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“They’re perfect,” Hunter says, his eyes shining, too. “Fiona and Maggie Murphy-Mendelssohn.”
My heart swells at the words. “Change that to Mendelssohn-Murphy and you’ve got a deal. I need to have the last word around here.”
Hunter smiles, the hope in his expression making me positive we’re going to make it all the way to happily ever after and then some. “As you should. Mendelssohn-Murphy it is.”
Later—much later—we crowd into the hospital bed together, one baby in each of our arms. Maya’s gone home to feed Mario, promising to drop Margaret at the rental tonight and return with Grandma first thing in the morning to check on all of us.
The room is quiet except for the soft sounds of Fiona snuffling slightly in her sleep, the steady beep of monitors in the distance, and the night nurses murmuring down the hall.
“Thank you,” Hunter murmurs, trailing a finger down Margaret’s cheek. “For both of them. They’re… I fell in love the moment I saw them.”
“Me, too,” I whisper.
He shifts his focus to my face. “Just like I did with their mother.”
I narrow my eyes as I add playfully, “Yeah, I liked you okay, too. Though I did my best to talk myself out of it.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” he says. “Is it too soon to ask you to marry me for real?”
Chest tightening, I nod. “Yeah, it is. But give me a few months. I have a feeling I might change my mind.”
And…I do.
Four months later, we’re at a summer concert in Central Park, listening to one of my favorite alternative bands from high school croon all the emo ballads I loved when I was seventeen and wondering if I’d ever find the kind of love people wrote songs about.
The girls are asleep in their double stroller, passed out cold after a big day spent visiting Grandma and playing with the new toys she bought for them to chew to pieces. Fiona’s thicker hair curls around her face in the late July heat, but Maggie’s stays wispy and straight. The older they get, the more their differences stand out, but they are both the cleverest and the best.
And they love each other so much. Even in sleep, their chubby fists touch over their heads and a small smile curves their lips.
Gazing down at them as Hunter and I sway to the music, I muse, “I wonder if they’re dreaming? What do you think babies dream about?”
“Maybe they’re dreaming about something like this?” he asks, and then, before I can wrap my head around what’s happening, he’s down on one knee on our blanket spread on the grass, pulling an engagement ring from his pocket.
It’s different than the first one, smaller, but more intricate, and clearly something he picked out especially for me.
I barely let him get out the words, “Elaina Murphy, will you do me the—” before I breathe, “Yes!” and hurl myself into his arms.
We tumble onto the blanket, Hunter insisting I let him finish as I giggle and shove my hand into his face. “Just put it on me already, Mendelssohn.”
With a roll of his eyes, he does, his lips curving as I crawl into his lap to survey my gorgeous new ring. “Finally. I was beginning to think you were never going to ask me.”
He huffs and shakes his head. “You told me to wait. There’s no pleasing you, woman.”
I wrap my arms around his neck, whispering against his lips as I move in for a kiss. “Oh, yes, there is. You please me all the time.”
He does. He pleases me later that night in fact, swooping me into his arms and carrying me into our bedroom the second we have the girls tucked into the nursery and have set the Captain up with a catnip ball to ease his suffering after being left alone for half the day. Captain Crunchypants loves his babies with the same passion that he loves humping other men and gets very upset if we take them away for more than an hour or two.
Thankfully, Margaret doesn’t seem too bothered by the occasional stray cat hair on the girls’ clothes, though we’realways careful to give them a good lint-roll before we head to Grandma’s.
Speaking of Grandma…
“We should call your mom and tell her the news,” I say as Hunter carries me into the bedroom.
“Later,” he says. “I have other priorities at the moment.”
I grin. “Oh yeah? I do love being a priority…”
He lays me down on the bed, undressing me with slow, delicious attention that makes my entire body hum. The first time we came together after the girls were born was a little painful, but now we’re back to the way we were before. As sweet and filthy as ever, and I couldn’t be happier.