"I want to love you. I want you to marry me."
She would have been content to hear him say he wanted to try dating. His proposal was so far beyond what she"d been expecting that her breath stuttered in her chest. "What?"
"I love you and I want you to marry me."
Dumbstruck, Grace only stared at him.
"You could say you love me, too."
"I love you, too."
At that Danny laughed. The sound filled the small kitchen.
"And you want to marry me." He took a breath. "Grace, alone with Sarah I realized I had everything I needed and I could have talked myself into accepting only that. But I want you, too. Will you marry me?"
"And I want to marry you!" She made a move to launch herself into his arms, but remembered her cocoa and turned to flip off the burner. By the time she turned back, he was at her side, arms opened, ready for her to walk into them.
He wrapped his arms around her as his mouth met hers. Without a second of hesitation, Grace returned his kiss, opening her mouth when he nudged her to do so. Her heart pounded in her ears as her pulse began to scramble. He loved her. He loved her and wanted to marry her. It almost seemed too good to be true.
He pulled away. "Pot"s probably boiling over."
"I thought I turned that off." She whirled away from him and saw the cooling pot. "I did turn that off."
"I have a better idea than cocoa anyway."
He pulled her to him and whispered something in her ear that should have made a new mother blush. But she laughed and countered something equally s.e.xy in his ear and he kissed her deeply, reminding her of her thoughts driving up I-64 the Monday they left Virginia Beach. She"d found Mr. Right.
She had found Mr. Right, and they were about to live happily ever after.
EPILOGUE.
RESTING UNDER the shade of a huge oak, on the bench seat of a weathered wooden picnic table, Grace watched Sarah as she played in the sandbox with the children of Grace"s cousins. She could also see Danny standing in left field, partic.i.p.ating in the married against the singles softball game at the annual McCartney reunion.
The CEO and chairman of the board of Carson Services didn"t look out of place in his khaki shorts and T-shirt, as Grace expected he might. It wasn"t even odd to see him punching his fist into the worn leather baseball mitt he found in his attic. Everything about this day seemed perfectly normal.
The batter hunkered down, preparing for a pitch thrown so hard Grace barely saw the ball as it sliced through the air toward the batter"s box, but her cousin Mark had seen it. His bat connected at just the right time to send the ball sailing through the air, directly at Danny.
With a groan, she slapped her hands over her eyes, but unable to resist, spread her fingers and peeked through. The ball sped toward Danny like a comet.
He yelled, "No worries. I"ve got it." Punching his fist into his mitt twice before he held it up and the ball smacked into place with a crack.
Whoops of joy erupted from the married team because Danny had made the final out of the game. For the first time in almost twenty years, the married men had beaten the younger, more energetic singles.
Danny received a round of congratulations and praise. He was new blood. Exactly what the family needed. Grace sat a bit taller on the bench seat, glancing at eighteen-month-old Sarah, who happily shoveled sand into the empty bed of a plastic dump truck.
The married team disbursed to brag to their wives about the softball victory. The singles grumbled that Danny was a ringer. Danny jogged over to Grace looking like a man about to receive Olympic gold.
"Did you see that?"
"Yes. You were great."
"I was, wasn"t I?"
Grace laughed. "Men." She took a quiet breath and he sat down on the bench seat beside her.
"Are you okay?"
"I"m fine."
"You"re sure?"
"I"m sure."
"It"s just that the last time you were pregnant you were sick-"
She put her hand over his mouth to shut him up. "For the one-hundred-and-twenty-seven-thousand-two-hundred-and-eighty-fourth time, all pregnancies are different. Yes, I was sick with Sarah. But I"m only a little bit queasy this time."
She pulled her hand away and he said, "Maybe you were sick because-"
She put her hand over his mouth again. "I was not sick because I went through that pregnancy alone. We"ve been over this, Danny." Because he was so funny, she laughed. "A million times."
"Or at least one-hundred-and-twenty-seven-thousand-two-hundred-and-eighty-four."
She laughed again and he glanced around the property. "This is a beautiful place."
"That"s why we have the picnic here every year. There are no distractions. Just open s.p.a.ce, trees for shade and a brick grill to make burgers and keep our side dishes warm. So everybody has time to talk, to catch up with what the family"s been doing all year."
"It"s great."
"It is great."
"And your family"s very nice."
She smiled. "They like you, too."
He took a satisfied breath. "Do you want me to watch Sarah for a while?"
"No. It"s okay. You keep mingling. We"re fine."
"But this is your family."
"And I"m mingling. Women mingle more around the food and the sandbox. At one point or another I"ll see everybody." She grinned. "Besides, this may be your last day out with people for a while. You should take advantage of it."
"What are you talking about? I have to go to work tomorrow."
"Right." She rolled her eyes with a chuckle. "Tomorrow you"re going to be suffering. Every muscle in your body will be screaming. You"ll need a hot shower just to be able to put on your suit jacket."
He straightened on the bench seat. "Hey, I will not be sore."
"Yes, you will."
"I am an athlete."
"You push papers for a living and work out at the gym a few nights a week." She caught his gaze, then pressed a quick kiss to his lips. "You are going to be in bed for days."
The idea seemed to please him because he grinned. "Will you stay in bed with me?"
"And let Sarah alone to fend for herself with Pickleberry?" They"d found Elise to be such a stickler for rules that Danny and Grace had nicknamed her after the governess in the storybook.
"Hey, you"re the one who said to keep her."
"Only so we wouldn"t be tempted to overuse her."
At that Danny laughed. He laughed long and hard and Grace smiled as she studied him. All traces of his guilt were gone. He remembered his son fondly now. He"d even visited the next-door neighbor who had been driving the SUV and they"d come to terms with the tragedy enough that Mrs. Oliver was a regular visitor at their home.
He"d also hired a new vice president and delegated at least half of his responsibility to him, so they could spend the majority of their summer at the beach house in Virginia Beach. He loved Sarah. He wanted a big family and Grace was happy to oblige. Not to give him heirs, but because he loved her.
Completely. Honestly. And with a pa.s.sion that hadn"t died. Their intense love for each other seemed to grow every day. He had a home and she had a man who would walk to the ends of the earth for her.
Watching her other family members as they mingled and laughed, weaving around the big oak trees, sharing cobbler recipes and tales about their children, Grace suddenly saw that was the way it was meant to be.
That was the lesson she"d learned growing up among people who didn"t hesitate to love.
Somewhere out there, there was somebody for everybody.