A Baby for Mommy Read online

  Epilogue

  Four and a half months later…

  Everything was happening at once. “Where’s the suitcase?” Walt demanded.

  Kayla shrugged and held up the stopwatch. “I don’t know. I thought you had it!”

  Keys in hand, Tommy raced toward them. Breathless, he pointed to the SUV idling at the curb. “It’s in the car!”

  Walt looked around, frantic. “Next question. Where is the mother-to-be?”

  Kayla eased the door open and peeked into the sanctuary. “She and Dad are still trying to get through their vows. But I think maybe they’re done…’cause Dad just kissed Emily and it looks like she’s kissing him back—”

  “Are they crazy?” Ava cried, wringing her hands. She had thrown down her maid-of-honor bouquet and exited the chapel the moment Emily’s first contraction hit. “We’ve got to get to the hospital!”

  “We have time,” Dan and Emily said in unison as they strolled leisurely down the aisle of the church.

  “Plenty of it!” Emily reassured with maternal ease.

  Everyone started to calm down.

  Then Emily groaned and tightly gripped Dan’s arm. By the time the second contraction in two minutes had passed, she straightened again. Face flushed, she murmured, “Or maybe not.”

  Dan steadied her. “Are you okay? I could call an ambulance.”

  “Just call Dr. Markham,” Emily said as her body tensed and her face began to flush again.

  “I’m on it!” Tommy shouted.

  Kayla ran ahead to the SUV and yanked open the front passenger door. “Hurry, everybody! Hurry!”

  “I think they might be a little excited,” Dan said.

  Laughing, Emily demurred. “I think so, too.”

  Three and a half hours later, the euphoria was even greater as Walt and the kids, still wearing their wedding finery, gathered around Emily’s hospital bed to see the newest addition to the Kingsland clan.

  “What a beauty!” Walt said, beaming.

  “Perfect,” Ava said.

  “I think she is realllly cute,” Kayla agreed as the newborn curled her fist around her little finger.

  “A born athlete,” Tommy decreed.

  His sisters looked at him as if he was crazy. “How can you tell?” Ava asked.

  “I just know.” Tommy shrugged.

  Gratitude flowing through her, Emily took in the familial scene. She’d always hoped to have four children—and a tall, blond, smart and sexy husband to love. And now, miraculously, she did. “I imagine this little one will be like her older siblings, able to do whatever she sets her mind to.” Emily grinned at the newly official clan of hers.

  “And her mommy and daddy,” Dan added.

  Together, he and Emily had more than proved that with hard work and determination all their dreams could come true.

  Emily’s partnership with Tex was proving to be a hit. The retail store at One Trinity River Place had opened on Valentine’s Day and was doing a huge business, as was the tearoom. Chef for Hire was still going strong, as well—with personal chefs Emily had hired and now supervised.

  Ava had been accepted at Harvard—the college of her choice—where she intended to study premed. Tommy planned to spend the summer working his first part-time job and attending wrestling camp. Kayla had just celebrated her ninth birthday and was learning to cook.

  Walt had officially retired from his private investigative work so he would be free to help out with the new baby, as well as the kids.

  And Dan…well, business had never been better.

  His home life had never been better, either.

  “So what are you going to name her?” Ava asked finally.

  Dan and Emily exchanged looks.

  “Bet you anything they’ve been thinking outside the box again,” Tommy drawled.

  “Please tell me it’s not Wheelbarrow or some other completely weird name.” Walt peered at them in comical trepidation.

  Emily chuckled. “Not quite.”

  “Is it…Peaches?” Kayla asked, referring to some of the joke-names they’d bantered about the past months.

  “Or…Trinity Place?” Tommy teased.

  “Cornucopia?” Ava got into the joking spirit. “Cause you all did meet in November!”

  “Maybe it’s Thanksgiving!” Kayla giggled.

  “Thanksgiving Cornucopia Kingsland?” Tommy guessed.

  “Nope. Not a one of those,” Dan said.

  Emily shifted the baby to one arm and linked hands with Dan. “Shall we tell them?” she asked.

  Dan looked down at the baby in Emily’s arms. She was without a doubt the most beautiful infant he’d ever seen, and the spitting image of her lovely, dark-haired, blue-eyed mother. And every bit as much a member of their family. “I guess we should,” he said, since the moniker they’d picked out was perfect, after all.

  Emily looked at the family gathered around. “We’ve decided to name her Grace, after my mother. And Rei—which means gratitude.”

  “We’ll probably call her Gracie, for short,” Dan added.

  “Gracie Rei Kingsland.” Tommy tried the name out.

  “I like it!” Ava said.

  “Me, too!” Kayla enthused.

  “A fine and fitting Texas name,” Walt said with another fond look at the infant. “Speaking of which, I think Miss Gracie looks all tuckered out. So we’ll head out and let you three rest.”

  Kisses and hugs abounded.

  Then it was just the three of them. Dan, Emily and the baby. Contentment flooded through him. He wasn’t sure how it happened, but he had gotten everything he had ever wanted. And he was pretty sure Emily had, too.

  She patted the bed beside her. “I know it’s not Thanksgiving, but…”

  Dan wrapped his arm around her shoulder, brought her against the curve of his body and settled next to her and Gracie Rei. “But it sure feels that way.” He pressed a kiss to the top of Emily’s head.

  “We have so much to be grateful for,” Emily acknowledged in a husky voice.

  Dan kissed her again. “So much to cherish.”

  “There’s only one thing we’re lacking.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A proper honeymoon.”

  “Actually,” Dan drawled, “I think I know just the place.”

  He left the bed long enough to retrieve his wedding suit jacket and remove a small wrapped box from the inside pocket. “I didn’t have a chance to give you this.”

  Emily sent him a questioning glance as she handed him the baby and he gave her the gift and then warned, “I know I promised you I wouldn’t make any more deals with Tex, but in this case, I figured you wouldn’t mind.”

  Emily went very still.

  “It’s a gift from my heart,” Dan said soberly. “And just so you know…everyone—Tex, Walt, the kids, even Brenda—is on board. We all want you to have this and we all felt you should be surprised.”

  “And to think,” Emily murmured, mystified, “all I got you was the promise of a spectacular honeymoon to be taken later.”

  “Well, now you know where we’ll go. Come on. Open it,” Dan said.

  With trembling fingers, Emily did so. Inside was a stack of glossy photos. So familiar…and yet not. “This is…!”

  “The farm in Fredericksburg, where you grew up. I made a deal with Tex. While leaving the orchards and working parts of the farm intact, I expanded the house enough to make room for our entire family, and bought the ten acres surrounding it, too. So you can go home whenever you want. We can all go. For the occasional weekends and vacations—it’ll be our special family retreat. As well as a very romantic place for just the two of us.”

  The new master suite, Emily noted, rifling through the photos, was especially luxurious. “You really did this?” she croaked, remembering the first time they’d made love there. She envisioned many more days and nights to come. “It’s done?”

  Dan nodded. Seeing Gracie Rei was once again sound asleep, he tenderly settled he
r in her hospital crib. “One hundred percent.”

  Tears of bliss rolled down Emily’s face as she looked through photos of room after room. The care and time and attention it had taken to do all this, the fact that Dan truly got what the place meant to her…“Oh, Dan, I don’t know what to say…except this is the best gift ever—and I love you.”

  “I love you, too.” Slowly, they came together. Dan kissed her tenderly. “So what do you say?” He held her and gazed into her eyes. “Want to start planning our honeymoon—and our next family retreat? Heck, while we’re at it, maybe a swimming pool and a play area in the backyard, too?”

  Emily kissed him again, knowing life had never been better. And this was just the beginning! “I certainly do. But first” she snuggled close to her husband, turning her face up to his “—I want to thank you for making all our dreams come true.”

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-4145-3

  A BABY FOR MOMMY

  Copyright © 2009 by Cathy Gillen Thacker.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario M3B 3K9, Canada.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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