Page 32 of Second Chance at Love (Chance At Love Duet 1)

He introduced me to every person there, and I couldn’t remember anyone’s name. I kept glancing back at my children, and they were all together, close to Kristoff and his mother, playing with some toys, and Sienna kept close, watching her sisters.

Fifteen minutes into Albert’s introduction, he finally brought me back to Kristoff and Lena. The expression on my face must have said it all because Lena laughed softly.

“I hope Albert didn’t scare you, my dear,” she chuckled as I sat down next to her empty chair. Albert pulled another chair and brought it close to Kristoff.

I couldn’t very well answer that honestly, so instead I just replied, “Ah, no. Just too many introductions.”

“Gemma is a dream,” Albert chippered happily. “I had to fight off all these old, single men and tell them she is off limits.”

“He is joking,” I answered quickly. “Everyone is very nice.” Sierra ran to me and gave me a big hug.

“Look, Mommy… toys… mine.”

I leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. “Make sure you share.”

And she was back to her sisters, offering toys. The two exchanged and went on with their game.

“Gemma, your girls are beautiful,” Albert noted seriously, and gently.

“Your husband must have been some lucky guy,” Albert added.

“Thank you,” I uttered, my lips in a tight smile.

Even after all that time, I found that speaking about Jack caused my voice to choke, except it wasn’t in sadness but more like anguish. I excelled usually at pushing away memories about Jack. I would have been perfectly happy to delete that chapter out of my life, but I couldn’t imagine what I’d do without my kids. As I raised my head determined not to go down that road, I caught Kristoff’s intense gaze on me, and I froze.

He was too observant. I had to watch my reactions and emotions around him.

Lena’s hand came to my arm gently, and she asked, “Can I open your gift, Gemma? I wanted to do it with you.”

I looked away from Kristoff.

“Yes, of course,” I answered.

Albert seemed to always make things cheerful. “Lena, how is it that Gemma gets to buy you a gift, and the rest of us don’t? I had such a good idea. We’d be cracking jokes for the rest of the night.” His eyes were twinkling.

“She didn’t know,” Lena answered calmly, unwrapping. “Oh, Gemma! How did you find this book? I’ve been looking for it forever!”

I smiled at the woman, and her simple excitement. It was a gardening book on tropical dwarf trees we discussed earlier that day during her lunch. Turned out, we were both excited about dwarf tropical plants. Who knew!

“Actually, I had it,” I replied happily. “It is my second copy so I figured who better to have one of them. The other two, if you have them already, I added a gift receipt, so you can return them.” The other two books were on gardening as well but published in the last six months.

She hugged me, smiling. “I don’t have them. None of them. I’ve been wanting this specific gardening book for ages. But I couldn’t find it in English!”

“Yes, I know they are hard to find,” I agreed. “This one has some of the pages in another language, but I have it translated on the page. I hope you don’t mind. And my handwriting is not the nicest.”

“I will treasure it forever,” she commented happily. “We’ll have to compare notes. Thank you so much, Gemma. It is too much.”

“Nah, not really. Considering, I had it already,” I answered with a smile.

Albert jumped in. “Wow, this woman is like you, Lena,” and he laughed. “There is one more thing in that bag. Let’s see what it is.”

She pulled out a bottle of Medenica. A Croatian liqueur made with honey. “Oh, dear. What is this, Gemma?”

“It's a traditional Croatian drink. You don’t strike me as a drinker but maybe Albert can drink that while we are talking about gardening,” I joked.

“Gemma, are you Croatian?” Albert asked in surprise.

“Yep,” I answered smiling. “Second generation though. I spent part of my childhood there when my parents decided to go back.”

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