She wore a cream silk dress that cinched in at the waist and fell in soft layers to mid-calf, and her hair was piled up and threaded with tiny flowers that matched the bouquet she carried.

Gabriel turned around, saw her as she walked up the aisle in the tiny local church where she had grown up in Cornwall and his heart had clenched with love.

He’d finally given himself permission to love and not a minute went past when he didn’t thank everything there was to thank that she was a part of his life.

He smiled, and when he cast his eyes over the congregation he felt a sense of satisfaction at the warmth and the love radiating from it.

He saw her father and her friends—including Lucy, who had told him what a lucky guy he was to have nabbed her best friend, a sentiment with which he couldn’t disagree. And his friends, some from his days at university, and a couple from boarding school, all forming a tightly knit group in his life.

And of course Arturio and Isabella, who could not have been more delighted with the outcome.

And now...

Gabriel glanced over to where his wife was sitting, feet resting on an upholstered pouffe, television on in the little snug of the cottage they had bought on the outskirts of London—close enough for him to get the train into the City as and when, but far enough out that there was land and fields around them.

There was also ample room for visitors and her father had already visited several times since they had moved in.

‘Anything?’ he asked, nudging her feet a couple of inches with his and looking at her with love.

‘Trust me, you’ll be the first to know the very second I feel any twinges.’ She glanced at her very pregnant belly and smiled at him. ‘I’m only four days overdue. I could be another week. Who knows? Although...’ she rolled her eyes ‘...I can’t wait. I feel like a beached whale most of the time.’

‘I can’t wait either,’ Gabriel confided in a husky undertone.

‘You might not be saying that when your nights start getting interrupted with a mini-me yelling for milk.’

‘Bring it on.’ He grinned and rubbed his knuckle across her cheek. ‘I can’t wait to meet this baby we’ve made, my darling, and to carry on with this fantastic new chapter in my life.’

Helen smiled back and rested her hand on her belly. ‘Nor,’ she sighed happily, ‘can I.’