Extreme Exposure (41 page)

“We’ll take your car. I don’t think the Jeep will fit all four of us plus luggage, and we’ll need Connor’s car seat.” He spoke the words as if there were no question that both of them would be going to get her son and mother, as if he were a part of her life, a part of her family.

It was now or never.

Kara took a deep breath and plunged in. “Reece, I know what I want to do, and I’m just going to come out and tell you. We’ve never had ‘the talk’—you know, the relationship talk?”

He set the paper aside, “Someone always avoided it.”

“Well, yes, but, whatever.” She gestured impatiently. “It comes down to this: I don’t want to be with a man who’s going to say he loves me one minute and gets sick of me the next. I don’t want to be with a man who will be sweet to Connor and then abandon him. I’d rather be alone than go through that.”

He stood. “I—”

She pressed her fingers to his lips and ignored her fears. “Shh! Let me finish. I don’t want to give up my career. And I don’t want Connor to be an only child. I want a husband, Reece, a mate for life. I want a man who really loves me, who will stick by me no matter what, even when he gets bored with me and thinks I’m old and ugly. I want babies—at least one more, probably two. And I want to work as a freelance journalist so I can stay home with them. I want a father for Connor, someone who will adopt him, become his legal parent.”

“Anything else?”

“I want a puppy. For Connor.” It felt good, once she got it all out. “Even though I love you, Reece, and can’t imagine a single day without you, I’d rather end it right now if you don’t want me in the same way, if you’re not comfortable with my—”

“Demands?” Reece offered gravely.

“Yes.”

He nodded, met her gaze, and suddenly she couldn’t breathe. She’d laid it on the line this time. Everything that mattered to her was on the line.

“In that case, I guess there’s only one thing I can say.”

Her pulse tripping, she waited.

He tucked a finger beneath her chin and tilted her face toward his. “Kara McMillan, will you marry me?”

EPILOGUE

Eighteen months later

Kara glanced at the clock. It was four-fifteen. She needed to start supper soon, but she could probably squeeze out a few more paragraphs first. Her book deadline was still six weeks away, but given how little writing time she got with a new baby, she wanted to take full advantage of every moment of peace and quiet.

She’d been offered the book contract while she and Reece were in Costa Rica on their honeymoon. Penguin had offered her an ungodly sum to write a nonfiction account of the TexaMent investigation and its aftermath, and she’d gone almost overnight from being a newly unemployed journalist trying to build a freelance career to being an author with more than a year’s salary in the bank.

She’d never written a book before and, at first, it had seemed like an overwhelming task. But she’d gotten to work on it and discovered that writing a book wasn’t all that different from writing a news article—a book was just a lot longer. The hardest part had been the emotional toll of reliving it all again.

After she’d written the chapter in which John Weaver tried to rape and kill her, she’d begun having nightmares again. Those nightmares had gotten so bad at one point that she’d become afraid to go to sleep, sure that in her dreams
she’d be running and running and running, only to find herself staring into Stanfield’s face and the unbearable heat of the kiln. Reece, afraid that the dreams were exacting too high a cost on her and their unborn baby, had asked her to put it aside for a time. She hadn’t, and despite his frustration with her, in the end he’d seemed to understand.

But the nightmares had passed. She was almost finished writing about the trial and other events that had followed. As a result of his brother’s heartbreaking and tearful testimony, Juan de la Peña had been sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. He’d been killed a few months later in a prison fight.

For testifying against Stanfield and his own brother, Miguel had received a suspended sentence. His dignity and self-respect recovered, but his Senate seat lost, he’d thrown himself into building a support program for family members of convicted felons. Sophie had written an article about it that had garnered attention from across the nation. And in a gesture that had brought a lump to Kara’s throat, Reece had sponsored a bill that allowed Coloradans to donate a portion of their income tax refunds to the organization.

Galen had avoided a trial by pleading guilty to a watered-down conspiracy charge. In return, he’d gotten a year’s probation, a sentence that had outraged Reece. Galen had also been disbarred and was now unemployed and living with his seventy-year-old mother.

Devlin had claimed to the end that he’d never known anything about murder plots or threatening phone calls or fraudulent campaign donations, and the jury had believed him.

Stanfield, despite a legal team that included five glitzy criminal attorneys, had been convicted of first-degree murder, two counts of conspiracy to commit murder, two counts of attempted murder, several accounts of assault, and numerous environmental crimes, for which he’d been sentenced to a total of one-hundred-twenty-five years in prison. Then he’d had to face a long civil trial for mismanagement at the hands of TexaMent’s shareholders. Kara found it somehow
fitting that he was now using all the money he’d made trying in vain to appeal his way out of prison.

TexaMent had faced a trial of its own. Its executives had claimed not to know what was happening at their Northrup plant, which the feds had shut down within days of Kara’s article being published. The company had settled out of court with its neighbors and been slapped with a few million in fines—which they were now trying to collect from Stanfield.

Kara had debated adding a couple chapters to describe what she jokingly referred to as the “Harrowing of the Senate,” but that was really Reece’s story to tell, not hers. He’d chaired the ethics committee hearings that had taken more than a year to complete and spent countless nights going over testimony and reading through records and transcripts. In the end, the governor had resigned in disgrace and more than a few lawmakers had found themselves paying restitution for expenses improperly charged to the taxpayers. Few of them were even bothering to run for re-election. Devlin was one of the stubborn ones—but polls showed him losing in a landslide.

The whole ordeal had put Reece in the spotlight, loved as a hero by some, loathed by others. His re-election campaign was going well, and he was expected to win with about 80 percent of the vote in his district. If members of his party had their way, he’d be running for Congress in two years. But they didn’t know her husband the way she did. Though he never complained, she knew he wanted nothing more than to return to teaching.

“If we teach kids ethics and we teach them how their government is supposed to function, this sort of thing will be less likely to happen,” he’d said more than once.

Her idealist. God, how she loved him! Not a day went by where she wasn’t grateful for those three margaritas and Holly’s inept meddling.

Whatever he decided to do, Kara would support him, just as he’d supported her in her career decisions.

Over the nursery monitor came a whimper that, Kara knew, would quickly develop into a lusty cry. She hit save, closed her document file, and left her desk to get Caitlyn from her crib.

“Hey, sweetie. Is someone hungry and wet? Come here, precious one.”

Kara quickly changed her baby daughter, who contented herself for a short time by sucking on her little fist. With Kara’s dark hair and Reece’s blue eyes, she seemed a perfect blend of the two of them.

She was almost eight weeks old and had been born at home in the bed where she’d been conceived. It had been Kara’s idea to have a homebirth with her family around her. She loved the old Victorian house she and Reece had bought and restored and hadn’t been able to stand the thought of going through labor in a hospital again. It was one of the best decisions she’d ever made.

Her labor had been so much easier and faster this time, with the pain overwhelming her only toward the very end. But then her mother and Reece had been there to help her through it, together with the midwife and Reece’s sister Melanie, who’d become a good friend. Holly, Tessa, and Sophie, whose job it had been to entertain Connor during Kara’s active labor, returned at the last minute, just in time to watch the actual birth.

Reece, whose love had sustained her through the last excruciating hour, had been the one to catch Caitlyn. With the guidance of the midwife, he’d eased their daughter from Kara’s body. Then he’d looked up at Kara through eyes filled with tears, a look of amazement on his face. “It’s a girl!”

Kara would never forget that moment for as long as she lived—even if in the next instant she overheard Holly tell Tessa and Sophie, “If I ever have a baby, I’m going to have a Brazilian wax first. Keep it pretty, you know?”

“Honey, when you’ve got an eight-pound object coming out of your cooter, the last thing you’re going to care about is how it looks,” had been Tessa’s reply.

Kara smiled at the memory, picked her daughter up off the changing table, and tried to soothe her fussing. “Hold on just a minute, sweet pea. I know you’re hungry.”

She followed the sound of a child’s laughter out to the backyard, where Connor was still trying to teach Jake—the black lab pup Reece had brought home from the pound one afternoon—to pull his red wagon like a sled dog. She sat in the porch swing, nursed her baby, and watched her big boy play in the late afternoon August sunshine.

He was five now, almost six, and he’d be starting kindergarten in a few weeks. Reece had already taught him how to read at first-grade level and do basic addition, and Kara cherished the bond that had formed between them.

“Watch, Mommy! Watch what Jakey can do!” Connor had attached Jake’s leash to the handle of the wagon, and when he walked forward, the pup—now more of a dog, really—did, indeed, pull the wagon.

“That’s great, Connor. He likes to play with you.”

But the moment Connor hopped in the wagon, hoping for a ride, Jake hopped in the wagon, too.

She laughed with her son, looked at the new baby at her breast, and wondered that her life should be so sweet, so rich, so . . . happy. She allowed herself to relish the moment, the scent of her rose garden, the warmth of the breeze, the tiny baby sounds Caitlyn made as she nursed.

When Caitlyn was full, Kara carried her back inside and placed her in her infant seat on the kitchen table, then popped some chicken in the microwave to defrost.

The garage door opened.

Reece was home early.

He walked through the door, a smile on his handsome face, briefcase in hand, suit jacket slung over his shoulder. The sight of him never failed to make her heart beat faster. He walked over to her, kissed her, and then went to kiss the baby. “How was your day?”

“Quiet. Connor spent most of the afternoon outside. Caitlyn just woke up from a good two-hour nap.”

“Get lots of writing done?” He tossed his jacket over the back of a chair, set his briefcase down, and opened it.

“Some. How were things at the Capitol?”

“Had a little run-in with Devlin. He wants to sponsor a bill to forbid anyone from taping a conversation without the knowledge and expressed consent of everyone being taped.”

Kara laughed. “I bet he does.”

“It won’t pass.” When Reece looked up at her again, there was an amused glint in his eyes. “I saw your mother enjoying a romantic lunch with Tom.”

Tom had been wooing her mother since the day they’d met in the hospital. Kara had been proud of how her mother had constantly turned him down, upbraided him for his bad manners, and generally told him to shove off. She refused to believe her mother could have given in. “What makes you think it was romantic?”

“Perhaps the fact that they had their tongues in one another’s mouths?”

“Oh, I think I’m going to be sick!”

Reece chuckled. “One other thing came up today.”

“What? Now they want you to run for governor?”

“Nothing like that. Just this.” He turned to his briefcase, pulled out a white envelope, and handed it to her, his gaze soft.

Kara stared at it for a moment, realized what it was, and looked up at Reece in amazement.

“Go ahead. Open it.”

Pulse racing, she ripped open the envelope, pulled out a thick document, unfolded it, and read. “Oh, my God! It’s done! It’s really done!”

He pulled her against him, kissed her forehead, and they held each other for a moment. “Prentice’s parental rights are forever terminated. He’s out of your life for good, sweetheart. Should we tell Connor?”

“Oh, yes!” Kara hurried to the back door, her heart dancing. “Connor, come inside! We have something special to tell you.”

Connor bounded indoors, followed by a panting, wagging Jake.

Reece sat at the table, lifted Connor onto his lap, and took the precious document from Kara.

Almost unable to contain her emotions, Kara pressed her hands to her face and watched.

“Do you know what this is?” Reece asked.

Connor shook his head.

“It’s our final adoption papers. These papers say that by law I am your real father now—and you’re my son.” At those last words, Reece’s voice broke.

Connor’s face split into a wide grin, and he threw his arms around Reece’s neck. “I have a daddy! I have a real daddy!”

Kara watched through eyes blurred by tears as Reece hugged his son—their son—and saw on her husband’s face how much Connor’s love and affection meant to him. Then Reece’s gaze met hers and he mouthed the words, “I love you.”

And in that moment, which would stay with Kara for the rest of her life, the world was perfect.

Pamela Clare
began her writing career as an investigative reporter and columnist, working her way up the newsroom ladder to become the first woman editor of two different newspapers. Along the way, she and her team won numerous state and national journalism awards, including the 2000 National Journalism Award for Public Service. A single mother with two teenage sons, she lives in Colorado at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. Visit her website at
www.pamelaclare.com
.