Currant Creek Valley by RaeAnne Thayne

far different from being faced with the blunt reality of it.
    “Does Harry know?” she finally quipped.
    Mary Ella made a face. “Very funny. Yes. He’s been asking me since Christmas. I just... It took me a long time to feel comfortable saying yes.”
    Their romance had shocked everyone in town, especially because Mary Ella had made no secret the past twenty years of her contempt for the man. She had always considered him greedy and soulless, someone who had betrayed his own son, traded his family away for a handful of gold.
    Something had shifted between them the year before, however, around the time Harry’s son, Jackson, had come back into Maura’s life after he discovered they shared a daughter, Sage.
    Tension tightened her mother’s features and Alex knew Mary Ella was waiting for some other response from her than a joke. She didn’t quite know what to say. Those strained and difficult teenage years aside, she loved her mother dearly and wasn’t sure Harry Lange was good enough for her.
    “Are you...okay with it?” Mary Ella finally asked.
    She gave a rueful shake of her head, squeezing her mother’s fingers. “I don’t know, Mom,” she said. “Don’t you think you could hold out for someone a little more financially secure who might take better care of you in your old age so we don’t have to?”
    Mary Ella chuckled, some of the tautness of her muscles easing a little at Alex’s light tone. “I don’t care about his money. Harry knows that. I hope my own children do, too.”
    “You know I’m teasing, Mom. Though if you were any other woman, I might suspect you of marrying him just to get your hands on his Sarah Colville paintings.”
    “I’m considering that a very big bonus. I’m marrying the man I love and in the process gaining an entire houseful of paintings by my favorite artist.”
    Mary Ella no longer looked as if she were going to climb the walls in a minute, but anxiety still furrowed her forehead. Alex swallowed the rest of her conflicted emotions and reached across the space between them to hug her.
    “I’m happy for you, Mom,” she said, meaning every word. “I may not have been all that crazy about Harry when you started seeing him—you can’t expect to unleash shock waves of epic proportions like that on the whole town without rattling a few people—but he’s started growing on me.”
    Mary Ella’s laugh was shaky with relief. “Thank you for saying that, my dear. Your sisters said much the same. Well, except for Lila and Rose, who haven’t really had a chance to get to know him this last year, as the rest of you have. Even they said they trusted my judgment. I only hope Riley will be as understanding.”
    Her brother could be overprotective of the women in his family and often tried to boss them all around, but he and Harry also had a weirdly amicable relationship.
    “I’m sure he’ll be happy for you,” she said. “If he’s not, Claire will make sure he comes around. So when’s the big day?”
    “We thought the holidays would be a special time for a wedding. Claire and Riley’s was so beautiful a few years ago, all those silvery snowflakes. We don’t want anything big, mainly for family and close friends, at Harry’s house. It will be lovely in the winter, with a fire blazing and those windows that look out over the mountains.”
    “I’m doing the food, of course.”
    “Absolutely not,” Mary Ella answered promptly. “You can plan the menu and hire the caterers if you insist on it, but I want you to be part of the family, front and center, not hiding away in the kitchen by yourself.”
    There went her escape plan. Ah, well. “Poor Maura. First she had to deal with Harry as a father-in-law and now he’s going to be her stepfather, too.”
    “She’s actually great with it. She and Jack both. We told them first. I hope you don’t mind. Sage, of course, didn’t seem at all surprised.”
    “None of us are, Mom. Everyone can see how happy you and