One Down, One to Go

When they got there, Brooklyn saw Becca for just a moment and waved at her, but she was looking at Serge who'd nodded to her and then she headed back outside where she conducted her boot camps.

"What's going on?" Brooklyn asked.

"You'll see," he told her again as he led her outside.

Becca was standing there next to a table for two done up in all the finest things with a bottle of champagne chilling on ice.

"Hi you two!" Becca bubbled. She lit the candles on the table then quietly walked away.

Serge helped Brooklyn get seated then sat down himself.

"This place will forever be one of my favorites," he began as he held her hand while sitting next to her. "That's because this is the place where I first met you. Brooklyn Maxwell. The love of my life. The woman I want to spend the rest of mine with."

Suddenly, Brooklyn got it. Then when Serge produced the tiny box her hands began to shake. When he got down on one knee, her entire body trembled.

"Oh, my God!" she said quietly as tears began to well up in her eyes.

"Brooklyn? This is the place where my life began. I was so unhappy and so confused. Until I saw you. When I danced with you, that's when I knew what was missing. I couldn't explain it at the time, but things became clear very quickly and then they fell into place one at a time until I could see with perfect clarity. You were what was missing. I love you, Brooklyn Maxwell. With all my heart. And I don't want this to end, either. So...will you marry me?" he asked.

Unable to speak, she nodded and held her hand out, and as he placed the ring on her finger, they both heard a muffled, "Yes!" coming from Becca who was watching from just inside the glass door of the gym.

Serge stood up and took Brooklyn's hands and helped her stand, too.

"I love you, sweetheart," he told her with utter conviction.

"I love you, too," she said still barely able to talk. "And...and if you want to start a family I...I want to try, too."

"What? Honey, you don't have to say that," he told her. "All I care about is being with you. You, Brooklyn. That's all."

She fell into his arms and said, "I was so afraid you might leave and hurt me. At first anyway. I...I said those things as a way of protecting myself from hurt. But now...."

She pulled her head back and looked at her fiancé and said, "But now I know how much you love me, and if I still can have children, I want to. With you. I really, really want to."

Serge felt himself tearing up as he pulled back in close and held her.

"I love you so much," he told her.

"I love you, too," she said now able to speak again. "With all my heart I love you."

They didn't wait for the wedding to find out. They made an appointment for the first available time to see if Brooklyn could still have children.

After a thorough exam and all kinds of blood work, a week later the doctor told them both she saw no reason why Brooklyn couldn't have a baby. She explained the increased risks of having a child for a woman over 40, but assured them the odds were overwhelmingly in their favor.

Relieved and happier than she'd ever been, that night Brooklyn told Serge he didn't need protection and admitted she'd stopped taking the pill. They'd set their wedding date for just three months away and both of them were hoping to have good news well before that day arrived. With any luck, Brooklyn would be 'with child' but not yet showing enough that people would notice, something that typically took between 12-16 weeks.

Brooklyn went through quite a few home pregnancy tests before finally getting the results they were hoping for. It happened just six weeks after they started trying and when two lines appeared for the first time, she and Serge both cried as they sat there looking at it knowing what it meant.

They decided not to tell anyone although keeping this kind of news from her daughter—her first child and her best friend—was as hard as anything she'd ever done.

Her own wedding was nowhere near as lavish as her daughter's and that was fine with Brooklyn and her new husband who were saving money for the birth of their first child. One of the many things they'd done was to move in together and get rid of one huge monthly payment.

Even so it was still a beautiful ceremony with Brooklyn's parents flying in from San Diego to meet their new son-in-law to be and attend their daughter's second wedding. They knew she'd been dating a younger man, and both of them had their concerns until they met him. Yes, he was a lot younger, but he was not only a very intelligent young man, he was already well established as one of the area's most sought after wedding photographers, and both parents warmed up to him virtually overnight.

They waited two weeks after their wedding, and one week after their own honeymoon, a modest vacation to Vancouver, British Columbia, before announcing that Brooklyn was pregnant having just turned 44.

If Kristi or anyone else suspected anything, no one ever mentioned it when Nikolai Sergeiovich Harkhov was born a little over seven months later. Nikolai, or Nick, as he would be called, was a healthy 7-pound, 4-ounce boy with nearly a full head of dark hair just like his father.

Kristi was there to hold her baby brother just minutes after he was born. She was so moved by the experience, she teared up as she held him in her arms

"Ryan and I were planning on waiting to start a family, but after holding this beautiful little boy, I think we may have to reconsider."

As she handed him back to his mother—her mother—Brooklyn smiled and said, "Well, honey. One down, one to go."