was serious. She knew good things didn’t necessarily happen.
Life was tough and happy endings were for story books.
But life wasn’t too tough. Not here. Not now.
‘You know, it seems to me that bad things have happened to us in the past,’ Riley said seriously. He let Jenna go-with reluctance-and lifted Karli from Maggie’s into his own arms. He held her and smiled at her and Jenna felt her heart twist all over again. ‘Your mum died,’ he said softly. ‘Jenna and I have been lonely. There’s been bad stuff. But good things happen, too. So it seems to me that we’ve done our bad stuff. We’ve been lonely for long enough. It’s time we had the good stuff.’
‘The happy ending,’ she said, echoing Jenna’s thoughts.
‘No,’ Riley told her. ‘No happy endings. I don’t like happy endings.’
‘What do you like?’ Karli whispered.
‘How about happy beginnings? What do you think about that?’
‘I think I like them,’ she said seriously, thinking about it. As a concept it seemed pretty good. ‘Happy beginnings. You and me and Jenna and Maggie and your puppy.’
‘It’s a ready-made family,’ Riley told her. ‘As soon as Jenna agrees to marry me.’
‘Will you marry him?’ Karli asked and turned to face her.
Would she marry him?
‘I would,’ Enid said. ‘Marriage is a very sensible arrangement.’
‘Hey, that means you ought to marry me,’ said Harold.
‘Give me Karli,’ Maggie ordered, and lifted Karli back so that Riley had a clear track to Jenna. ‘Ask her again.’
‘Think carefully,’ Bill said.
‘What’s there to think about, stinky?’ Dot demanded and hugged her husband.
What was there to think about?
Nothing. Not very much.
Riley smiled and smiled. Then, realising that the entire world was watching-the whole disreputable cast of this comedy of manners, plus the entire terminal staff-he rose to the occasion.
Or, rather, he dropped to the occasion. He fell to one knee.
‘Will you marry me, Jenna Svenson?’ he asked.
And what was a girl to say to that?
‘Yes,’ she said promptly, and she fell to her knees as well. ‘Yes, I will.’
There was simply no other answer to give.
Marion Lennox
Marion Lennox is a country girl, born on a southeast Australian dairy farm. She moved on- mostly because the cows just weren’t interested in her stories! Married to a “very special doctor”, Marion also writes hugely popular Harlequin® Medical Romances™. In her other life she cares for kids, cats, dogs, chooks and goldfish, she travels, she fights her rampant garden (she’s losing) and her house dust (she’s lost!)-oh, and she teaches statistics and computing to undergraduates at her local university. Marion has won major awards for her romance writing in both North America and Australia.
