Page 18 of Her Captivated Hero

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At the reception,Riya was practically bouncing up and down in her chair. Her black eyes sparkled. Riya had teased Gray the entire short drive from the church to hotel where the reception was being held. Miranda and Griff’s two-year-old daughter had seen him as they were leaving the church and had yelled out for her Uncle Gay-Gay. She wanted to be held and cuddled. Gray loved his honorary niece, but he was sincerely looking forward to the day that she would start calling him Uncle Gray.

“Did you see it all, Gray? You were seated near the back, and over to the right, so I didn’t know if you could catch it all. I was dying. I laughed so hard, I was crying. I tried not to make any noise.”

“Admit it Dr. Patel, you were crying, and it wasn’t because you were laughing.”

She bit her lip. “Okay, to begin with I was laughing, but then I was crying, crying. How could you not? It was so touching.”

Gray had watched as every single bridesmaid had cried. He’d even choked up. “It was one for the record books, that’s for sure.”

“I adore Susan’s kids.”

Jeremy had been the ring bearer, and Hope had been the flower girl. When Susan had said, “I do,” Hope had walked right over to her brother, grabbed his arm and dragged him up to the dais where the couple stood in front of the minister.

Mike and Susan, full of joy at the moment, had done nothing but smile at the two small children.

“I do, too, Mike,” Hope had said in that high pitched voice of hers, still stuck between a baby and a little girl. “Are you my daddy now?” she’d asked.

Mike had swept the child up high into his arms, “I am definitely your Daddy if you want me to be.”

Gray knew that Susan’s first husband had died while serving overseas when Jeremy had been a toddler.

“Can I say ‘I do,’ too?” the six-year-old boy had asked.

Mike crouched down so he would be eye level with the child. “Absolutely, Champ.”

“Can I call you Dad?” the young boy asked with a slow gap-tooth grin.

Mike cleared his throat. “I would be honored.”

The ministered coughed. “Would this fine family like to turn around so we can finish the ceremony?” he’d asked kindly.

“Yay!” Hope cried. “We’s getting married.”

Gray shook his head, coming back to the present and looked around the ballroom. He spotted the little girl in question, then smiled back at Riya. “Yes, I saw the whole thing. It’s going to be tough for any wedding to top that one.”

“Look at Hope out on the dance floor. She is definitely in her element.” Riya’s smile was soft.

“Is she that much of a handful when you babysit her?”

“I usually have structured play time, so there isn’t a lot of wiggle room for her to do too much outside of the parameters.”

“Is that fun for her?”

Riya’s eyes got even brighter. “Since I never babysat before, I was really worried about what to do. So I researched it. The kids seemed to like it, and I conferred with Susan afterwards and she said that they wanted me to come over and play again, even if I wasn’t babysitting. So I’m thinking it was a success.”

He was curious what the little scientist would have found to play with the young children. The fact that she’d researched it, slayed him. “What did you do?” he asked.

“Well, I wanted to do something that would both entertain them and teach them. I was always happiest when I was learning something as a kid.”

“Is that true now?” Gray wasn’t surprised, but he wanted to hear more about her childhood.

“Oh yeah, I love new experiences,” she grinned. “For instance, this wedding has been fantastic. I’ve only ever been to one wedding before, and it was an Indian wedding. This was totally different.”

He watched her eyes jump to the dance floor again, but before he could ask her to dance, she was talking.

“I bought Jeremy and Hope sketch pads and a bucket so that we could do a nature walk along the bike trail near Susan’s house. I asked them to find different kinds of plants and flowers and put them into the bucket, and then sketch the different kinds of bugs, lizards and birds that they saw. I had planned to go back to the house so we could research everything they had found on the internet.”