Saving Home. Marie Ferrarella

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       CHAPTER TWO

      ANDY HESITATED JUST inside the kitchen door and suddenly reached for the counter to steady herself. Her breath caught in her throat as her brain kicked in, making the question she was about to ask Cris entirely unnecessary.

      “Are you saying—?” Andy blew out a breath and tried again, this time hoping to be able to form a coherent, complete sentence. “You want me to be the new baby’s godmother?”

      “Only if you promise to learn how to speak English and not garbled gibberish,” Cris qualified, doing her best to maintain a straight face.

      “Absolutely!” Andy grabbed Cris’s hands, as if that would somehow help her discern if her sister was just having fun with her or on the level. “Is Shane okay with this? I mean, did you ask him? Maybe he’d rather have someone else, or—”

      Cris pulled her hands free from Andy’s and placed her fingers against Andy’s lips in an effort to, at least for the moment, stop the torrent of words.

      “Shane is fine with this,” Cris assured her. “In case you hadn’t noticed, he’s really crazy about this family.” Resting her hand on the baby, who must have been once more attempting to kick its way out of her belly—a rather regular occurrence recently—the smile on Cris’s lips widened. “I am an exceedingly lucky woman. To have two good men love me in one lifetime, well, it just doesn’t get any better than that.”

      Andy saw that there were tears shimmering in Cris’s eyes. Happy tears.

      “No, it doesn’t,” Andy agreed quietly.

      The next moment, Andy felt a wave of guilt wash over her. Guilt because she caught herself being envious of Cris.

      Her tall, willowy, gentle older sister had had two men pledge to love her forever. Two men who vowed to be there for her so she would have someone to lean on. Not that she didn’t think Cris deserved the love of both her late husband and Shane, the man she’d married last Christmas. She did.

      But was it too much to ask to have someone like that come her way?

      Apparently, Andy decided, it was. She struggled to suppress a deep sigh.

      Cris pressed her lips together, knitting her eyebrows into one very thoughtful line. “For a second there, you seemed like the old Andy,” she told her sister. “But then this new Andy 2.0 version popped out again.” Cris gave her a penetrating stare—and a warning. “You might as well resign yourself to the fact that you’re not coming out of this kitchen until you get it all off your chest.”

      Andy just looked at her.

      Cris shook her head. “And sorry, I’m not a sucker for that sad, little girl lost face you just put on. Now talk to me, kid. Let it all out. You’ll feel better.”

      Andy shrugged, watching Jorge, Cris’s sous-chef, move about the kitchen on what seemed like automatic pilot. Cris was the creative one in the kitchen. These days, as she was getting closer to her due date, Jorge had gone so far as to insist that he wouldn’t listen to a thing she said unless she was sitting down when she said it.

      As independent as her sisters, but less vocal about it, Cris had no choice but to comply.

      Apparently Jorge’s stubbornness was on the same level as Alex’s. Cris had lamented that she was outnumbered, but Andy believed her sister was secretly grateful for all the help she was getting. It was to the point where everyone was anticipating—correctly—her next order.

      Andy blew out a breath, surrendering. “All right, if you really want to know...”

      “I do,” Cris replied firmly.

      It took Andy a second to gather her courage. She wasn’t one given to whining or complaining. “For the first time in my life, I feel like I’m the odd girl out.”

      “Well, there’s no arguing that you’re a little odd,” Cris allowed, then she laughed, her eyes crinkling with unabashed humor. “In comparison to the rest of us, you’ve always been the one on an even keel, the one who was always happy. You’re the one who always makes the world seem a little brighter, a little happier because of your attitude.”

      Cris grew more serious as she made her way to the industrial-sized refrigerator that her father had had installed two renovations ago, at the time it became clear that the one they had could no longer accommodate all the food they needed to feed their increased number of guests.

      “Go on. Don’t stop,” Cris urged. “There’s got to be more to it than that.” She took out one of the potpies she’d made earlier that morning and popped it into the microwave. Hitting the appropriate numbers, Cris turned around to look at her sister. “You were saying—?” she coaxed.

      Andy wet her very dry lips before continuing. “You and Alex and Stevi, you’ve got your men. You’re set for life, for having your own families.”

      This wasn’t coming out right. It was making her seem petty and small, and she wasn’t, she thought, annoyed with herself. She would have gladly laid her life down for any of her sisters or her father. That list also included her brothers-in-law as well as her nephew.

      She was feeling this way because she wanted to be just like them, to have the promise of love and a family—her own family.

      “And me,” she continued out loud, “I’m going to be your kids’ crazy old Aunt Andy.”

      “Wait,” Cris said. “Shouldn’t СКАЧАТЬ