AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Macie skipped up to them, excitement barely contained. “Are you ready?” The gender reveal party had been her idea, and she had been the one to go with them to their ultrasound appointment to find out the gender so it could be a surprise to Joselyn and Marcus. Between Macie’s excitement of the party and Joselyn’s and Marcus’s excitement at becoming parents, it didn’t take long to turn into a party involving With a Cherry on Top, Macie’s new business, Paws and Relax, and half the town.
She and Marcus both grinned, and Macie headed down Main Street toward the big, closed-in tent area she had set up a hundred yards away. As she walked down the middle of the street, she had all the family, friends, and townspeople back up toward the sidewalk on one side, or toward Snowdrift Springs that ran down the middle of the street. When Macie got to the end, she glanced back at them before ducking into the tent.
Marcus moved to Joselyn’s side and grabbed hold of her hand. She squeezed his tightly, her stomach fluttering.
With a flourish, Macie flung open the tent wall and her dogs Reese and Lola raced out of it and down the aisle made by all the onlookers toward Joselyn and Marcus, each of them clutching in their mouths a corner of a giant pink flag that billowed out behind them.
“We’re going to have a girl!” Joselyn shouted.
Marcus wrapped his arms around her and turned them both in a circle. “We are going to have a daughter.” He kissed her on the lips. Then, as if his excitement was too much to contain, he turned to the crowd and shouted, “We’re going to have a daughter!” He ran toward Joselyn’s brothers and he and Everett did a jumping chest bump before he did the same with Kennon. Then he threw his arms around each of her siblings and their spouses and her parents, then raced down the line of nieces and nephews, giving fives to each of them as he went. Then he shouted to the crowd again, “We’re going to have a daughter!”
Macie, Hannah, the rest of Joselyn’s family, and a good portion of their Business Alliance friends—Brooke, Tory, Alete, Cole, the Keetchs, the Treanors, the Elsmores, Joey, Nate—all gathered around to congratulate her and Marcus, and she hugged them and thanked them all.
Whitney, the woman who owned the Nestled Hollow Gazette and had been Marcus’s same grade in high school, stepped closer to Joselyn as she took pictures of the event. As she lowered the camera, she said to Joselyn, “He would be exactly this excited whether you found out it was a boy or a girl, wouldn’t he?”
Joselyn nodded. “It’s one of the things I love about him. I can’t wait to see how he is as a father.”
Whitney looked at Marcus’s excitement with a wistful yearning that Joselyn had never seen on the woman’s face before. It had only been there a moment, though, before she seemed to wipe it away with sheer willpower, and brought the camera back up for more pictures.
As Marcus made his way around the entire length of the crowd and back, he wrapped his arms around Joselyn again and gave her a kiss that immediately turned into a smile.
“So I take it you’re excited we’re having a girl?”
Marcus laughed that loud, rumbling laugh that she lived for. “It’s music to my ears. I guess this means we can start decorating the back room in the shop, and then the nursery at home as soon as we move in.”
Then he turned to the crowd and said with a raised voice, “As you might have guessed by that flag, a big scoop of ‘Pink Lemonade Stand’ is free for everyone today!” He waited for the crowd to finish cheering, and then added, “I made several buckets worth, so make sure you come inside and get yours. Oh, and the blue ‘C is for Cookie’ flavor is half-price until the cartons I made of that are gone.”
The crowd roared in laughter, and Joselyn wondered for the hundredth time how much of With a Cherry on Top’s success was because of his incredible ice cream, and how much was because they loved the man serving it. He was an easy man to love.
“Shall we?” She reached her hand out and he clasped it in his, and they headed inside their shop. They had run into a few more problems when doing the last-minute projects before the shop had opened earlier in the year, but every time she walked in, Joselyn was overwhelmed with the feeling of it having turned out exactly right in the end. This place felt like home, and running it with Marcus brought her more joy than she ever thought running her own business would.
Hand-in-hand, they both walked behind the counter, grinned at each other, then together started scooping up cones full of Pink Lemonade Stand for the endless crowd that poured through their doors.
* * *
