One Year Later
Pastor Miles smiled at Max then began his usual dedication litany. Sophia Dalila Lakefield-Donovan was being dedicated. To Max’s left, Ben and Adam stood as godfathers, while to his right a smiling Deena, along with both her sisters, who were serving as godmothers. Around them were their parents and other family members, and some members of the press were in the back of the church. They’d been at their wedding snapping pictures for their next story. Why it was news that the two families had made a legal union as well as the business one, Max still didn’t understand. But as long as Deena didn’t mind, he was okay with it.
In his arms was a wiggling baby girl. She weighed eight pounds and three-and-a-half ounces now, at two months old. At birth she’d barely been five pounds. Her biological mother had been a fifteen-year-old street child in Pirata, Brazil, who had showed up on the steps of the Karing for Kidz House in terrible pain and scared out of her mind that she was dying. The young girl hadn’t even known she was pregnant. Noreen had called Deena immediately and Deena had hurried to Max’s office to ask if they could adopt her.
The question had startled him.
“She has nobody, Max. The mother doesn’t want her. Besides, she’s too young to know what to do with a baby. She’ll be an orphan that our parents will have to find foster parents for if we don’t take her. Here, look. I’ve got a picture my mom emailed to me just before I left the house.”
They’d purchased a house in Henderson, Nevada, after their Fourth of July wedding in Hilton Head. Deena was now on her fifth book and loving taking care of the household while Max was away.
He took the picture from her hands even though he wasn’t sure his heart could take another surprise. Of course he wanted to adopt the baby. They’d talked about adopting extensively over the past six months. It was an option they both felt comfortable with.
He looked down and everything inside him melted. She was beautiful.
And now, she was his daughter. His little Sophia.
Max looked around, his heart full, as he had the perfect wife, and now together, they had the perfect child. It just didn’t get any better than this.