Several hours later a glowing, if somewhat weary Meghan held court in her hospital room. Enthroned in crisp white sheets and propped with pillows, she smiled radiantly at her devoted subjects, as her nurse finished her ministrations.
“Yours is one delivery we won’t soon forget,” the nurse teased Meghan with a wink. “What a day,” she said, as she left the room.
“She can say that again,” Michael agreed, grinning broadly. “It can’t be every day they help deliver a baby and witness a wedding in the same hour.”
Everyone chuckled in unison, recalling with amused relief the events of the day.
“I still want to know where the judge came from,” Meghan pondered aloud.
All eyes turned to Sean Shay, who gave a careless shrug before delivering his simple explanation. “Judges aren’t as sober as most people think, and I haven’t been standin’ behind that bar for the last thirty years for nothing. I just called in a couple markers and got a few strings pulled to get the blood tests and waiting time waived by Judge Murphy. It was the least I could do for my first grandchild, considering the way you two were bungling everything. I’ve never heard such a ridiculous story,” he said, shaking his head in wry amusement.
Meghan lowered her eyes. “I did bungle things, didn’t I?” she uttered remorsefully.
“No more than I did,” whispered Michael, as he placed an adoring kiss at her temple. “Besides,” he added in more normal tones, “I thought we decided this was all meant to happen. We were simply playing out our parts in the divine design of things … including that first night. Lord knows, no mere mortal could have staged this and still come out with a happy ending.” He laughed from deep in his chest. He bent slightly to take Meghan’s hand in his. Their gazes met and they smiled their mutual happiness and contentment, silently repledging their devotion to one another.
“Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey?” came the nurse’s voice from the doorway. “Your daughter wishes to join this party.”
The newest member of the Shay-Ramsey clan was delivered into her mother’s arms and held lovingly. Grandfather, uncles, godmother, and parents alike oohed and ahhed over her beauty and perfection.
“We’re saving all the yellow blankets in the nursery for her,” the nurse noted, then explained, “The pink ones clash with that red hair of hers. You’ll never be able to claim there was a mix-up at the hospital and you took home the wrong baby,” she teased. “That one is most certainly yours.”
Meghan beamed her pride and laughed good-naturedly.
“She certainly is,” piped Lucy. Then she added, “And well worth all the trouble.”
“Oh, yes,” Meghan agreed, her voice filled with awe. Then looking from her daughter into the loving, proud eyes of her husband, she said, “Well worth it. But next time I think I’ll do it in a more conventional manner.”
Michael chuckled and placed a tender kiss on her brow. Giving her a menacing glance, he said, “Damn right, you will.”
A Biography of Mary Kay McComas
Mary Kay McComas is an acclaimed romance novelist and the author of twenty-one short contemporary romances, five novellas, and three novels. McComas has received several honors and awards for her work, including the Washington Romance Writers’ Outstanding Achievement Award and two Career Achievement Awards from Romantic Times (one for Best New Author and another for Innovative Series Romance).
Born in Spokane, Washington, the third child of six siblings, McComas graduated with a bachelor of science degree in nursing. She worked for ten years as an intensive care nurse. After marrying her husband and having their first child, the family moved to the Shenandoah Valley in northern Virginia, and McComas soon retired from nursing to raise her family, which included three more children.
Throughout her childhood and into college, McComas battled undiagnosed dyslexia. As a result, she was an infrequent reader in her youth and early adulthood. It wasn’t until after the birth of her youngest son that McComas began reading for pleasure—books hand-picked by her older sister for their humor. Gradually, she branched out with her own choices, reading widely, until one book changed her life. “Eventually I bought IT. You know … that one novel that even a dyslexic amateur can tell is poorly written, with no plot and horrible characters,” she explains. “I told my voracious-reader husband, ‘I can do better than this!’ And he said, ‘Then do it.’”
McComas’s first book landed her an agent, who helped sell four of McComas’s stories and secured the author a four-book contract within a year. McComas published her first book, Divine Design, in 1988, and followed it with seven more paperback novels.
A favorite of both fans and reviewers, McComas has been nominated for a Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award eight times and has been a Romance Writers of America RITA Award finalist twice, once for Best Short Contemporary Fiction and once for Best Novella. Over the course of her “third career,” as McComas refers to it, she has expanded her scope beyond contemporary romances. She frequently contributes to Nora Robert’s J. D. Robb anthologies and her paranormal novellas have garnered continuous praise.
McComas continues to live in the Shenandoah Valley with her husband, three dogs, and a cat. Her four grown children live nearby. Read more about Mary Kay at marykaymccomas.com.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1988 by Mary Kay McComas
Cover design by Julianna Lee
978-1-4804-8429-0
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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