She could read nothing from his face while he listened to the voice at the other end before murmuring a quiet, 'Thank you,' as he replaced the receiver.
'Luke?'
'They're ours.' He was across the room in two strides, picking her up in his arms and swinging her round and round until the room was a kaleidoscope of colour. 'That's it, Josie, they're ours. It's signed and sealed and official.'
And later, after they had loved and loved some more, they crept upstairs in the soft warmth of the mellow summer evening to check on their children—a little girl of three and a little boy of one, who had come to them some months before, bruised and traumatised from the accident that had robbed them of their parents and older sister.
And there were others through the years: a damaged little scrap of humanity who was all eyes and teeth and had endured more cruelty and horror in his short four-year life than most adults ever had to face; twin girls of two, whose single-parent mother had wanted to start a new life in a different country with a man who didn't want a ready-made family; a small baby girl who had been born with a facial deformity that would need countless operations before it was corrected and who had been rejected by her natural parents.
They all came and they were all loved, and, like tiny precious flowers in rich good soil, they blossomed and grew, and in their turn loved back. Because love was priceless.