Adding Up to Marriage by Karen Templeton Page B

with hugs and kisses. For barely twenty seconds, mind, but the point was not lost on Silas.
    Who, in the void left by her absence after her departure, found himself almost kinda wishing she’d given him one of those hugs, too.
    Which point was not lost on him, either.

Chapter Five
    E xhilarated.
    That was the only word for it, Jewel thought as she and Patrice stood on the Blacks’ front porch an hour after Jewel caught Winnie’s seven-pounds-and-change baby girl. Behind them the wind sighed through the sixty-foot pine trees standing guard over the modern wood and glass structure tucked into the mountainside. And farther back, Aidan Black’s studio where the Irishman captured, on enormous canvases, the majestic kaleidoscope of light and color that made up the landscape that Jewel, too, had grown to love so much.
    â€œCouldn’t’ve done it better myself,” Patrice said, the yellow porch light skimming her high cheekbones and cropped silvery hair. Her broad grin. “Nobody could’ve told that was your first catch, missy. I’m proud of you.”
    Grinning herself, Jewel snuggled more tightly into her jacket and leaned against the porch railing. They’d go backinside shortly, but Patrice felt it was important to give the new family time to bond by themselves. “You might’ve given me warning, though, that you’d planned on turning over the reins.”
    â€œAnd have you fretting your head off beforehand? No damn way.”
    â€œI wouldn’t have—” At Patrice’s low chuckle, Jewel laughed, too. “Okay, I would’ve been a wreck, you’re right. But what made you decide it was time I flew solo?”
    â€œCouldn’t really say. Same way I know when a baby’s ready to come, I suppose. Even when the physical signs don’t always agree with my intuition. You learn to feel these things, you know?”
    Jewel released a breath. “Not like you do.”
    â€œWhich is why you’re the apprentice and I’m the boss,” Patrice said, and Jewel smiled. “But I have no doubt whatsoever you will. I can tell already, could tell from the first time you attended a birth with me, you’ve got…I guess you could call it a gift, for listening and seeing with more than your eyes and ears.”
    Her face warming, Jewel looked away. “You’re gonna give me a swelled head.”
    â€œYou? Not a chance. So. How’d your first day go with the Garrett boys?”
    â€œFine,” she said, her face heating even more at the memory of the conflicted looks Silas kept giving her. At the even more conflicted feelings those looks provoked inside her. Hormones Gone Wild were one thing; those, she understood. Ka-BOOM, however, was something else entirely. And far, far scarier.
    Then she remembered a certain unresolved issue. “You know anyplace I can stay for a week or two?”
    â€œWhy? Eli throw you out?”
    â€œNo, no…the house needs some major repairs, that’s all.And the consensus is it’d be best if I vacate the premises ’til they’re done. I don’t suppose you and Lucy…?”
    â€œTrust me, honey, you’d never get a wink of sleep on that sorry excuse for a couch. I slept out there when Lucy had that cold a couple of weeks ago and my back still hasn’t forgiven me. I mean, if you can’t find anything else, you’re welcome to it. But I swear a bed of nails would be more comfortable.”
    â€œBelieve it or not, it’s tempting.”
    â€œAnd why is that?”
    â€œSilas said I could have the pull-out in his office, but only if—” Jewel made quote signs in the air “—‘worse came to worst’.”
    â€œAnd the subtext there is…?”
    Speaking of hearing with more than her ears—nobody was better at that than Patrice. Even so, Jewel hesitated. Perhaps because her mother had always been the needy one, Jewel