She opened her mouth to tell him the secret only two other people had known, but the dark expression on his face, and the narrowing of those blue eyes, stopped her.

His jaw was clenched tight. “My life turned out better than I could ever have hoped when I came to live with the Campbells,” he said, an odd note of emotion gone before she could identify it.

“But I will never understand how a mother—any mother—can give up her child.”

A chill of foreboding washed over her. He was deadly serious. She could barely breathe. How could she marry him and keep the secret? She couldn’t lie, not to him, not about this.

A marriage built on a lie was set down on a foundation that would in the end crumble and hurt many people. Lies festered and boiled inside a person like an open wound.

Yet the alternative was to tell him and see the look of disgust on his face. He would call the whole thing off. She would not get to be a mother to the children. She would not be able to repay Sara for the friendship and the love she had shown her. Please God, she prayed silently, don’t let this fall apart now.

Her heartbeat accelerated. Her hands began to tremble ever so slightly and she realized why Lewis had suggested she not tell Jared about her past.

“You make adoption sound like the easy way out.”

“Isn’t it?”

The elevator pinged and opened for them. She pushed the button for her floor and waited, watching him, her breath lodged somewhere in her throat, her palms sweating.

“I look at Sara’s children and I know I’d die for them. I’m not even related by blood. How can a mother who gives birth to a child not have those same feelings…even stronger ones?”

The words were out of her mouth before she even thought about it. “There are cases, like Caroline’s for example, that are horrifying, but there are women out there who do it out of love for their children.”

She continued on, not even realizing how it might sound to him; she just said what was in her heart. “Giving up a child you love, never to see him or her again, is one of the most difficult decisions a woman in that position has to make.”

His gaze locked with hers instantly and Annie knew this was the moment to make her choice…to tell him and end it now or to keep silent about her past, about Toby, and try to live with the guilt she knew would compound day by day.

“I’ve watched television programs on adoption, read books written by woman who have gone through it…I even know a woman who did it,” she said quietly, swallowing the half truth and hating the aftertaste.

His expression remained as dark as it had been since the discussion was started. “But still they hand their children away like consolation prizes in a raffle.”

“I think you would find most mothers try to find a loving family who can give the child everything she isn’t in a position to.”

“Or doesn’t want to be bothered with.”

Annie wondered if his jaw would actually break, it was clenched so tight. Then he looked down at her, his blue eyes a darker shade than before, his mouth set in a grim line.

“We aren’t ever going to see this from the same side of the fence, Annie, so you had better know that now…before we go any further.”

If she told him about her past he would turn and walk away. If she stayed silent about her past, Annie would have to reconcile it within herself and deal with the consequences the lie would bring…and they would come.

With a prayer in her heart, she made her decision, already feeling the first tentacles of guilt wrap around her. “Then I guess we had better make it one of those topics we agree to disagree about.”

“You won’t ever change my mind on the subject.” His tone told her it would be a waste of time trying. “Tomorrow is Friday. I’d like to pick you up and take you back to Guthrie for the weekend. I’d bring you home Sunday. You need to meet the kids, spend time with them. I can’t really make a decision before I see you with them in their environment.”

Annie swallowed all her reservations and concentrated on why she was doing this. For Sara and James. For three children who were a family.

“Friday sounds fine.”

He ushered her out of the elevator as they came to her floor. “I almost forgot.” He extracted three wallet-size photographs from his pocket. “These were taken at Sara’s birthday party a week before she…died.”

“Thank you. It was thoughtful.”

He nodded. “I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon about four? We can be home for the dinner my mother will no doubt cook.”

“I’ll be ready and waiting.”

“Be sure to pack a pair of sturdy boots and maybe a pair of jeans, too. The kids like nothing better than playing outside. I’ll be seeing you.”

Annie went inside her apartment and shut the door. Kicking off her shoes and tossing her purse onto the sideboard, she looked down at the photograph that was on top.

Caroline was beautiful even at age nine. Hair so blonde and eyes so blue she would one day have some man wrapped around her little finger. Luke’s dark hair was curly and his big brown eyes were filled with life. His smile shone through…infectious and wide. He was seven.

Annie hesitated as she came to the last photograph in the pile, turned facedown. She put it right side up.

She had counted every day of the last eighteen months. In the silence of her apartment, her heart hammering like a runaway freight train, she sat and stared into the beautiful face of the little boy who was her son.