Only You by K.T. Quinn

Epilogue

Molly

The Day We Got Married

We went down to the courthouse the next day. With the pandemic still in full swing, we were happy to settle for saying our vows in a small group. Maybe when things were back to normal we could have a bigger gathering with friends. I’d be able to fit into a wedding dress then, too.

Herb and Gloria came down to the courthouse with us. We were happy to have them as our witnesses. Gloria was a sniffling mess before we even started, and she had to keep lowering her mask so she could blow her nose.

Donovan and I stood in front of the Justice of the Peace. He looked dashing in a black suit, with his hair combed back and his beard trimmed thin. The Justice was wearing a mask with the Indiana state flag on it, a gold torch surrounded by gold stars on a field of blue.

“You may remove your masks for the ceremony,” The Justice said.

“Oh!” Donovan suddenly said. “I almost forgot. Be right back.”

He ran out of the room.

“Did I just get left at the altar?” I asked.

“It happens more often than you would expect,” the Justice of the Peace said.

“Stop scaring the bride,” Herb growled at the man. “My son said he would be right back, which means he’ll be right back.”

Donovan came running back into the room with something in his hand. He placed the object on the chair next to Gloria and Herb.

It was a framed photograph of my parents on their wedding day, with my mother’s long white dress trailing behind her.

“Donovan…” I whispered.

“I grabbed it from your dining room,” he told me. “Is that okay? I wanted them to be here for—”

I threw my arms around him. “It’s perfect. You’re perfect. Marry me, damnit.”

He squeezed my hand and we turned to the Justice. “I don’t want to live another minute without being married to this woman. We’re ready.”

The Justice cleared his throat. “Donovan, please repeat after me…”

The Justice said the words first, but I was totally focused on Donovan Russo, the man smiling down at me, the man who I was about to marry.

“I, Donovan Russo, in the presence of these witnesses, do take you, Molly Carter, to be my lawful wedded wife. To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until death do us part.”

He slid a wedding band onto my finger until it touched the engagement ring. I waggled my fingers, testing how it felt.

The Justice gestured to me. “Molly Carter, please repeat after me…”

I had imagined this day my entire life. I always thought I would be a crying mess on my wedding day, but as I looked up at the man I loved, the father of the child growing inside of me, my voice was steady and confident.

“I, Molly Carter, in the presence of these witnesses, do take you, Donovan Russo, to be my lawful wedded husband. To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer. In pandemic and in health, to love and to cherish, until death do us part.”

Donovan chuckled at my word change while I slid his wedding band on.

“By joining hands,” the Justice said, “you are consenting to be bound together as husband and wife. By the authority vested in me by the laws of the state of Indiana, I now pronounce you husband and wife.”

Gloria let out a loud wail, and was promptly shushed by her husband.

Donovan took me in his arms and kissed me. It reminded me of that first kiss we shared on the balcony in Rome, when we were just two strangers looking to each other for support during a crisis. It reminded me of the first kiss we shared when I was released from the hospital. It was so much like the kiss Donovan surprised me with while we were renovating the store.

Every kiss had been different, but they had all contained the same amount of warmth, passion, and love. A love that I knew would never fade.

Donovan suddenly dipped me. It felt like I was falling until his strong hand held me a foot off the ground, with him leaning down at me, smiling.

“Careful with her!” Herb suddenly scolded. “She’s carrying my grandchild!”

“I’ll always be careful with you,” he whispered, for my ears only. “Except for the times you want me to be rougher.”

I beamed at him, and we kissed once more before he raised me back up.

“I have the tremendous honor,” the Justice continued, “to introduce Mr. and Mrs…”

“Oh, not yet!” I said. “I’m not taking his name for a while. Not because I don’t want to! It’s because we own a business, and everything is in my name, and we definitely don’t want to deal with the hassle of changing everything over right now. We’ll wait until we’re more settled.”

“Don’t care,” Donovan said. “You’re Mrs. Russo to me.”

Mrs. Russo. I did like the sound of that.

“Okay, enough celebrating,” I said. “Time to get back to the restaurant.”

“Can’t you take the day off?!” Gloria said. “You’ve been married for thirty seconds and you’re already jumping back to work.”

“We don’t open until four,” Donovan told me. “We can get brunch with my parents before we head back.”

“Okay, we’ll get a quick brunch,” I allowed. “But then I want to head to the restaurant. Opening night was more packed than I expected, so I need to schedule the extra servers we talked about, and order more raw food supplies. Not to mention reevaluate the Cost of Goods Sold ratio on the wine, which I think we can tweak…”

“My feisty wife has a business degree,” Donovan said, “and she never lets me forget it.”

I grinned at him. “You just called me your wife.”

“Get used to it, because I’m going to be calling you that a lot, wife.” He held out his finger. “I like how this feels.”

“You’d better, husband!”

Donovan’s parents stayed for a week. It was actually really helpful because while Donovan and I were at the restaurant constantly, they helped with other things around my apartment. Preparing the nursery, stocking up on diapers and wet-naps and other supplies, and even taking my car to get inspected before the sticker expired. Gloria and I spent a lot of time together, chatting about how fussy Donovan was as a baby, and the tips and tricks she used to get him to sleep.

“Oh, he always cheated at hide-and-seek,” she revealed one morning. “He peeked through his fingers to watch where we would hide!”

“Don’t believe a word that woman says,” Donovan called from the kitchen. “I am, and have always been, a perfect little angel.”

Gloria and I glanced at each other, then fell into a fit of giggles.

By the time they left, I was really sad to see them go. I realized I was one of the lucky women who actually liked her in-laws.

They could never replace my parents. No one could. But the way they welcomed me into their family, it did a pretty good job of filling the emotional hole in my heart.

The first week at Solo Tu was a resounding success, and it never slowed down. As the pandemic began to fade away and the lockdown restrictions were eased, people were eager to return to their normal lives. Going out, eating at restaurants, socializing with friends and family.

One of the first things I had learned in business school was that businesses were rarely profitable the first year they opened. But against all odds, Solo Tu turned a profit the first month—even with all the small-business loans we needed to pay back.

Neither of us could believe it. We felt like we were living in a dream, and we would wake up at any moment.

The days ran together and time flew by. We worked at the restaurant non-stop, but it was more fulfilling than any job I’d ever had. I had my check-ups at the doctor, and everything with the baby looked totally normal. The virus hadn’t affected its growth at all in those first few weeks.

And pregnancy sex? Way better than I expected. Even though I felt about as sexy as a beach ball, Donovan couldn’t keep his hands off me. We probably had just as much sex in my third trimester as we did when we were in Rome.

We hosted a Halloween party at the restaurant, and gave away bottles of wine to the customers with the best costumes. I dressed as a gumball machine, with my pregnant belly as the big glass gumball container. Donovan dressed like the Swedish Chef from The Muppets, with bushy red eyebrows and a thick red mustache, and ran around the restaurant while waving a rolling pin and shouting Swedish-sounding words at everyone.

We closed the restaurant on Thanksgiving, but not before preparing five hundred turkey dinners to deliver to the homeless shelters in Elkhart and South Bend. Donovan cooked a turkey in our apartment, and accidentally burned it to a crisp by hitting the broil button instead of bake.

“Don’t you do this for a living?” I teased while he pulled the black bird out of the oven. “Or do you let the sous-chefs do all the work in the kitchen?”

“I don’t like your kitchen,” he grumbled. “I prefer the one at the restaurant. I can’t believe I ruined Thanksgiving…”

I wrapped my arms around him and kissed his back. “You’re allowed to screw up every now and then. I don’t mind filling up on mashed potatoes and stuffing!”

Donovan’s parents came to visit for Christmas. We closed the restaurant on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, which gave us plenty of time to relax at home with them.

Donovan cooked another turkey. This one turned out perfect—crispy on the outside with juicy meat on the inside.

“I’m just saying, next year you should visit us for the holidays,” Herb said over dinner. “We moved to Florida to get away from the snow. Not to chase it.”

“They’ll have the baby, Herb,” Gloria scolded.

“We traveled with Donny when he was that age. He did fine.”

“He cried on every single plane ride,” she said dryly. “You didn’t notice because you put earplugs in and went to sleep until we landed.”

I gave Donovan a warning look.

“I promise to be very helpful with the baby,” he said. “I’ll be the dad walking his baby up and down the aisle to get it to go to sleep.”

“We appreciate you visiting,” I said. “With the restaurant and everything, it would have been tough to fly down to Florida. And the next time you visit, we’ll have a larger place.”

“Yeah? You’re thinking of buying a house?” Herb asked.

“We’ve started looking,” Donovan said. “The restaurant is booming, and the lease on this place expires in May. By then we’ll want more room for the baby.”

“I think it’s wonderful,” Gloria said, grinning at me. “How many bedrooms?”

“We want three beds, two baths,” I said. “That gives us a nursery and a guest bedroom. So you can stay with us when you visit, rather than getting a hotel.”

“I think it’s a lot,” Herb said while chewing on a piece of turkey. “The four most stressful events in my life were getting married, starting a new job, having a baby, and buying a house. You two are doing all four at once.”

Donovan winked at me and said, “Marrying Molly was the easiest thing I’ve ever done. I’m sure the rest will be just as easy.”

After dinner we gathered around our fake Christmas tree next to the fire. I played Christmas music out of my phone while we exchanged presents.

“These presents are for the baby,” Gloria said while handing Donovan a big box.

“Mom, there’s a dozen presents in here!”

“That’s just to start,” she said firmly. “It’s my God-given right to spoil my first grandchild. Hold on. You can’t open any of these until after the baby is born.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because somebody insists on waiting until the baby is born to know the sex.” Gloria rolled her eyes and handed her son a box. “This is the only baby gift you can open.”

Donovan tore open the wrapping. “It’s no fun giving us all these presents and making us wait until January to open them.”

I leaned against him and rested my hand on my swollen belly. “Might not be that long. My due date is still ten days away but I feel like I’m ready to pop!”

Donovan finished unwrapping the gift and removed the lid on the box. “Baby clothes! What is this, a little chef outfit…”

Gloria gasped. “That’s the wrong gift! You’re not supposed to—”

Donovan held up the clothes. It was a onesie for a six-month-old, white like a chef uniform, with a hoodie that was shaped like a floppy chef hat. It was absolutely adorable, and my heart swelled with happiness at the sight.

And then I saw the words stitched onto the breast in blue thread:

CHEF’S SON

“Oh, for pete’s sake,” Herb mumbled. “I must have wrapped the wrong box…”

Donovan’s grey eyes were wide as he stared at the onesie. He lowered it and looked at his parents. “Son? I’m going to have a son?” He turned to me. “It’s a boy?”

I cringed and nodded slowly. “I’m so sorry the surprise was spoiled…”

Tears welled in his eyes and he suddenly hugged me fiercely. “A boy! I’m having a boy!”

“We’re having a boy,” I said.

“You’re not upset?” Gloria asked.

Donovan jumped up and hugged her. “Why would I be upset? I’m having a boy!” He hugged his dad next. “I’m going to have a son!”

“We’re having a son,” I corrected. “I guess now is a good time to tell you the name I settled on.”

He froze. “What name?”

I stood up on unsteady legs. Being pregnant was murder on my back. “I know it’s cliché to name children after the place they were conceived, but in this case I really like the idea of—”

“ROMAN!” Donovan suddenly blurted out. “I think that’s the perfect name!”

“Really? You think so?” I asked.

He hugged me and gave me a long kiss. “I know so. Roman Russo.”

I grinned. “I like the sound of that.”

“And you know what the best part of all this is?” he asked. “Now we don’t have to wait until the baby’s born to open this huge pile of presents!”

Gloria rolled her eyes and stood. “Who wants Russo Pie?”

Donovan and I laughed while opening all the baby gifts in front of the Christmas tree, both of us happier than we ever thought we could be.