A Valentine for Harlequin's Anniversary by Catherine Mann Read Free Book Online Page B

lay against me, believing I could do no wrong by her.
    In the early days I was getting up to feed her three times a night. Doesn’t sound like something you’d inflict upon someone you love right? Well the one thing that amazed me was that even though every time I awoke to that new baby cry, knowing I would be parted from my beloved bed, my beloved pillow and my beloved sleep for the next hour, the second I looked down into that sweet little face in the cradle I just fell in love all over again.
    I feel most loved when my daughter smiles at me in the mirror, hiding her face against my chest as though she’s overcome with happiness. When she’s in anyone else’s arms she watches me as I walk around a room. And when she stares unblinking into my eyes when I sing The Rainbow Connection.
    She’s now a little over four months old and quite truly the love of my life.
    The books I have received most reader mail about-A FATHER IN THE MAKING and MILLIONAIRE TO THE RESCUE-are those in which my heroines have had young children. This bond between mother and child has obviously touched more readers to write and tell me than any other, and I wonder if that’s because the bar on what kind of man a woman will allow into her life is raised when the happiness of her children is at stake.
    Now that I’m a new mum, I can’t wait to see how it colours my writing. I wonder how writing about families will change now that I am in a position to really know how family dynamics work. What truly heavenly heroes await—for surely a young mum deserves one who cooks, cleans, changes nappies! Lucky for me I have one of those all for myself so I don’t have to look far for research purposes.
    As to the romance of being permanently covered in baby spew, of walking around all the time with a cloth nappy over one’s shoulder without realising it, of having permanent bags under ones eyes and at best four hours of sleep in one block at night, and taking a half hour longer to get in and out of the car than a woman without kids, well we write romantic fantasy right;)?
    — Ally Blake
www.allyblake.com
    #34
    I believe in love because what else is there? If not love, then what would fill my heart and colour my life and inform my choices?
    I believe in love in its many shapes and textures. I believe in the lightning bolt of instant attraction. I believe in all the clichés: the knee-melting, stomach-tightening, heart-skipping eye meet across a crowded room. The inability to look away, to breathe, to speak, to reason. I believe in the heart knowing that this is The One.
    I believe because that’s how it was for me, twenty-nine years ago.

    I believe in love beyond that first flush of infatuation. I believe in the power of laughter and of quiet conversation, in shared newspapers on a Sunday morning, in walking hand in hand, and in unexpected kisses…just because. I believe in companionable silences and in heated debates and in making up even when sorry is the hardest word to voice.
    I believe in the instant bond of maternal love and in the husband with the goofy grin and misty eyes standing by my bedside and holding my hand. If I didn’t believe in his love, then we wouldn’t have made it through my week in the maternity ward and his decision to use his time alone at home to clear out some of “the junk” in the spare room. I managed to replace most of the books he “cleared out.” Our love survived.
    It survived and it strengthened…without that strength it would not have survived. My sanity would not have. He held my hand again as we learned that our second son had serious “developmental delays”, as I angsted over why, what, how. Through year after year of therapy sessions and specialists’ surgeries and diagnostic probing until I screamed enough. In the quiet aftermath we got our diagnosis. It didn’t change a thing. We have a son who cannot say the words but who shows us love in its purest form, in a hug, in a look, every day.
    I believe