Bonus Epilogue
Adam
Two and a Half Years Later
“Happy anniversary, sweetheart.” I pulled my wife into my arms and kissed her soundly.
Not only was it our third wedding anniversary, but it was also the second anniversary of the opening of Belle’s Kitchen. My beautiful wife had turned the business into a huge success, as I’d known she would the day I’d given her the key to the shop. She now had two members of staff working for her, which was just as well, considering she was only a few weeks away from giving birth to our first child—a boy.
As if having Belle as my wife wasn’t enough, she was now giving me a son. I couldn’t wait to hold him in my arms, to teach him everything I knew. Unlike Belle and I, our boy, and any future children we were blessed with, would grow up knowing the love of two parents.
“Happy anniversary, baby,” Belle murmured, hugging me tightly. “Can you believe it’s been three years?”
“Three years, four months if you count our first wedding,” I pointed out.
Although we often joked about tying the knot twice, we considered our second wedding date our actual anniversary. That was when we’d spoken our vows with love and promised ourselves to each other forever.
Today was a Sunday, so Belle’s Kitchen was closed, but Belle was nesting with a vengeance and had wanted to come and check that every last detail was in order before the baby came. She wanted to make sure that Briony and George, the two staff members she’d hired, had everything they needed in her absence.
At this point, I was indulging her, so long as she rested up when we got home. On this occasion, though, we didn’t make it home because just as Belle was locking up the shop, her water broke.
By the time I got her to the hospital, her contractions were five minutes apart, and she was using words I’d never heard coming from her sweet mouth. An hour later, Jesse Adam Sterling came into the world—a perfect bundle of joy with a healthy set of lungs weighing eight pounds, seven ounces.
I bent over the hospital bed as Belle nursed our son, kissing her tenderly. “Thank you.”
She smiled up at me tiredly. “For what?”
“For making me the happiest man alive. I didn’t know what love was until you came along.”
“That goes double for me. I love you, Adam, so much.”
“I love you, too, Belle. More than I can ever tell you.”
My life was now full of so many precious things, but by far, the most precious was my wife and son, both of whom held my heart in their hands.