The True Love Quilting Club (29 page)

The theater itself was dark, but there was a light on over the stage. It had to be in the loft. The place where she and Sam first kissed. She’d better turn it off.

She started down the aisle. Patches followed at her side. Had the dog somehow known the light had been left on? Nah, Border collies were smart, but they weren’t
that
smart. Emma climbed up on the stage, Patches with her every step of the way.

After pushing aside the heavy red velvet curtain, she moved to climb the metal stairs leading to the loft.

That’s when she heard the giggle.

Someone was up there.

“Hey,” she called, rapidly scaling the ladder. “Who’s there?”

Another round of giggles.

She poked her head through the opening, and there sat Sam and Charlie, dressed up in tuxedos, looking completely adorable. Sam held a dog whistle in his hand and had a sheepish grin on his face. That explained Patches’s behavior.

“What are you guys doing up here?” she asked, stepping onto the loft platform. “And why are you dressed like that?”

“’Cause,” Charlie explained, displaying a gap-toothed grin. “We got sumpin’ very important to ask you.”

She walked over to them. “You do, huh?”

“Yep.” He nodded. “Don’t we, Dad?”

“That we do,” Sam said. “Here.” He stood up. “Sit down.”

It was Emma’s turn to giggle. She sat down in the thin-legged, straight-back wooden chair Sam had vacated. “What are you two up to?”

Sam tucked the dog whistle into the breast pocket of his tux. He looked so handsome that her breath caught. Then from the pocket of his jacket, he withdrew something he kept shielded in his palm.

He went down on one knee.

Emma started shaking all over.

He extended his hand, revealed the black ring box, and cracked it open with his thumb. A beautiful diamond solitaire, nestled in a star-shaped setting with smaller diamonds filling in the points of the star, winked at her in the light.

“Oh!” She splayed a palm over her heart.

“Trixie Lynn Parks, my one true love, who has now bloomed into the beautiful, incomparable Emma, will you marry me?”

Charlie joined his father on his knee. “And will you be my new mommy?” Charlie looked at her with earnest eyes exactly like Sam’s.

“Yes, yes,” she exclaimed.

She saw Sam’s chest fall with a quick exhale of air
as he slipped the ring onto her finger. Saw a wide grin cut across Charlie’s face.

Emma jumped to her feet and embraced them both in a tight group hug. Then Sam pressed his lips to her ear and whispered, “I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with you.”

They got married in the theater on Valentine’s Day. The playhouse was packed to overflowing. Half the town of Twilight showed up, it seemed. All of Sam’s family was there, and of course everyone from the quilting club, and Malcolm Talmadge.

The man who’d raised her, but couldn’t bring himself to love her because she wasn’t his daughter by blood, did not come, and neither did her mother. But that was okay. She had Sam and his big, boisterous, colorful family, who teased and argued and loved one another in powerful and generous ways. The Cheeks behaved the way she always imagined a real family behaved, supporting one another through thick and thin, even if they disagreed. They accepted her with open arms and willing hearts.

She asked Sam’s father to walk down the aisle with her, and she could have sworn his eyes misted as he gruffly said, “I’d be honored.” Sam’s brother Ben was his best man, Mac and Joe served as groomsmen. Sam’s sister Jenny stood in as maid of honor, while Katie and Maddie were bridesmaids. Lois Cheek took her aside before the ceremony and told her how happy she was for Emma to be her daughter-in-law and gave her full blessing.

Charlie was the ring bearer, and he looked so adorable in his tux with his copper cowlick (the color so much like Emma’s own) stubbornly standing up in the back, defying all Maddie’s attempts to flatten it. He carried the ring on the pillow as if it was a sacred responsibility, his shoulders as straight as a soldier’s, his hands outstretched, each step taken with deliberate thought. The sight of him warmed her to the center of her soul. Emma couldn’t wait to mother him. To give him the kind of unconditional love she’d never had as a child.

As Emma moved toward the altar that had been erected onstage, her arm linked with Sam’s dad, a sense of complete and utter peace settled over her. And when she looked into Sam’s eyes, and he reached for her hand, the entire theater vibrated with the force of their love.

And when Sam said, “I do,” and slipped the ring on her finger, Emma fully understood that family didn’t always come from whom you were born to, but from those who saw you for who you really were deep inside, past the defenses and the fears and self-doubts, past the mistakes and missteps. Family was where you hung your heart, and hers had gotten sweetly tangled up in Twilight, Texas.

“You may now kiss the bride,” exclaimed the minister.

Sam kissed her, cementing their union. Her lips tingled, sending a message of pure joy pulsing throughout her body. Amid loud applause, Sam finally broke the kiss and looked down into her eyes and whispered, “Welcome home.”