I married a widower, promising to love his children as my own. But he turned me into their servant while painting me as the villain. When I finally left, I thought I’d failed them forever.
Then, 16 years later, his daughter reached out with words that shattered me. I was 21 and completely naive when I met Paul at a coffee shop in downtown Lakeside. He was 32, with salt-and-pepper hair and eyes that looked like they’d seen too much pain.
His wife had died in a car accident eight months earlier, leaving him with two young children. “You have the most beautiful smile,” he said, approaching my table with a confidence that made my cheeks burn. “I’m sorry if that sounds forward, but I haven’t smiled in months, and somehow seeing yours made me remember what that felt like.”
I should have seen the red flags, that suffocating intensity, and how he made everything about his tragedy overwhelming.
But at 21, I thought his broken-man routine was romantic. “I’m Carol,” I managed, clutching my coffee cup like a lifeline. “Paul.
And I know this might sound crazy, but would you have dinner with me tomorrow? I feel like meeting you might be exactly what I needed.”
Three weeks later, I was sitting in his living room, meeting his kids, Mia and John. Eight-year-old Mia had her father’s dark hair and a gap-toothed grin that could melt hearts.
Six-year-old John was all energy and mischief, climbing on furniture like a tiny tornado. “Kids, this is Carol,” Paul announced. “She’s very special to Daddy.”
I nearly choked on my coffee.
Special? Already? We’d only had two dates.
“Are you going to be our new mommy?” Mia asked with the brutal honesty only children possess. Paul’s hand found mine. “Maybe, sweetheart.
Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”
The courtship was a whirlwind that left me dizzy, with flowers at my work, romantic dinners where Paul stared at me like I’d descended from heaven, and late-night calls where he would whisper, “You saved us, Carol. You brought light back into our dark world.”
“I never believed in second chances,” he told me over candlelit pasta at Romano’s, our fingers intertwined across the table. “But then you walked into that coffee shop, and suddenly I could breathe again.”
I was drowning in his intensity, but I mistook it for love.
When he proposed after just four months, I said yes. The ring was beautiful, but what really sealed it was what he said next: “You’re not just marrying me, Carol. You’re choosing to be Mia and John’s mother.
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