To Mikala’s complete astonishment, Dawson dropped to one knee, pulled a ring from his pocket and took her hand. “Mikala, I want you to know straight out this proposal has nothing to do with your pregnancy…our pregnancy. My proposal is all about wanting to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?”
Speechless, Mikala was overcome with emotion. She could see the sincerity in Dawson’s eyes, the honesty in his expression, the love all over his face. With him looking at her like that, her pride meant nothing.
Only her true feelings for him mattered, and she had to tell him what they were. “I love you, Dawson Barrett. I can’t wait to be a mom to our baby, and to Luke, if you’ll let me.”
Dawson slipped the heart-shaped diamond onto her finger, then stood and took her into his arms. “You will be the best mom a child could ever have. And I will work hard to be the husband you’ve always dreamed of. Forever.”
His kiss was everything she’d dreamed a kiss could be. He swept her away with it—into his heart, into his life, into their future.
Suddenly the French doors opened and she heard applause. Dawson’s lips clung to hers for a moment and then he leaned back and laughed, his arm encircling her, keeping her close. All of their friends were standing there, watching, smiling and applauding.
“Way to go,” Riley called.
“Congratulations, boy!” Silas said.
Dawson murmured in Mikala’s ear, “I think our friends approve.”
“I know I do.” Mikala’s eyes filled with tears of happiness.
Dawson bent his head and kissed her again.
Epilogue
Mid-May
Mikala heard the strumming of a guitar and headed toward the nursery.
It was still early on in her pregnancy. The morning after the dance she and Dawson had told Luke he would have a brother or sister. Looking from one of them to the other, he’d asked, “When are you getting married?” as if he’d known all along they would be. So after more discussions with Luke, deciding stability was important for all of them now, she and Dawson had married in a quiet ceremony in the backyard with Dawson’s dad, Aunt Anna, Silas and their friends. Celeste and Jenny had been her attendants with little Abby as her flower girl and Luke the ring bearer.
That had been two weeks ago. Yesterday the furniture had been delivered for the nursery. They’d wanted Luke to be part of the planning of the baby’s room and he’d entered into it wholeheartedly, helping them paint the walls a pale yellow, insisting his brother or sister should have little ducks on the coverlet on the crib. The room was as bright as her future with Dawson and she was so in love she couldn’t see straight.
Luke had asked her to give him guitar lessons and she’d happily begun doing that, transitioning from therapy into music lessons. Now, as she entered the baby’s room, she found him sitting in the glider-rocker they’d bought, with its pink-and-blue-plaid cushions, strumming the chords she’d taught him. He had a piece of paper on his knee and was trying to juggle the junior guitar and stare at it at the same time.
“What’s up?” she asked, looking at the boy who was so much like his dad.
He rested the neck of the guitar against his shoulder. “I’m practicing.”
“Practicing for what?”
“A lullaby. When my brother or sister comes in November, I’ll be ready.”
Mikala laughed, went over to him and gave him a hug, guitar and all. “You’re going to be the best brother.”
“I second that,” Dawson’s deep male baritone said from the doorway.
When Mikala looked at her new husband, joy and excitement overtook her.
He seemed to sense that as he crossed the room to her. “Now that we’ve decorated the nursery, and Luke’s practicing a lullaby, we have something even more important to do.”
“What’s that?” Luke asked, echoing Mikala’s thoughts.
“We have to pick out names.”
“I can look on the computer,” Luke said enthusiastically.
“That’s a great idea,” Dawson agreed.
“I’ll do it now and practice later.” Carefully lifting his guitar, he hurried from the room to do something very important.
“Do you have any favorite names in mind?” Dawson asked Mikala as he took her into his arms.
“I’m open to whatever we all like.”
“And are you open to a night of unbridled passion?” he asked as he teased her neck with several wet kisses.
She laughed. “I don’t know how unbridled it can be without having a soundproof bedroom,” she whispered back in a low voice.
“I have a surprise for you.” He took a brochure from his jeans pocket and handed it to her.
She unfolded it and found a beautiful Sedona resort. “Dawson, it looks magnificent. Those red rocks, blue sky, a spa.”
“Dad can come up and stay with Luke next weekend. Two nights and three days of a honeymoon with you. Can you make room in your schedule?”
Mikala wrapped her arms around his neck. “On second thought, I don’t think I’ll have time for the spa. Not if we’re giving massages to each other.”
Laughing, Dawson swung her around. Then he set her down, looked lovingly into her eyes and said simply, “You’ve made me the happiest man in the world. You know that, don’t you?”
She brushed his hair from his forehead and smiled with a happily-ever-after song in her heart. “I feel the same.”
Dawson’s kiss was a renewal of the vows they’d so recently professed. His kiss promised to make all of her dreams come true.
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt of Once Upon A Matchmaker by Marie Ferrarella!
We hope you enjoyed this Harlequin Special Edition story.
You know there’s always a new chapter to be written. Harlequin Special Edition stories show that whether it’s an old flame rekindled or a brand-new romance, love knows no timeline.
Visit Harlequin.com to find your next great read.
We like you—why not like us on Facebook: Facebook.com/HarlequinBooks
Follow us on Twitter: Twitter.com/HarlequinBooks
Read our blog for all the latest news on our authors and books: HarlequinBlog.com
Subscribe to our newsletter for special offers, new releases, and more!
Harlequin.com/newsletters
Chapter One
So this was what all the secrecy, giggling and whispers had been about.
Micah Muldare sat on the sofa, looking at the gift his sons had quite literally surprised him with. A gift he wasn’t expecting, commemorating a day that he’d never thought applied to him. He’d just unwrapped the gift and it was now sitting on the coffee table, a source of mystification, at least for him.
His boys, four-year-old Greg and five-year-old Gary, sat—or more accurately perched—on either side of him like energized bookends, unable to remain still for more than several seconds at a time. Blond, blue-eyed and small boned, his sons looked like little carbon copies of each other.
They looked like Ella.
Micah shut the thought away. It had been two years, but his heart still wasn’t ready for that kind of comparison.
Maybe someday, just not yet.
“Do you like it, Daddy?” Gary, the more animated of the two, asked eagerly. The boy was fairly beaming as he put the question to him. His bright blue eyes took in every tiny movement.
Micah eyed at the mug on the coffee table. “I can honestly say I wasn’t expecting anything like this,” Micah told his son. “Actually, I wasn’t expecting anything at all today.”
The mug had been wrapped in what seemed like an entire roll of wrapping paper. Gary had proclaimed proudly that he had done most of the wrapping.
“But I put the tape on,” Greg was quick to tell him.
Micah praised their teamwork.
The mug had World’s Greatest Mom written on it in pink-and-yellow ceramic flowers. Looking at it now, Micah could only grin and shake his head. Well, at least their hearts were in the right place.
“Um, I think you guys are a little confused about the concept,” he confided.
Gary’s face scrunched up in apparent confusion. “What’s a con-cept?”
“It’s an idea, a way of—”
Micah abruptly stopped himself. As a reliability engineer who worked in the top secret missile defense systems department of Donovan Defense, a large national company, he had a tendency to get rather involved in his explanations. Given his sons’ tender ages, he decided that a brief and simple explanation was the best way to go.
So he tried again. “It’s a way of understanding something. The point is, I’m very touched, guys, but you do understand that I’m not your mom, right? I’m your dad.” He looked from Gary to Greg to see if they had any lingering questions or doubts.
“We know that,” Gary told him as if he thought it was silly to ever confuse the two roles. “But sometimes you do mom things,” he reminded his father.
“Yeah, like make cookies when I’m sick,” Greg piped up.
Which was more often than he was happy about, Micah couldn’t help thinking. Greg, smaller for his age than even Gary, was his little survivor. Born prematurely, his younger son had had a number of complicating conditions that had him in and out of hospitals until he was almost two years old.
Because of all the different medications he’d been forced to take, the little boy’s immune system was somewhat compromised. As an unfortunate by-product of that, Greg was more prone to getting sick than his brother.
And every time he did get sick, Micah watched him carefully, afraid the boy would come down with another bout of pneumonia. The last time, a year and a half ago, Greg had almost died. The thought haunted him for months.
Clearing his throat, Micah squared his shoulders. His late mother, Diane, had taught him to accept all gifts gracefully.
“Well, then, thank you very much,” he told his sons with a wide smile that was instantly mirrored by each of the boys.
“Aunt Sheila helped us,” Gary told him, knowing that he couldn’t accept all of the credit for the gift.
“Yeah, she drove us to the store,” Greg chimed in. “But me and Gary picked it out. And we used our own money, too,” he added as a postscript.
“‘Gary and I,’” Micah automatically corrected Greg.
The little boy shook his head so hard, his straight blond hair appeared airborne for a moment, flying to and fro about his head.
“No, not you, Daddy, me,” Greg insisted. “Me and Gary.”
There was time enough to correct his grammar when he was a little older, Micah thought fondly.
Out loud he marveled, “Imagine that,” for his sons’ benefit. A touch of melancholy drifted over him. “You two are growing up way too fast,” he told them. “Before you know it, you’re going to be getting married and starting families of your own.”
“Married?” Greg echoed, frowning as deeply as if his father had just told him that he was having liver for dinner for the next year.
“To a girl?” Gary asked incredulously, very obviously horrified by the mere suggestion that he be forced to marry a female. Everyone knew girls were icky—except for Aunt Sheila, of course, but she didn’t count.
“That’s more or less what I had in mind, yes,” Micah told his sons, doing his very best not to laugh at their facial expressions.
Covering his face, Gary declared, “Yuck!” with a great deal of feeling.
“Yeah,” Greg cried, mimicking his brother, “double yuck!”
Micah slipped an arm around each little boy’s very slim shoulders and pulled them to him. He would miss this when the boys were older, miss these moments when his sons made him feel as if he was the center of their universe.
“Come back and tell me that in another, oh, ten, fifteen years,” he teased.
“Okay,” Gary promised very solemnly. “We will, Daddy.”
“Yeah, we will!” Greg echoed, not to be outdone.
Micah’s aunt, Sheila Barrett, stood in the living room doorway, observing the scene between her nephew and her grandnephews. Her mouth curved in a wide smile. While she lived not too far from Micah, it felt as if this was more her home than the place where she received her mail. She took care of the boys when her nephew was at work, which, unless one of his sons was sick, was most of the time.
“They picked that mug out themselves,” she told Micah, in case he thought that this was her idea. “They absolutely refused to look at anything else after they saw that mug. They thought it was perfect for you.”
“And of course you tried to talk them out of it,” Micah said, tongue in cheek. His amusement was there, in his eyes.
Sheila shrugged nonchalantly. “The way I see it, Micah, little men in the making should be as free to exercise their shopping gene as their little female counterparts.”
“Very democratic of you,” Micah commented, the corners of his mouth curving. Aunt Sheila had always had a bit of an unorthodox streak. He learned to think outside the box because of her. He sincerely doubted that he would be where he was today if not for her. “Well, just for that, I’m taking all of you out for lunch.”
“Aunt Sheila, too?” Greg asked, not wanting to exclude her.
“Aunt Sheila most especially,” Micah told his younger son. There was deep affection in his voice. “After all, Aunt Sheila is the real mom around here,” he emphasized pointedly.
Clearly confused, Greg turned to look at the woman who came by every morning to take him to preschool and his brother to kindergarten. Every afternoon she’d pick them both up and then stayed with them until their father came home. Some nights, Aunt Sheila stayed really, really late.
“Aunt Sheila has kids?” Greg asked his father, surprised.
Sheila smiled, answering for Micah. “I have your dad,” told the boy.
They had a special bond, she and her sister’s son. When the world came crashing in on him when his parents were killed in a car accident while on vacation, Micah had been twelve years old. Injured in the accident, too, he’d been all alone at that San Jose hospital. She’d lost no time driving up the coast to get to him. She’d stayed by his side until he was well enough to leave and then she took him home with her. There was no looking back. She’d raised him as her own.
Greg was staring at her, wide-eyed, his small face stamped with disbelief. “Dad was a kid?”
“Your dad was a kid,” she assured him, biting her tongue so as not to laugh at the expression of wonder on the little boy’s face. “And a pretty wild one at that.”
“She’s making that part up,” Micah told his sons. “I was a perfect angel.”
“When you were asleep, you looked just like one,” Sheila agreed, then added, “Awake, not so much.”
“Can you tell us stories about when Daddy was a kid?” Gary asked eagerly.
Sheila’s smile was so wide, her eyes almost disappeared. “I sure can.”
“But she won’t,” Micah interjected with a note of finality. “She’s going to save those for when you’re older.”
Gary’s forehead crinkled beneath his blond bangs. “Why?�
��
“I’ll tell you that when you’re older, too,” Micah promised him. Changing the subject, he asked, “Now, who’s hungry for pizza?”
The words were no sooner out of his mouth than a chorus of “We are!” rose up. It was hard to believe that two little boys could project so much volume when they wanted to.
Micah gazed at his aunt who’d made herself comfortable in the love seat opposite Micah and the boys. “I thought we’d go to that little Italian restaurant you like so much. Giuseppe’s.” The boys bounced up to their feet. His aunt rose to hers, as well. “Luckily for me, it’s kid-friendly.”
“As it happens,” his aunt said, placing a hand on each boy’s shoulder in order to usher them out the front door, “so am I.”
* * *
“You know there’s no one here to impress, right?” Kate Manetti Wainwright said to her friend, Tracy Ryan, as she stuck her head into the latter’s office.
It was Sunday and the law firm was closed. Or should have been. The sound of typing must have drawn Kate to Tracy’s small office, which meant an interruption.
Tracy looked up from the brief she was working on. “You’re here,” she pointed out.
“But I’m not supposed to be.” And neither was anyone else, she added silently. “I just stopped by to grab the sweater I left here on Friday.” She held up the powder-blue article of clothing as exhibit A. “And besides, I don’t count.”
“You do to me,” Tracy told her, flashing a quick, fleeting smile at her friend. “And for your information, I’m not trying to impress anyone, I’m just trying to catch up on my workload.”
Kate rolled her eyes. “You already work twice as hard as anyone here,” she pointed out. “How much catching up do you possibly have to do?”
Tracy’s slender shoulders rose and fell in an absentminded shrug. “Enough,” she said evasively, then, cocking her head, she leveled a piercing gaze at the woman who had been her friend all through law school. They’d been each other’s support group through the bad times, and each other’s cheering section through the good ones. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?” she asked. After all, today was Mother’s Day and, unlike her, Kate was lucky enough to still have one.
The CEO's Unexpected Proposal Page 18