Page 58 of Dr. Grump's Surprise Baby

“My mother left it to me. She said I should give it to the girl I wanted to marry.” He swallowed. “I never thought I’d actually find someone. I didn’t want to get married. But even so, Icouldn’t bring myself to throw the ring away. It was as if part of me knew all along that this was coming.”

He opened the box.

Emily stared down at the beautiful solitaire diamond.

“I messed everything up,” he said.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “You did.”

“All I can do is beg for you to give me a second chance,” he said. “To let me be a part of this family. To raise this baby with you, and to love you the way you deserve to be loved. It’s all I want. More than I want my medical career, I want this. I would give up anything.”

Looking into his eyes, Emily’s resolve crumbled. How could she say no to him? It was so beyond obvious that he meant what he was saying. She couldn’t doubt him.

And she couldn’t deny that he was exactly what she wanted. Doing this with him instead of on her own, celebrating every joyous moment as they raised their baby together — she couldn’t think of anything she would have liked more.

She held out her hand and allowed him to put the ring on her finger, stunned at how everything had changed so quickly. She had thought they would never be close to one another again, and now he was proposing marriage.

The strange thing was that it didn’tfeelstrange at all.

It felt inevitable.

He took her in his arms and kissed her, and Emily felt a shiver of joy pass through her as she realized that all the hopes she hadn’t dared to admit to herself that she had were actually coming true.

EPILOGUE

DOMINIC

“Did you ever wonder if it would be a mistake?” Emily asked.

She was standing at the kitchen counter preparing a bottle for their daughter. Selena Ruth Berger had come into the world a little over four months ago, and she was happy, healthy, and gorgeous, with her mom’s fair hair and blue eyes — but her parents were consistently exhausted.

“Did I wonder if what would be a mistake?” Dominic asked her.

“Us getting married,” Emily said. “We did it so fast.”

“No,” Dominic said. “Once I had asked you, I never worried about that.”

“How were you so confident?”

“Well, I know we hadn’t known each other that long, but you have to keep in mind that we spent alotof time together — and in a lot of high-pressure situations,” Dominic said. “Even though we never technically dated, I felt as if we had dated for a longtime. I had let you learn an awful lot about me, and I feel like I learned a lot about you.”

“You did,” Emily agreed. “But even so, wedidrush into our marriage. You proposed to me, and we were married a month later.”

“Are you sayingyouthought it might be a mistake?”

He was smiling — he felt confident about what her answer would be. And she didn’t let him down. “No,” she said. “I never questioned it. Sometimes it seemed strange to me that I felt so sure, but I never had any doubt that we were doing the right thing.

“Because of Selena?”

“Actually, if there was anything that would have made me doubt this, it would have been Selena,” Emily admitted. “I can gamble with my own happiness, but I’d never want to take a risk with hers. But… I don’t know. Something about the way you looked at me that day, when you asked me to marry you, made me feel sure. I knew that you really meant it. And once I knew that, I knew I didn’t have to resist what I was feeling myself any longer.”

“I’ve been thinking, actually,” Dominic said. “About our wedding.”

“What about it?”

“I’ve never regretted marrying you. It’s one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. But what I do have second thoughts about is the wedding itself. I think we could have done something a bit nicer.”

“You didn’t like our wedding?” Emily frowned. “I thought it was sweet.”

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