By golly, if Janet didn’t go and make good on her promise. Barely nine months to the day after their honeymoon, Harlan found himself pacing the hallways at the hospital waiting for her to give birth. The whole danged family was there, fussing and carrying on, teasing him unmercifully about getting a second chance at parenthood.

“Maybe this time you’ll get it right,” Cody teased.

“There’s not a thing about the way I did it the first time that I’d do over,” he shot right back, then sighed heavily. “Except with Erik. I’d do that over if I could.”

Luke put his arm around him. “Daddy, Erik made his own choices.”

Jessie stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “That’s right. It’s time to let it go. Besides, this should be a happy occasion. We should be concentrating on the new baby, not sad memories.”

Jenny, who’d been standing impatiently in the corridor outside the delivery room for the past hour, came up in front of him and scowled. “I just don’t get it. What’s taking so long? And why aren’t you in there with her?”

“Because he’d be telling the doctor what to do, that’s why,” Cody chimed in. “The delivery room staff signed a petition to keep him out.”

“But you took those classes with Mom and everything,” Jenny protested. “Now she doesn’t even have a coach in there with her. If I’d known you were going to chicken out, I’d have taken the classes.”

Just then a nurse appeared in the doorway. She zeroed straight in on Harlan. “Mr. Adams, your wife is asking for you.”

His breath caught in his throat. “The baby?”

“Should be here any minute now,” the nurse said. “She says you’ll probably only have to suffer through a contraction or two.”

When his sons heard that, they hooted. “Now we know,” Jordan taunted. “Janet was terrified you were going to faint in there, wasn’t she?”

“We reached an agreement is all,” Harlan said defensively.

The truth of it was, Janet had fought like a demon to keep him from seeing her in pain. He’d fought just as hard to be in that delivery room. He’d missed out on the birth of his sons, because that was the way of the world back then. He’d regretted it more than he could say. This time he wanted to be there for the miracle, just one of many to come into his life since the day he’d met Janet and Jenny.

As promised, he walked through the door of the delivery room just in the nick of time. Janet’s face was bathed in sweat, but the smile she turned on him was enough to fill his heart to overflowing. He clasped her hand.

“I hear you’re doing great,” he said.