Baby, I’m Yours Page 5

  As the crowd dispersed, Emory stood aside while Shelby was swept up in a gaggle of well-wishing women. She threw the bouquet and it fell into the glad hands of a young girl who had been in the grocery basement with Shelby after the storm.

  Porter slung his arm around Emory’s shoulder. “Hell of a week, huh?”

  “I’ll say.”

  “I talked to Marcus and Kendall this morning on a satellite phone. They said to give you their best, and their thanks for what you did for the town.”

  Emory gave him a rueful smile. “That’s really nice of them…but the town is gone.”

  “For now,” Porter said. “But mark my words—it’ll be rebuilt someday, and when it is, we’ll have a reunion.”

  Emory smiled. “I look forward to that day.”

  Porter nodded to Shelby. “You’d better claim your wife and get out of here.”

  He grinned. “Don’t mind if I do.”

  The men shook hands, then gave each other an impulsive hug.

  Emory found his father and said goodbye with the promise to call soon. Then he made his way through the crowd around Shelby and clasped her hand. “Mrs. Maxwell, it’s time to go.” He lowered his mouth to her ear. “I can’t wait to get you to that hotel room in Atlanta and…well, you know.”

  Shelby blushed as she dimpled. “Let me say goodbye to Daddy.”

  He gave father and daughter a private moment of goodbye before walking up to Walter Moon to shake his hand. He pretended not to notice the shimmer of tears in the older man’s eyes.

  Then he and Shelby ran through a gauntlet of friends and neighbors who threw birdseed salvaged from the remains of the local feed store. Their SUV had been decorated with streamers and cans and shoes tied to the rear bumper. They drove off, waving and honking. It had been the most perfect ceremony, better than he’d imagined, magnified by what they’d nearly lost.

  “I can’t believe you’re mine,” Emory said, squeezing her hand.

  She smiled, her eyes shining with love. “Believe it, baby…I’m yours…all yours. There’s no place I’d rather be than with you.”

  They drove out of their mountain hometown on the road still littered with massive trees that had been sawed and cleared to allow vehicles to pass. The sign for the mercantile still stood, announcing a business that no longer existed. The covered bridge over Trimble Creek was gone, too, blown to God only knew where. He remembered the bittersweet pangs of being pulled back to this place and felt guilty that he’d nursed resentment toward Sweetness.

  It had made him who he was today.

  Emory looked in the rearview mirror at the one remaining landmark of Sweetness, the soaring white water tower, and marveled at the role it had played in his life and in the lives of the residents it guarded.

  “Goodbye, Sweetness,” Emory murmured to himself. “May you thrive again someday.”

  If you fell in love with the people of Sweetness, Georgia, don’t miss the SOUTHERN ROADS trilogy, the story of the Armstrong brothers who return to rebuild the mountain town of Sweetness—with the help of a group of northern women recruited from a newspaper ad! (Hint: Porter, the confirmed bachelor, is the first Armstrong to fall!)

  Coming this summer from Mira Books:

  BABY, DRIVE SOUTH

  BABY, COME HOME

  BABY, DON’T GO

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-0412-6

  Baby, I’m Yours

  Copyright © 2011 by Stephanie Bond, Inc.

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