Free Her Perfect Match by Kate Welsh

remembering and relating that life-altering afternoon in the studio. “I never questioned the way I look. I suppose I should have. I didn’t resemble anyone in the family, but Dad does have blue eyes. Being adopted never occurred to me. I guess because Crystal looks so much like Grandmother and Mama.”
    “They were supposed to name you Wade Jackson after your father.”
    “They did, mostly. My full name is Jackson Wade Alton. College friends shortened it to Jack. So that’s what I gave Ross as my name. I wasn’t trying to be dishonest. I didn’t know how much your family knew and I didn’t want to cause you any embarrassment.”
    “I understand and I thank you.” She looked around. They were still very much alone in the backcorner of the hall. “I suppose here’s as good a place as any. You said you have questions.”
    Jackson nodded. “One of the things I found that afternoon was the ring. I suspect it was your engagement ring. I managed to answer some of my questions about you and Wade Jackson, my father, on my own. I know he died in the Vietnam War and that he was a pilot. I assume you loved him very much. What I don’t understand is why you gave me up and why you left your ring with me.”
    He saw a great deal of pain flash into Meg’s expression and then it was in her voice. “Oh, I loved him. He was the embodiment of the word hero. And I gave you up for the same reason. I met him in New York when I was barely eighteen. I’d gotten lucky with a break as part of the cast of Hello, Dolly! Wade was essentially alone in the world, having lost both his parents a few years earlier. He was between tours of duty. I was also alone. I’d burned my bridges with my father over the career I chose.
    “I found out I was pregnant after he’d left for Saigon. My letter didn’t reach him before he was shot down. I had only a distant cousin to turn to. I went to her when I lost my spot because I couldn’t dance anymore. It was in Colorado that I found the Lord. I loved you already for being part of Wade and our love. It was a different world then, Jackson. I loved you too much to raise you with a stigma of illegitimacy and without a real family. It hurts more than I can say that you didn’t have that.”
    “No. No, don’t feel that way. I did have a goodlife. Dad was the best father he could be. It’s funny, but leaving the Circle A and coming to Laurel Glen gave me a lot of perspective. Yes, emotionally he’s been absent. But he was always there—a male presence in my life. Most important, though, he gave me the Lord. I only had Mama for four years but I remember her. Her smile. The way she smelled and the sound of her singing and her laughter. And I had Grandmother.”
    He smiled, knowing the smile was tinged with sadness. “It wasn’t perfect but then life rarely is. Look at Ross and Cole, for instance. They fight like cats and dogs most of the time. Yet who could want a better father than Ross?” He shrugged. “Apparently Cole, and I’m sure he has his reasons. Just like I’m sure Ross has his for jumping down Cole’s throat practically every time Cole opens his mouth.”
    “Thank you,” Meg said, blinking back tears. “You’ll never know what a double loss it was for me when my father died not two years after I gave you up. To know all these years that Ross would have welcomed me back and I could have had you in my life.”
    She shook her head. “But I don’t know how we would have survived for even that short amount of time. I’ve told myself thousands of times you were better off with the life I thought I gave you.”
    “You did give it to me.”
    Her expressive brows drew together. “Then why did you come looking for me?”
    “Because I needed to know you. I’d had Mama.I’d had Grandmother. But there’s an empty place in my heart for a mom,” he replied, and shot her a nervous grin. He felt as if he was proposing. In a way, he guessed he was. He was after all asking someone to take