Her Wedding Wish by Jillian Hart Read Free Book Online Page B

me back then, and one night, when we were just back from snowbirding in Scottsdale, we met with Ann and Silas Donovan, Brice’s grandparents. We were all in the same boat. We had grandchildren but no great-grandchildren. I saw this as a totally unacceptable situation, so I decided to take it to the good Lord and start praying.”
    “Is that so?” Jonas didn’t seem to understand that it was their marriage, and their firstborn son, who’d been that long-awaited great-grandchild.
    “You’d just moved into the rental house on Caleb’s grandparents’ property just down the road,” Danielle explained, remembering that sweet summer they’d met.
    “That so?” He grinned. “I lived down the road from Gran?”
    “You did.” He’d always called “Gran” by her first name, Mary, but she didn’t correct him. She reached for his knife and began to cut into his barbecued chicken. “It was this nice little two-bedroom house with a perfect view of Gran’s horse pastures, where I rode with Aubrey every morning.”
    “I see.” He still couldn’t tell the twins apart, and looked at Ava, who was giggling away at something Tyler was saying. “It’s my guess I took one look at you and decided to take you to dinner.”
    “And you were awfully confident about it, too.” Danielle felt the cold places within her warm like that June morning. She wished he could remember how that day had changed both of their lives for the better.
    “Confident? What did I do?” He watched her blankly, his gaze searching her face. A stranger’s gaze.
    But he was no stranger to her. Gone was the memory they shared of how she’d first set eyes on the young, strapping twenty-two-year-old Jonas, so handsome and friendly and good. She’d been afraid to trust him. Repeating the heartbreak of her mother’s first marriage had been her fear back then—her natural father had been violent to her.
    Did she tell him how nervous he’d made her? Or how secretly wonderful she thought he was, even at first glance? “I’ll never forget how you strolled up to the fence one morning after Aubrey and I were back from a long ride, and you had your arms braced on the top rail and a cowboy hat shading your face. Just the impression you gave made me turn my horse around and avoid you entirely.”
    “No, you didn’t. That’s a good one. A good joke.”
    “It’s no joke, handsome. I thought you were trouble spelled with a capital T. ” She had to laugh at herself, fighting against the pull of sadness. How could he not remember? How could so much love and life be wiped clean like images off a blackboard? “Okay, so I was wrong.”
    “Am I trouble?” Jonas asked, as if he had no clue what that meant.
    “Big-time,” she assured him. She wished he could see how blue the sky was and how vibrant and stalwart he had looked with the mountains behind him.
    “How long did you stay away from me?”
    Now he had the wrong impression. She should have said that she’d wanted to avoid him because she was scared. Sometimes when you looked your dream in the face, nothing was more terrifying.
    Before she could answer, Gran did. “Didn’t I mention that I had to resort to prayer?”
    “She didn’t like me that much?”
    “In my defense—” Danielle set down his knife and then reached for her own “—I was looking for a nice guy to marry. Someone as wonderful as Dad.”
    “We’re a rare bunch,” Dad called out from across the table.
    Jonas looked puzzled. “I’m a nice guy. Right?”
    “The nicest,” she reassured him. “But I didn’t know you. And a handsome, self-assured man who had too much charm for his own good didn’t fit with what I was searching for.”
    “I’ve got charm, huh?” He gave her that lopsided grin.
    “A tad.” Danielle smiled, unable to find the words to describe how deeply he had charmed her.
    “A smidgen,” Ava called from across the table.
    “Just a pinch,” Aubrey chimed in. “I told Dani at the time that she ought