Family Matters (DiCarlo Brides book 4) (The DiCarlo Brides) Read Online Free PDF Page A

and part of something more.
    Tonight, when Rosemary talked about her daughter and becoming a parent, he’d felt that tug stronger than ever. Felt it for her.
    Had he been crazy to offer her his support? He layered on the smoked ham and pushed it from his mind. That way lay madness—as he’d already found since his arrival in Juniper Ridge.

    “Okay, what’s with the emergency meeting?” Jonquil asked as she set popcorn and chips on the coffee table in their sunken great room and hour later. The last of the sisters arrived only moments before and Rosemary refused to speak without them present, even if three no longer lived in the house. She didn’t want to have to go over any of this again, so handling all of their questions now was a must.
    She was anxious about how everyone would take her news—especially Jonquil and Delphi. Harrison was the first person she’d told about Cleome in years—and she never would have mentioned her to any of them if it weren’t for her chance to regain custody now. Some things were best kept to oneself.
    “Are you going to tell us why we’re here?” Delphi asked as she pulled out her earrings. “Not that losing your friends isn’t a big deal, but you didn’t call us all here to bare you soul.”
    Rosemary had been lifting a glass of water to her mouth and was glad she hadn’t been drinking when she heard that—she might have inhaled a mouthful. As it was, it took a moment to answer. “You’re not as far off as you think.”
    Sage patted Rosemary’s knee. “It’s okay, no one will give you trouble about what you’re going to say.”
    “You sure about that?” Delphi asked, but the words were mild, more a tease than a real challenge. Sometimes it was hard to tell with her, though.
    “Pretty sure.” Sage smiled, her dark gypsy features calm and supportive.
    Rosemary nodded and plunged ahead. “I got pregnant when I was nineteen.”
    Eyes bugged, breaths of surprise were drawn in and the room became quiet enough to hear Delphi’s earring hit the carpet. She scrambled to pull the pearl stud out of the deep pile and Rosemary couldn’t help but feel a little satisfaction that her announcement had thrown her cool-headed sister off-balance.
    She continued. “There was this couple in my neighborhood—really sweet, friendly, let me come over all of the time. Cecelia taught me to cook. They couldn’t have kids of their own, so I offered to let them adopt my little girl. They were thrilled. Now they’re,” she had been planning to say dead in that matter-of-fact voice she had been using for the whole story, but couldn’t get it to come out of her throat. She changed her word choice and still had a waver in her voice when she spoke, “gone. It leaves my daughter, who is nine now, an orphan. This morning when the lawyer came to tell about them, he said the Markhams wanted me to become her guardian if something happened to them.”
    More gasps, but Sage was right—no one gave her a hard time. Not yet, anyway.
    “So you have to bring her back here, to live in our house.” Delphi’s face was blank, not giving away any hint of how she felt about it.
    “I’d get a place of my own if it were an option, but thanks to Dad’s will, it’s not, so yeah, I’m going to have to bring her back here. I know that means you and Jonquil are going to be inconvenienced with the noise and mess, and giggling voices, but until September—”
    “Right,” Jonquil said with a firm nod. “There are three empty bedrooms now. They all have private bathrooms and desks in them, so it’s not like she’s going to be taking over our private spaces. If we can deal with Lana the hot-water hog here for the first part of the year,” she paused to grin when Lana protested, “we can manage a nine-year-old.”
    Rosemary nodded, feeling relief, even though she expected nothing less from Jonquil. She turned toward Delphi—the one who was more likely to object.
    “I don’t see that there’s much