Page 94 of A Match in the Making

“He’s gone off the rails again,” Gwendolyn heard Matilda say, which had her lips twitching.

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” Walter muttered. “As I was saying, I find you fascinating, I’m in love with you, and if you possibly return even a smidgen of that love, please put me out of the misery I’ve been feeling ever since you left Newport. Tell me you hold me in some affection, or at least find me pleasant enough to where you’ll agree to marry me.”

A single tear fell from her eye. “I find you more than pleasant.”

Walter smiled. “You do?”

“I do. I’ve been rather miserable as well since I left Newport, because I left a large piece of my heart there, and not simply with the children.”

He was on his feet and pulling her up beside him a second later. “Are you saying you’re in love with me as well?”

“I am, although know that I found you to be incredibly annoying at first, but then, like you, something changed. It may have been when you almost drowned me at Bailey’s Beach, although I didn’t realize it at the time.” She ignored a tear trailing down her cheek. “And then, after I watched you becoming closer with your children, saw that you had the capacity to love them deeply and unconditionally, I knew I was in trouble, especially when I was supposed to be matching you up with the perfect lady during the Newport Season.”

He wiped the tear from her cheek and leaned his forehead against hers, locking their gazes. “But you succeeded with your assignment, because you, my darling Gwendolyn, are my perfect match.”

Breathing became difficult once again when Walter cupped her face in his hands, leaned forward, and captured her lips with his own, leaving her more breathless than ever.

“They have to get married now, cuz they’re kissing,” Priscilla said before she giggled, Samuel joining in a second later.

Walter slowly drew away from Gwendolyn, placed a kiss on her forehead, and then caught her eye. “I have a feeling we’re soon to be inundated with best wishes and children longing to be part of this happy occasion. Shall we continue this later when we don’t have an audience?”

“Absolutely,” Gwendolyn said, right as the children scampered to join them, hugging Gwendolyn tightly and leaving her with the sense that she truly and quite unexpectedly had found her purpose in life—and that purpose was to become a wife and mother to a family she adored, where she’d spend her days basking in Walter’s love and watching children, who would now become hers, blossom in that love as well.