Quarterback's Secret Baby(134)

"Jennifer. My beautiful Jenny from America, my big city girl. I love you. You make me happier than I've ever been. The only thing I want to do is spend the rest of my life making you as happy as you've made me. Will you marry me?"

He opened the box and I gasped at the ring. A flawless, Asscher cut diamond surrounded by a halo of rubies sat in a cloud of black velvet. I must have stared for a little too long because Darach gave my hand a little squeeze.

"Well? What do you say? Will you have this Scottish idiot?"

I reached down and very gently took the ring out of the box, handing it to Darach.

"Yes. Yes. Darach, a billion million times yes. I love you."

He pushed the ring onto my finger and admired it for a few seconds before standing up and pulling me into his arms. It was there, with my face pressed against the familiar warmth of his chest, that I remembered Diane.

"What about D-"

I didn't even get to finish.

"I wasn't in Dubai, Jennifer. I was in London. She's made a deal with my lawyer - I get full custody of Cameron and an immediate divorce. It should come through within two months but I wanted to get a ring on your finger before you had a chance to escape.

So that was it, my happy ending. Our happy ending - mine, Darach's, Cameron's and all of the babies I wanted to have with him.

We spent the next few days telling everyone. Darach's sister Anne came back from her summer vacation and, when we told her, just shook her head and smiled.

"I knew it. I knew it. I could see it on both of your faces two days after you met. Congratulations."

We got married on a clear, frosty day in January. My friends Amy and Simone sat in the front row beside the small photograph of my grandmother, whose presence I could feel all around us in the church. I wore a white Valentino couture gown that had involved three trips to Paris to get right and Darach held his daughter in his arms as he watched me walk down the aisle with Mr. and Mrs. Clyde on either side of me. When he kissed me after our vows had been taken and we had been pronounced man and wife, the whole church stood up, clapping and whooping.

Darach looked me in the eye and bent down to whisper in my ear through the din:

"You're mine now, Jennifer Robinson. And I'm yours. Forever."