Page 94 of Take Me to the Wedding

“I do believe you’ve fallen in love, Dr. Gas.”

I nodded. “A double fall. Except I’m not so sure about the guy—he fed me some line about looking at stars or something, and turns out he had a blow-up mattress in his truck bed.”

Caleb chuckled. “It worked though, didn’t it? That plus my get-lucky sweatshirt. You might be a magical matchmaker, but I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve too.”

“No more magic. No more tricks. No more matchmaking,” I said.

“No more denying we’re a couple.” He wiggled his toes. “With a giant heart on my foot, guess I definitely can’t do that.”

I giggled. “I love you, Caleb.”

“Samantha, I love you.”

Then he kissed me, long and sweet and wonderful. The first of a lifetime of kisses. That lifetime starting right now.

And wouldn’t you know, the pup wedged herself between us, her propeller of a tail rotating a mile a minute.

I petted her, and she nudged my hand with her wet little nose.

“I thought you didn’t like dogs,” Caleb said, scratching her behind the ears.

“Well, I didn’t like you much either at first, and look what happened.”

“Magic happens,” he said. And then we kissed again.

Epilogue

Caleb

“Look!” Sam said, pointing to the baseball field in front of us. “Joseph grew.” It was a sweltering Saturday in August, the sun casting golden rays across the slightly burnt-out grass just as it should on a hot summer evening, the bleachers around us were filled with the sounds of happy parents and grandparents and kids. The Little League team on the field was dressed in blue and bright, clean white that was undoubtedly going to be grass stained and dusty really soon. Joseph stood behind the fence laughing and clowning around with his teammates, his skinny legs in white pants with blue-and-white baseball socks. Notably not limping.

Just like me. I’d gotten my cast off.Finally.

“An inch since winter,” his mom Terry called up from the bleacher below us.

Joseph looked up, grinning and waving at us, giving giant thumbs up. We did the same right back.

“He’s so excited to have his doctors here today,” his mom said. “Thanks for coming.”

“Thanks for inviting us,” I said. “We wouldn’t miss it.”

Next to me on the bleachers, Samantha squeezed my hand. She wore white shorts and sunglasses, her hair high up in a ball cap with her ponytail sticking out the back. I touched her lightly on her leg, still in awe that she was mine. “Hey,” I said, unable to stop smiling.

“Hey back,” she said with a giant smile.

That made my heart expand to bursting—it felt like that a lot lately—making me utter a silent prayer of thanks. I shook my head in disbelief.Was she really mine?

“You okay? Anything wrong?” she asked. She knew I’d been excitedly anticipating this day. Now that it was here, I was a little anxious.

“I just want Joseph to smack it out of the ballpark.” I made a big arc with my hand.

She shook her head, but she was still smiling. “Would you settle for a little less?”

“No.” That made her laugh.

“Remind me not to sign our kids up for Little League. You might be one of those super aggressive parents.” She looked me over, noting my tapping foot, my inability to sit still. “He’s going to be fine,” she said. “You know that, right?”

She looked so beautiful I wanted to kiss her right then and there. In fact, I did, good and quick. In my mind, I was half-tugging her down to the bleachers, kissing her everywhere.

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