Stardust Miracle (26 page)

“Scott is almost an adult. I never saw him as a baby, a toddler. Never knew he was alive. Never went to his soccer or football games until this last year. And he’s good. He’s damn good. But I didn’t get to see it. I didn’t—”

He stopped, his throat working. He sucked in his breath, then exhaled before he spoke again, his voice rough. “Next fall he’ll be off to college. He’ll be making new friends. Starting his new life. He doesn’t even know what college he’ll be accepted into.”

A coldness grew in her. Shards of ice lodged in her chest, pointed at her heart.

What was he telling her? That he would be leaving Miracle?

She nodded and felt like one of those dolls with a bobble head. She was reverting back to type, listening and nodding...too numb to do anything else.

“I missed most of his life.”

“It wasn’t your fault.” Her voice was hoarse. Her throat was dry. She needed water. Or wine – a large bottle of wine.

“Doesn’t matter. I wasn’t there. I...don’t want to do that again.”

“I see.” A sick feeling started in her throat. She’d already decided to do this without him. She’d been okay with it. So why did he drag her in here, letting her think that he might—

“This time I want to be there for my child.”

Her knees wanted to buckle. A noise came out of her mouth.
Eeep.
She grabbed his arm to keep from falling. She bit her tongue and closed her mouth to keep words from babbling out. And her gaze locked onto his face, as if afraid he were a genie and if she glanced away, even for an instant, he would disappear in a puff of magic smoke.

“You might find someone else,” she whispered. “You might be sorry.”

“You might find someone else,” he shot back. “You might be sorry.”

Never.
She shook her head. “I’m doing this with you or without you.”

“I can’t offer anything more. It wouldn’t be fair. I’m a traveling guy. You’re a stay-at-home woman.”

She frowned. She’d dreamed of traveling. With a baby, it might be tough. But she’d never thought it would be easy. A single mom. Newly divorced. Her father not supporting her. No job yet.

It didn’t matter. From the start, none of the obstacles mattered. She had enough money to carry them for a while. She was learning to repurpose old items and was already making money. She planned to start online classes in the fall. They wouldn’t starve. Maybe she and her baby wouldn’t live in luxury, but they would be okay.

And she had the one thing that mattered most to any child.

Love. Inside her body, she had an ocean of love.

“I don’t know if I’ll be a stay-at-home mom,” she said. “Don’t expect that from me. I might work outside the home.”

“The only thing I expect of you is to be a great mom.”

Her throat thickened with unexpected emotion. So inconvenient. “You’ll be a great father.”

“It’s set then,” he said. “No donor.”

“Technically, you’ll be the donor.”

“No.” His gaze didn’t waver from her face. His expression still grave, but his eyes... They warmed and softened and darkened. And so did his low voice. “Technically, I’ll be the dad.” 

Sunlight burst inside her. Brilliant sparkles of happiness. Like a picture in a cartoon movie, they lit up the room, too. Sparkles shimmered all around them.

She stepped back. This was the happiest she’d been in her whole life.

Then he stepped back, too. He looked around the room, his lips parted, his eyes reflecting the sparkles. Even the air felt electrified. As if tiny lights were coming down, shimmering on her skin.

“You see
that
?” His voice was hushed.

She gaped at him. He couldn’t be talking about the sparkles? Impossible. No one saw them but her.

“See what?”

“It’s like little twinkling stars are in the room. Swirling around us.”

Her breath came out in a quasi laugh. Her hands shook, and she held them against her thighs. “I do see that.”

“What is it? Where is it coming from?”

She shook her head. It was still hard for her to believe someone else was finally seeing them. “I’ve been seeing them for a couple of months, but no one else did.”

“This is...crazy.” He laughed. “Crazy wonderful.”

“Crazy wonderful. Just like life.” She reached out to his laughing face, touching his cheekbone with her fingertips. Her hand wasn’t shaking anymore, but her voice trembled. “Remember I told you about the message written on the cars in the church parking lot?”

“Something about a miracle coming soon,” he said.

She drew back her hand. Nodded. Licked her lips. “That’s when I first saw the sparkles. And no one else saw them except me.”

“And now me,” he said.

“Now you. I think I know what the miracle is.”

The stars were disappearing slowly. One by one. As if they’d sent their message and could rest for now.

“The twinkling stars?” he asked.

“The baby.” She smiled at him. “Our baby.”

He stared at her, the laughter leaving, and the look in his eyes made her hold her breath though her heart was hammering in her chest. Then he leaned down and kissed her. Not with passion, but tenderness. He pulled back and she breathed. And she smiled. And she felt tears well up. Happy tears. 

“It’s going to be magic,” he said.

“A miracle.” She wondered if Elsa could see the sparkles, too. After all, she was part of this. Without her egg...

But Trey was smiling at her, his head coming down. And behind him, she saw the sparkles lighting up again, as if someone plugged them in. Or they just liked her and Trey kissing.

She reached up. So did he.

“
Our
miracle,” he said, and then he kissed her and her eyes closed. But she still saw sparkles. Hundreds of them. Lighting up her life. And this wasn’t the end of a miracle, she thought as their lips met. This was just the beginning...

-The End-

Dear Reader,

I’m delighted that you’ve read STARDUST MIRACLE, the second
Miracle Interrupted
story. MUST WORSHIP CATS, a novella, introduces the series. MIRACLE LANE and MIRACLE PIE are the next two books. I have more
Miracle Interrupted
novels on the way.

If you enjoyed STARDUST MIRACLE, I would appreciate it if you would help others enjoy it by posting a review at your favorite places.

Read on for an excerpt from MIRACLE LANE and MIRACLE PIE, along with an excerpt from SECOND CHANCES by Leigh Morgan.

I love hearing from readers. You can reach me at
[email protected]
.

Author updates can be found at
http://edieramer.com
. You can also sign up for my newsletter and find samples of my other novels.

Happy Reading!

Edie Ramer

Miracle Lane

a Miracle Interrupted novel

Edie Ramer

She forgot how to hate, and now she’s learning how to love...

Brain-damaged Nia Beaudine can’t remember her life before The Accident. Someone intentionally ran over her and left her for dead. Now she’s living in the ‘witch’s house’ she inherited in the village of Miracle, relearning how to live on her own. Well, almost on her own – the talking cat helping her cope is a bonus. But when a hate-filled family member shows up with a gun, Nia knows she needs real help.

Former Army Sergeant and PTSD sufferer Rob Ackerman regularly covers for his identical twin, the village constable, and answers Nia’s emergency call. This strange young woman immediately sees he’s not his brother. In return, he sees that the only way she can fully live in her new life is to find out why someone in her old life tried to kill her...and might try again.

As they dig up Nia’s past, the attraction between them grows. Their brains may be damaged, but their bodies and hearts are working just fine.

Excerpt:

Chapter One

The thin man wearing the tan constable uniform at Nia Beaudine’s front door was a liar.

People told Nia she’d been a liar in her old life. Those memories had been lost along with pieces of her skull and brain matter. Her new self couldn’t understand why people lied. Truths were hard enough to remember.

Why would this man –
any
man – want to pretend he was a constable in this village of only 629? Most of them odd. A place she should fit right in.

This man...he didn’t look odd, but she knew he must be very odd. Not dangerous, though. For one second she considered closing the door on him, but every instinct told her she could trust this man.

Instead, she said, “I think my cat is trying to talk to me.”

Her words seemed to hang in the air like bubbles. She studied his face, waiting for his reaction. Ready for anything.

He studied her back. Just watching. 

Yesterday Nia had learned the word
cryptic
while doing a crossword puzzle in an exercise to expand her word skills.

Her cat was cryptic. A cryptic, talking cat.

The man blinked. Not talkative like her cat. Perhaps even more cryptic. The silence stretched out between them. Nina heard the birds chatter and small rustles of leaves. Probably a squirrel or animal running across the wooded lawn of the house her mother’s aunt had bequeathed to her.

“Why do you think that?” he finally said.

Nia’s arms prickled. She was sensitive to sound – as if to compensate her for losing twenty-five years of memories – and his resonating baritone made her skin itch from the inside out.

“Because I understand what she’s saying,” she said.

He nodded, his expression serious.

Better than she’d expected when the words tumbled out of her mouth. Any other person would frown, a conviction of her insanity stamped on their disbelieving face, and step back, as if fearful that crazy was catching.

She always wanted to tell them it was catching only if someone was trying to run them over in a car.

And to make sure it worked, that someone would back up and run them over again.

But instead of giving her the
loco
look, this man stared at her steadily. His full lips closed and pressed into thinness, his eyes steady on her face. Mournful brown eyes that matched his nut-brown hair.

He made her think of a tree. Solid but not broad. One that would bend but not break. And his face... Like his body, his face was long and lean. Deep lines of pain scored each side of his mouth, though she guessed he wasn’t more than thirty. He couldn’t be much older. Not with his skin clinging tightly to his bones. His nose was blade-like, half a triangle. His jaw resolute. His eyebrows and hair thick. 

He was a man’s man, making up for his few words with an excess of testosterone.

Pheromones shot straight at her. She could smell them. They twirled around her like invisible dust motes, capturing and captivating her, putting a magical spell on her, bringing to life senses that had been sleeping since she woke up in the hospital bed, the world fuzzy, her mouth dry, and no thoughts in her mind.

But her mind hadn’t been silent, not with a scream shrieking through it that no one could hear but her.

Later, she recognized the scream must have been her own voice. Even later, she realized that must have been the last sound she made as the car ran over her.

She shivered, the memories upsetting, but not as upsetting as the way he made her feel.

This was not the kind of help she’d hoped for when she’d called the constable’s number.

Maybe this was the trouble her cat had been warning her about.

If only Bast had been more specific.

This cat and human communication was new to both of them. They’d been living together for only three weeks. She’d just started to understand Bast’s yowls and meows and mrows and an entire orchestra of sounds yesterday. Like the first few pieces of a thousand-piece puzzle coming together.

Maybe they would get better with time.

She shifted her feet, the silence pressing down on her. Early on in her recovery, she discovered other people hated silence. The need to fill the wordless void compelled them to speak. To say things they later wished were unsaid. To say the truth.

Apparently he’d reached the same conclusion, since he kept his gaze on her, not moving a muscle. As if the loser would be whoever spoke first.

The silence was like a chewed piece of gum...growing longer and longer and longer...

“What’s the prize?” she asked.

“Prize for what?”

“For talking last.”

His lips stretched slowly then kicked up at the edges. “You talked first. You tell me what my prize should be.” 

She glanced down at his shoes. She’d amused him. Maybe there was a prize for making him smile.

Maybe there were no prizes in life.

“Something’s crawling on your shoe.”

He glanced down, not twitching. The most unmoving man she could remember. Since her memory went back only eighteen months, she supposed there might have been others.

“Caterpillar,” he said. “A monarch.”

She peered down at the yellow, black and white stripes on the fuzzy thing. “How do you know?” 

“By the colors.”

She nodded. That made sense. Every day she found out something new. “I’ll look it up on my computer.”

“When you called, you said someone was trying to kill you.”

Her head came up. “I called the constable, but you’re not him.”

His stillness became different. More than just holding his breath. As if his blood stopped pulsing through his veins and his heart stopped beating and even his soul closed up, hiding itself. 

Then a shudder shivered through him. Like a car that wouldn’t start, coming to life. He blinked and his lips parted. “Jerry and I are twins. Identical. How did you know?”

She’d learned about twins. Her therapist had advised her to watch TV to learn about life. And she did learn. One twin could be evil. The other could be good. But by now she knew not everything on TV was true, and she guessed most twins were neither good nor evil, but just people trying to get through life without being killed and not wanting to kill anyone else. People like her.