Page 65 of Midnight Rider

He moved toward the bed, leaving Colston to admire his grandchildren, and sat down next to a weary, worn Bernadette, who still somehow managed to smile and lift a hand to pull him down to her.

She kissed him softly. “We have children,” she whispered weakly. “A son and a daughter.”

“And you are alive, as you promised me, and with lungs that didn’t even hinder you through this entire ordeal,” he said. He kissed her again. “Bernie, I’m very drunk.”

She laughed at the unfamiliar nickname he’d just given her. “Very drunk, indeed!” she scolded. “Didn’t you trust me?”

“I tried to,” he said. “But trust is hard when people scream, you know.” His radiant eyes met hers. “I love you more than my life,” he whispered tenderly. “Thank you for being alive. And thank you most especially for our children.”

She nuzzled her face into his shoulder. “Thank you, too.”

He glanced toward his father-in-law, who had taken a chair and was holding one of the babies, crooning softly to it. Bernadette lifted her face and followed his fascinated gaze. Tears stung her eyes at the sight of her father with his grandchild.

“Do you believe in miracles, Eduardo?” she asked, thinking of how distant she and her father had once been, and how chaotic her life had been just the year before. So much had changed. She couldn’t have imagined such happiness.

“Yes,” Eduardo answered the soft question. But he was looking at her.

She smiled up at him. They had a prosperous cattle ranch, two new babies and the whole world with its arms open to them. She wondered if she were dreaming it all.

“Darling, would you like to pinch me, just in case?” she asked him.

He chuckled, because he knew what she meant. “Only if you agree to pinch me in return.” He leaned closer. “But perhaps we won’t take the chance, dearest. If I am dreaming, let me never wake!”

Bernadette couldn’t argue with that sentiment. She smiled and kissed him instead, to the soft whisper of an Irish lullaby that came lovingly, but sadly out of tune, from the general direction of the window seat. She thought that she’d never heard such a beautiful song in her life.

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