Baby Under The Mistletoe

EPILOGUE

“YOU’RE SUPPOSED to smile, not cry.”

Soleil looked up at the camera pointed at her. “Would you put that thing away?”

“No, I want a few more shots. I’ve heard newborn babies’ faces change every day. We have to get lots of pictures or we’ll forget what she looked like.”

“Oh, God,” she muttered, but he could tell she was kind of enjoying the attention.

He clicked a few more shots at various angles, unable to stop himself. They looked beautiful together, Soleil and their little girl.

She smiled at the baby who’d been attached like a suction cup to her breast all morning. “Enough already,” she said to the baby, right before she gently pried her off.

“Your turn,” she said. “My arms are cramping up.”

He put down the camera and took the baby from her.

“Think of any names you like yet?”

“I know for sure that we’re not naming her Matilda.”

“Mattie for short! I think it’s perfect,” West said as the baby rooted around on his chest, only to discover that he didn’t have anything interesting there.

She began to howl. He gazed at the tiny pink bundle of screaming, angry perfection that had barged into his life and promptly taken charge of his heart a day ago.

“Let’s don’t be one of those couples whose baby goes around for a month with no name.”

“Alice?” he suggested.

“No.”

“Amanda?”

“No.”

“Drucilla?”

“Now you’re making me angry.”

West laughed. “You’re so cute when you’re mad, I can’t help myself.”

Soleil eased herself off the hospital bed. Her pink flannel pj’s were kind of turning West on, but since they had a baby to keep up with and she’d just given birth and all, he figured he’d better keep that fact to himself for now.

Or at least until she was in a better mood.

“How about Juliana,” she said. “It sort of combines both our mothers’ names.”

He looked down at the baby in his arms, who, for the moment, was lying there peacefully.

“Juliana,” he said. “Is that your name?”

“Juliana Morgan,” she said, trying out the sound of it.

“I like it, but I think her middle name should be Soleil.”

She sighed. “Okay, fine.”

There it was. That was their daughter’s name. “Perfect.”

She said nothing, but he could tell she was pleased.

He watched her walk, tentatively, unsteadily, across the room to the window, and his heart swelled with pride. She was his wife, and this life, with her here in California, running the farm, it was the first time he could look around and see that his choices finally resembled his heart, and not anyone else’s.